tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43045451099064739242024-02-07T05:47:22.318+00:00Thoughts from the Grim NorthFormerly known as Must Labour Die? and leaving this unresolved, we revert to idle thoughtsMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-8934994172859306772021-06-13T13:31:00.000+01:002021-06-13T13:31:34.823+01:00What comes next<p> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">In 2007, I was the co-author of a little book entitled </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Feelbad Britain</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">. Its opening sentence was:</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; text-align: justify;"><i>The starting point for this analysis of contemporary British society is simple: the observation that in an era of apparently unprecedented overall material prosperity and economic stability, people seem to feel no better than before and quite possibly worse. Obviously the </i><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><i>feel-bad factor” affects us all in different ways and to different degrees, but there is enough of it about to suggest a general trend across society, amounting to what we would characterise as a crisis in social relations and others have called a “social recession”. We are a society of people who don</i><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><i>t appear to like themselves or each other very much. Twenty-first century Britain, our country, is afflicted with a deep-seated and widespread social malaise.</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">We went on to describe this social malaise in many different forms including such diverse factors as obesity, depression and anxiety, behavioural problems in children, prison population, drug addiction and chronic indebtedness.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">The book made a small impact at the time but it was swiftly overtaken by a factor to which we paid a passing reference but whose importance we largely failed to realise; the global financial crisis which gathered pace with the collapse of Lehman Brothers at the end of 2008. We noted the failure of Northern Rock and even used the phrase “<i>global financial crisis</i>” but failed fully to appreciate the extent to which this would usher in the subsequent vast bailout of financial institutions and the years of austerity which would make our phrase “<i>unprecedented overall material prosperity and economic stability</i>” seem rather outdated.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">In 2010, two academics specialising in epidemiology, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, made a vastly more substantial contribution to this social-malaise, <i>The Spirit Level</i>. In the words of the Equality Trust founded by the authors, the book highlights the "<i>pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption</i>". Their work covered the 23 richest countries of the world. It shows that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in those rich countries with greater inequality. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">The inequality about which they wrote has deepened in the UK since 2010. A report from its Office for National Statistics in 2020 that showed that, over the past decade, median income for the poorest fifth of the population fell by 4.8% to £13,800, mostly in the last four years, while that of the richest fifth increased by an average 0.7% a year to £62,400. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this decline is the impact on health. In 2010, a report by Michael Marmot noted the effect that inequality had on differential health expectations. In 2020 in a report which reviewed this Marmot Report ten years on, the same author came to the conclusion that: <i>England is faltering. From the beginning of the 20th century, England experienced continuous improvements in life expectancy but from 2011 these improvements slowed dramatically, almost grinding to a halt. For part of the decade 2010-2020 life expectancy actually fell in the most deprived communities outside London for women and in some regions for men. For men and women everywhere the time spent in poor health is increasing.</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">In the first years of this century, this problem, which might be simply termed ‘unhappiness’, attracted a good deal of attention from a variety of other academics, perhaps most importantly Richard Layard, am eminent economist at LSE, once a key adviser to the Labour Party on welfare policies. Layard’s definition of happiness was:</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>By happiness I mean feeling good – enjoying life and feeling it is wonderful. And by unhappiness I mean feeling bad and wishing things <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>were different. There are countless sources of happiness, and countless sources of pain and misery. But all our experience has in it a dimension which corresponds to how good or bad we feel</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px; text-align: justify;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"> and so is his perception of how happiness has evolved in modern societies</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is a paradox at the heart of our civilisation. Individuals want more income. Yet, as society has got richer, people have not become happier. Over the last 50 years we have got <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>better homes, more clothes, longer holidays, and above all better health. Yet surveys show <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>clearly that happiness has not increased in either the US, Japan, continental Europe or Britain.</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px; text-align: justify;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">I have summarised his work and that of others in a personal essay which offers the fairly obvious conclusion that this apparent rise in personal unhappiness could be placed squarely on the way in which neoliberal economic policies came to dominate the world in the early 1980s; in Gramscian terms to form the prevailing hegemony. One consequence of all this work is that the Office of National Statistics began an annual publication of a complex ‘well-being’ or happiness index which, unfortunately, only goes back to 2014.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">After the financial shock of 2008, attention shifted to the fundamental problems of the neoliberal economic policies which seemed to be the root cause of the ‘feelbadness’ about which we wrote and to the political turmoils which swept over Europe. In 2019, Paul Collier, an Oxford economist, summarised the result of this social malaise as follows: “<i>Anxiety, anger and despair have shredded people</i><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><i>s political allegiances, their trust in government and even their trust in each other</i>…<i>Deep rifts are tearing apart the fabric of our societies. They are bringing new anxieties and new anger to our people, and new passions to our politics.” </i>Throughout Europe, these rifts have fundamentally altered the face of politics, in particular causing the virtual collapse of some long-established social-democratic parties and the rise of political formations with little or no political history such as the 5 Star Movement in Italy or New Democracy in Greece. The most disturbing aspect of this has been the rise of far-right political formations in many European countries with such as the French National Rally Party led by Marianne Le Pen and the Freedom Party in Austria actually on the edge of forming governments in western Europe. The rise of Alternative für Deutschland to be the effective opposition in Germany is also disturbing. The growth of authoritarian right-wing groups in eastern Europe is an established fact.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">In the USA, the rule of Emperor Trump has, thankfully, ended but the passions which surrounded his rule have not subsided leading to what some observers have described as an attempted coup including a riotous invasion of the Capitol preceding Biden’s inauguration. It is difficult to believe that we have heard the last of such as the Proud Boys or, indeed, of Donald Trump. It is probably significant that income inequality in the USA has been rising steadily since the financial crisis and that the country has the highest inequality of all G7 countries, higher even than the UK.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">There has not been an equivalent shift in British politics or, perhaps it would be better to write, in English politics given the effective obliteration of the Labour Party in Scotland, once its heartland. In a way we have been lucky that our own right-wing or neofascist ‘leaders’ have been more figures of fun than apparent dangers to the democratic state. Even so, the startling Brexit vote and the collapse of the so-called Red Wall of Labour seats in England suggest that something is shifting in our political system. In fact, it is not to far to suggest that the British political and constitutional system is broken with the two, previously dominant, parties in a state of disarray and the national makeup of the country pulled apart.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">A dozen years along from <i>Feelbad Britain</i>, the book’s thesis seems a little behind the times given the political storms of these years and the social turmoil of the Covid pandemic. However, in the midst of our current crisis, I have wondered just how much this sense of ‘feelbadness’ contributed to these political storms and how much it will contribute to the stormy times which we will face once we have come through it. Certainly, one feature of the current health crisis is how much inequality has been a factor in infection rates and deaths, something recorded by Danny Dorling. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">To return to Gramscian terminology, the final breakdown of the neoliberal hegemony in 2008 has led to a period of inter-hegemonic turmoil similar in some ways to the 1920s and 70s which also formed such periods. I have written previously on this at some length but, to simplify, the concept of hegemony was proposed by Gramsci to solve the problem which had beset all European radicals, particularly Marxists, for decades; why the subordinate working class failed to overthrow the dominant capitalist class even after its own oppression and exploitation had been endlessly revealed. Why even then they failed to follow Shelley<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span>s impassioned words to: </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>Rise, like lions after slumber</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>In unvanquishable number</i>!</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">written in 1819 despite the oppressed being many and knowing that the oppressors “<i>were few</i>”. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">Hegemony can be defined as the way in which dominant groups in society maintain their dominance by securing the spontaneous consent of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political, ideological and economic consensus which incorporates both dominant and subordinate groups. It needs to be acknowledged that, even as it provides a conceptual basis for resolving Shelley’s conundrum, hegemony remains a somewhat mysterious process, something which has always bothered some Marxists who want to retain some form of economic determinism. The problem in part lies in the heart of my definition, that hegemony is both ‘spontaneous’ and the result of ‘negotiated…consensus’. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">As noted above, the disturbing political feature of the past dozen years of inter-hegemonic crisis is the emergence of forms of authoritarian governance which can be loosely described as fascism combining both a kind of spontaneity and also political negotiation. Trying to pin down just how this might resolve itself in the disparate states of Europe let alone the chaos of the contemporary USA is impossible. However, one disturbing thought is that the extreme authoritarianism of the measures required to combat Covid could provide a social boost to this trend. In this country, one obvious consequence of such measures is that they have greatly heightened the sense that the United Kingdom is increasingly disunited with four separate governments applying different rules of conduct. This impact is heightened by Northern Ireland becoming even more isolated by the complex customs rules that now apply to it after Brexit.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">Just how far this separation will go is difficult to judge though the SNP have clearly set out their agenda for independence. One very machiavellian thought, worthy perhaps of Dominic Cummings, is that the Conservative government will, with public great reluctance, accede to another independence referendum knowing that in England and Wales, they have an almost unassailable lead. In 2019, the Conservative majority in these two countries was a rather astonishing 158 seats. It is true that in 1997, Blair won a landslide victory in England but that was when the Tories dropped to just 33.7% of the vote and the LibDems won 18%. Before then it was back in 1966 that Labour won a majority of English seats. England has been a Conservative country.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">But whatever the results of nationalist manoeuvres, one thing is clear; that as we emerge from the shadow of Covid, the constitutional and social character of the United Kingdom will be under great strain. Leaving aside the question of just how far apart the countries of the ‘United’ Kingdom will become, Covid has brought into to sharp relief the problem of England with its very centralised governmental system trying to cope with the regional aspects of Covid without any clear regional structure to implement any measures. There is a good reason for this difficulty which is that England is a country which has never had any such structure. Again, I have written about this elsewhere but, to summarise, England is not, of course, a state; it is itself a region within a state albeit one that has a powerful internal belief that it is a nation with a clear and indivisible sense of nationhood. One odd consequence of this, so ingrained that it passes without comment, is the national insistence on having separate international sporting teams. Imagine having a teams called Catalonia or Bavaria playing in the World Cup but that is, in effect, similar to the teams currently called ‘England’ or ‘Wales’ in various sports.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">This assumption that England is one indivisible nation remains so ingrained that it is an effort to realise just how unusual it is in modern Europe. Most large European states accept that they are formed from regions that have such different cultures, even languages, that they are almost different countries in everything save the political formation. Just how unstable this makes the country varies widely. In Spain, Catalan and Basque independence means that the country perpetually hovers on the edge of dissolution whilst in France, acceptance of separate national languages from Brittany to Nice to Alsace seem to satisfy most separatist desire. In Belgium, Flemish/Walloon contestation has led almost to the formation of separate countries whilst in Germany, the <i>länder</i> structure seems to satisfy nationalist aspiration.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">The thing that separates England from other large European countries, apart from the fact that it is not a country as state but, politically, a region within a state, albeit the dominant one, is that it has its own creation story based upon conquest. Other European countries tend to accept that they were created by a process of amalgamation or, in the case of some of the smaller countries, by the division of states even though this amalgamation or separation might have been, in part, based on war. England, historically, either conquered all the other constituents of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or, in the case of Scotland, had a perpetually antagonistic relationship until King James, almost accidentally, brought the two nations together, nations which remain quite distinct. This history extends to the country of England itself with a ‘conquest myth’ starting with Alfred hiding in the marshes of Athelney before emerging to begin a long war against the Danes which eventually led to the formation of England. Despite subsequent reconquest by the Danes and then the French takeover, this central idea of a country called England ruled first from Winchester then London remained dominant even if its northern boundary sometimes seemed a little hazy.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">There is little doubt that introduction of some kind of regional structure within England is necessary to reform its highly centralised government which has, in many ways, shifted little from the time of Henry VIII and remains almost comically archaic. What other country, for example, could have as a senior member of its government, a minister entitled the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, an office apparently created in 1491? The first attempt at such reform was undertaken by Oliver Cromwell who set up ten regions covering England and Wales and ruled by his Major-Generals. This venture did not end well and little else was done until the early 20th century when various forms of regional authority were set up to look after such diverse matters as electricity supply and road development. Nine "standard regions" were set up in 1946, in which central government bodies, statutory undertakings and regional bodies were expected to cooperate. Various other regional structures were looked at throughout the second of the century mostly with the intention of developing some kind of regional economic planning though always without any democratic involvement or, perhaps crucially, any kind of revenue raising power. The number of such regions varied between seven and ten. The key underlying feature of the later efforts was the glaring disparity between the setting up of new ‘parliaments’ in three sub-regions of the United Kingdom defined as nations and the centralised structure in its fourth and by far its largest sub-region, England. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">The Blair government made some quite strenuous efforts to set up regional structures. In 1998, <span style="color: black;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_assembly_(England)">regional chambers</a> </span>were created in the eight English regions outside London under the provisions of the Regional Development Agency Act. The powers of the assemblies were limited, and members were appointed, largely by local authorities, rather than being directly elected. The functions of the English regions were essentially devolved to them from Government departments or were taken over from pre-existing regional bodies, such as regional planning conferences and regional employers' organisations.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">It was originally intended that these should develop into elected bodies following referendums and one such, the London Assembly, was set up in 2000. However following the electoral rejection in 2004 of such a plan in the North East, the idea was dropped and, after 2007, under the new Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, the regional assemblies were effectively phased out, something which was completed after 2010 by the Coalition Government though the London Assembly continues in existence.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">The fact of the continuing existence of this Assembly highlights the underlying problem with any form of new regional structure for England; the overwhelming financial dominance of London and the South East. This dominance can be placed in personal terms quite simply; in 2020, someone living in Richmond-on-Thames had median full-time weekly pay a bit over £893 whilst in Islington it was £843. In Great Yarmouth, it would have been £473 and in Blackburn, £457 weekly. Regionally. in 2020, the median annual earnings in London were £41,017 whilst in Yorkshire and Humberside they were £27,856. Of course within these places, there were great disparities in such earnings with some poverty in Islington and wealth in Yorkshire. But the overall picture is clear.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">This disparity is reflected in the share of national production in the various regions which shifted dramatically in the last century. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the economies of the South East (including London) and the North were roughly on level pegging, accounting for 35 and 30 per cent of British gross domestic product respectively. By the end of the twentieth century, the South East<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span>s share had risen to 40 per cent while the North<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span>s had dropped to 21 per cent. From a position near parity, the regions had so diverged in their fortunes that the output of one was twice that of the other. Through boom and bust, London then increased its share by another 5 percentage points between 1997 and 2017. There is a small population disparity between the two regions but not enough to account for such a huge swing.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">This kind of regional disparity is not confined to the UK; other countries in Europe have shown similar features in particular, the Paris region in France and southern Germany as well as the well-known north/south divide in Italy. However, the scale and time-scale of the long-term relative shift does seem to be a particularly British phenomenon. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">Wilkinson and Pickett showed a decade ago how such income and wealth disparities led to acute social problems including, as I noted above, physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being. There can be little doubt that the problem of ‘feelbad Britain’ which we wrote about has got worse in the years since. It is astonishing that in 2019, more than 20% of the UK population was living in poverty, around 14.5 million people, whilst some 2.4 million including more than half a million children, were totally destitute at some point in the year,, This was an increase of about 50% compared with 2017. There can be little doubt that one consequence of Covid will be that these numbers will increase in 2021. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">This does paint a very bleak picture of a country soon to emerge from an unprecedented health emergency with stretched public and private finances, high unemployment, a lot of issues with ongoing mental and other health problems, Brexit problems and a political system wracked with uncertainty. There is no one single solution to these issues. The first step is clearly recognition of the scale of inequality and just how important it is to rectify the situation. However setting up a ‘Northern Powerhouse’, a perhaps rather unfairly derided initiative by the Coalition Government in 2015, became little more than a PR exercise when unaccompanied by specific and wide-ranging initiatives. There has been much talk of a “Green New Deal’ after Covid but without any clear policy flesh on the phrase. In particular, such talk does little to capture the essential underlying problem of gross inequality.</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">The best this essay can do is to introduce the idea of a ‘solidarity of the shaken’, a phrase first used by the Czech philosopher, Jan Patočka, who died in 1977 after his involvement there with the Charter 77 movement. The phrase means</p>
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<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>a particular bond that originates between people who have experienced a strong disturbance of the certainties, big and small, that hold their lives in place.</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px; text-align: justify;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The </i><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><i>shaken” is an individual whose everyday assurances have been overturned by a deeply shocking experience, which allows them to change their perspective on life.</i></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i> From Patočka</i><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><i>s point of view, the shaken are </i><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><i>those who are capable of understanding what life and death are all about, and so what history is about”, as they have regained the true <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>meaning of their own life through the experience of an actual danger. By rediscovering the meaning of their death, human beings can also understand what life really is, i.e. something that cannot be restricted to ordinary every day experience, or limited to mere facts.</i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><i></i><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">There can be little doubt that the worldwide experience of the pandemic can be seen in these terms; its dangers but also in the sense of various kinds of community support that it invoked. It is possible that we will learn to have a different relationship with nature in a time of acute climate crisis and that the worldwide nature of the epidemic will give a better sense of international solidarity. It has to be said that at the moment that there is little sign of the kind of leadership needed at all levels emerging in our political parties but time will tell. </p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">Meanwhile all I can do is finish with a song, one that my choir is currently ‘zooming’ but will, hopefully, soon be singing together:</p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We shall be known by the company we keep<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By the ones who circle round to tend these fires<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth</i></p>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is time now, it is time now that we thrive<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is time we lead ourselves into the well<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is time now, and what a time to be alive</i></p>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love</i></p><div><i><br /></i></div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-55113006828686905862019-08-30T10:57:00.000+01:002019-09-03T09:17:00.443+01:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This photograph of a recent installation by the Ghanian artist, Ibrahim Mahama, at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester is entitled Parliament of Ghosts. It is made out of old railway seats and battered cabinets full of withered documents, all remnants of the British colonial era. Probably unintentionally, it sums up the state of English politics today. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Newspaper columnists writing about the situation are full of words like ‘collapse’, ‘meltdown’ and ‘splits’ It is easy enough to find both Labour and Conservative M.P.s willing to criticise their leaders, often in scathing terms whilst there is an apparently constant flow of resignations from Party whips to be come independent or to form short-lived groupings under some invented name. There are currently 16 such independents sitting plus such as Chuka Umunna and Sarah Wollaston who first left parties, Labour and Conservative respectively, then joined the Liberal Democrats having fallen out with others in the short-lived Change UK.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The decision to prorogue Parliament has produced an even greater deluge of claims that we are falling into a dictatorship which seems a touch strong, given that M.P.s will lose just five working days given their habit extending the summer holidays by a couple of weeks to attend each others conferences or perhaps to stay on the beach for a few more days≥</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The absence in all of this chatter is any clear suggestion as to just what might emerge from the current wreckage, in particular whether the two-party system which has held sway at least in England for over hundred years might breakdown. Let’s leave the Conservatives out of the reckoning. The Conservative Party does not do splits; it does rancorous factions but not splits largely because its autonomous local associations have control over candidate selection and local finance. The Labour Party is, of course, a quite different animal and one which has the dates 1931 and, more relevantly, 1981 written on its heart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In 1931, its leader Ramsay McDonald, one of its founders and its first Prime Minister, led a faction of the Party into a kind of alliance with the Conservatives and Liberals forming a National Government. He was denounced as a traitor by the Party and expelled and in the 1931 election, Labour was shattered, getting just 52 seats despite obtaining 30.6% of the national vote. In 1981, four leading Party figures left to form a new party, the Social Democrats (SDP) and were joined by 28 Labour M.P.s and one Conservative. The basis for the new party was that Labour had become too left-wing under a socialist leader and was espousing policies such as unilateral nuclear disarmament and leaving the EU. It was also feared that a far-left movement whose name began with M was infiltrating the Party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the election of 1983, in which the SDP formed an alliance with the Liberals, the voting figures were as follows:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Share, %<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Seats</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Conservative<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 42.4<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 397</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Labour<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 27.6<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 209</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>SDP/Liberals<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 25.4<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 23</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Margaret Thatcher won in a landslide and Labour stayed as the Opposition for fourteen years. One of the luckiest Labour candidates was one Jeremy Corbyn, who had been chosen as the candidate in a seat, North Islington, which the Social Democrats were expected to win comfortably. In the event, the sitting M.P., Michael O’Halloran, who had joined the SDP, but had not been selected as candidate because of his notorious corruption, intervened as an independent, split the vote and Corbyn slipped in. (I drove Jeremy around on election day, 1983, and he was probably as surprised as I was that he won).</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The moral of both these dates is that under the merciless first-past-the-post electoral system, under 30% of the vote gets you nothing and that a party which splits gets hammered.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The long-term electoral situation for Labour already looks bleak particularly if, as seems very likely, Scotland becomes independent post-Brexit. In the past Labour has needed a strong showing in Scotland to achieve a Parliamentary majority, something which until 2005 it got. Scotland was, after all, almost the founding home of Labour. In 1997, it did get a huge majority and would have done so without Scottish seats but this landslide looks like a fading dream in the current situation. The Conservatives currently hold 304 of the 573 seats in England and Wales with Labour holding just 255. It already has nearly all Welsh seats so it must make big gains in England where, currently, the Conservatives hold 296 seats and Labour 227. A previous post on this site shows just how regionally concentrated the Labour vote in England has become (These are the <i>Chumps who Lost Scotland,</i> <a href="http://rainsborough.blogspot.com/2015/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">http://rainsborough.blogspot.com/2015/</span></a>). Gains on this scale in England look close to impossible. The map of British constituencies after the 2015 election show just how confined is the Labour vote.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The moral of this for Labour is that it is going to be very hard for it to win an overall majority and impossible if it splits in any way. The current outlook is that Johnson will soon call an election making some kind of pact with the Brexit Party and that Labour, currently polling around the mid-20% will not do well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There is probably one way out for Labour. If it were to propose a root-and-branch revolution in our system of governance including abolition of the absurd House of Lords and its replacement by a senate based around regional elections; much more power and finance to local government and, of course, a proper system of proportional representation to Parliament then it might well sweep in with a majority, even in England, if it were to propose some kind of electoral pact with the Lib Dems and the Greens. It would then, of course, have to learn to live with some form of coalition government and could, reasonably happily, split into the two parts who are currently at such odds with each other inside the Party. Or perhaps Britain could develop regional parties with their own agendas. Scotland might then choose to remain inside the union of 1707.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is all fantasy of course. Labour has never had any interest in constitutional reform and Corbyn and his close advisers stuck in the 1970s will not change this now. So the Parliament of Ghosts will wander along, shouting at all and sundry but with no-one really listening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The wild card in this is Nigel Farage and his, presumably ephemeral, Brexit Party. Just to where he and his devoted followers will migrate after Brexit is quite unknown. Presumably if the leader departs to earn a good living in Trump’s USA they will drift to their natural home following Boris. But Farage may well have other political ambitions in England and he is probably the most astute politician in the country.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Meanwhile the ghosts in Parliament will have some more weeks shouting their empty words.</span></div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-50880151083686045632019-05-29T15:44:00.000+01:002019-05-29T15:44:32.505+01:00Crucified on a Cross of Gold<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The political structures of both Europe and North America are in a state of turmoil usually referred to as an upsurge of populism. This has been a recurring theme in past issues of <i>The Thinker and </i>was recently explored last year by Anver Saloojee. This upsurge is characterised by the rise of new political parties and previously unknown leaders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Political shifts are occurring in many parts of the world. Trump and Macron - non-politicians - have become Presidents of two of the world’s largest economies. The populist Five Star movement, fronted by comedian Beppe Grillo until it came to power, is in government in Italy. Andrej Babiš, a businessman and entrepreneur, became Prime Minister of the Czech Republic only three years after entering politics. Syriza are in government in Greece. AfD and the Greens now take a significant share of the vote in Germany. Hungary and Poland are ruled by populist and illiberal parties. The new Ukrainian President is Volodymyr Zelensky whose previous political experience consisted of playing a Presidential candidate in a TV sit-com. In emerging market democracies, Brazil has recently installed a far-right President in Jair Bolsonaro and Mexico, a far-left President in Andres Lopez Obrador. Pakistan is now ruled by former cricket captain Imran Kahn. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">These new parties combine policies which traditional parties would not; they are organised differently to traditional parties, they are led by people who would not be in charge of traditional parties and who say things that traditional politicians wouldn’t. They pride themselves on being outsiders, setting themselves apart from incumbent elites. The parties portray themselves as democracies opposed to corporatism and the vested interests that have captured government and the old, incumbent parties. The names of the new parties give the clue to their purpose. In Germany, the extremist AfD translates as Alternative for Germany, President Macron’s party, En Marche! (the exclamation mark is apparently required) simply means ‘Forward’ whilst Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf means Movement for Justice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In South Africa, the rise and fall of ex-President Zuma can be seen in very encapsulated form as both the strength and the weakness of populist movements in that Zuma rose to power on the back of populist demands such as free university education and his attacks on an elite within the ANC and fell because of his notorious corruption. The rise of Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters may be seen as a continuing strand of populism in South African politics. In his election campaign, Malema made a point of attacking “racist white farmers, corrupt politicians, the rich and the powerful”, the usual populist rhetoric of the capture of democracy by an elite.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Although this political turmoil is world-wide, it is important to distinguish populism from popular uprisings such as the Arab Spring or recent events in Sudan. Populism is a movement within a democracy and refers to a sense that an elite of some kind has stolen democracy from some wider grouping within society, the ‘people’. It originated in this sense at the end of the nineteenth century in the USA and the Peoples’ or Populist Party, a largely agrarian movement, led by William Jennings Bryan who in a famous flight of rhetoric concerning the rather technical demand for currency bimetallism attacked the financial and political elite, who wanted to maintain a currency backed by gold, declaring that:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One problem in characterising these new political formations is that they do not fall neatly into the left/right axis that is used broadly to locate European political parties based upon their economic policies. This Marianne Le Pen’s Fronte National party (renamed National Rally) is usually described as ‘far-right’ even though many of its economic policies would conventionally be seen as to the left of the neo-liberal market policies of President Macron’s En Marche! party. Although their policies can be seen as confused and sometimes internally contradictory, they usually involve budgetary expansion and tax-cuts and are hostile to the globalisation of economic policies. Hostility to global financial interests is a common feature even if attacks on bankers are often combined with attacks on ‘Jew bankers’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is the apparent concern of new populist parties with the financial plight of the ‘common man’ which has led to the collapse of the traditional social-democratic left in many European countries rather than the populist ‘right’ making similar inroads upon the conservative right-wing groups. In an ominous historical parallel, it needs to be remembered that Hitler named his party National Socialist and that Mussolini was originally a leading member of the Italian Socialist Party whilst Oswald Mosley, the British Fascist leader was elected as a Labour member of Parliament.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is also true that some of the new parties, such as the Five Star Movement in Italy, Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain are sometimes called left-populist because they largely, though not entirely, eschew the anti-immigrant racism which characterise the ‘right’ populist parties.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The recent elections to the European Parliament illustrate the extent to which the new populist parties have grown and how the traditional centre-left and centre-right has been eroded. In these the Social Democrat bloc lost 46 of their seats and are reduced to 145 whilst the European Peoples bloc, the home of such as the German Christian Democrats, lost 41 down to 180 seats. The Conservative and Reformers bloc containing the British Conservatives lost 11 seats reducing them to 59. This latter result was largely down to the obliteration of the Conservatives who lost 16 of their 20 seats. To some relief, the principal winners in the election were not the far-right nationalists but the Green parties which gained a total of 19 seats from a base of 50 and a melange of centrist liberal parties comprising the ALDE bloc who gained 109 seats, a rise of 42. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Of course, the two main centre-right and centre left blocs remain the largest groups but they no longer have any majority in the Parliament and will have to seek various kinds of alliance when it comes to the crucial elections of various officials within the European Commission.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A closer look at particular countries does, however, confirm the collapse of traditional parties particularly on the left.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In Germany, the once mighty Social Democrats were reduced to third place losing 11 seats and almost being overtaken by the neo-fascist AfD who won 11 seats compared to the SPD’s 16. In France and Greece, the traditional left has effectively disappeared whilst in Italy, although they did achieve a respectable second place, the Social Democrats were comfortably beaten by the Liga, once a regional party, and were almost overtaken by the rather bizarre 5SM. It was not all bad news for the traditional left; in the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Portugal, they held on to a dominant position but, overall, it was a bad night for them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Perhaps the strangest result of all was in the United Kingdom, a country whose name actually spells out the precise opposite of its politics, where, enmeshed as the country is in a protracted withdrawal from the EU, a party formed barely four months before and led by a man, Nigel Farage, widely characterised as a cartoon buffoon, swept the board taking 29 of its 73 seats. The Labour Party limped in third place behind the centrist Liberal Democrats whilst the ruling Conservatives crashed to fifth behind the minuscule Green Party. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It remains very unclear as to just where the disintegration of the traditional left/right political structure in Europe will lead just as in the USA, the binary pairing of Republican, broadly conservative, and Democrat, broadly progressive, will lead. The huge proliferation of potential Democratic contenders for the next Presidential elections suggests a major fracturing of usual alliances.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This collapse of political structures is not recent but has been slowly mounting for some time. As long ago as 2007, Peter Mair, a British political scientist, wrote about the wider context of political parties:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>A tendency to dissipation and fragmentation also marks the broader organizational environment within which the classic mass parties used to nest. As workers’ parties, or as religious parties, the mass organizations in Europe rarely stood on their own, but constituted just the core element within a wider and more complex organizational network of trade unions, churches and so on. Beyond the socialist and religious parties, additional networks of farming groups, business associations and even social clubs combined with political organizations to create a generalized pattern of social and political segmentation that helped to root the parties in the society and to stabilize and distinguish their electorates. Over at least the past thirty years, however, these broader networks have been breaking up. In part, this is because of a weakening of the sister organizations themselves, with churches, trade unions and other traditional forms of association losing both members and strength of engagement. With the increasingly individualization of society, traditional collective identities and organizational affiliations count for less, including those that once formed part of party-centred networks.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He concluded that:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Voters in contemporary Europe may still be willing to locate themselves in left-right terms, and may even be willing to locate the parties in the same dimension, but the meanings associated with these distinctions are becoming increasingly diverse and confused. In part, this is due to the policy convergence between parties; in part also, to the often contradictory signals emerging from post-communist Europe, whereby the traditional left position is often seen as the most conservative. In another respect, it has to do with the new challenge of liberalism, and the increasingly heterogeneous coalition that has begun to define leftness in anti-imperial or anti-American terms, bringing together former communists, religious fundamentalists and critical social movements within what may appear to be a unified ideological camp. In this context, meanings are no longer shared and the implications of political stances on the left or on the right become almost unreadable.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Where is all this going? The only possible answer is no-one knows. Perhaps the unexpected upsurge in Green votes suggests that the people of Europe recognise that the biggest problem they face is that of climate change and of coping with the surge in displaced peoples, many of whom will see Europe as a place of refuge. As the countries of Europe have been, historically, a major creator of climate change it has to bear its share of responsibility for the outcome. Perhaps.</span></div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-72690529174340291422018-07-18T11:54:00.000+01:002019-01-01T10:11:07.210+00:00Hegemony and all that stuff<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Hegemony and all that stuff</span></b></span></h2>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The sky too is folding under you</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">And it’s all over now, baby blue</span></i></span></div>
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Hegemony - the way in which dominant groups in society maintain their dominance by securing the spontaneous consent of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political, ideological and economic consensus which incorporates both dominant and subordinate groups.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Historic bloc - the degree of historical congruence between material forces, institutions and ideologies and more specifically the alliance of different class forces politically organised around a set of hegemonic ideas and structures that give strategic direction and coherence to its constituent elements.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The concept of hegemony was developed by Antonio Gramsci, writing whilst imprisoned by Italian fascists, to solve the problem which had beset all European radicals, particularly Marxists, for decades; why the subordinate working class failed to overthrow the dominant capitalist class even after its own oppression and exploitation had been endlessly revealed, why even then they failed to follow Shelley’s impassioned words written in 1819:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Rise, like lions after slumber</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">In unvanquishable number!</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Shake your chains to earth like dew</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Which in sleep had fallen on you:</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ye are many—they are few.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">It needs to be acknowledged that, even as it provides a conceptual basis for resolving this conundrum, hegemony remains a somewhat mysterious process, something which has always bothered some Marxists who want to retain some form of economic determinism. Gramsci saw the capitalist state as being made up of two overlapping spheres, a ‘political society’ (which rules through force) and a ‘civil society’ (which rules through consent). He saw civil society as the public sphere where trade unions and political parties gained concessions from the bourgeois state, and the sphere in which ideas and beliefs were shaped, where bourgeois ‘hegemony’ was reproduced in cultural life through the media, universities and religious institutions to ‘manufacture consent’ and legitimacy. The political and practical implications of Gramsci’s ideas were far-reaching because he warned of the limited possibilities of direct revolutionary struggle for control of the means of production; this ‘war of attack’ could only succeed with a prior ‘war of position’ in the form of struggle over ideas and beliefs, to create a new counter-hegemony.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Over eighty years have passed since Gramsci’s original formulation and we are able, with the benefit of extended hindsight, to see how hegemony itself often carries seeds of its own instability in ways which sometimes are reminiscent of the way Marx believed that capitalist economic formations carried within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. The problem is that such instability is both more complex and also more unpredictable than any simple economic crisis.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hegemonic domination is, of course, not confined to the capitalist era. It can be seen in some form, often religious, extending back to the Pharaohs. However, capitalism shows greater instability and shifts than previous eras so it is useful to engage in a quick gallop through the last hundred and fifty or so years even though this risks considerable elision and gross simplification. This gallop is confined to Europe and America where the processes of such domination can be most clearly seen and does have a particular focus on Britain. The application of the idea of hegemony in post-colonial and post-Communist societies remains as work in progress given the relatively short period since domination by simple force was superseded by other forms of control.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The obvious starting point in Europe is 1848, the Year of Revolution, when there were popular uprisings in various forms across over 50 countries. Britain had its own, more decorous, form of uprising in the shape of Chartism. Virtually all of these uprisings were defeated, often with great bloodshed but it clearly marked the moment in which the dominant class accepted that the repressive techniques which had marked class control had to be modified. The use of these in Britain in the thirty years after Peterloo is wonderfully illustrated in paintings of the mass Chartist gatherings in remote hill sanctuaries held where no militia horses could pursue them. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> No one seems to have any good understanding of just how or why there was such simultaneity across countries when there is no real evidence of any overt linkages. It does illustrate the spontaneous aspect of the formation of any new hegemony. At the time, the bloody defeats in 1848 were seen as major setbacks for developing European socialist movements but they set in train the process of negotiation into what might be called the democratic hegemony, which included the concession of manhood suffrage, trade union rights and the development of parties representing the working class though always with unevenness and retreats. This long period of sixty years or so in which consensual democracy replaced physical repression is what would have informed Gramsci’s views on hegemony and still represents the longest period of relative social stability in the capitalist era, surviving as it did the unification of Italy and Germany, several wars including civil war in the USA and the rise of mass social democracy and trade unions. It was destroyed by WWI without any real signs of systemic instability epitomised by the complete failure of revolutionary Marxists like Luxembourg and Liebknecht to organise any international opposition to war based upon working-class solidarity. It produced a rather rose-tinted memory of the epoch epitomised by the American novelist Scott Fitzgerald’s description in <i>Tender is the Night</i> in 1934 in which an American couple visit a WWI battlefield. It remains as a perfect evocation of just how complex is the formation of hegemonic domination,</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">“See that little stream — we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation…</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.”</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">“General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.”</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">“No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.”</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This war broke the long-lasting ‘democratic hegemony’ and ushered back the old fear Marx announced in 1848 that:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Of course Marx and his allies were, at the time, quite wrong in their estimation of the power of revolution and of their own words. According to Eric Hobsbawm, "<i>By the middle 1860s virtually nothing that Marx had written in the past was any longer in print.</i>” Only in one respect were Marx and Engels proved right; the ability of opposition parties to split based upon accusations of leftism and rightism. However, in one way, 1919 was the postscript to 1848. The Russian revolution opened up a concrete vision of a new form of society; the social democratic opposition parties in most of Europe finally split into their revolutionary and reformist factions and there were short-lived workers states set up in Hungary and southern Germany. But only in Mongolia did the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party succeed in 1921 in forming a long-lasting communist state. Instead, 1919 ushered in nearly twenty years of cultural and political upheaval, economic collapse, war and what would today be termed authoritarian populism, otherwise known as fascism. Even Britain was not immune to the upsurge of the old organs of repression with naval gunboats moored in both the Clyde and Mersey at various moments. The final devastation was WWII.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The end of WWII brought in what can be termed the ‘welfare hegemony’, a consensual agreement between a conjunction of forces some of which seemed deeply hostile to capitalism including huge Communist parties in Italy, France and Finland as well as the revival of Labour in Britain based upon a left-wing programme. The ‘historic bloc’ developed in the agreement allowed these apparently hostile forces to be neutered and even incorporated inside the capitalist system.The essentials of this agreement need little rehearsal, basically the use of Keynesian economics to counter cyclical economic recession and the guaranteeing of certain minimum welfare levels. Of course, at the same time, capitalist Europe had been much diminished, a process that continued through to 1948 with the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the Soviet bloc and the continuance of forms of authoritarian fascism in Spain and Portugal. This new hegemony applied only to a core Europe of about seven countries plus the defeated countries of Germany, Italy and Austria. It was also adopted though in a modified form in the USA.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The twenty-five or so years of this welfare hegemony have often been thought of as the golden years of capitalism when both recession and unemployment and the threat of communist revolution seemed to have been banished in favour of steady economic growth benefitting all sections of society. The inherent problem of this pact was the increasing penetration of the state into the functioning of capitalism and the increasingly powerful position of organised labour within this state intrusion. This included not just nationalisation of much basic industry but also the use of various forms of planning and economic direction to steer the economy. These included such as the French economic plans which ushered in the so-called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>Trente Glorieuses</i></span></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(37, 37, 37); color: #252525;"><i>, </i>only briefly faltering with the <i>événements</i> in 1968, the Italian <i>Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>, </i>a Fascist institution taken over in postwar Italy and much admired by British social democratic economists, as well as the various forms of state intervention in Britain, mostly involving nationalisation but also the National Economic Development Council set up in 1962 by a Conservative government followed by the ill-fated national plan of 1965 under Labour.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The inevitable economic problems created by this penetration were summarised in 1975:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The most general contradiction of capitalism remains that between the growing social character of production and the private appropriation of the product through the market.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">In the period following the 2nd World War, this contradiction has developed in a number of different spheres, each marked by the increasing encroachment of conscious pubic control over the decreasingly effective market mechanism.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">In the area of human life, this process of increasing public control has been able to achieve definite social and economic progress, but in each such area, the problem of the increasing incompatibility of the market mechanism with the social and economic needs created by the continuing development of the productive forces, has caused new and intractable crises to develop. These crises are insoluble because each new encroachment on the sphere of the market leaves less and less room for manoeuvre in what is left of the market economy. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">B.Warren and M.Prior, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">Advanced Capitalism and Backward Socialism</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">, p. 25, Spokesman Press, 1975, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;"><a href="http://mikeprior.net/pdf/advanced-capitalism.pdf" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">http://mikeprior.net/pdf/advanced-capitalism.pdf</a>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In Britain, these crises were particularly marked by very high inflation rates created by intensive union action to raise wages. However, this characterisation did to an extent draw upon the need for Marxist economists to find economic underpinning for social upheaval. What was occurring throughout Europe was more complex than any simple economic explanation. These, after all, were the <i>anni di piombo </i>in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Germany and the wave of various kinds of student agitation throughout Europe. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">An analysis later in the 1970s looked at the almost simultaneous events in this decade:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The exact cause of the great international explosion of 1968 is not clear, though it was a social and political phenomenon without parallel, transcending even the Year of Revolution, 1848, in its international scope. There was certainly an element of international emulation heightened by the use, almost for the first time, of virtually instantaneous satellite TV transmissions. The images of that year still stand to mind: the NLF flags on Hue Citadel; clenched fists of black athletes in Mexico City; the CRS visors and shields appearing out of teargas clouds in Paris; bewildered Russian tank crews harassed by Prague crowds; the ruins of Detroit ghettos. Yet each of these events and the accompanying discord of a hundred cities – even London, where a Vietnam march in November 1968 was seriously seen in the leader column of the Times as being the precursor to armed uprising – was its own end point, the result of apparently dissimilar movements within quite different societies.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">We do not propose to analyse this international shock wave except to note one factor. All the popular movements we have mentioned were failures, at least in the dimension of physical repression. Even the Tet Offensive was accounted a material defeat at the time. But each, with one exception, set in motion powerful forces for change, which, in some cases, are still progressing. The Tet Offensive broke the power of the US government to convince its own people that the price was worth the gain and initiated a deep questioning of the effectiveness of political democracy in controlling the actions of governments. In Italy and France, the Communist Parties began their climb out of the political wilderness. In the USA, the struggle against racism was given a political dimension that it had never achieved before. What they all represented – save the Tet, which lies outside this circle except in its indirect effects on the American people – was a break with certain aspects of bourgeois hegemony rather than a challenge to state power. And what they demonstrated more effectively than a thousand theories was that such challenges could emerge out of popular movements; that they need not be mediated by any strata of intellectuals or party groups; that bourgeois hegemony within the political and ideological structures of society is not absolute.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">M. Prior and D.Purdy </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">Out of the Ghetto</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">, p.89, Spokesman Press, Nottingham, 1979, ISBN 0 85124 245 6, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;"><a href="http://mikeprior.net/pdf/OutoftheGhetto.pdf" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">http://mikeprior.net/pdf/OutoftheGhetto.pdf</a>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Applying a more Gramscian analysis, we suggested a more subtle explanation than the one quoted above for the dominance of the ‘welfare hegemony’ and the seeds of its downfall:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">This notion of an ongoing conflict between structurally antagonistic modes of production co-existing within the same social formation is crucial to the subsequent argument. It is also necessary to be clear that the dominant mode of production is not identical with the progressive mode of production. The dominant mode may lack the capacity to resolve the major social and economic issues of the day from within its own resources. In order to sustain itself and to integrate both individual and social needs at various levels of society into a stable synthesis it may have to rely on partial and contradictory borrowings from outside itself.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The previous example of post-war Britain illustrates how British capitalism was enabled to survive and even, by the standards of its own historical past, to flourish, by incorporating some of the dynamics of socialism. It is this phenomenon, the pre-emptive borrowing of elements of the class enemy's programme in order to forestall revolution, for which Gramsci coined the phrase "passive revolution". The borrowed elements do not, however, become totally submerged. They do not completely lose their progressive character by virtue of being harnessed to the dominant mode. Because they derive ultimately from an antagonistic mode of production they always retain a threatening potential and remain a continuing focus of political and ideological conflict. It is hard to see how the experience of the UK since the onset of acute economic crisis in 1973-4 can be understood in any other terms. On every front of economic and social policy, from the control of the National Health Service to the control of the money supply, the most fundamental principles of social organisation and action have been locked in combat. That this combat has been fought out in the idiom of reform rather than revolution should not obscure its importance.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">M. Prior and D.Purdy </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">Out of the Ghetto</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;">, p.27, Spokesman Press, Nottingham, 1979, ISBN 0 85124 245 6, </span><a href="http://mikeprior.net/pdf/OutoftheGhetto.pdf" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 10px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">http://mikeprior.net/pdf/OutoftheGhetto.pdf</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The outcome of this breakdown of ‘welfare’ hegemony is too well known to need much reiteration except for two points; that the victory of what subsequently became known as neoliberalism was not inevitable and that it was not total. In 1983 in Britain, the victory of what later became known as Thatcherism could probably have been resisted, at least for a time, had the Labour Party not conveniently committed suicide in 1981 just as it had done fifty years before in 1931. The key hegemonic point of neoliberalism was the alleged return of power to the individual consumer, to allow individual choice as against state-dictated spending and the removal of power from institutions such as the trade-unions and local authorities which were portrayed as impinging on the power of the individual. The final part of the agreement was the progressive privatisation of parts of the economy, including social housing, once seen as necessarily state-owned with generous discounts offered to purchasers of shares or freeholds. One key statistic summarises the basis of this hegemonic agreement: in 1979, UK household debt was at the record low of 29.20 percent of GDP whilst in 2016 it was a little above 87% down from its record high of 97% in 2010 but increasing. Accompanying this was a prolonged attack on government expenditure from a postwar high of over 48% of GDP at the end of the 1970s down to a low of 36% in 1998.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The rise in household debt was common throughout the capitalist world. In 1995, household debt as a proportion of household disposable income was about 38% in Italy and 105% in Australia. The corresponding figures in 2014 were 89% and 201%. Only in Germany has household debt been kept relatively stable resulting in Germany’s current position as the economic arbiter of Europe with Angela Merkel as the good-housekeeper. In the USA, it will be recalled that it was the sub-prime mortgage scandal which precipitated the financial crisis of 2008, essentially the provision of the mortgages necessary to buy houses well beyond the ability of households to pay. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In one important way, the neoliberal hegemony differed from the previous two in that it was based upon a lie whereas both the democratic and welfare hegemonies were based upon at least partial truths. Real advances were provided in democratic rights after 1848 and there were real gains in welfare provisions after 1945. What neoliberalism provided was access to personal debt finance to promote consumption whilst allowing monstrous growth in real inequality to those with power either corporate or political. A recent starting revelation about this is that just 8 people have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the world’s population. Real wages have effectively stagnated for most working people whilst top-earners have soared away. This is shown in the figures for the USA of the share of national income taken by the top 1%. This bottomed out in 1973 at 8.9% and has since under neoliberalism risen to 21.2% in 2013. Similar numbers can be found for most countries. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The neoliberal hegemony was also concerned to reduce the fear and uncertainty which had been created in the turbulent 1970s essentially by reducing the power of trade-unions and other organs of social dissent. The apparently total victory of neoliberalism was marked by the failure of opposition forces to adequately develop any counter-hegemony particularly any way to bring together the various social movements of the 1970s and established political agents which effectively controlled access to channels of electoral democracy. This failure was most marked in Italy which had both mass social upheaval and powerful left political parties. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A paper by the controversial Italian sociologist, Antonio Negri, (later described by a conservative Italian President as "<i>a psychopath</i>" who "<i>poisoned the minds of an entire generation of Italy's youth</i>” so he can’t be all bad) analyses this period and, in particular, the failure of the Italian Communist Party’s ‘historic compromise’ which was, in effect the one effort to produce a counter-hegemony however flawed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In various ways, the collapse of the welfare hegemony and the rise of a neoliberal hegemony was mirrored throughout Europe though in different ways and degrees. The notorious <i>tournant de la rigueur </i>by the Mitterand government in 1983, accompanied by the expulsion of the Communist Party from government, is the most obvious example, a turn essentially derived from the same problem which had confounded British Labour governments in the 1970s, persistent and rising inflation. The historic bloc created in all cases was essentially based upon fear, that the perceived chaos created by strong trade-unions would destroy hard-won savings and prevent individual success.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">We are now in the midst of the fourth hegemonic crisis in the capitalist era if one counts the turbulent 1840s. It may or may not be encouraging for progressive politics that they seem to have come at steadily decreasing intervals; very roughly 60, 30 and 20 years. It is certainly not encouraging that war has often, in the past, been part of the breakdown. What is clear is that what we are going through is not simply an economic crisis, though certainly the financial crisis precipitated by the neoliberal hegemony and its debt-fuelled underpinning is key, but also a crisis of democracy whose outcome remains very much in the balance. The election of the maverick Donald Trump in America and the Brexit vote in the UK were a massive markers along this path. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">All over Europe from the Pirate Party in Iceland to Podemos in Spain, new and rather odd political formations have arisen whilst in others the old spectre of fascism has arisen in a new garb. There have also been an array of social movements which often overlap with the new parties to the extent that it is difficult to see much difference. One problem with describing these is that the old labels no longer fit very well. In France, Marianne Le Pen is often described as ‘far-right’ but in fact it is her likely opponent in the French Presidential elections, Fillon, who best fits this label. He would demolish the existing labour code, cut public expenditure, abolish the wealth tax, in short the full neoliberal agenda. On economic policy, Le Pen’s Front National’s 2012 manifesto contained commitments to raise the minimum wage and lower the retirement age to 60, reduce energy prices and taxes, introduce trade barriers along with measures designed to help small rather than big business, and give priority to French nationals in employment. Essentially, left-wing protectionism plus hostility to immigrants. In many ways, Trump offers the same kind of mix. Of course, pessimists would suggest that another name for this kind of combination is national socialism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">One more quote from 1979 to suggest that this political disarray is not unique:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">We are paradoxically in a situation where the richness and diversity of the left has outrun the political concepts that we possess to handle their coordination, mutual support and unification around common political objectives.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(</span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 10px;">Out of the Ghetto</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 10px;">, op cit p. 14)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Just why have we reached this parlous state? In 2016, the late Zygmunt Bauman wrote:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> We could describe what is going on at the moment as a crisis of democracy, the collapse of trust: the belief that our leaders are not just corrupt or stupid, but inept. Action requires power, to be able to do things, and we need politics, which is the ability to decide what needs to be done. But that marriage between power and politics in the hands of the nation state has ended. Power has been globalized, but politics is as local as before. Politics has had its hands cut off. People no longer believe in the democratic system because it doesn’t keep its promises. We see this, for example, with the migration crisis: it’s a global phenomenon, but we still act parochially. Our democratic institutions were not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Zygmunt Bauman </span><a href="http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/19/inenglish/1453208692_424660.html?id_externo_rsoc=FB_CC" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent; font-size: 11px;">http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/19/inenglish/1453208692_424660.html?id_externo_rsoc=FB_CC</a>)</div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Thus Europeans and Americans hear their national leaders say that they will resolve the refugee crisis, stop terrorism, provide more jobs, control the banks, increase economic growth… And then they don’t. As a consequence they turn to parties or social movements disguised as parties which at least hold out the promise of action even though, as with Syriza in Greece, they prove unable to do this. In America, Trump based his campaign on exactly this self-proclaimed ability to get things done. In Great Britain, it was this con</span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: x-small;">catenation of concerns that produced the Brexit vote.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Some observers believe that the current turmoil presages the final collapse of capitalism. For example, Paul Mason predicts that the spread of information technology, in particular the internet, will create an entirely new form of society (see </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Paul Mason, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Post-Capitalism, a Guide to Our Future</i></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 10px;">) </i><span style="font-size: x-small; text-indent: 28.3px;">whilst Wolfgang Streeck suggests that democracy will inevitably master a weak and failing capitalist system. (see </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Wolfgang Streeck, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">How Will Capitalism End?: Essays on a Failing System).</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-indent: 28.3px;"> However, both views seem to rely heavily on a version of the old Marxist tradition of capitalism failing because of internal contradictions rather than the actions of any agency, a new kind of economic determinism. It is difficult to see the new hegemony which might arise from the collapse of neoliberalism; certainly a return to what we have called welfare hegemony seems unlikely particularly as pillars of international order such as the International Monetary Fund and the Economic Union seem wedded to neoliberalism. On the other hand, formation of what may be called in Gramscian terms a counter-hegemony is also difficult to envisage. The historic bloc required to achieve such requires a complex set of alliances which go beyond the simple proletariat/peasantry duality of Gramsci’s time. In particular it must include alliances with refugees displaced by war and famine as well as with the mostly young protesters in such as the Occupy movement which briefly erupted after the 2008 financial crisis. It also has to take into account the growing international importance of countries such as China and Russia which were effectively excluded in any hegemonic settlement in previous eras because of the simple capitalist/communist duality which prevailed. It is difficult to foresee other than turmoil as the EU enters a period of crisis and Donald Trump does, well whatever Donald Trump is going to do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; text-indent: 28.3px;"> Perhaps the best commentary comes from a prophet of a past era, our current Nobel Literature laureate:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Come writers and critics</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Who prophesize with your pen</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">And keep your eyes wide</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The chance won’t come again</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">And don’t speak too soon</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">For the wheel’s still in spin</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">For the loser now will be later to win</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">For the times they are a-changin’</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Come mothers and fathers</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Throughout the land</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">And don’t criticize</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">What you can’t understand</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Your sons and your daughters</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Are beyond your command</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Your old road is rapidly agin’</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">For the times they are a-changin’</span></i></span></div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-12821578801542429902017-06-13T10:26:00.001+01:002019-01-01T10:11:57.270+00:00Nostalgic Thoughts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Spending election week abroad, I woke on Friday morning and, looking at the results, was struck with a wave of nostalgia for it all seemed so much like the 1970s when I was a young political enthusiast with first the Communist then Labour parties. It all came back; two parties neck-and-neck swapping government and sharing 80-90% of the vote, slim majorities (in October, 1974, Labour got a majority of 3 with 39.2% of the vote), minority government (remember the Lib-Lab pact), ill-timed elections (Wilson went early in 1970), wrong opinion polls (they gave Labour a lead of over 12% in 1970 instead the Conservatives won by over 3%), EU referendums, election of a left-wing Labour leader (Michael Foot in 1980) and, perhaps best of all, vicious in-fighting inside Labour culminating in the electoral disaster of 1983. The last has perhaps the biggest resonance for today as it allowed Jeremy Corbyn to slip past two warring Social Democrats into what had been seen as a likely win the new Social Democrat Party. (I drove Jeremy around the constituency on that day).<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">There were actually two triumphs last Thursday. Obviously Labour's huge increase in its share of the vote, up 9.5% since 2015 but also, and much overlooked, a smaller but still significant Conservative triumph in increasing its share of the vote by 5.5%. Yes, I know this sounds the wrong note in this moment of triumph but read on. Of course, they suffered huge and humiliating losses in constituencies like Canterbury and Reading but this was almost but not quite compensated by big inroads into what had previously been Labour heartlands. Check out Bishop Auckland (Tory vote share up 14.4%, Labour majority 502), Dudley North (up 15.6%, Labour majority 22), Ashfield (up 19.3%, Labour majority 441) and Walsall where they won with a vote share up 15.9% and a majority of 2,601. Even, and don't mention this when Dennis Skinner is in the room, in the rock-solid seat of Bolsover, the Tory vote-share went up by 16.1%. Bolsover still isn't marginal, of course but Dennis might bump into some Tories when he shops in the local Poundland.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The result of this is twofold. First, politics in England and also in Scotland and Northern Ireland has been reduced to a tight two-horse race with a large number of marginal seats in all parts of the country. An article in the Guardian, (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/11/labour-can-win-majority-if-it-pushes-for-new-general-election-within-two-years">https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/11/labour-can-win-majority-if-it-pushes-for-new-general-election-within-two-years</a>), shows that Labour could become the largest party on a swing to it of just 1.6% by winning a further clutch of seats in southern England and Scotland whilst the Tories could gain 19 seats in all parts of the country on a swing of just 1%. These kind of electoral swings are almost impossible to predict with the result that the next election is going to be chancy for both parties.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The second outcome of the election is that smaller parties have been hammered, some almost to oblivion with both major parties benefitting. Ukip is almost certainly finished but the results for the Green Party are almost as disastrous and the Liberal Democrats have barely hung on.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">So is it back to the '70s. Well, not really because in that decade the two-party clash was heavily class-based whereas now the class base of politics has become become distorted even inverted. Robert Ford writing in the Guardian (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/11/new-electoral-map-for-britain-revenge-of-remainers-to-upending-class-politics">https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/11/new-electoral-map-for-britain-revenge-of-remainers-to-upending-class-politics</a>) produced the best analysis I have seen. Part of it goes:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>The 2017 surge in turnout, with particularly high engagement from the young, was something new. But other shifts in last week’s election reflect the continuation of well-established trends. One was the ever-growing education divide in politics. This grew sharply in 2015, when Labour under Ed Miliband did much better among graduates than school-leavers and was also very clear in the EU referendum. It looks likely to have grown again this year due to a shift at the other end of the scale, with May’s Conservatives gaining ground in areas where voters with few qualifications congregate, while falling completely flat in graduate-heavy seats. The education divide reflects major differences in identity, values and outlook between more socially conservative and nationalistic school-leavers and more liberal and cosmopolitan graduates. Similar deep divides were visible in recent elections in Austria, France, the Netherlands and the US. The clash between graduates and school-leavers looks set to be a central part of democratic political competition both here and elsewhere in the future.</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>While deepening education divides pull Labour-voting graduates and Conservative-voting school-leavers ever further apart, the traditional class divides that have structured politics in Britain for generations seem to have been inverted this year.</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>Labour, founded as the party of the working class, and focused on redistributing resources from the rich to the poor, gained the most ground in 2017 in seats with the largest concentrations of middle-class professionals and the rich. The Conservatives, long the party of capital and the middle class, made their largest gains in the poorest seats of England and Wales. Even more remarkably, after years of austerity, the Conservatives’ advance on 2015 was largest in the seats where average incomes fell most over the past five years, while the party gained no ground at all in the seats where average incomes rose most.</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>Britain’s class politics has been turned completely upside down in 2017. Wealthy professionals in leafy suburbs have swung behind a Labour leader who pledges to sharply increase their taxes, while it was struggling blue-collar workers in deprived and declining seats who were most attracted by the party of austerity cuts to public services and welfare.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Ford's analysis is mirrored on a wider scale by David Goodheart in a recent book (T</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">he Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics) in which he divides modern </span></span><span style="background-color: white;">society into two groups; the Somewheres and the Anywheres. The Anywheres are the graduate employed comfortable living in a new metropolitan environment and broadly dismissive of conservative (with a small 'c') ideals of geographical community and what Goodheart terms the 'sacred' in a non-religious sense amongst which are notions relating to nationalism and national identity. They are also rather contemptuous of the Somewheres who remain close to where they were born, have little education and who were in the British context the large majority of the Leavers. I have heard several Remainers including friends of mine refer to these Somewheres as the 'stupid people'.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The fact is that the election shows that England (I am not qualified to comment on other countries in the Union) is a deeply divided country and that we are entering the Brexit negotiations in a dangerously unstable social and political context. This is not something to celebrate.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Just a final note on my own party, the Greens. As noted above, we have been effectively almost wiped out in the election. It is no use trying to disguise this fact as Caroline Lucas attempts to do in trying to promote the success of progressive alliances. (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/10/progressive-alliances-future-of-british-politics">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/10/progressive-alliances-future-of-british-politics</a>) All that happened was that some local Green Party's did not stand candidates. That's it. Alliances involve some kind of mutual agreement and that did not happen. Not anywhere. And why should it have. In our target seat of Sheffield Central, our vote-share halved to 8% whilst Labour shot ahead with an increase of 15.9%, pretty much there largest in the north. (It is worth noting that in the Labour gain from the Lib Dxems in neighbouring Sheffield Hallam, the Labour vote-share hardly increased whilst the Conservative share shot up by over 10%) In the other target, Bristol West it was the same story. Our vote-share crashed by 14% to just 12.9% whilst Labour shot up by 30.3%. The fact is that throughout the country, the electoral constituency which should have contained our biggest source of support, the young, educated, environmentally aware Remainers, surged to the polls to vote Labour.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lucas' view that progressive alliances are the future of British politics is startlingly naive. We have a national vote-share of 1.6% just below UKIP which all agree is effectively destroyed. Why should a party with a shar</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">e of 40% have any interest in a deal? It is understandable that the Lib Dems, whose share dropped to just 7.4% despite winning some seats, might be interested in acquiring a few more. But Labour, whose leader has never shown the slightest interest in electoral reform? Pull the other one, I am afraid, Caroline.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">So what should we do? First, we need to have a reality check. We have failed and failed badly. Second, we need to try and establish just what went wrong. Yes, that main mean focus groups and all the paraphernalia of modern political research. Third, and probably most controversial, we need to draw very firmly away from suggestions of alliances with anyone. In particular we need to draw away from Labour and establish a clear political identity and not one just based on environmental concerns. Certainly root-and-branch constitutional reform has to be part of this but we also have to agree a clear social platform together with taxation policies such as the land and wealth taxes which Labour so markedly steered away from.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">It might work, it might not. But to return to my nostalgic vision of the '70s, we are in unstable and fast-moving times and what we need now is a clear head not one full of romantic nonsense. Perhaps I should end by quoting one last expert, the true prophet of the age and our very own Nobel Laureate:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>The line it is drawn</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>The curse it is cast</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>The slow one now</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>Will later be fast</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>As the present now</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>Will later be past</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>The order is</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>Rapidly fadin'</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>An the first one now</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>Will later be be last</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><i>For the times they are a-changin'.</i></span><br />
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-47720119232274389842016-08-03T11:17:00.003+01:002016-08-03T11:17:48.932+01:00After Brexit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The referendum vote in the U.K. to leave the European Union (EU) forms a coda to the rather pessimistic piece in the last issue of <b>The Thinker. </b>It was the worst possible result; close but decisive revealing deep underlying fissures in British society along several axes. Young against old; richer against poorer; London versus the North; educated against less-educated. In each category, the first voted much more heavily to Remain than the 48% in the overall vote. In the north of England, Manchester, a multi-cultural city with a huge universities, voted to Remain whilst the surrounding battered once-cotton towns of Lancashire voted heavily to Leave. Scotland and London were the bastions of Remain, pretty much all the rest voted to Leave.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What happened? Perhaps the best explanation can be found by going back to the last referendum Britain had on the EU in 1975 when it was still called the European community. Labour, the party in power, was deeply split over the issue as was the right-wing of the Conservative Party. Even so, the country gave a 67% majority to stay in the EC. In his diary, Ken Tynan, a drama critic, noted:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> <i> 6 June: Roy Jenkins [then Home Secretary] interviewed on TV after the result was announced, made an unguarded remark that summed up the tacit elitism of the pro-Marketers. Asked to explain why the public had voted as it had… [he] smugly replied “They took the advice of the people they were used to following”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Last June, a majority of English (and Welsh) people stubbornly refused to accept the advice of just the same people who had expected to be followed as usual. In a perceptive article in the <i>London Review of Books</i>,</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 7.3px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> John Lanchester explores this refusal and, essentially, concludes that Britain is a country in which one large section, the white working class, feels that it has been abandoned. As he writes:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> <i>To be born in many places in Britain is to suffer an irreversible lifelong defeat - a truncation of opportunity, of education, of access to power, of life expectancy.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This group was once politically represented by the Labour Party, an alliance of liberal, metropolitan intellectuals and the working class, and now feels abandoned by it. Lanchester goes on:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i> For now, what has happened amounts to a collapse of our political system…The deeper problem is that the referendum has exposed splits in our society which aren’t mapped by the political parties as they are currently constituted…Political parties are the mechanism through which divisions in society are argued over and competing interests are asserted.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i> The trouble with where we are now is that the configuration of the parties doesn’t match the issues which need to be resolved.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So what now with regard to EU exit, something which is now the focus of the political problems outlined by Lanchester? There are essentially three options. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">First, the UK Parliament could simply immediately repeal the 1972 European Communities Act and its later amendments, the founding and, in most respects, the only legal basis for British membership at least so far as the British are concerned. Once this is done, then European law except that which has been transposed into British legislation would no longer be valid and the country would no longer be bound, legally if not morally, by any treaty obligations with the EU. It could then apply whatever border controls it saw fit and cease to provide funds to any institution of the EU.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is not going to happen. Such immediate and unilateral action would fit the hopes of some extreme ‘exiters’ but would arouse great resentment amongst other EU members and institutions and, possibly, provoke retaliatory action. They demand exit based on the formula of the Treaty of Lisbon, Article 50, which requires:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Broadly, this seems to mean that a member-state tells the EU that it wants to go, then, after a great deal of talking, it does whatever is necessary under its own constitutional framework to leave. It also may conclude an agreement with the European Council as to its future relationship though Article 50 remains unclear as to what happens if no agreement is reached after two years of talking if a country has not withdrawn “<i>in accordance with tis own constitutional requirements” </i>but has also not concluded an agreement. (Health warning: do not try to read Article 218 of the Treaty in the hope of enlightenment if you wish to get to sleep). Presumably membership somehow just lapses like a member of a club who fails to pay their subscription. The fact is that no one is very clear just how a state leaves the EU as the possibility has never been seriously considered before.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The exit-option most often put about is that the UK should remain a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) which is essentially the EU-lite with free trade and some financial contribution but no involvement in environment, agriculture or fisheries policies. The problem with this is that one of the pillars of the EEA is the same free movement of labour as exists within the EU, whilst one of the key reasons for the exit majority was resentment over the volume of EU nationals immigrating into the UK.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The third option is that the UK Government will start talking with various bits of the EU setup, after it notifies it of its intentions under Article 50, and that these talks will drag on for so long that everyone will become tired of the issue and it can be quietly dropped on the pretext that popular opinion has now swung round to the ‘sensible’ side rather than the ill-informed and rather stupid rabble that, in the view of the metropolitan elite, voted to leave. Or a blatantly unacceptable deal will be ‘agreed’, put to another referendum, rejected and this will be taken as a symbol that opinion has shifted against exit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Government is publicly inclined to the second option as it has put some hard-line ‘exiters’ in the front rank of the future negotiations. However, a sign that the third option is still up for grabs is that the new Prime Minister, Theresa May, will not trigger the Article 50 process by ‘notifying’ the EU until next year. Indeed such is the confusion over just what withdrawal means that no one seems very clear as to just what ‘notify’ actually involves. Perhaps a hand-written letter signed by the Queen or, on the other hand, simply public acceptance of the referendum result. Legal action is already being taken by devoted opponents to require a specific vote in Parliament on triggering Article 50 where there is, in principle, a majority against exit and it seems likely that this case will be argued all the way to the Supreme Court. Article 50 refers to a country’s ‘<i>own constitutional requirements</i>’ and as the UK has no formal constitution it’s make-hay time for any lawyer who can claim constitutional law expertise. Currently, bookmakers are offering odds as low as 2/1 that Article 50 will not be triggered until after 2018 or even not at all. It might be worth a flutter even at these odds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The confusion over the whole process mirrors the shambles of the current British political scene. The Conservative Party has managed, temporarily, to patch over its differences as parties in power tend to do by appointing prominent ‘exiters’ to negotiate the possibly impossible task of leaving. However, the centre-left party, Labour, is reducing itself to complete mockery in a leadership contest in which a clearly incompetent incumbent, Corbyn, who gained the support of only 20% of his MPs in a no-confidence vote, will probably defeat an unknown challenger of dubious background, having gained almost god-like status amongst a band of new arrivals to Labour, mostly based in London and, mostly, rather well-off. Genuine long-term leaders of Labour are standing aside hoping to become leader after the Corbyn-led electoral defeat which all assume will happen. However some doubt must exist as to whether Labour will survive at all as a major party after this debacle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In many respects, the British political train-wreck brings it in line with the political scene throughout Europe. The previous article noted that the pattern of a centre-right/centre-left party structure is collapsing as people lose faith in the old parties. In eastern Europe, which has very little tradition of this kind, there is a disturbing rise of the neo-fascist parties which have, so far, achieved only marginal purchase in western Europe. However, in France, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, is dancing with glee at the British vote as she believes it encourages her supporters to push their own dislike of the EU. She will probably not become French President in elections next year, just like Donald Trump surely cannot become US President. Surely not. But the French President, Hollande, is currently committing suicide by forcing through measures deeply unpopular with his own Socialist party using extra-parliamentary powers in the name of the neoliberal austerity programme imposed by Brussels and the German government. Big fascist gains in the French Assembly seem inevitable. In the Netherlands, Dutch anti-immigration leader Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, is currently heading opinion polls on the basis of calling for a referendum on leaving the EU if he is elected in March, 2017. Italy and Greece are dying under EU-imposed policies whilst Spain seems unable to even form a government. With an Italian referendum on constitutional reforms due in the autumn, the latest vogue word in Euro-politics, replacing Brexit, is Quitaly, the possibility that Italy will vote to leave the EU. This might happen if the Five Star Movement, led by TV comedian Beppe Grillo, defeats the autumn referendum. Revealingly, the 5SM claims not to be a party but a social movement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Just why have we reached this parlous state? Zygmunt Bauman, the venerable political scientist has the following answer:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i> We could describe what is going on at the moment as a crisis of democracy, the collapse of trust: the belief that our leaders are not just corrupt or stupid, but inept. Action requires power, to be able to do things, and we need politics, which is the ability to decide what needs to be done. But that marriage between power and politics in the hands of the nation state has ended. Power has been globalized, but politics is as local as before. Politics has had its hands cut off. People no longer believe in the democratic system because it doesn’t keep its promises. We see this, for example, with the migration crisis: it’s a global phenomenon, but we still act parochially. Our democratic institutions were not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions.</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 7.3px; line-height: normal;"><i><sup></sup></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Thus Europeans hear their national leaders say that they will resolve the refugee crisis, stop terrorism, provide more jobs, control the banks, increase economic growth… And then they don’t. As a consequence they turn to parties or social movements disguised as parties which at least hold out the promise of action even though, as with Syriza in Greece, they prove unable to do this. In America, Trump bases his campaign on exactly this self-proclaimed ability to get things done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the coming two or three years of wearisome negotiations between Britain and the EU, it is possible that they will become irrelevant as the whole EU structure falls apart. Another Euro crisis, perhaps triggered by the collapse of Italian banks, a blanket refusal by some states to implement even a half-baked refugee resettlement programme, a continuing use of Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty against neo-fascist regimes</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 7.3px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">, another anti-EU referendum in the Netherlands, Italy or France; any of these could make British exit a sideshow in the general chaos.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The overall result of the referendum in Britain, whatever happens in the rest of the EU, may well be some variant of option 3. As Lanchester puts it, “<i>the likeliest outcome, …is a betrayal of the white working class. They should be used to it by now</i>.” Used to it or not, such a betrayal may spark some far-reaching political consequences.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yes, this continues to be a pessimistic assessment. We need more than brave Tess Asplund to offer opposition. To continue with news of my local choir, this month we are singing for the return of Joe Hill, the early-twentieth century Swedish-American trade unionist and songwriter framed on a murder charge and executed in 1915.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 7.3px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Even that may not be enough.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span>The link is:</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J-V_axAQAE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J-V_axAQAE</a></span></div>
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Only for the brave</div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-23263747935511317082015-05-13T13:58:00.000+01:002015-05-13T13:59:02.284+01:00Farewell to Welfare Statism or Good Riddance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Andrew
Pearmain writes:<o:p></o:p></div>
So
what do we make of that then? On a personal level, the 2015 General Election
leaves me with two contrasting emotions. Firstly, a certain sense of
vindication about the outcome, because for several years I've been the only
person I know predicting an outright Tory majority. It was pretty obvious what
they, and the disgruntled and “worried” great British public, were up to. On
the other hand I feel deep gloom about what a far right English government will
do with its shiny new “popular mandate”. I suspect that, compared to this lot,
the abrupt adjustments to neoliberal globalisation engineered by Thatcher/Major,
New Labour and the Con/Lib coalition will come to seem partial and cautious.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
The
smug determination with which Cameron and Osborne shut the doors to their
neighbouring abodes and on us poor bemused electors, and set about ruling party
business as usual, was quietly terrifying. It's full steam ahead to a low-tax,
low-wage, low-skill, low-productivity, low-security, low-quality economy of
services and consumption, retail and distribution. Social tensions and
divisions are turning into semi-permanent fractures along class and race lines;
“culture war” between competing identities and interests more relentlessly
vicious; regional animosities more blatant and unapologetic. In or out of
Europe, it doesn't really matter, we're heading for the worst of America, a
nation profoundly and permanently ill at ease with itself. This small island is
more turned against itself than pretty much anywhere outside the Middle East.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
The
political prospects of the “anti-Tory alliance” look suitably bleak. The Lib
Dems, having been seduced by the lure of ministerial office to provide the
Tories in coalition with a veneer of “conscience”, have been duly cast aside. I
expect we'll see a revival of their “social democratic” leftism, relapse into
comfortable opposition, and a further slide into historical irrelevance. The
SNP cheerfully stepped forward to frighten the poor bloody Sassenachs into
doing what they were told. I knew some of these new-found, ex-Tartan Tory
“anti-austeritans” in former guises - step forward “comedy impresario” and old
Labour leftist Tommy Sheppard! -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
believe me, they are just as careerist and opportunist as the old Labour
beardies they've displaced. Without the labour movement disciplines that just
about kept the old guard in check, we can expect some spectacular nonsense from
these new Bravehearts. The Greens, as I've written elsewhere, continue to
squander the historical opportunity of climate change for a secure niche on the
margins of the political establishment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
As
for Labour, the real surprise is that they've still got so many MPs. How did
these 230-odd bores and chancers and big-mouths get <i>anybody </i>to vote for
them? The North London “weirdo” had his very own Sheffield-arena moment with
his tablet/tombstone (or was it the “gotta” with Russell Brand? Or the “hell
yes”? Or the stumble off the stage in Leeds? Choose your own historical
embarrassment). Surely, for all the thrashings of the New Labour dinosaurs -
“We were right all along!” - we can agree that Labourism is finally,
definitively, thankfully dead, an ex-parrot of a subaltern mentality/emergent
ideology. Even Neal Lawson, chair of perennially Labour loyalist think-tank
Compass, is talking of “kicking the cat to see if it's dead”. We've had Old
Labour, New Labour, Next Labour, and New New Labour if Mandelson pulls off his
latest zombie trick. Now we have No Labour in Scotland, the South and East of
England, and pretty much anywhere anyone else can be bothered to push them out
of the way. The question we now need to ask, and which the next five years will
almost certainly answer, is what dies with Labourism?<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
The
central project of the forthcoming Tory government will be to complete what
first-wave Thatcherism only partially accomplished: to dismantle the one
undisputed historical achievement of Labourism, the welfare state. It has
always been a deeply compromised legacy, and the contradictions within it –
enabler or oppressor? Safety net or trap? Divider or unifier? - have
continually undermined its popularity and efficacy. But this election gives the
neo-Thatcherites carte blanche to slash welfare, submit benefits to the same
squeeze as wages, and carry on the already advanced programme to outsource the
public sector's marketable functions. This will entrench our established social
relations of wealth and poverty, exploitation and subalternity, grievance and
deference, “striver”/“shirker” (and doesn't that hegemonic couplet mark a
significant advance on the 1980s stereotype “scrounger”) apparently forever, or
for as long and as deeply as makes no difference. In waving farewell to the
welfare state, I have to declare an interest. Born dirt-poor in the
de-industrialising north of England, but bright and ambitious, I was a child of
the welfare state, the beneficiary of benefits, free health care, a scholarship
to grammar school, then fully-funded university. In bidding it good riddance as
well as farewell, there may be some Oedipal element in my attitude to the
welfare state, but that does at least alert me to its essential paternalism,
which is surely what's done for it in the court of public opinion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Much
has been said and written about growing inequality, with lots of trendy
demographic and economic studies – Wilkinson, Picketty, Dorling etc. - briefly
cited by the formers of liberal opinion<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>in order to fuel philanthropic outrage. For me, the more significant and
comparatively neglected social phenomenon of modern Britain has been the
stalling of social mobility, the sense that the country is “stuck” in
established patterns of power and wealth, that individuals or sub-groups can no
longer move up (or down) the social scale by virtue of their own talents and
efforts (or lack of them). Instead, we have a system of dynastic succession in
power, property, business ownership and acumen, educational and cultural
prestige, and even in Parliament. I for one am sick to my stomach at the sight
of posh boys taking over everything from art and fashion, even bloody pop
music, to food culture, broadcasting and sporting pastimes and whole “hipster”
districts of London, invariably assisted by Daddy's money, contacts and
reputation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because it's all “kept
in the family”, nobody sees fit to question any of it. Meritocracy was only
ever a useful myth, but it helped keep the spirits up in a grim postwar Britain.
They're drooping now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
We
can rail against the basic unfairness of it, but by far the most destructive
aspect of social stagnation is the way it traps people in poverty and misery
and dependency; in other words, the not so tender clutches of the welfare
state. There are now several generations of families and communities all across
Britain who have never had secure employment. They are sustained in various
incapacities and disabilities, including the inability to take care of
themselves. And don't they make a handy scapegoat/bogey, especially when
featured in the burgeoning sub-genre of reality TV known as “poverty porn”?
Even the proliferation of foodbanks can be explained away by their lumpen
fecklessness, because “these people” spend their benefits on alcohol and
tobacco and have to rely on do-gooders for food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is fear of that state of destitution, of
being somehow hurt by people already in it or of falling into it yourself,
which lies behind the mood of “anxiety” which apparently was the key factor in
deciding how people voted in this general election.<o:p></o:p></div>
<o:p> </o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">So what can we “on the left” we do about it?
Firstly, we have to accept that the welfare state is dead, along with the
century-old tradition of Labourism, itself a strange amalgam of “respectable” workerism
and liberal philanthropy. Secondly, we can start to build a new kind of “social
welfarism” from the bottom up, that echoes pre-Labourist traditions of
mutuality and self-reliance, but adds new 21<sup>st</sup> century networks and
styles. That's what<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I plan to do, by
returning to the “front line” of social work which 25 years of social services
management has taken me further and further away from. I'm sick of the
make-believe of “policy development” and “performance management”, of ever
rosier reports of the state of things as you go up the hierarchy so that the
crock of shit on the ground becomes a bed of roses seen from the top floor of
County Hall. If we want to recreate the bonds of social solidarity and mutual
interdependence which our “politics” says we do, we can't sit around waiting
for the “welfare state” to deliver it, as Labourism promised us it would. Like
the pioneers of pre-Labour socialism, we have to do it ourselves. I fully
expect to become tired and disillusioned on a professional diet of human misery
and squalor, but I might just help one or two people climb out of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-40892928948578750782015-05-13T13:24:00.000+01:002015-05-13T13:24:20.328+01:00The New Plague<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Willie Thompson writes:<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
In the week of the general election
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Scientist</i> journal, which is
published on Saturdays, had an accidentally appropriate headline on its front
cover (referring to the danger of mutant bugs} it reads,<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
‘THE NEW PLAGUE’<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Which would likewise do very well
for the political situation we find ourselves in now. The cover also advertises
another of the articles inside, ‘No person, no vote: How health inequalities
distort democracy’. That article links differential health outcomes with social
class, showing how lower-income electoral strength is consequently
weakened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
It was an exceptionally important
election with a remarkable as well as an exceptionally calamitous outcome – and
also an exceptionally dirty one. The Tories invoked near-racist prejudice
against Scottish voters and attempted, with some success, to fasten on the SNP
the scary role that the communists used to occupy in British right-wing
imagination. The Labour Party rhetoric did little to challenge this caricature
or emphasise that the SNP had evolved into a mildly left-wing social democratic
force which had a record of devolved government very much in accordance with
British social values as they used to be in the days before Thatcher. They
simply tried their hardest to dissociate themselves.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
To be sure the Labour campaign had
plenty of weaknesses and shortcomings. Not that a boldly left-wing one would have
enhanced the chances of victory; it might even have weakened it given the
nature of the southern English political climate. What it might have done but
failed to do was to present a coherent and convincing programme of progressive
change that would have addressed the various issues hurting the public
throughout the country. For example, alongside the protection of the NHS from
market rapacity and introducing controls on private renting, it could have
proposed returning the railways first of all to public control via regulation and
then to public ownership – not by immediate outright renationalisation, which
would have incurred enormous expense, but by resuming the various franchises as
they expired.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Instead what the Miliband team did
was to staple on a few socially progressive items to what remained an overall
acceptance of a society governed by neoliberal values, exemplified in Ed Balls’
economic strategy, which needed a magnifying glass to distinguish from George
Osborne’s. Moreover, while not advocating it, EU withdrawal should not have been
excluded as an option in all circumstances if its bureaucracy insisted in
blocking socially progressive measures. Moreover Labour <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>should, in particular, have promised to have
nothing to do with TTIP; instead that was viewed with some approval. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
In addition the Labour Party should
have denounced the sort of political rhetoric favoured by our elites,
emphasising that, ‘Hard Decisions’ and Tough Choices’ are not hard and tough
for the people who make them in their well-cushioned comfort, but for the
citizens who have to endure them. Labour was accused of being anti-business, to
which it responded only with weak denials. What it should have proclaimed loudly
and emphatically was along the lines of ‘What we’re in favour of are businesses
which give their workforce a fair deal, which are attentive to the needs of
their customers, which pay their taxes willingly and are alert to their
environmental responsibilities. These we’ll applaud, listen to and support;
what we’re against are ones who do the opposite, all too prevalent in the
present-day neoliberal climate’. That’s not a socialist programme, but is one
which the evidence of the recent past suggests would have found a public
response even in ‘middle England’. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The Labour campaign was too
left-wing, we’re informed. Like in Scotland? And what happened to the Lib Dems,
who were surely ‘aspirational’ enough? Back in 2010 after the coalition was
formed one of their MPs complained that he hadn’t been elected to make poor
people even poorer. That is exactly what his party did and for their treachery
they got their just deserts, which regrettably was not to the public advantage.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Now in the aftermath, while Tories
and their stuffed-wallet backers gloat and plan their next assault upon the
common good, another weasel word is intruding into the vocabulary as the heirs
of the Blair-Mandelson gang (plus Blair and Mandelson themselves) crawl out of
their political slime to try to recapture what remains of the party for their
catastrophic project of being indistinguishable from the Tories – or even
worse if that were possible. That word is ‘aspirational’, a code term in this
context for the active encouragement of greed and irresponsibility. It’s
otherwise known as ‘I’m all right Jack.’<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Were Labour to go down this toxic
route, as it may well do, the likely inheritor in the absence of other
considerations, might even be UKIP, who, in spite of their election
disappointments polled strongly, especially in Labour heartlands like North
East England. We face the possible nightmare scenario in five years time of
UKIP doing in these places what the SNP has done to Scottish Labour and Lib
Dems. One of these other considerations however is the Green Party, which will
be striving to prevent any such outcome. Its electoral successes on May 7-8
were modest, but they provide a strong base on which to build and expand.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
In the event of the Blairites
triumphing, a possible response would be for those on the Labour left together
with other honest members and MPs to split away and form a loose coalition with
other progressive political forces such as the SNP and the Greens. Tony Benn in
one of his last public meetings, in South Shields, argued that the Labour and
Green parties should work together, and in Scotland the Greens there act in
co-operation with the SNP and relations are friendly. <o:p></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">We will have to see, but
without any doubt whatever we are on the point of experiencing interesting
times – in the Chinese sense.</span></div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-10478125041217129232015-05-01T16:29:00.001+01:002015-05-01T16:30:46.707+01:00These are the chumps who lost Scotland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="PadderBetweenControlandBody">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some years ago in a time BTC (Before The Crash), a group of
us wrote a booklet entitled <i>Feelbad
Britain</i>. (Available at <a href="http://www.hegemonics.co.uk/docs/feelbad-britain.pdf">http://www.hegemonics.co.uk/docs/feelbad-britain.pdf</a>).
It received mild interest and then passed into the oblivion reserved for small
political tracts. One sentence from its first paragraph sums up its content<i>: Twenty-first century Britain, our country,
is afflicted with a deep-seated and widespread social malaise.</i> Since that
distant past, this malaise has deepened. One obvious factor is the revelation
that our high-street banks, once pillars of respectability, are nests of crooks
who have managed to steal billions of pounds without any retribution. Another
is the ongoing disclosing of just how deep rooted has been a culture of sexual
depravity and paedophilia amongst once-revered entertainers and politicians.
Perhaps the defining revelation is that an allegedly demented paedophile was
able a few weeks ago to sign his name to a letter requesting leave-of-absence
from the institution of which he remains a member: the House of Lords.
Presumably his advisors thought it might be embarrassing for him to continue to
sign to collect his £300/day ‘expenses’. Truly, England has become a sad and
dispiriting country.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, amidst this malaise, a suitably sad and
dispirited election campaign is underway. On the Conservative side, this lack
of any spirit is understandable. If one accepts that there are only two kinds
of election campaign: steady as she goes and throw the rascals out then clearly
they have to be bound by the former and unexciting slogan. Steady as she goes,
chaps, careful not rock the boat, we’ve got the wind in our sails, easy does
it… (I think that’s enough nautical stuff). Even so, Cameron has seemed so
lack-lustre as to require a special boost of amphetamines to inject just a bit
of dash into his manner.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The issue really is just why the ‘throw the rascals out’
Labour campaign has been so pitiful. Just why these devotees of the <i>West Wing</i> with their expensive American
advisers and their months of preparation have managed not just to be totally
devoid of any spirit but also to be so inept. These, after all, are the chumps
who lost Scotland, the heartland of the labour movement, Red Clyde and all
that. Say it very loud: these are the chumps who LOST SCOTLAND.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is not as though there were not plenty of warning signs. The
electoral system for the Scottish Parliament could have been designed expressly
to stop any one party dominating but in 2011, the SNP did win an overall
majority. Then they came within touching distance of succeeding in the
referendum. Then, instead of realising that by siding so openly with the Tories
as pro-Union they had poisoned their reputation, that when, last year, the
leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Johann Lamont, resigned saying that
Scottish Labour was treated <span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“<i>like a branch office
of London</i>”, she was replaced not by an MSP but a political bruiser from
Westminster. At the time, Henry McLeish, another former Labour first minister, said
that Scottish Labour supporters no longer know “<i>what the party stands for</i>” and that it had given “<i>enormous ground to the SNP unnecessarily</i>”.
But still the chumps carried on oblivious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">It could still all be a dream and we could wake up on 8 May
and find that it was the same-old two-party system. But the Scottish polls all
suggest otherwise. The result of the inevitable bargaining over a minority
government will clearly fill the columns. But another, underlying issue will
also arise; can the Labour Party survive the debacle of losing Scotland. In
terms of simple arithmetic, the answer is yes, it can survive without Scotland.
In 1997, it won with a UK majority of 179 so even losing 41 seats in Scotland
would have left it with a massive majority. It would even have won in 2005
though with a majority of barely 20. In a sense, the arithmetic is even better
if one takes into account the fact that Scotland is over-represented with
several small seats. It could even, looking to the future, survive the loss of
Wales if one follows the idea that if Scotland goes then perhaps Wales will
also see the advantage of having a progressive regional party look after its
interests. In 2010, Labour won 29 of 40 Parliamentary seats there though with a
historically low share of the vote, 36.3%. In principle, taking 1997 as a
marker, it could still gain a majority of close to 100 even if it were to be
wiped out in both Scotland and Wales. Even the result in 2005, a Labour
majority of 66 would be almost a dead-heat without Celtic votes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">To appreciate what this would mean requires some graphics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><img src="http://www.ukelect.co.uk/May1997Winner/UK.jpg" height="640" width="481" /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Electoral Map, 1997</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">This is the best that Labour has received in modern times.
And here is the map from the other famous victory in 1945 when Labour had a
majority of 150.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_i1027" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="https://rgshistory.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/screen-shot-2015-02-08-at-10-34-37.png"
style='width:6in;height:642.75pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\RAINSB~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image003.png"
o:title="screen-shot-2015-02-08-at-10-34-37"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<img src="https://rgshistory.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/screen-shot-2015-02-08-at-10-34-37.png" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">UK in 1945
general election<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Finally, let’s look at the 2010 result.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/2010UKElectionMap.svg/2000px-2010UKElectionMap.svg.png" height="390" width="400" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">UK in 2010
election<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">These three show how dramatically concentrated Labour has
become regionally within England even in the miraculous victory of 1997
compared with 1945 when it actually won fewer seats. Since 1945, entire regions, notably East
Anglia and the east Midlands drifting down to London have become effective
no-go areas for Labour. In 2005, there was almost dead-heat in England as shown
below, achieved by Labour holding on to seats in the west Midlands and this
could be repeated in a future election. It is almost certainly the best it can
hope for from this election.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">In other words, Labour can survive and even win a
Parliamentary majority without the Celtic votes. However, it would become
essentially a regional party ruling over the entire U.K. as well as Northern
Ireland from a swathe of northern England and central London. This would be more difficult once the
slow-motion Electoral Commission had regularised seats boundaries but still not
impossible. The question is, even if this electoral manoeuvre could be
successfully carried through, is such a regional domination politically, let
alone democratically, possible. The problem is exacerbated by the likely issue
that Labour would win a majority of the seats but not of the total vote.
England is not a country prone to civil war but a scenario of Labour ruling
from such a confined English base would seem to set a possible scenario for
another one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<img src="http://www.game-point.net/misc/election2005/eng2005.gif" height="400" width="323" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Electoral Map
of England in 2005 general election<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Unless there is a sea-change in the next five days, the
result of this election seems likely to raise a whole raft of questions, essentially
concerning legitimacy. These could arise almost immediately if, as present
rhetoric suggests, Labour would try to govern without making any kind of
agreement with the regional party which has just wiped it out in one part of
the U.K. The same issue, though as a kind of mirror-image, will come about if
the Conservatives push ahead with their commitment to limit parliamentary votes
on issues on which Scotland has devolved powers to English M.P.s Although
Labour has largely tried to avoid the issue, it was in fact first voiced by a
Labour M.P., Tam Dalyell, back in 1977 and became known thereafter as The West
Lothian Question after Dalyell’s Scottish constituency. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">This problem has been avoided by the three main parties
largely because they pretend that they are genuinely national bodies choosing
to follow U.K. national sentiment in the belief that Northern Ireland is a kind
of foreign country with its own mysterious and potentially frightening
political governance. The Tories have moved closest to accepting that they are
basically an English party having been wiped out themselves in Scotland in 1997.
It is hard to remember that up to 1987, the Tories had 21 seats in Scotland and
were only overtaken by Labour there in 1955 when it still operated as the
Unionist Party before merging with the Conservative Party of England and Wales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The Liberal Democrats have an odd, historically based
regional pattern with a geographical base in the South West followed by patches
in the North West, Scotland and Wales which essentially follow the bases of the
old Liberal Party. Given that most these last are likely to go in this election,
their regional base will become quite clear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The regional basis of Labour once it has lost Scotland and,
potentially Wales, and having no real links with any Northern Ireland party will
pose it with a huge problem given that it has become a party essentially run from
a London-based machine. Only Manchester outside of London still possesses
anything like a regional power-base. One of the most difficult issues for
Labour, if it does form a minority government, is what to do about DevoManc
given that it was negotiated directly by local Labour bosses without,
apparently, any involvement of the London leadership. If similar powers to that
accorded to Greater Manchester are passed to other cities, mostly northern,
then it will be seen throughout the rest of England as a way of privileging
Labour’s northern base. If it lets Manchester proceed on its own then it will
enrage leaders in cities such as Leeds, Newcastle and Liverpool. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The fact is that Labour has become a regional party but
without the local, regional dynamism which propels other regional-based
grouping in countries such as Spain and Italy. And, of course, its ‘region’ has
no name or political identity other than ‘up there’ or the ‘grim north’. Older
Labour members sometimes nostalgically recall the days, usually the 70s and
early 80s, when local northern Labour constituencies had some real life and
sense of social purpose. Now they are just efficiently organised electoral machines
with no role for members other than a little electoral activity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Must Labour die? Well, in its current form, probably unless
the chumps who lost Scotland manage some exceptionally clever reorganising.
There will undoubtedly by some vicious infighting inside the leadership
especially as beasts such as Douglas Alexander and Jim Murphy will be wandering
about wondering how to get back on to the gravy-train which has given life for
so long. The chances of a new and brighter party leadership emerging from the
wreck are small particularly if, because of the vagaries of the British electoral
system, they have the chance of forming a minority government provided, of course,
they manage to eat humble pie and deal with the SNP. Good luck on that one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">One final thought. The Green Party has always had a separate
organisation in Scotland. In England and Wales, they could emerge being able to
claim that they are the only genuinely national party not rooted in one region,
north, south, east or west. Not quite sure how that one will pan out either.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-33268413169090360182015-04-29T11:36:00.000+01:002015-04-29T11:36:40.199+01:00What to do with the EU?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Willie
Thompson writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Despite the fact that British withdrawal
constitutes the centrepiece of the UKIP election campaign, the other parties
involved have been surprisingly reticent about discussing the question at any
length or in great detail. No doubt this is due to a state of uncertainly and
embarrassment, plus a suspicion that a referendum would be likely to result in
a vote for exit, which none of the others would wish to commit themselves to, since
they retain the conviction, with various degrees of enthusiasm, that membership
is a ‘good thing’. Odd to think that in the referendum of 1975 the Labour Party
was in the main on favour of withdrawal, now, next to the Lib Dems it is the
one most committed to opposing not merely exit but even a referendum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Indeed there are plenty of
reasons for wanting to be quit of this institution. It is consummately corrupt
and unmitigatedly undemocratic, a gravy train for its bureaucracy and high
officials; the meadow to which dubious politicians who have overstepped the
mark, such as Peter Mandelson, are put out to grass. It may be remembered that
voting publics in particular states such as Ireland, when referenda returned
votes against innovations thought by the elites to be very important, the
citizens were made to vote again until they produced a majority for the
favoured outcome. It has worked in every case except Norway, but even there the
national economy is nevertheless closely tied to that of the EU. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Although the butter mountains and
wine lakes are now in the past, the bureaucrats of the Commission continue to
make rules which result in serious inconvenience to ordinary citizens or even
wreck entire industries such as the British fishing industry. Marketisation is
at the heart of its agenda and it was specifically designed in the 1950s to
entrench capitalism and present a high obstacle to a socialist programme in any
of its member states even if their electorate should have the impertinence to democratically
decide upon such a thing, as more than half a century down the line the Greek
example has demonstrated with unmistakable clarity. The ultimate aim, clearly
stated from the beginning, is political unification; an absurdity in any modern
state institution with the degree of language difference inside even inside its
previous borders, while its parliament, except as a platform for political
publicity, is a farce with no meaningful powers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Although it is not a sovereign
state, its elites have nevertheless has developed aspiration to conduct foreign
policies. When these have had any effect, they have proved catastrophic. The EU
in the main has acted as the economic arm of the US empire in Europe, an
economic and would-be political coalition of vassal states, and if not all its
members are not enrolled in NATO, the overwhelming majority are and the two
institutions are closely aligned. The nature of this alignment has become
especially clear in recent years in the military and political sphere so far as
the Ukrainian crisis is concerned, while in the Mediterranean, thousands of
refugees are being condemned to death by drowning on account of the decisions
of the politicians who run the institution and constitute the final
decision-makers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">To some extent tensions and
stains within the EU derive from the fact that when it was created its
originators assumed that the Soviet bloc would last at least far into the
twenty-first century; it was intended for the western Europe of the previous
one, and its unforeseen growth deep into Eastern Europe and the Balkans, with notions
of admitting even Turkey and regions yet further afield, has turned its
structure of governance into a rickety mess. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">What attitude to take?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Naturally the EU has attracted
hostility in different degrees of intensity, some of it unrelenting, and given
it character and practice this should not surprise anybody. Would its breakup,
if that were to occur, therefore deserve celebration and applause? If a
referendum were to go ahead in 2017 should the British public vote to depart?
The answer, surprisingly it might appear, in view of what has been said above,
is ‘No’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Although there are not many of
them, even in its present form the institution does have some positive
features. Its social regulations at least pose some restraint on the worst
features of predatory capitalism, which is the principal reason that there is a
lobby, albeit a minority one, among some sectors of British capital, in favour
of withdrawal. The traumatic economic effects of uprooting from such a lengthy
and deep integration into the structure as Britain has developed, is of course
evident. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The principal objections to
leaving however relate to none of these aspects, but to consideration of the
political forces which would gain from such an outcome. These are the
right-wing reactionary populist movements which infest nearly country in the
Union and thrive on its deficiencies, often supported by toxic tabloids such
as, in the UK, the <i>Daily Express</i>. Breakup
would put rockets under their political prospects and energise them to no end.
They are all racist in their presuppositions although their leaders may try to
deny it and expel members who are too vociferous in these matters. Some,
primarily in eastern Europe, nevertheless are even open in their fascist
nostalgia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">There are some on the left as
well who would, understandably, like to see the end of the European Union (I
have a degree of reactive sympathy with them) but the situational reality has
to be the decisive consideration and the institution’s collapse, or British withdrawal, has got to be countered
and argued against strongly. Nevertheless, unless the EU is reformed root and
branch and designed to be primarily for the benefit of its citizens and not its
moneybags, hatred and resistance can only increase, with political reaction harvesting
the gains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-59604800511664453602015-04-22T16:04:00.002+01:002015-04-22T16:04:46.703+01:00UKIP and Labour: Anyone for “Social Fascism”? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Andy
Pearmain writes:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
concept of “social fascism” has got a very bad name. It was coined by the
Communist International in its “third period” of the late 1920s to attack
social democracy. The communists were competing with the reformist and
labourist political parties for the allegiances of the working class across the
industrialised world. This was the time of the Wall Street crash and the onset
of the Great Depression, of mass unemployment and hyper-inflation. In the
heightened tension of capitalist crisis, which pitched “class against class” in
a global struggle for supremacy, the social democrats were cast by the communists
as “the left wing of the bourgeoisie”, delaying the historically inevitable
onset of “the dictatorship of the proletariat”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Further,
they could not be relied upon to resist the blandishments of the ruling class,
and would always betray the interests of the proletariat for the sake of their
own governmental, parliamentary, municipal and trade union careers. Practical
examples were not hard to find, from the SPD's role in suppressing the German
revolution of 1918/19 to the 1929/31 National Government in Britain led by
“turncoat” ex-Labourites Ramsay MacDonald and Phillip Snowden. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
But
there were several problems with this line of thinking. In its strategic
perspective of “class against class” it was hopelessly “economistic”, in that
it reduced all analysis to simple polarities between capitalism and socialism,
bourgeoisie and proletariat, reform and revolution. It privileged the economy
as the sole determinant of history, and relegated culture and ideology and even
politics to the status of irrelevant sideshows. It pitched actual and potential
allies on the left into sectarian squabbles and feuds, turning them in on
themselves and against each other and away from the broader struggle for
socialism. Above all, it downplayed the emergent threat of actual Fascism and
Nazism, already in control of the state in Italy and well on the way to it in
Germany, and the much greater threat they posed to the “grand old cause” of
international socialism and eventually world peace.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In
the ensuing local controversies over “social fascism”, trade unions,
cooperatives, cultural and propaganda organisations were riven with factional
dispute. Real physical violence was widespread, in the form of street fighting
and targeted attacks. The Communist Parties themselves, previously ascendant
and basking in the “borrowed prestige” of the young Soviet Union, were
confused, divided and distracted. Anyone suspected of deviation from the party
line was summarily expelled, an early warning of the purges which would destroy
an entire generation of “old Bolshevik” intellectuals and activists in the
darkest years of 1937/8.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In
reality, “social fascism” had far more to do with the vicious infighting inside
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union than with the grand project of world
communism. It provided the “theoretical basis” for Stalin's “left turn”, the
vanquishing of former collaborators on the right (most notably Bukharin) who
had worked with him to defeat Trotsky and the mid-1920s “Left Opposition”. The substantive issues – the pace and scale
of industrialisation, policies towards the peasantry and the middle classes –
were less important than the imposition of the central authority of the “great
leader”, who could tack to the right or the left as it suited him. From then until his death in 1953, “Uncle
Joe” would be the undisputed figurehead of Russian and worldwide
communism. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In
the meantime, the ultimately embarrassing concept of “social fascism” was
quietly dropped. The Popular Fronts of the mid-1930s saw considerable revival in
the political fortunes of the left, including relatively stable and successful
governments. Once actual Fascism and Nazism had been subdued by military
conquest, forms of “left unity” provided the political basis for post-war
reconstruction and the welfare state, adopted with varying degrees of
radicalism by all the victorious powers, including the Soviet Union, Western
Europe and even the USA. Even the prolonged stand-off of the Cold War tended to
favour the domestic politics of left-wing social democracy and right wing
communism in an undeclared but highly effective alliance right across Western
and Eastern Europe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Now,
with the “post-war social democratic consensus” pretty much vanquished by
Thatcher and Reagan and their disciples (including much of what remains of
social democracy), and the almost total hegemony of neoliberalism and its
project of capitalist globalisation, is it time to rehabilitate the concept of
“social fascism” to explain the almost universal rightward shift of the centre
of political gravity? In particular, does it aid our understanding of the new
right-wing or nationalist “populism” which is taking social democracy's place
across Europe and elsewhere as the primary vehicle to resist, protest or ameliorate
the ravages of global capitalism?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
We
are struggling to understand it in any other terms, not least because it poses
an all-round electoral threat to traditional parties of both left and right.
Let's look at our own national example, the peculiarly British (or more exactly
English) United Kingdom Independence Party, which looks set to attract around
15% of the vote in the forthcoming general election, and may gain sufficiently
more in some constituencies to win 5 or 6 seats. What exactly are UKIP's
politics, beyond its signature themes of opposition to Europe and immigration
(not forgetting its denial of climate change)? In traditional political party
terms, where can we place it?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Well,
like all classically Fascist political movements, it doesn't fit easily into
any single point of the political spectrum, and can be identified as much by
its temper and style as programme or principle. What can be seen of its central
leadership beyond Nigel Farage is almost entirely ex-Tory, based in London and
the Home Counties, and disillusioned with their former party's apparent
disavowal of full-blooded Thatcherism. They are viscerally disgusted by the
more modern, socially liberal, “politically correct” Conservatism espoused by
David Cameron and his metropolitan friends in the Notting Hill set (or have
they all now decamped to the Cotswolds?).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
But
to their evident surprise, these traditional, dry as dust Thatcherites are
drawing support from disillusioned segments of tribal Labourism, especially in
the midlands and the north. The more far-sighted UKIP-ers are working towards a
“2020” strategy, whereby second place to Labour in the 2015 general election in
around 100 constituencies will pave the way for a concerted effort to win those
seats five years later, and displace the Labour Party as the “true” voice of
working class England. The loss of even a quarter of those northern English
seats, on top of the massive losses expected in Scotland this year, would be
utterly disastrous for Labour. Where else, apart from (weirdly) inner London,
with its enclaves of white middle class hipsters and their multinational
service-class underlings, would Labour then be able to call its own?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
We
are in murky waters here. The British proletariat, even at its late 19<sup>th</sup>
century zenith when manual labour occupied fully two-thirds of the whole
population, was never clearly politically identified. Rather, it was
collectively organised in the workplace through trade unions, with their
“economistic” focus on squeezing better wages and conditions out of the
capitalist bosses, and practical neglect of broader social and political
concerns. In its “spare time” the working class was most passionate about
essentially non-political pursuits like gambling, spectator sport, music and other
forms of light entertainment, and emotionally focussed on the immediate
concerns of family and street community.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Labour
could never count on their unconditional support, even at elections. For much
of its history since universal suffrage, large chunks of the working class
voted Tory and sustained a culture of popular Conservatism with strong strands
of unionism and imperialism. Its less respectable cousin British Fascism –
real, declared fascism in the form of Mosley's blackshirts and the National Front
and most recently the British National Party – has been largely a working class
movement led by toffs; an alliance of the “top and bottom drawers” which has
always set itself most stridently against the middle class enlightenment and
liberal philanthropy of “progressive politics”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
For
all the self-serving triumphalism of the metropolitan liberal left – determined
that “in the twenty first century there can be no place” for racism, sexism,
homophobia and every other nastiness – these ideological impulses are all still
there, successfully tempted out of the regional English undergrowth and
coalesced by UKIP into a new historical bloc. UKIP has provided a contemporary
and very plausible political vehicle for what I have elsewhere called “the
fascist possibility”, always lurking like a bad smell on the margins of British
political culture. With its appeal to disillusioned old Labour, it has taken on
a “social” dimension which previous, predominantly business-orientated and
ex-Conservative fascist movements never quite managed. Hence, the label “social
fascism”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Finally,
if we are to fully grasp what all this means, we need a better understanding of
what actual Fascism is and was, beyond the foul insanities and perversions of
Hitlerism and the comic buffoonery of Mussolini. These were real social and
political movements, which managed over decades to mobilise genuine historical
grievances and popular aspirations. They won majority support, at least in
their own countries (though they were also widely admired elsewhere, including
the UK). While setting a firm profile towards the future, they also aimed to
recreate an imagined, much better past. Their core support was the lower middle
class and upper working class, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and the labour
aristocracy. They were impatient with the niceties of the law, and contemptuous
of the messy compromises of democracy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Their
political style can be described as “authoritarian populism”; their political
project as “regressive modernisation”. These were terms commonly applied in the
1980s to Thatcherism, which was also described by some as a form of fascism
(not very helpfully, because Thatcher unusually took over an established
political party rather than creating her own; and by then the concept of fascism
had been devalued by decades of caricature and name-calling). Above all these
movements were angry, to the point of violence when necessary, but otherwise
prepared to vent their anger through established legal and political channels
if it got them their way. On all these measures, UKIP <i>is </i>fascist, and
just possibly the most successful British incarnation yet of “the fascist
possibility”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Standard">
</div>
<div class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b><i>Andrew
Pearmain's latest book 'Gramsci in Love', a novel set in Soviet Russia and
Fascist Italy, is out now.</i></b> <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-90644060672784629162015-04-06T12:38:00.000+01:002015-04-06T12:38:11.896+01:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Willie Thompson writes:<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Back in the days soon after the
1997 election, when our eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Blair, I
wrote that the Labour Party had the opportunity of dismissing the Tories from
power for evermore, provided that the new government acted energetically on
behalf of ordinary citizens rather than the financial sharks and vultures that
had flourished under the regime of Thatcher and Major – but at the same time I
doubted if we would see any major initiatives other than devolution and the
minimum wage. What was not expected, even in our worst nightmares, was that New
Labour would out-Tory the Tories and make Edward Heath look like a leftie and
Harold Macmillan like a raving Bolshevik. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Fast forward to early 2010, and we
find the <i>New Left Review</i> editorial
declaring that in view of the government’s record and character we shouldn't
spill any tears over Labour losing the forthcoming election, and several years
previous to that Andy Pearmain was arguing that ‘<span style="color: #262626; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;">Labour Must Die!’</span> I thought at the time that such
views was a bit excessive though I could appreciate and understand them
– the record was appalling and the Labour leaders a bunch of lying
scoundrels, total strangers to the truth, with a war criminal in charge until
2007 and then succeeded by the only minister who had been in a position to stop
him but who had failed to do so and was continuing all the essentials of
Blair’s policies. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
It was a question of how you judged
matters when you thought about the alternative, but in the event the 2010 outcome
for a few days did not look too bad – the Tories had failed to gain an overall majority, and Caroline Lucas
had won a seat in Brighton. Perhaps the Lib Dems would support a Labour
government while vetoing its more nefarious endeavours. Before 1997 I had even
suggested that it might not be a bad
idea if Blair teamed up with the Lib Dems, as that could possibly shift Labour a fraction to the left.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Treachery<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
It hadn’t occurred to anyone following
the 2010 result that the Lib Dems would commit the treachery of joining in a
formal coalition with the Tories who most evidently, when their coalition
partners had exhausted their usefulness, would then throw them away like a used
condom – as they had done twice in the past to the Lib Dems’ predecessors in
the Liberal Party; and yet the calamity came to pass. The Tories got what they
wanted and the Lib Dems destroyed themselves in the process. If they’d had any
sense the latter would never have entered the coalition in the first place, but
might have had some chance of amending their error by immediately breaking it
up once they failed to get proportional representation. However the bauble attractions
of government office proved too tempting. So far as Labour was concerned,
despite losing the election its parliamentary party was in quite a strong
oppositional position and soon presented with an endless succession of
political open goals, all of which it contrived to miss. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Now this forthcoming election is
supposed to be a multi-party one in a manner that has never previously been seen
in British politics, but Cameron is right at least in his statement that there
are only two possible prime ministers in the offing, either himself or
Miliband. So can Labour recover some of its lost ground and its credibility? On
the face of things there should be no problem and Labour several kilometres
ahead in the polls. The <i>Tory</i>
administration (which it has been, forget about coalitions) between 2010 and
2015 has not only acted as Robin Hood in reverse, but systematically gone about
destroying the country’s social infrastructure – and it’s material one in
addition. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>A dirty trick</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Nevertheless the signs are not
hopeful. It is revealing that Miliband immediately jumped on a manifestly bogus
accusation that Nicola Sturgeon had wished for a Tory victory, without
paying any attention to her vehement
denial. The lack of principle here almost equals anything that New Labour might
have attempted. It shouldn’t be forgotten that in Scotland the SNP <i>are</i> the majority party, and the reason
for them being in that position is the abysmal failure of the Blair/Brown
governments during the Labour period in office. As Caesar is supposed to have
said when surveying the corpses of his defeated opponents, <i>hoc voluerunt</i> (they asked for it).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
It was not the fact that Labour
opposed Scottish independence – there were meaningful arguments against separation
as well as ones in favour, and if the Labour Party had campaigned independently
for a No vote it would have been a position that could be respected even if not
accepted. The spectacle, though, of the Labour Party acting in collusion with
the hated Tories and treacherous Lib Dems was repellent beyond description and
very likely does a lot to account for the enormous leap in SNP membership that
has taken place since the referendum.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>What could be done?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
If the Labour leadership had any
sense they would take that as a very significant signal and, instead of banging
on about the demerits of the SNP, begin to seriously ask themselves <i>why</i> they have been replaced in the affections
of the Scottish electorate. Ed Miliband would do well to remember the
injunction of his admirable father Ralph in his masterpiece volume <i>Parliamentary Socialism</i>, that serious
politics is not polite conversations between gentlepersons but civil war by
other means. Miliband senior demonstrated irrefutably with chapter and verse
the truth of the statement by the Tory leader Balfour after his overwhelming
electoral defeat in 1906, that whichever party was in office the Tories would
continue to rule the country, and that in the words of the <i>Red Flag</i> anthem, ‘to cringe
beneath the rich man’s frown’ has been indeed the default posture of the Labour
Party throughout the century-plus of its
existence. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
In present circumstances it’s not
as though an imagined Labour government with, at best, a very narrow majority
or in informal collaboration with the progressive nationalist parties and
Greens could immediately set about implementing a Bennite agenda. As things
stand, the socially conservative English culture would not accept it and the US
would never tolerate it. Nevertheless, Miliband and his cabinet could consider
the Scottish experience. In 1955 the Tories won an absolute majority of votes in
Scotland. Look at them now: popular outlooks can be changed, for all the toxic
tabloids can do. The Labour leaders could then work to reinvigorate their party
on the ground as a campaigning organisation, take lessons from the SNP
administration in Scotland and begin trying to copy it. Electorates seeing an
honest and socially progressive government committed to the common good, can be
persuaded to line up behind it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-pagination: none;">
Is there any
possibility that this could happen? About as likely as Sunderland, where I
live, winning the English Premiership in the next football season. The most
probable outcome is that Labour will have to be replaced, most likely by the
Green Party, though evidently that will be a very challenging undertaking.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-9759585695995591292015-03-15T11:47:00.001+00:002015-03-15T11:47:39.898+00:00What is Labour?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Michael Prior writes:</h4>
It is obvious that Britain is not Greece or Spain. Those
hot-headed Latins can switch parties and entire political systems without a
moment’s thought. But we have a calm and sensible system which accepts that
what was good enough for our parents is good enough for us. And that means
first-past-the-post gets the prize and coming second gets nothing. As Labour
may soon find out in Scotland. Just what a Labour wipe-out in Scotland would
mean in the rest of the country remains to be seen. But surely one consequence
has to be a close examination of the system which has produced the most rigid
political structure in Europe, one that has essentially remained unchanged for
nearly a hundred years. This involves not just the electoral system which does
look increasingly dysfunctional but also the political framework built around
this system. The starting point for such an examination has to be the Labour
Party and the complex history which has brought it to the current impasse.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A rigid first-past-the post (FPTP) system tends to produce
an equally rigid two-party system which, loosely, correspond to progressive and
conservative positions. The range of different views within these broad
categories are represented by factional groupings within the two parties which
jostle for influence in determining the policy of the party in various ways.
However, the inexorable electoral logic of FPTP tends to perpetuate the
two-party structure despite internal differences. Just how well this system has
served Britain (it has never worked in Ireland) can be disputed but one thing is
clear, the coming election is one in which it has broken down. There are two,
rather distinct reasons for this. First, has been the rise of a specifically
regional party whose position on the left/right spectrum tilts to the left but
is less important than its regional allegiance. This is not quite a new
phenomenon in U.K. terms but the political structure of Northern Ireland, the
regional exception, has long since been detached from Britain though it may yet
in tight votes come back into prominence. Second has been the rise in
importance of issues which simply cannot be contained by factional disputation.
EU membership and immigration have seen the rise of UKIP, primarily as an opponent
of the Conservatives whilst concern over environmental issues has fuelled the
rise of the Greens. (Discussion of the extent to which the Greens can be taken
seriously as a political party rather than a pressure group must be deferred.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These twin issues impact most heavily on Labour as the
Conservatives have long vanished from Scotland. Wipe-out in Scotland and major
Green inroads into some parts of its English vote could leave it faced with no
electoral future at Westminster without a major restructuring of the British
political system. None of this is certain. It could yet hang in with
30-something percentage of vote, a deal with the Scot Nats and a continuing
grip on its northern citadels. But given the clear possibility of a potentially
fatal blow, some assessment has to be made of this rather odd body, odd because
its structure differs so sharply from the normal, continental form of a classic
social-democratic mass party with a hierarchical structure built up from a
national membership.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In February 1900, representatives of most of the socialist
groups in Britain (the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the Social Democratic
Federation and the Fabian Society), met with trade union leaders at the
Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, London. After a debate the 129 delegates
decided to pass Hardie’s motion to establish "<i>a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips,
and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with
any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting</i> <i>legislation in the direct interests of
labour." </i>To make this possible
the Conference established a Labour Representation Committee (LRC). This
committee included two members from the Independent Labour Party, two from the
Social Democratic Federation, one member of the Fabian Society, and seven trade
unionists, effectively equal representation for the political and labour wings.
The wording “<i>any party”</i> is
significant; these men were not themselves forming a new party nor is there any
indication that they aspired to this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The name Labour Party was in fact first adopted in 1906 by
the group of 29 MPs who had won election under the auspices of the LRC
essentially to describe themselves and those who had worked to elect them. Its ‘object’ in 1910 was to ‘<i>secure the election of Candidates to
Parliament and organise and maintain a Parliamentary Labour party with its own
whips and policy</i>’ It was a ‘<i>federation
of national organizations</i>’, a loose and ill- defined alliance rather than a
coherent party with specific aims.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nationally, the Labour Party only acquired individual
membership in 1918, after extension of the national franchise to all adult
males and some women, when something like the existing constitution was
adopted. It was only after 1918 that the party began to contest nearly all
seats and to systematically oppose the Liberals, the party which had been the
main representative of the working class before 1914 and with whom the LRC had
concluded electoral pacts to gain election. Its success was then meteoric. By
1924, it was able to form a government, albeit as a minority, and by the end of
the decade, it had totally eclipsed the Liberals. This complex organisational
rather than political process and its sudden rise to power has provided the
Labour Party with unusual, though longstanding, features which still define its
nature and politics. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, as a federal organisation in which most democratic
power is exerted by affiliated bodies whose own individual members have
different relationships with their national body, it has only a limited role
for individual members of the Party itself. A consequence of this has been a
persistent inability of positions which commanded significant, often majority,
support within the individual membership to determine party policy as expressed
within party manifestos. It is noteworthy that the one affiliated body with
specific political ambition controlled by individual membership, the ILP, split
from the national LP in 1932 to begin a long decline. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Second, it has remained true to its original LRC roots in
being primarily an electoral body dedicated to providing the Parliamentary
Labour Party (PLP), a separately constituted body with its own rules and
policy, with members and to electing local councillors. It has had a minimal
role as a campaigning body or one with any ambition to the development of any
left political culture outside Parliament. As a result, a wider political body
of left campaigns and agencies has always existed outside the LP with overlapping
membership and various levels of support but with no official relationship. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is a provocative but essentially truthful comment that it
has always been this loose gathering, a kind of political penumbra, which has
provided the LP with the full characteristics of a political party rather than
being just an electoral machine. The procedural basis of this has been the way
in which affiliated bodies have memberships which contain both LP members
(often a minority) and members of other political groups as well as those with
no direct political affiliation. The classic example of this is the way in
which Communists were always able to play an indirect part in forming Labour
policy by their active participation in policy formation inside the unions to which
they, as individuals, belonged.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Third, the trade unions have always had a crucial role
inside the LP, though one which is now reduced, though not vestigial, usually
one that is supportive of the leadership of the PLP and which provides much of
the party’s money. Trade unions provide the parliamentary leadership with its
compliant majority on the National Executive Committee, which nominally runs
the LP, and also helps elect the national and Scottish leaders (thus Ed not
David Miliband and Jim Murphy). They also provide substantial though
diminishing amounts of dosh.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This historical role defined much of the party’s internal
ethos. Supporting the Labour Party meant accepting not socialism or indeed any
specific ideology but an intricate network of loyalties. This was essentially a
trade-union code of behaviour; so were the political aims of the Labour Party,
at least for much of its existence, essentially trade union ones. Within these
limited terms the Labour Party has had reasonable success. If it is objected
that it has not served the ‘true’ interests of the working-classes the answer
is that it was never designed to do so. One of the abiding features of unions
is solidarity, an unquestioning support of other members against external
forces. This, translated into political terms, is essentially a kind of
tribalism in which support for the party rather than support for some external
political principle becomes the dominant feature of political calculation. The
result is that a large number of LP activists continue to work to elect LP
candidates even though they reject a good deal of Party policy and always have
done. It is probable that this rigid but essentially fragile shell of support,
which can break once a single crack appears in its carapace, is one important
reason for the extraordinarily rapid collapse of the Scottish LP.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fourth, the LP was never a socialist party though initially,
it contained elements of support for a socialist political programme in its
constitution and even now some of its elected MPs, though certainly not a
majority, would define themselves as socialist and probably a majority of its
membership still would. Historically, Labour has coped with the wide diversity
of political belief in its ranks by a sometimes chaotic and often fractious
internal coalition stretching from right to left. The left-wing of the Party,
though normally the junior partner, had often been able to exert influence over
both policy and leadership though this influence has declined drastically since
the mid-1990s. Its last form, the archaically-named Labour Representation
Committee, has only a few hundred members, a bare half-dozen affiliated M.P.s
and has no influence of any kind. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This odd, hybrid body might have been expected to undergo
various kinds of political development into something like the continental
pattern of a hierarchical membership-based party if it were not for its
remarkable and, at the time, unexpected transformation into a party of
potential government, a transformation which, even after the debacle of the
defection of the then Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, in 1931,
continued without any serious challenge. Labour won only 7.0% and 6.4% of the
votes cast at the two general elections of 1910. In 1923, on an extended
franchise, its share was 30.7%, just ahead of the Liberals, who were damaged by
the bitter feud between Lloyd George and Asquith, and it was able to form a minority
government. It was only in 2010, that its share dipped down to this level,
leaving aside the 1983 election when it faced with its first and, so far, only
challenge resulting from in internal split. As a result this strange political
formation has continued to dominate left politics in Britain down to the
present day without significant alteration to its original form despite the
contingent features of its first structure. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This then is the vessel which will set sail in May into the
choppy waters of minority government. Although it still has a full set of sails
and is manned by a crew of old salts who largely if reluctantly obey the orders
of the captain, this disguises the fact that its sails are threadbare and its
hull is worn paper thin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Media political commentators still see the post-May
situation in conventional terms of two, dominant competing parties even if the
loss of Scotland wipes out much chance of an overall Labour majority. Labour
will, it is blithely assumed, form some kind of alliance with the SNP which
will enable it to form a convincing government. A moment’s thought suggests,
however, that this is a very unlikely situation even in the short-term. There
are a number of key issues which are red-lines both for the SNP and Labour. The
most obvious of these is Trident renewal whilst others on austerity, Europe and
immigration easily come to mind. The fact is that on most of these, Labour will
find it much easier to obtain its majority with Tory votes than by compromising
with the SNP. There will never be a formal Labour/Tory coalition but it remains
quite possible that on key issues, Labour will continue in government for the
statutory five years by relying on reaching compromises with the Conservatives.
The logic of a first-past-the-post electoral system has always been that there
will be two main parties, each covering the span of right-wing
conservatism/left-wing progressiveness and containing internally most of the
various emphases that such a broad definition encompasses. When these start to
overlap and rely on mutual deals then the system begins to break.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The impact that such a situation will have on the English LP
is difficult to predict but there are already some straws in the wind
suggesting that in its northern heartlands, alternative structures are being
considered. The Yorkshire First Party is standing in several constituencies mainly
with ex-Labour members who see the national Labour Party as too centralised and
London-based to represent the people of Yorkshire. A similar party has been set
up in the north-east. Neither will win any seats but their appearance in
previously solid Labour areas is significant.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A quite different but perhaps even more interesting
development is that of DevoManc, that is the deal agreed between a consortium
of 10 Greater Manchester councils and the Conservative government, to devolve
control of large chunks of local expenditure, including most startlingly that
on health, to the councils although the actual level of the budgets will remain
under central control. Greater Manchester is the most important and powerful
Labour machine in England. Manchester is the one major city never seriously
threatened by the Liberal Democrats and without a single Tory councillor. The
deal, brokered by the twin leaders of this machine, Richard Leese and Howard
Bernstein, is remarkable for its breadth and also, given the politics of
Manchester, the apparent fact that it was done directly with Cameron and did
not involve the central party, who do not seem to like it very much. Certainly,
the health service unions are spitting blood over it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is doubtful that Leese and Bernstein envisage the breakup
of the English Labour Party. The fact is, however, that they are busy setting
up a situation in which Greater Manchester will come to resemble Scotland in
its power and which, given the bringing together of 10 councils, 8 of which are
Labour, will make the regional Labour Party a significant power-broker whatever
the complexion of Westminster.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Clearly, if Labour suffer a wipe-out in Scotland they will
be vulnerable to challenge in England not to mention Wales. Plaid Cymru is now
up to around 20% support there but Labour still remains way out in front. In
England, only the Green Party shows any signs of acting as an alternative on
the left but would need a massive injection of support to be anything other
than an irritant to Labour, mostly acting as a conduit for disaffected Lib Dems.
Labour now has an iron-bound constitution preventing any challenge from
disaffected members. It would require the emergence of a trade-union leader of
real stature rather than jokes like ‘Red’ Leonard McCluskey to provide a
genuine challenge rather like that of the Jones/Scanlon leadership of the
1970s. Disaffiliation by unions would not provide any problem except financial.
It is one of the oddities of the LP constitution that the number and, indeed,
membership of affiliated bodies, trade unions and societies, could drop to
single figures and still have the same dominant position in elections of leader
and NEC.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It also has no need of any pool of potential candidates now
that Westminster politics has now become the province of a self-serving group
who have chosen politics as a career and, like Tony Blair, may have chosen
Labour as their vehicle largely by chance. It is significant that out the 31
members of the current shadow cabinet, less than half have ever had a proper job
outside politics having climbed up the ladder via advisers to M.P.s or in
various lobbying groups. And that is counting solicitors as a proper job. The
days of stalwarts like Prescott or Blunkett, who learnt their trade in trade
unions or local authorities whilst holding down other jobs, are past.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h2>
<br /></h2>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
And yet. The main result of the May election will be conformation
of the growing contempt which much, perhaps most, of the electorate has for Westminster
politicians. Under 20% of it, possibly even less, will have voted for the party
which will claim the right to form a national government. If Labour is that party it will do so on the
basis of being essentially a regional organisation rather than a national one.
It will proceed to act in a way which the majority of its membership will have
reservations about. It would be difficult to describe a more unstable political
scenario. It would be pleasant to envisage a future in which this was
recognised by the leadership of the main parties and there was a consensus to
push through the reforms necessary to reduce this instability. But this is not
how either Labour of the Tories behave. There will be frenetic back-stairs manoeuvring
in May, much making of deals and counting heads. But there exists neither
leadership nor will to do anything than ramp up the already dismissive contempt
with which most people view Westminster. Could Labour collapse in England as it
has seemingly done in Scotland? Could the Green Party strike some kind of
political alliance with the Scot Nats, Plaid Cymru and odd fragments of the
English left such as Yorkshire First and the Trade Union and Socialist Alliance
(aka Militant of yesteryear) to form some kind of emergent democratic left
party to take its place? Even writing
such a sentence seems to provide its implicit answer. But something is going to
change. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-26819125494272089542015-02-13T16:24:00.000+00:002015-02-13T16:24:39.557+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Peter Lawrence writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some 35 years ago, I wrote a book chapter entitled ‘Is the
Party Over?’</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Michael/SkyDrive/Documents/peter%20blogpiece.docx" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
which was an attempt to critique the idea and relevance of the Leninist
vanguard party. As the title implies, it argued for the demise of the vanguard
party (the model for the then highly influential Communist Party to which I
belonged, as well as for its various Trotskyist competitors on the
Marxist-Leninist left), in favour of one which would coordinate socialist and
other progressive activists involved across a range of struggles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In so doing, it would provide a home for many
who had hitherto felt excluded because of a lack of interest in the issues that
concerned them. (One example I gave was the Ecology Party, the earlier name of
the Green Party.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A party which would be
inclusive, coordinating and democratic in organisation might also, so I argued,
lead to similar developments within the Labour Party which would begin to shed
its suspicions of movements it did not dominate and turn it much more into a campaigning
organisation to mobilise public support for sustained progressive change. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Fast forward to 2015, and the Communist Party has morphed
into a minor Stalinist sect, while the other ‘vanguard’ groupings such as the
SWP, remain small and marginally influential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Green Party has grown in membership and influence, gained 1 MP and
three MEPs and now threatens Labour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is both a campaigning and electoral party now having to come to terms with the
diversity of its appeal, which gives it campaign strength, and a set of
divergent policies which reflects its diverse appeal. In Scotland, the SNP
threatens to wipe out Scottish Labour MPs while the Labour Party, on the other
hand, remains an electoral organisation whose performance in government has
differed marginally from that of the Tories, still its main competitor, and
continues to shy away from becoming a campaigning party which seeks to mobilise
popular support for progressive policies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Prior to 1966, voting Labour felt like a positive act in the
cause of building a democratic socialist society. However timid the Labour
governments were, the leadership spoke about planned economies, distribution of
income and wealth and the importance of protecting workers against unscrupulous
employers. Even when Labour came back to government in 1974, there was a sense
such a government was a necessary if not sufficient condition for building
democratic socialism. Even more so in 1997, after 18 years of Tory rule, there
was no question about where a socialist would put the X on the ballot paper – vote
Labour not least to get the Tories out, but also because this was the nearest
we could get to a socialist government. In the intervening period socialists
have found it increasingly difficult to put that X by the Labour candidate.
Holding your nose and voting Labour for fear of something worse was the most
positive thing that could be said in favour of such an action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2015, the smell associated with the Labour
Party is becoming so strong that holding your nose will not be enough. Labour
has become another political career path to high office and then to co-option
by the corporate sector with commensurate financial rewards. Yet still we will
agonise until the last minute about whether to desert Labour and vote Green (the
only realistic alternative) and risk another five years of a government
dedicated to advancing the interests of the plutocracy and impoverishing a
large proportion of the 99%, or whether to vote Labour to avoid the worst
excesses of the Tories. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But will Labour in government, avoid the worst excesses of
the Tories? Maybe. Labour, having bought the fiction that austerity is the only
way out of the crisis, has already promised to cut public expenditure and
eliminate the budget deficit, but not as fast as the Tories. So what would this
mean in practice? Maybe the removal of the ‘bedroom tax’, maybe a slower rate
of cuts, maybe a marginal reduction in unemployment, maybe some capital
expenditure on infrastructure, though even the Tories plan the latter, possibly
a higher rate of tax for the rich, possibly a version of the mansion tax that
actually hits those who engage in property trading for speculation. Well,
better than nothing, and for some people and families, critical, but still not
addressing the key problem of British capitalism – its domination by large
financial corporates, who effectively determine what governments can do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The current fuss about whether Labour is pro or anti-business
is a case in point. The current crisis was, at its root, caused by the Tory
financial liberalisation of the 1980s. Financial corporates gambled away huge
amounts of depositors’ money and took control over the non-financial sector. So
what did the Labour government do but rescue these failed institutions and now
they are back gambling with our deposits which if they lose the bets, are
anyway guaranteed by the Government!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Miliband has talked about ‘predator capitalism’ which is certainly what
it is, but he hasn’t said what he plans to do about it. Meanwhile the very
business friendly shadow chancellor Balls has been heard to say at a private business
function ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You might hear anti-City
sentiment from Ed Miliband but you’ll never hear it from me</i>.’</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Michael/SkyDrive/Documents/peter%20blogpiece.docx" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
Yet it is the City itself that is and has always been the key problem for the
UK economy and it is the activities of the banks and finance houses that populate
the square mile and that Thatcher liberated with the Big Bang, over 30 years
ago that caused the crisis. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So here we have it. The coalition has provided Labour with
an open goal which the party constantly misses. Is it because they are afraid
to shoot for fear of alienating voters who are unlikely to vote for them
anyway? Is it because they don’t want to shoot because they believe in a strong
financial sector?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or is it because they
know that they need the financial sector onside because it can bring
governments down and they don’t know how to mobilise popular support for a
policy that would bring the City under control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If there is a lesson from the past, it is that appeasing the City simply
strengthens it, and getting the City out of trouble, as Labour did in the
financial crisis, loses you elections because the City has plenty of opinion
formers who can shift the blame onto the Government and get away with it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Must Labour die or must it change in order to
stay alive? If there is a lesson from what is happening in Greece and Spain, it
is that it is possible for ‘left wing’ political formations of a new type to
emerge from popular activity involving different groups and movements. In the
case of Greece, it can win an election, and start to implement its policies,
though the forces of financial rectitude opposed to it, led by the ECB, are
trying to prevent this. But a governing party that remains a campaigning one
can retain its popular support by doing what it said it would do and mobilising
the population to ensure it is done. Labour could learn from this and start to
do things differently, not be afraid to take sides with the unemployed, the
working poor, the inadequately housed and the food bank dependent, and link up
with progressive movements which seek systemic change. That would include the
Greens. But for that to happen Labour would need to be a different party and
I’m not optimistic, after all those years when it missed the chance, that it
can become one now.</span>
<br />
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Michael/SkyDrive/Documents/peter%20blogpiece.docx" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
Peter Lawrence, Is the Party Over? in (ed) Mike Prior, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Popular and the Political: Essays on socialism in the 1980s</i>,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Michael/SkyDrive/Documents/peter%20blogpiece.docx" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Patrick Jenkins, <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Labour steps up charm
offensive on City leaders, </span>Financial Times, February 3, 2015 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: x-small;"> </span></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-75227606395768859302015-02-11T07:55:00.000+00:002015-02-11T07:55:00.314+00:00Cutting loose: the only way for Scottish Labour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoTitle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="color: #5b9bd5; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><strong>Cutting Loose: Scottish
Labour and the SNP<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
David Purdy writes:<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
As recently as last September, a poll for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scottish Mail on Sunday</i> on Westminster
voting intentions gave Scottish Labour a six-point lead over the SNP, with
Labour on 39%, the SNP 33%, the Conservatives 18% and the Lib Dems 3%. Since
the referendum, Labour has lost one third of its support in Scotland, while the
SNP has climbed to 45-47%, a lead of around 20 points. On a uniform national
swing, Scottish Labour would be annihilated, losing all but a handful of its 41
Westminster seats. Even if the party were to claw back to 35%, while the SNP
slipped to 38%, Labour and the SNP would each win 28 seats, an outcome that
could still put paid to Labour’s chances of forming the next UK government.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>So far, despite the best efforts of its newly elected
leader, Jim Murphy, Scottish Labour has yet to reach base camp. A seat-by-seat
survey of 16,000 Scottish voters conducted by Michael Ashcroft’s polling
organisation and reported in the press on 5<sup>th</sup> February confirmed the
bad news for Labour. The poll, covering 16 constituencies – 14 held by Labour,
two by the Lib Dems and all areas where there was strong support for Yes in the
independence referendum – showed an average 21-point swing from Labour to the
SNP. If these results were replicated across Scotland, Labour would lose 35 of
its seats. Among voters under 44, support for the SNP is nearly double that of
Labour. Indeed, the SNP leads across all age groups, except among those aged 65
and over. Even allowing that the swing against Labour might be lower in areas
where the Yes vote was lower, the party’s prospects look bleak.<o:p></o:p></div>
<o:p> </o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
In what follows, after tracing the forward march of the SNP
from protest to power, I examine the impact of the referendum and its aftermath
on Scotland’s political landscape, explore the implications for May’s election
and suggest that Scottish Labour’s best – and perhaps only – hope of recovering
from defeat is to cut loose from its sister parties south of the border,
embrace the cause of Home Rule and challenge the SNP’s lingering attachment to
neo-liberal “common sense”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<o:p> </o:p><br />
<br />
<h2 style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="color: #5b9bd5; font-size: 14pt; mso-themecolor: accent1;">The
rise and rise of the SNP<o:p></o:p></span></h2>
<br />
<br />
<h1 style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><u><span style="font-size: small;">Table 1 UK election results in Scotland 1970-2010<o:p></o:p></span></u></span></i></h1>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
<div style="border-color: currentColor currentColor windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span>%
vote<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 72pt;">
Con<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Lab<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Liberal/<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>SNP<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Other<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div style="border-color: currentColor currentColor windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span>Lib
Dem<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
1970<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>38.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>44.5<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5.5<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>11.4<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>0.6<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
1974 (Feb)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>32.9<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>36.6<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>7.9<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>21.9<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>0.6<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
1974 (Oct)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>24.7<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>36.3<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>8.3<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>30.4<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>0.3<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
1979<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>31.4<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>41.5<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>9.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>17.3<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>0.8<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
1983<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>28.4<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>35.1<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>24.5<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>11.8<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>0.3<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
1987<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>24.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>42.4<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>19.2<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>14.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>0.3<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
1992<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>25.6<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>39.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>13.1<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>21.5<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>0.8<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
1997<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>17.5<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>45.6<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>13.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>22.1<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>1.9<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
2001<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>15.6<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>43.3<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>16.3<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>20.1<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>4.7<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
2005<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>15.8<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>38.9<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>22.6<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>17.7<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>5.1<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div style="border-color: currentColor currentColor windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
2010<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>16.7<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>42.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>18.9<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>19.9<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>2.0<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The SNP’s initial electoral breakthrough came at the
Hamilton by-election in 1967. Thereafter it fielded candidates in more or less
every Scottish constituency in UK general elections. The party’s share of the
vote peaked at 30% in the October 1974 election, when it pushed the
Conservatives into third place, yet it won only 11 (15%) of the 71 Scottish
seats then in existence. After a lean spell in the 1980s, the SNP averaged
around 20% of the votes, but even its best result, in 1997, yielded only 6
seats.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>This discrepancy between votes and seats is easily
explained: the SNP’s support is spread evenly across Scotland, both
geographically and socially. Unless a party is in the lead across the piece, an
even geographical spread is always a disadvantage under first-past-the-post
elections. And the SNP’s vote varies little by occupational class or type of
housing tenure, making it difficult to break into Labour’s heartlands in the
Central Belt, where most of the population lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Thus, prior to devolution, the SNP struggled to make headway
in Westminster elections. With the new Scottish parliament, however, came a new
electoral system. Under the Additional Member System (AMS), the 72 existing
first-past-the-post constituencies (with Orkney and Shetland divided into two)
were supplemented by 56 party list seats, allocated within each of eight
regions so as to ensure that the overall distribution of seats in each region,
both constituency and list, would reflect, as closely as possible, the division
of votes among parties. This system, agreed after protracted negotiation
between Labour and the Lib Dems, the senior partners within the Scottish
Constitutional Convention that campaigned for devolution during the 1990s,
offered a compromise between the Lib Dems’ preference for PR and Labour’s need
for reassurance that should the SNP start coming first in votes, it would still
fail to achieve an overall majority of seats.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
As can be seen from Table 2 below, until 2011 the SNP found
it difficult to win constituency seats and depended for its heft within the
Scottish Parliament on the top-up regional list seats. Even in 2007 when, for
the first time, the party won the largest share of the constituency vote,
Labour still had a majority of constituency seats (37 out of 73) as against 21
for the SNP. Nevertheless, because the allocation of list seats gave it one
more than Labour overall, it won the election and went on to form a minority
government, with the support of the Scottish Greens. In 2011, the SNP managed
to achieve what AMS was designed to prevent: a single-party majority in the
Scottish Parliament, coming first in 53 constituencies and winning 69 seats
overall, compared with 15 and 37, respectively, for Labour.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p><span style="color: #5b9bd5; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-themecolor: accent1;">The referendum and after: how Scotland has changed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>There was now no parliamentary barrier to holding a
referendum on independence, but the legal position was still unclear. After
nine months of negotiation, in October 2012 a deal was struck: the UK
government agreed to a temporary transfer of the requisite legal powers on
condition that the referendum was confined to a single question offering a
straight Yes-No choice. The Scottish government had been open to the
possibility of two questions, offering voters three options – the status quo,
“devo max” (or Home Rule within the Union) and full independence – but the
pro-Union parties ruled this out, anticipating that a clear majority for
remaining in the UK would “settle the issue for a generation.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<h1 style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><u><span style="font-size: small;">Table 2: Scottish Parliament election results in votes and
seats, 1999-2011<o:p></o:p></span></u></span></i></h1>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></i></div>
<div style="border-color: currentColor currentColor windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm; text-align: center;">
%
constituency vote (no of seats)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1999<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2003<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2007<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2011<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
SNP<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>28.7<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>7)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>23.8<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>9)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>32.9<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(21)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>45.4<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(53)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Lab<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>38.8<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(53)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>34.6<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(46)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>32.2<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(37)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>31.7<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(15)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Cons<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>15.6<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>16.6<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>16.6<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>13.9<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Lib Dem<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>14.2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(12)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>15.4<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(13)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>16.2<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(11)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>7.9<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Greens<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>–<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>–<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>0.1<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0.1<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>–<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>–<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
SSP<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1.0<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6.2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>0.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>–<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>–<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div style="border-color: currentColor currentColor windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
Others<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1.7<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>3.5<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2.0<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1.1<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
% regional list vote
(no of seats)<o:p></o:p></div>
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div style="border-color: currentColor currentColor windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1999<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2003<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2007<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2011<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
SNP<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>27.3<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(28)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>20.9<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(18)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>31.0<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(26)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>44.0<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(16)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Lab<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>33.6<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>29.3<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>29.2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>9)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>26.3<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(22)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Cons<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>15.4<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(18)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>15.5<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(15)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>13.9<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(13)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>12.4<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(12)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Lib Dem<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>12.4<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>11.8<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>11.3<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5.2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Greens<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3.6<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6.9<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>7)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>4.0<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5.2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
SSP<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2.0<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6.7<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>0.6 <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0.4<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div style="border-color: currentColor currentColor windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: currentColor; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
Others<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5.7<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>0)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>8.9<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>10.0<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>6.5<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1)<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
What they had not reckoned with was the transforming impact
of a long referendum campaign. For the next two years, the SNP combined
incumbency with insurgency, continuing to govern Scotland while holding out the
vision of Scotland as a new self-governing nation. In a bid to quell voters’
anxieties about “separating” from the UK, the party limited its ambition to
“independence lite”, offering assurances that in the event of a Yes vote,
Scotland would cease to be represented at Westminster, but would retain a
shared monarch as ceremonial head of state, along with the pound sterling, the
Bank of England, membership of NATO and membership of the EU.<o:p></o:p></div>
<o:p> </o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
In the event, this attempt to secure the repeal the 1707 Act
of Union, while preserving a common currency, crown and geo-political
alignment, came to grief. Yet despite losing the referendum by a wider margin
than polls taken in the last six weeks of the campaign had suggested, <i>Yes
Scotland</i> did well to secure 45% of the vote (on a remarkable 85% turnout).
1.6 million Scots had voted to leave the UK, the highest level of support for
independence ever recorded at the ballot box. According to polls conducted at
the outset of the campaign, in a three-way choice between the status quo, more
devolved powers and full independence, 35-36% of the Scottish public favoured
more powers, while 32-33% supported each of the other options. With the
referendum reduced to a binary choice, the rival camps had to win over the
middle ground, now reclassified as undecided voters. On this reckoning, support
for independence grew by 12-13 percentage points over the course of the
campaign, though by the same arithmetic, two thirds of those who wanted more devolution
short of independence ended up voting No.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
What no one expected was the sequence of events that
unfolded after the referendum. Within minutes of the result being announced, a
relieved David Cameron issued a “Counter-Vow”: if returned to office at the
next election, he declared, the Conservatives proposed to tackle the West
Lothian question by amending the procedures of the House of Commons so as to
secure “English Votes for English Laws”. In the weeks and months that followed,
Scotland’s political landscape was transformed as supporters of other parties
who had voted Yes in the referendum, together with some who had voted No,
defected in droves to the SNP.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Hitherto, as a comparison of Tables 1 and 2 shows, the SNP
had won a higher share of the constituency vote in elections to the Scottish
Parliament than it achieved in the preceding Westminster election. Indeed, the
gap widened from 4 percentage points in 2003 to 15 in 2007 and to 25 in 2011.
In part, this pattern can be explained as a mid-term protest vote. But surveys
suggest that, regardless of the state of the Westminster election cycle, voters
were more willing back the SNP in elections to the Scottish Parliament than in
elections to the UK House of Commons. In the former, people focus on who is
best fitted to govern Scotland; in the latter, on who will provide good
government for the UK as a whole. The SNP does not aspire to govern the UK, but
it is a serious contender in Scotland, offering an attractive alternative to a
dysfunctional Scottish Labour Party, which those who vote Labour or Lib Dem in
Westminster elections can safely back for Holyrood.<o:p></o:p></div>
<o:p> </o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Since the referendum, however, Holyrood voting intentions
have been translated into Westminster voting intentions. According to the
Ashcroft polls cited earlier, 35% of Scots who voted Labour in 2010 and almost
half Scots who voted Lib Dem intend to back the SNP this time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And two thirds of Labour voters who have
switched to the SNP say they do not intend to switch back. Fear of letting the
Tories back in has been overridden by the intense focus on Scottish politics
that built up during the referendum and will almost certainly persist up to and
beyond the next Holyrood election in May 2016 until a new constitutional
settlement is reached, whether this involves some form of Home Rule or, indeed,
another referendum on independence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p><span style="color: #5b9bd5; font-size: 14pt; mso-themecolor: accent1;">Parliamentary
arithmetic, constitutional reform and political renewal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p> </o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
“Red Nats” sense the prospect of a landslide victory that
leaves the SNP holding the balance of power at Westminster, possibly as the
third-largest party. This, they hope, will enable it to conclude a
parliamentary pact with a minority Labour government whereby in return for confidence
and supply support, the SNP secures concessions ranging from Home Rule with
full fiscal autonomy to the cancellation of Trident and the removal of nuclear
weapons from the Clyde. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The trouble is that in a situation where neither Labour nor
the Tories are likely to achieve an overall majority, every seat that Labour
loses in Scotland makes it more likely that the Tories will end up as the
largest party at Westminster. At the very least, that would give the Tories
first shot at forming a government, though of course, whether they succeed
depends on the parliamentary arithmetic, and more specifically on the number of
seats won by the DUP, UKIP and, perhaps, the Lib Dems. If the numbers stack up,
the Tories will move heaven and earth to stay in office. And even if they fail,
there is no guarantee that the numbers will stack up for Labour or that if they
do, Labour will accede to the demands of the SNP, whether acting alone or in
concert with Plaid Cymru and the Greens. Other outcomes are possible: there
could, for example, be a second election and if that failed to resolve the
deadlock, Labour and the Conservatives could form a grand coalition to take
charge of constitutional reform, starting with a reform of the voting system.<o:p></o:p></div>
<o:p> </o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
At present it looks as if, whatever happens, the SNP cannot
lose. If it routs Labour in Scotland without letting the Tories back in, a
minority Labour government at Westminster would have to pay a price to win its
backing. If the Tories form a minority government and, with Lib Dem support,
proceed to give English and – on matters not devolved to Cardiff – Welsh MPs a
veto over legislation that does not apply to Scotland, pressure would mount
north of the border for a second referendum, especially if the Tories
simultaneously refuse to countenance a “Celtic” veto in any referendum on UK
membership of the EU. And even the hint of a grand coalition between Labour and
the Tories would make Labour even more unpopular in Scotland than it already
is, confirming the nationalist argument that the two establishment parties are
essentially interchangeable and will do anything to preserve the Union.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
If Scottish Labour suffers a heavy defeat in May, its
condition, already critical, could become terminal. If it is to avoid internal
strife, stop haemorrhaging support, mount a credible electoral challenge to the
SNP in 2016 and, in the longer term, prevent its old rival from becoming
Scotland’s Fianna Fail, its best hope is to sever organisational ties with its
sister parties in England and Wales, rename itself the Independent Scottish
Labour Party and embrace the cause of Home Rule, an aspiration shared by both
Labour and the Liberals in the early twentieth century before two world wars,
the Great Depression and the post-war Labour Government turned the UK into one
of the most centralised states in Europe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<o:p> </o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Undoubtedly, cutting loose
would be painful. But by splitting along the line of the border rather than
along a left-right axis, as happened when the ILP broke away in 1932 and the
SDP was formed in 1981, Labour would be better placed to adapt to an era of
multi-party politics that takes different forms in different parts of the UK.
In Scotland, the SNP needs to be challenged from the left. For far too long it
has been allowed to get away with advocating Scandinavian social policies on
the basis of US tax levels. With a fresh lease of life and a new sense of
purpose, an Independent Scottish Labour Party could put the SNP under pressure
to jettison its neo-liberal baggage and sign up to the project of working
towards a new social settlement and a better kind of capitalism within the
framework of a federal state.</span></div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-74816733685498735162015-02-09T16:28:00.000+00:002015-02-09T16:28:42.150+00:00View from the Sidelines<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dorothy
Margot writes<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I am no academic,
and I have made no study of the Politics of my country. Nevertheless, I have
been a keen observer of the political scene since I first proudly walked into a
polling booth, to vote for the first time, thanks to the<i><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black;"> Representation of the People Act,
1969,</span></i><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black;"> which gave
me the vote at 18 years old. </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> I voted Liberal. Frankly, it was to hack off my RAF father, and
all he believed in, but I also thought Jeremy Thorpe was more convincing than
the sexually ambiguous, Edward Heath. (Oh the irony). I doubt if I could have
told you a single policy, from any party. I voted for the man who seemed most
sincere.</span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">If you Google Ed Miliband, you will note the second most popular search
is 'Ed Miliband bacon sandwich'; if you Google David Cameron, the next most
popular search is 'David Cameron, Twitter'. People actually want to know what
Cameron is saying, whereas Miliband is good for a laugh.</span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In the days when the Labour party could field a man of the calibre of
the late Labour Leader, John Smith, they stood a chance of sweeping the Tory
party away. Who, amongst the ranks of the faithful, consider the
unprepossessing and uninspiring Miliband any threat to Cameron? Cameron
acts out the part of the statesman and family man to good effect, irrespective
of what he is actually saying.</span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Political pundits rather downplay the influence that mere personality
exerts on the voters' minds. That might be a simplistic summation, but Arnold
Schwarzenegger garnered 4,206,384 Republican votes in 2003 on the back of
having a good physique and a few quotable one-liners. It would be wrong to
imagine the British voter has more savvy and is not swayed by celebrity and
charisma, witness the Farage Effect! My father was persuaded by the
personable Blair to vote Labour after a lifetime of Daily Mail-informed
conservatism, but during recent local elections, he voted UKIP, because he
admires Nigel Farage, for 'talking sense'.</span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">To quote Chesterton: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">''The first
effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything".</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Have you read your papers recently?:</span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Comedian Al Murray has
announced he plans to stand against </span></span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/nigel-farage" target="_parent"><span style="color: #005689; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Nigel Farage</span></span></a></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> in the seat of South Thanet in May’s general election.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He will stand as his comedy
alter ego “the Pub Landlord” for the Free United Kingdom Party, or FUKP.
In </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tADgYkAfXro" target="_parent"><span style="color: #005689; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">a video
posted to YouTube</span></span></a></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> launching his bid for
parliament, he says: “It seems to me that the UK is ready for a bloke waving a
pint around offering common sense solutions.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The first of his pledges is to
make pints of beer cost 1p and to brick up the channel tunnel"<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Frances Perraudin, The Guardian January 14, 2015<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Politics
is dying on its feet, when a stand-up comedian, mocking UKIP, warrants column
inches in all the press. The next election seems set to fragment politics even
further, to devalue it and to fail to offer the country a radical leader/thinker
of the likes of Greece's Alexis Tsipras, who ensured he was always seen,
without a tie! Political stagecraft, and it got International press coverage of
the '<i>this man means business' </i>variety.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In
June 2013 the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire Labour Party, had the opportunity to
adopt an outstanding female Labour councillor, Jenny Lynn as their next
election candidate. She has worked tirelessly for the party and her community
and much more besides; she was the first woman to represent her ward in over 30
years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> She
is an openly practicing Christian, and I have witnessed the great respect she
gets from the local Muslim community, (no mean feat), by her leadership of the
Halifax Friends of Palestine and her support of asylum seekers. She is
eloquent, her voice is easy on the ear, she has a 'common touch' and a good
sense of humour, and she is passionate about her politics. So whom did her
party choose, when she was proposed as a candidate, and stood against 3 other
hopefuls? A fresh faced, anodyne London-based 'local' lad who has yet to serve
his community, Josh Fenton-Glynn. Yes, let's not select a fiery, single,
middle aged woman, let's have a safe smiley Mili - Bland clone. Well, good luck
with that choice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #292f33; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Josh twittered on 7 Feb 2015:</span><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #292f33; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">"<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We are
'likes' away from 500 on the 'Josh For Calder Valley' Facebook page, let's see
if we can get there by Monday"</i>. Inspiring, isn't it?</span><span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); color: black; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> So, finally, to answer the question. By choosing,
post-Kinnock, yet another albatross leader to hang around their necks, the
Labour party is indeed already dying, by slow suicide</span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-17777883749537130642015-02-07T15:02:00.000+00:002015-02-07T15:02:33.994+00:00Well, must it still die?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Nine years ago I wrote a piece called 'Labour Must Die!'
which made a minor splash in various places, most oddly on the website of the
'liberal-interventionist' Euston Manifesto, where it can still be found as well as here. My
Gramscian critique of New Labour sat rather uncomfortably alongside arguments
for extending 'western democracy' to ever more remote and dusty parts of a
generally unreceptive world. A lot's happened in the meantime: the 2008 crash
and subsequent slump, the decay of the Blair/Brown project and the electoral
defeat of New Labour in 2010, the neo-Thatcherite induced austerity<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the Con/Lib coalition, the Eurozone crisis
etcetera. On a personal level I finished the PhD of which my article was a
snapshot, and got it published as a book 'The Politics of New Labour' (2011)
which has sold moderately well and played some small part in the post-mortem.
My first novel 'Gramsci in Love', which offers an account of my intellectual
hero's tortured love-life, is about to be published. I am even less engaged in
the sterile routines of party politics than back then.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
So, nine years on, must Labour <i>still </i>die? Well, on a
simply existential basis, the Labour Party survives to fight yet more elections
and chase more headlines, so obviously it hasn't quite died yet. But on any
objective measure it's not exactly thriving either. Membership briefly rose
post-Blair/Brown but has since levelled off. Most local Labour organisations
are 'hollowed-out' or moribund, and heavily reliant on elected councillors or
paid officials with a vested financial interest in their 'political' activity.
Joining the Labour Party is now a pretty strange thing to do, even in the
conditions of opposition when indignant leftists historically 'return to the
fold'. Performance in elections, by-elections and opinion polls is pretty
lacklustre, to the extent that 'the Labour vote' is less responsive to the pull
and push of the party machine than at any time in its 100 year-plus history.
The ideology of Labourism, with its experiential base in the manual work which
hardly anyone in this country does any more, and its organisational basis in
the trades unionism which is now largely confined to the public services, looks
increasingly shallow and ineffectual. It lives on in the ghostly 'cultural'
forms of football, light entertainment and xenophobia, but struggles for clear
political expression. The subaltern heartlands of northern England are palpably
depressed and taciturn.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>But, to pose the question with which Labour has always
stymied any challenge to its hold over class and electoral allegiance, what
else is there? Personally I wish I could vote for Syriza, which is exactly the
kind of 'broad democratic alliance' we Euro-communists yearned for in the
1970s, and whose Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis is right now the coolest man
on the planet, but our archaic electoral system won't allow anything of the
sort. For most of us in England the choice this May is between the traditional
'hold your nose and vote Labour' or the rather less unsavoury but arguably more
destructive 'vote Green'. I've had extensive dealings with the Green Party over
the last ten years, and I can't say I'm hugely impressed. It's a strange
amalgam of political geeks, with an obsessive focus on the electoral mechanics
of 'getting out the vote' to match anything in Labour, and angry hippie dreamers
who will gladly embrace any wacky cause that can't find a political home
elsewhere. Their politics and organisation are simply not up to the historic
opportunity presented by climate change and the decay of traditional party
politics. The real Green 'breakthrough' was in 1989, with 15% of the vote in
the European elections for a genuinely popular environmentalism, and they blew
it. The current 'green surge' is causing a minor media flurry, with party
membership over 50,000, but it will not translate into a double-figure
vote-percentage let alone Westminster seats. Even Caroline Lucas in Brighton
Pavilion looks vulnerable to a focussed and very nasty Labour push. After May I
would expect the Green Party to fall away as quickly as it did in the early
'90s, when the 'anti-austerity' activists of the 'Green Left' take their pale
Labour leftism elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
As for actual Labour, quite frankly I don't really care one
way or another. It simply continues to slide into historical irrelevance,
and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don't see what the career
prospects of a bunch of blustering, boring Oxford PPE graduates and ex-special
advisers, led by a strange man who is both old before his time and stuck in
perpetual adolescence, have to do with me and my life or even my country. If
they want to spend their lives shouting at Tories and conspiring in corridors,
that's up to them, but I cannot see what possible benefit the rest of us derive
from such shenanigans. Labour makes even less of an impact on daily life out
here in the real world than it ever did; increasingly what they do feels like
make-believe. To sum up – it seems to me that my question of nine years ago has
expanded way beyond its original focus. Any prospect of social transformation
or even sustained economic recovery in Britain now requires the death of not
just Labour but the whole of what constitutes 'politics' in our debased,
exhausted, post-pretty-much-everything age. Quite what form the politics of
post-politics will take is wholly unclear, and I don't think we should get too
carried away with 'social media' and all the other techno-fixes of late
capitalism, but one way or another it will always be about people getting
together and taking action to improve their lives and prospects; something the
Labour Party has signally and consistently failed to do.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i>Andrew Pearmain is a historian and author of 'The Politics
of New Labour' (2011) and 'Gramsci in Love' (2015)</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b><o:p> </o:p></b></div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.712891000000013-36.4181565 99.052733999999987 90 69.521483999999987tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-41454274346202272015-02-02T16:37:00.002+00:002015-02-02T16:37:41.314+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Trevor Fisher
says No: It’s Labour or the Fourth Republic<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Before the 2010 election, there was some discussion in
the Chartist collective on whether Britain was taking the same route as the
Weimar Republic in the twenties. The Blair-Brown years had seen the rise of the
Far Right with street fighters like the EDL emerging and a serious electoral
challenge from the BNP. Its leader Nick Griffin became an MEP and with the BNP
winning council seats, the risk of a British Front Nationale succeeding was
real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Five years later the good news is the Fascist Right is
retreating though not defeated. The bad news is it has been replaced by UKIP,
and while this has split the Tory right, xenophobia also appeals to Labour
voters. In Scotland, the Nationalists
threaten to deny Labour the seats it needs for government. Electorally the Lib
Dems are taking a hammering across the UK and the Greens are providing an
appeal for progressive Labour voters. With 7 parties in the TV debates, the
election is beyond quick fixes. If Britain today looks less like Weimar before
the Nazis, it increasingly looks like the French Fourth Republic – a Poujadist
Party in UKIP, fragmentation and a future of coalition governments and
instability.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Immediately there is an overwhelming case for a
Tactical Voting campaign to stop the Green surge taking Labour seats. The
threat of Farage in government should concentrate minds. A UKIP-Tory coalition
could be the election outcome, with Cameron is ousted as Tory leader for a
pro-UKIP leader. An alternative scenario, if Miliband does badly, is a threat
to his position and a Grand Coalition of Tory and Labour for the still sizeable
number of pro-European Tories. For Balls the chance to become Chancellor in a
Grand Coalition, backed by the Blairite M Ps, cannot be underestimated. It is possibly
the only way to save a career blighted by his embrace of austerity. A pro
-Austerity, pro- Europe coalition would have appeal to the Orange Book Lib
Dems, though whether Clegg holds his seat is problematical. If he loses and the
Liberals split, then a Labour-Left Liberal alliance is possible. The Oakshott
grant to the Labour-Liberal candidates he favours is a big straw in the wind, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The Greens would probably not win enough seats to hold
a balance, but could stop Labour victories, while the SNP is a real beast in
this jungle. As the Nats have picked up the social democratic/pro welfare state
cloak that New Labour threw away, it would have an appeal to many Labour
voters. It’s a poisoned chalice however, and in Scotland Labour supporters
might prefer an alliance with Left Lib Dems. With no major party having a clear
alternative to policies of fiscal orthodoxy, austerity and more cuts save the
fringe parties, the possibility of unstable short term coalitions would be considerable
- just like the French Fourth Republic – making a Grand Coalition more
attractive, but hard to achieve, hence the French Fourth Republic could be the
reality and if fixed parliaments are kept, changes might happen without any
electoral mandate at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">While YouGov polling at the end of January suggests
support for radical policies amongst Labour and Swing voters, the message will
be blanked by Labour. John Reid's comment on the Left Futures website to the
news -”We tried this in 1983 and it failed” - shows the anachronism of New
Labour. However Blairites remain in action, actively hostile to even Miliband's
limited gestures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">In the last month both Blair himself and Alan Milburn
have attacked Miliband, to the applause of the Tory press. It is possible a
Miliband defeat would put them back on the political stage. Labour is
internally divided and has spent the coalition period being studiously vague.
It is unlikely this will change as Labour fears a 1992 repeat, though this is
not 1992 and with the Greens attracting young Leftish voters, its present
course is risky.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The immediate priority is to secure a Miliband
premiership via tactical voting. This would also lay the basis for an Anti Austerity
Alliance. While the People's Assembly is marginal. It could be strengthened by
a strong tactical voting network for May 8<sup>th</sup>. In the immediate post-election
period, repealing the fixed parliament Act would be an essential first step. A
coalition may be the outcome if there is no majority, but not for another 5
years. It has to be brought to an end when circumstances change, for another
election to seek a majority. Otherwise we really will have the French Fourth
Republic in the UK, with disastrous consequences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The Chartist website is <a href="http://www.chartist.org.uk/about-chartist/">http://www.chartist.org.uk/about-chartist/</a></span></div>
</div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-16545230014124753692015-01-31T16:24:00.001+00:002015-02-01T14:50:12.139+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 class="entry-title" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.3em; letter-spacing: -0.05em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em; padding: 0px;">
<strong style="color: #333333; font-size: 15.2182540893555px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">New Labour has failed. We need a new political formation which will survive the demise of the Labour Party, argued Andy Pearmain in 2006.</strong></h2>
<div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4em; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0em 0px 0px;">
<div style="color: #333333; font-size: 15.2167320251465px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; padding: 0px;">
<span id="more-359" style="font-size: 15.2182540893555px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span></div>
<blockquote style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://eustonmanifesto.org/wp-content/themes/change_at_Euston/images/quotecolon.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 10px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; color: #666666; font-size: 15.2167320251465px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1.6em; padding: 20px 0px 0px 15px;">
<div style="font-size: 15.2182540893555px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; padding: 0px;">
‘<i>I simply don’t think that the current Labour leadership understands that its political fate depends on whether or not it can construct a politics, in the next 20 years, which is able to address itself, not to one, but to a diversity of different points of antagonism in society; unifying them, in their differences, within a common project. I don’t think they have grasped that Labour’s capacity to grow as a political force depends absolutely on its capacity to draw from the popular energies of very different movements; movements outside the party which it did not — could not — set in play, and which it cannot therefore “administer”.</i></div>
<div style="font-size: 15.2182540893555px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; padding: 0px;">
<i>‘It retains an entirely bureaucratic conception of politics. If the word doesn't proceed out of the mouths of the Labour leadership, there must be something subversive about it. If politics energises people to develop new demands, that is a sure sign that the natives are getting restless. You must expel or depose a few. You must get back to that fiction, the “traditional Labour voter”: to that pacified, Fabian notion of politics, where the masses hijack the experts into power, and then the experts do something for the masses: later … much later. The hydraulic conception of politics.’ </i></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://eustonmanifesto.org/wp-content/themes/change_at_Euston/images/quotecolon.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 10px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; color: #666666; font-size: 15.2167320251465px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1.6em; padding: 20px 0px 0px 15px;">
<div style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; padding: 0px;">
(available at <span style="color: blue;">http://www.hegemonics.co.uk/docs/Gramsci-and-us.pdf)</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #333333; font-size: 15.2167320251465px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; padding: 0px;">
So said Stuart Hall, in ‘Gramsci and Us’, nearly 20 years ago now. New Labour was a response of sorts to that critique, drawing heavily on the late 1980s ‘New Times’/Marxism Today analyses (with which Stuart Hall was himself associated) and attempting a kind of virtual, heavily mediated connection with some of those emerging social ‘movements outside the party’. Many of us now feel that it was a peculiarly selective and distorted response. The de-classed ‘identity politics’ we contributed to the New Labour project, with its worthy emphasis on race and gender and sexuality and sometimes giddy consumerism, came out the other end as Philip Gould’s ‘suburban populism’. Our disintegrating industrial proletariat was reconstituted as their Home Counties petty bourgeoisie.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-size: 15.2167320251465px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; padding: 0px;">
It may seem now that ‘New Labour is unraveling’, but with the prospect of Brownite renewal offering a variant strain, we should remind ourselves that it’s still there and in government. Gould and others are insisting that the project’s achievements are deep and permanent, in changing the terrain on which their New Tory opponents have to operate and in ‘transforming’ the Labour Party (albeit effectively out of existence). Whatever, New Labour needs to be historically accounted for, even if only so we don’t fall for something like it again. It’s time to ask — what was New Labour all about? Beneath the bossy spin and the rising, scummy tide of sleaze, what has happened in the 15-odd years since New Times?</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-size: 15.2167320251465px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; padding: 0px;">
If we look beyond the glossy rhetoric of ministers and advisers, and the Blair/Brown Punch and Judy show, two particular components of New Labour seem to have come to the fore , and squeezed out the far richer mix which the best of late-period Marxism Today represented:</div>
<ul style="color: #333333; font-size: 15.2167320251465px; line-height: 1.5em; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em; padding: 0px;">
<li style="font-size: 15.2182540893555px; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-image: url(http://eustonmanifesto.org/wp-content/themes/change_at_Euston/images/eustonbullet.png); list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8em; padding: 0px;">An odd kind of shallow, quasi-Marxist determinism, which argues the ‘historical inevitability’ of capitalist globalization with just the same dogmatic fervour and disregard for politics and ideological conflict or real human agency of any kind that marked 2nd International social democracy and later forms of (mainly Stalinist or Trotskyist) leftism. Socialism (or now, globalisation) is coming — all we can or need do is ready ourselves for the new dawn.</li>
<li style="font-size: 15.2182540893555px; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-image: url(http://eustonmanifesto.org/wp-content/themes/change_at_Euston/images/eustonbullet.png); list-style-type: disc; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8em; padding: 0px;">A nerdy awe of information technology, characteristic of people who don’t really understand its scientific or logical bases and that it’s only ever as good as the creative uses that people put it to. This combines, in the writings of Leadbeater, Mulgan et al., with a taste for way-out and ultimately empty ‘new age’ management theory to create an approach to government (or should I say ‘governance’?) more suited to a millenarian cult than a modern, secular political party. The future is coming. It is bright and shiny. If you don’t embrace it you will die… Prepare for lift-off!</li>
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But is New Labour really that new? It likes to think and insistently tell the rest of us that it is. The project’s ‘visions’ and ‘models’ are supposedly written on a historical blank sheet. But it incorporates far more old-fashioned, horny-handed Labourism than it cares to admit, even if only because it is grudgingly dependent on the Labour Party electoral machine to “get out the vote” every few years and on the likes of John Prescott to keep the North of England in line. And is New Labour’s “technocratic managerialism” really all that different from the “hydraulic” Fabian expert-ism Stuart Hall referred to in 1987? The cumbersome, room-size, calculating machine may have given way to a palm-top computer, but it’s still churning out the same old exhortation to “trust the experts” on everything from macro-economics to public sector reform and so-called ‘social exclusion’.</div>
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I would argue that, within the history of the Labour Party and the ‘broader’ democratic left in Britain, New Labour is simply the latest manifestation of Labourism, that inert, stodgy, defence-mechanism of a fractious, fissured working class firmly, grimly entrenched within capitalism. For all of its hundred-plus years, it has drawn on the energies of more dynamic but marginal and ephemeral social movements to renew itself and in particular to get its professional cadres re-elected to parliament. That is the real, thoroughly dispiriting, historical outcome of ‘Labour’s capacity … to draw from the popular energies of very different movements outside the party’.</div>
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The Labour Party was founded on the back of the great upsurge in mass, ‘national-popular’, democratic activism in late-Victorian, still overwhelmingly industrial Britain. Even then, it managed to combine all sorts of other ideological components from what was at that time an extraordinarily rich ‘civil society’, such as radical Liberalism and Marxism, Methodism and pacifism, feminism and male chauvinism, imperialism and internationalism, voluntarism and statism, municipalism and parliamentarism — all these and more, in often dynamic contradiction. This was the celebrated (and much admired elsewhere) ‘broad church’ approach to working class politics, with deep roots in daily life and about as close as Labour ever came to a genuinely ‘hegemonic’ strategy for taking and exercising power. Then came Ramsay MacDonald, the first in an almost pathological pattern of ‘betrayal’ and dashed expectations, which forms the sorry emotional leitmotif of Labour history.</div>
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The travails of the 1920s and ’30s at least helped to focus and popularise the party, to lay the basis for the post-war heyday of Labourism. This culminated in the highest ever popular Labour vote in 1951. Even then, there were ‘betrayals’ and disappointments along the way (Oswald Mosley and his ‘New Party’, Stafford ‘austerity’ Cripps and eventually the labourist patron saint Nye Bevan himself). Labour’s failures were barely offset by the great (similarly mythologically resonant and seriously flawed) labourist achievements of the NHS and the welfare state. And of course, though Labour got its highest ever vote in 1951, it lost the general election to the new ‘one nation’ Conservatives. Labour’s most ambitious attempt at ‘technocratic managerialism’ by Harold Wilson, underpinned and propelled by Crosland’s social-democratic ‘revisionism’ and the corporatism represented by ‘beer and sandwiches at number 10’ for trade union barons, foundered on its own internal contradictions amid the capitalist crises of the 1960s and 70s.</div>
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Along the way, there were repeated attempts by Labour to tap into new popular energies, such as the war-time ‘Dunkirk spirit’ of national togetherness; or the ‘scholarship generation’ of 1950s working class intellectuals borne along on their parents’ hard-won affluence and aspirations; or their younger brothers and sisters ebulliently engaged in the <i>evenements</i> of 1968 and after. I have a particular interest in the latter, as the final example of the ‘broad’ left attempting a truly hegemonic take on British political economy, via the social contract and the alternative economic strategy in its first, pre-Bennite form. It swiftly retreated from mass politics into the far more comfortable settings of trade union office, seminar room and ‘left-leaning’ newspaper columns.</div>
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In the 1980s, Labourism tried several different takes on the ‘new social forces’ derived from ‘the politics of identity’ which Stuart Hall and others were helping to articulate. Bennism had a go first, with an opening to the non-Labour left of feminists, black and gay activists. This generally ended in tears when they rubbed other, more straight-laced members of ‘the broad church’ up the wrong way, so to speak. As Thatcher embarked on her full-frontal mid-80s assault on ‘loony leftism’, we embarked on yet another round of recrimination and disillusionment. The ‘soft left’ was in part an honest attempt to salvage something from the wreckage. Egged on by Kinnock’s ‘favourite Marxist’ Eric Hobsbawm, and by the Euro-communists’ favourite Labourist Bryan Gould, it came perilously close to a thoughtfully reformist, outward looking and alliance building politics, but at its big soppy heart Labour remained a party of tribalists. All talk of pacts and alliances fell away when they sensed that with professional advertising and media management to gloss up the product, Labour could go it alone just like in 1945. Finally, as we’ve seen, New Labour took off on its own messianic journey into ‘New Times’.</div>
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My analysis is open to challenge on a number of counts. Labour has in its hundred-plus years achieved some genuine amelioration in the living conditions of the industrial working class. Imagine what the last century would have been like if capitalism had been able to exercise the free hand it has now. Unemployment and related benefits, state pensions, some measure of protection against injury and discrimination at work, comprehensive education (even post-war access to grammar schools for bright poor kids like me) and social housing are all real consolations for the miseries inflicted by the ‘free market’.</div>
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New Labour continues to devise and to offer its own consolations. Just recently I heard one of its advocates argue that the slush-funds of ‘local regeneration’ and ‘social inclusion’ represented a further, proud example of Labour providing compensatory ‘access to the state’ in addressing ‘market failure’. Throw money at anything, I would respond, and it will undoubtedly feel better for a while. Ask any lottery winner. But, as is all too obvious now, these schemes and fixes are easily undermined or even swept away when they are judged ‘unaffordable’. All the ‘new deals’ and ‘sure starts’ will not survive the next serious recession and round of public spending cuts, let alone a New Tory sweep-out. Besides, they have never provided any basis for a real challenge for power, or rather in Gramsci’s much more resonant term ‘hegemony’.</div>
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Then there’s the historical absence of much else of value in British working class politics. Even Labour’s staunchest critics have felt forced to accept that it has historically been ‘the mass party of the British working class’. They have usually campaigned for some wider social ferment, which would force the party to adopt ‘more progressive policies’. For much of its history, Labour’s only semi-serious political rival, the Communist Party of Great Britain, worked to a strategy of ‘militant labourism’. This would (in ways never entirely spelt out) bring along ‘a Labour government of a new type’. Even Hall’s (and especially his <i>Marxism Today</i> stable-mate Hobsbawm’s) 1980s critiques were aimed (however tetchily) at eventually restoring Labour’s political vigour. What is most striking now about the history of the CPGB is just how deferential it was towards Labour, in all its phases and across all its factions, rather than seeking seriously and strategically (like other more effective European communist parties) to displace their labourist rivals or at least force them to develop a coherent social democracy.</div>
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There have been, as I’ve already noted, some genuinely interesting and creative attempts to connect the Labour Party with wider movements and trends in British society, even if they remained isolated and tentative and have almost always resulted in bad feeling all round. And there was always the powerful argument that any political initiative outside of the Labour Party would inevitably end in narrow, shrinking sectarianism and ‘being confined to the political wilderness’. There are plenty of generally very depressing examples of this too, including the CPGB, and thus a serious pro-Labour case to answer. Apart from anything else, there are plenty of ‘good people’ still in and around the Labour Party (many of them clustered around Compass) who would place themselves within our self-styled ‘democratic left’ but still need persuading that Labour is really and truly dying.</div>
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I would argue now that, for a whole range of reasons, Labour is no longer the mass party of the British working class, not least because its leadership has decided (understandably) that it doesn’t want it to be. This sounds obvious but it needs spelling out, and in historical terms is the primary explanation for Labourism’s long decline. The long-term retreat and fragmentation of the working class and the breakdown of its tribal habits and loyalties was one of the primary reasons for the New Labour manoeuvre. Voting and (especially) membership figures attest to the party’s decline as an active political (or even social and cultural) presence in the real, everyday world. Hence the reliance by New Labour on ‘spin’, through a generally compliant or appeased media, as the only remaining means of reaching its ‘public’. In a very practical sense the Labour Party barely any longer exists ‘on the ground’ where most of us spend our daily, increasingly de-politicised, lives.</div>
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This surely is the real but barely commented-upon reason for Labour’s fawning reliance on rich businessmen’s money, donated or loaned. Labour is simply not receiving enough in membership fees to pay for the operation of a modern, media-dependent political party, let alone making up for dwindling and politically uncomfortable trade union support. The Jowell/Mills and ‘loans for peerages’ affairs attest to the real sorry organisational state of the party, but also to the residual ethical framework of labourism — a large part of the public revulsion with Labour is made up of scorn for the bosses’ ill-gotten gains. How can ‘our people’ be so cosy with ‘them’? That’s why nobody’s much bothered about the Tories’ much greater reliance on handouts from the plutocrats of bandit capitalism, because it’s what we expect. New Labour’s ultimate failure lies in being unable to shake off the ethical straitjacket of labourism, while the real political agency of the party continues to shrivel.</div>
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So what do we do now? We could usefully revisit one of the central arguments of the first, late-1950s New Left — that Labourism is an obstacle to the wider social ferment we need in order to bring about progressive change in Britain. The modern democratic impulses at work in Britain, beyond the sterile pantomime of parliament and its regional and local clones, are going on despite not because of Labour. Tribally, instinctively, mythologically, it remains deeply suspicious of Hall’s ‘movements outside the party which it did not — could not — set in play, and which it cannot therefore administer’. It pains me to say it, but the examples of genuinely democratic developments I am most professionally familiar with from the last 20 years (health and social care for people with HIV/AIDS, for instance, or tenant participation in housing) received far more government support, financial and moral, under the Tories than Labour.</div>
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Thatcherism was (and remains, in its ‘transformist’ adaptations) a many-faceted beast . In its urge to ‘roll back the frontiers of the state’, it left quite a lot of space for new ways of providing and receiving services, not just in the deregulated private market but also in the remaining, generally battered public sector. It was possible to deploy Thatcherism’s anti-statist thrust in some surprisingly creative, invigorating and genuinely innovative ways. We felt ‘freer’, even if only to harm ourselves and those around us. We could be ‘who we really are’, even if that ultimately meant being confined to particular, comfortable, sealed boxes of sexual, gender, ‘cultural’ or ethnic identity, locked in an uneasy stand-off in our supposedly diversifying society. We could choose our lifestyles and circumstances, even if the very exercise of choice consigned others to deeper subordination. We could take pretty much exclusive responsibility for the upbringing of our children, even if it took extraordinary dedication and sacrifice to do it half-well, and the class-status and confidence to avoid the ‘protective’ scrutiny of the moral agents of the soft state. We could purchase anything — any kind of pleasure, our own homes and cars, shares in privatised utilities, high quality education and health care, ‘fancy foreign holidays’, above all our own social identities, that is, who those around us thought we were.</div>
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New Labour of course accepts all this, but in an oddly joyless, fastidious and ultimately begrudging spirit. The ‘celebration’ of Thatcherism is the aspect of the ‘New Times’ legacy they bridle most at. New Labour accepted the invitation to the party, but they’re still standing in the corner with their ties and belts done up tight, watching everyone else enjoy themselves. Really and truly, New Labour disapproves of Thatcherism’s freedoms, what Stuart Hall has called its license to ‘hustle’. It has, by contrast, rushed to accommodate and deepen all the ‘regressive’ elements of Thatcherite ‘modernisation’ — globalisation above all, but also its closely related project of ‘authoritarian populism’. In its drive to get us all ‘ready for market’, it shows growing disregard not just for the traditional niceties of the liberal state but for any kind of difference or dissent beyond those officially sanctioned within its own ‘respect agenda’ . It is even more inclined than in 1987, when Stuart Hall wrote these words, to regard as ‘subversive’ anything which ‘doesn’t proceed out of the mouths of the Labour leadership.’ And again, why should we be surprised? Personal liberty, in its deeply English (and highly, even globally, attractive) form of comic irreverence and wilful individualism, has always been inimical to the Labourist tradition of dour conformity.</div>
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The problem for the democratic left is that the actual, final death of the Labour Party, as an organisation of people with deep vested interests in its survival, doesn’t look like happening any time soon. Labourism as an ideological strand is clearly exhausted but the Labour Party itself has powerful organisational life-support systems, not least the networks of local and national state patronage it still controls. The Labour Party simply is, even if it has lost any sense of where it might be going and any historic mission beyond the vacuities of the Third Way. The real question for us then is — what can we do to help kill it off?</div>
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There are epochal processes at work within British politics, which seriously threaten the Labour Party’s survival. The decline of popular faith and involvement in electoral politics is eroding its own popular base. Very few local Labour Parties nowadays are capable of a ‘total canvass’ of their wards, which was always the pre-requisite for the regular, well-oiled Labour ritual of ‘getting out the vote’. The party has officially lost more than half its membership since 1997, over and above all those members (like my wife) who stopped paying dues years ago but still receive members’ mailings and are presumably still counted as members because they never got round to actively resigning. As it loses local council seats, not to mention local ‘activists’, there are fewer local councillors to do the actual donkey work. The policy/lobby group Compass shows signs of intelligent life, but they are about the only ones around the Labour Party. It remains to be seen how much long-term impact or influence they have.</div>
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The decline of interest in electoral and party politics among younger people has been well documented. They are simply not acquiring the habits of ‘civic duty’ of previous generations. However, that’s not to say they are politically uninterested. In my experience of parenting and teaching some of them, I find a hunger for insight and explanation to help make sense of the bewildering world around us. They very often end up looking in the wrong places, embarking on forms of ‘political tourism’ and returning from their global gap years with the simplistic, unsustainable pieties of ‘anti-capitalism’. But they are not in any numbers going anywhere near the Labour Party or anything else which might engage them in the hum-drum but utterly crucial routines of national-popular politics.</div>
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We may just at the next election, by a fortuitous combination of luck and tactical design, arrive at a hung Parliament. That’s assuming that the imminent deterioration in economic and political circumstances, which have so far spared New Labour any serious test, doesn’t deliver something nastier. Then, if the notoriously slippery Lib Dems can hold their nerve and insist on Proportional Representation, we might just see the beginnings of a properly democratic, modern political system, which genuinely reflects the real currents of popular feeling. That would include all those of us on the democratic left who finally, historically, have had enough of Labourism, the Labour Party and all its ways and works.</div>
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That’s a relatively optimistic short-term view. I don’t share it — far more likely is a New Tory Cameron government, sooner or later displaced by some form of neo-Thatcherism, which remains the strongest ideological impulse in Britain. But all of that should be of secondary concern to anyone who wants to see real, deep, meaningfully left wing transformation of British society in all its cultural, social, political and economic aspects. We need a new political formation, which will survive the demise of the Labour Party, and hopefully play an active, purposeful part in the long overdue historical ‘project’ of killing it off.</div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-76835454325586414912015-01-29T16:12:00.000+00:002015-01-29T16:12:21.047+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red;">Must Labour Die<span style="font-size: large;">?</span></span><o:p></o:p></h1>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nearly</span> ten years ago, Andy Pearmain wrote that ‘Labour Must Die’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Dropbox/Must%20Labour%20Die.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.6933336257935px;">[i]</span></span></span></a>, an analysis of the dead-end called New Labour. He suggested that at the 2010 election we might “<i><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">by a fortuitous combination of luck and tactical design, arrive at a hung Parliament</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">” in which the Lib Dems might push through some kind of proportional representation leading, at last<i>, </i>“<i>to the beginnings of a properly democratic, modern political system, which genuinely reflects the real currents of popular feeling</i>.</span>” </div>
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Unfortunately, he overestimated the moral fibre of the Lib Dems and the degree to which Labour and the Conservatives together would sabotage even the minor shift to AV voting. He was right to suggest that “f<i>ar more likely is a New Tory Cameron government, sooner or later displaced by some form of neo-Thatcherism, which remains the strongest ideological impulse in Britain</i>.” So, right on the money there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">His conclusion then was that Labour had to be replaced by a new political formation; that Labour must die. As we approach the May election the same question arises; vote Labour to get the Tories out or vote for a better alternative on the left to push Labour down and look to a more distant horizon. A sudden surge in belief in the Green Party as such an alternative makes the question even sharper. In 2010, Labour’s share of the vote was just 29%, only just above its lowest ever share (27.6%) in 1983 when the vote was split following the formation of the Social Democrats and the defection of a number of its MP’s. In fact, 2010 can be seen as the continuance of a long-term trend since 1945 as the Labour share of the vote drifted steadily down from the high 40%s in the 1950s, with the thirty years since 1983 an aberration after the reshuffling of the Liberal, Labour and Social Democrat votes. 1983 to 1997 now looks rather like the shocked reaction of an electorate to a new neo-liberal agenda and 1997 to 2010 a growing realisation that Labour was not much different.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCf6EYNPN9wbJqYK8KQ2oY9-FqzNW0p_h4tW1sb6Si7T-tpHu65EGn_nJt0yw-dUapD_XisFqOP4pVQfK-78XgrlQlZlFp70egGGvzSC8p2GGdpwiLhlLbeR5FhWq24b2cTQbDoJ2Jzg1/s1600/Vote+share.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCf6EYNPN9wbJqYK8KQ2oY9-FqzNW0p_h4tW1sb6Si7T-tpHu65EGn_nJt0yw-dUapD_XisFqOP4pVQfK-78XgrlQlZlFp70egGGvzSC8p2GGdpwiLhlLbeR5FhWq24b2cTQbDoJ2Jzg1/s1600/Vote+share.jpg" height="167" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i>Share of
vote at UK general elections since 1945: Labour, Conservative, Liberal and
Other</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">The hope, indeed the prayer, of the Labour apparatus is that
the Lib Dem 2010 share at 23% will collapse and flow to Labour whilst the ‘Others’,
notably UKIP, will eat the Tory vote. And such was the general view of the
political commentariat until first the SNP and then the Greens poked up their
tousled heads. The Labour nightmare is that the SNP (1.7% of the national vote
in 2010) might claim, say 5% of Scotland’s roughly 8.5% share of the national
vote and the Greens (0.9%) perhaps another 5%, all out of Labour, whilst the
Lib Dem vote could either stay firm or go to the Greens. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">If Labour’s national
share did continue the trend down towards 25% or so then it really would be in trouble.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">The Greens and the SNP are not the only
possible ways that Labour will be hit. In late 2014, Paul Salveson<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Dropbox/Must%20Labour%20Die.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>, a long-time Labour
stalwart and councillor, joined Yorkshire First, a quirky regional party aiming
to do what the label says. The defection of such a figure suggests, as Salveson
did, that </span><span style="color: #494949;">“<i>At the end of the day Labour have had a long time in which to push
forward with devolution and other issues concerning greater social justice that
I’m campaigning for. We don’t know what will happen with next year’s vote but
we live in a democratic society so it’s time that we got away from the idea
that we must vote for Labour as the progressive vote. We believe that we are
the new alternative.” </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #494949;">He put forward Scotland as the inspiration for his
move and will be standing in Colne Valley, a seat which must be high on the
list of Labour target seats. If Labour starts to die in strongholds such as
Yorkshire as well as being wiped out in Scotland and being challenged by the
Green vote then the political landscape would indeed be shifting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #494949;">What makes the 2015 election
quite different to anything seen since the 1920s is that it does offer a real
choice on the left: either to vote for a discredited centre party clinging to
the shreds of a long-past reputation for progressive social change on the
grounds that this is the only way to keep out the Tories or to register a
protest against the current political structure and cause the Labour Party to
finally relinquish its grip on left politics. Ironically, it is the threat
posed by a populist English party which will also strip away Labour votes which
makes this latter alternative a good deal more plausible. The likelihood that
in Scotland, the SNP will actually win seats from Labour will, as the example
of Paul Salveson shows, give an important moral push to all those who have been
on the brink of jumping ship for years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #494949;">It would be unsafe to draw too
many conclusions from the victory of Syriza in Greece. However, what it does
demonstrate how quickly apparently dominant parties can collapse. After a muted
first effort in 1974 when it received only 13.5% of the national vote, PASOK,
the Greek equivalent of Labour, bounced up to the 40%’s in 1981, a level held
through to 2009. In 2015, PASOK gained just 4.7% of the national vote. Labour is unlikely to collapse so
dramatically but, on the other hand, it is already a long way down the path to
effective oblivion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #494949;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #494949;">The form of the coalition of
groups and parties, for such it would have to be, which might replace Labour is
not clear. The lack of any clear alternative organisational form is one reason why Labour
has held on for so long. But perhaps we need to stop thinking in terms of national
parties and instead focus upon forms of power in which different groups of
people could exercise choice; locally, regionally, in different sectors,
collaborating in ways which are at present unthinkable in our centralised
monolithic system in which winner takes all. But one thing is clear. Andy had
it right. Labour must die.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Dropbox/Must%20Labour%20Die.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <a href="http://eustonmanifesto.org/2006/08/24/labour-must-die/">http://eustonmanifesto.org/2006/08/24/labour-must-die/</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Dropbox/Must%20Labour%20Die.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Salveson_(politician)">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Salveson_(politician)</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-83336147714539304572015-01-26T10:33:00.000+00:002015-01-26T10:33:14.655+00:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US"><b><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Democracy</span></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Early in 2014 in a South African journal,<i>The Thinker</i> (Q1, 2014),
Thabo Mbeki laid out his vision for the future of the progressive movement in
Africa. The core of this agenda, was “<i>establishing
genuinely democratic systems of government, including accountable State systems</i>”.
He is harsh about the reality of democracy in many African countries in which “<i>State systems have been reduced to a
patrimony of a predatory elite, controlled by its self-serving ‘professional
political class</i>’” “<i>Thus</i>”, he
continues, “<i>does the putative democratic
state become a social institution which serves the interests of a
‘rent-seeking’ elite whose goals amount to no more than preserving its
political power and using this power to extract the ‘rent’ which ensures its
enrichment”</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Harsh words indeed, though ones which have
become almost a cliché with respect to the governance of many African states.
Yet, by an odd coincidence, at around same time, <i>The Economist</i>, august journal of the western business elite, had a
front-page splash <i>“What’s gone wrong with
democracy?”</i>,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
the title of a long essay inside which opened by suggesting “<i>that democracy is going through a difficult
time. Where autocrats have been driven from office, their opponents have mostly
failed to create viable democratic regimes. Even in established democracies,
flaws in the system have become worryingly visible and disillusion with
politics is rife. Yet a few years ago democracy looked as though it would
dominate the world.” </i>The piece ends with the quotation from a past US President
often found in <i>The Economist</i> that “<i>democracy never lasts long. It wastes,
exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not
commit suicide</i>” John Adams wrote this in 1814 and it is unclear as to
precisely what he was referring. There had been a brief flourishing of
democratic intent in France a few years before, quickly snuffed out, and there
had been the original ‘democracy’ in Athens copied by a few other Greek
city-states around the fourth century BC in which, it is believed, around 15% of
the population took part. There was, of course, the Roman Republic which we
know ended badly on the Ides of March and also the Republic of Geneva about
which the less said the better. Adams in fact had precious little evidence on
which to base his assertion and, of course, it would not have occurred to him
that a country whose franchise excluded all women and those males held in
servitude could not be seen as a democracy. Even so, recent history suggests
that he had a point given that in 2014 alone, three elected governments were
overthrown and replaced by self-appointed cliques.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Doubts about the state of democracy are not
confined to right-wing journals. The eminent left historian, Perry Anderson,
recently published a coruscating essay mainly about the corruption of Italian
democracy but which opened with a lament for European democracy in general.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><i>Europe is ill. How seriously, and why,
are matters not always easy to judge. But among the symptoms three are
conspicuous and inter-related. The first, and most familiar, is the
degenerative drift of democracy across the continent, ... Referendums are
regularly overturned, if they cross the will of the rulers. Voters whose views
are scorned by elites shun the assembly that nominally represents them, turnout
falling with each successive election... executives domesticate or manipulate
legislatures with greater ease; parties lose members; voters lose belief that
they count, as political choices narrow and promises of difference on the
hustings dwindle or vanish in office.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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He
continues with a roll-call of distinguished European politicians who have been
implicated in various ways in huge corruption scandals amongst them Helmut
Kohl, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, Horst Köhler (former head of the IMF), Christine
Lagarde (current head of the IMF), Bertie Ahern, (past Irish prime-minister),
Mariano Rajoy (current Spanish prime-minister) and on through Greece, Turkey
and the U.K. The sums involved are not small: Helmut Kohl was found to have
amassed some two million Deutschmarks from donors whose names he refused to
reveal. Not one of this illustrious roll-call has so far been called to account
though Lagarde is currently under criminal investigation, something which seems
not to impede her job ruling the global financial system.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nor
is the problem of dynastic political elites any preserve of Africa. Arguably
the most important democracy in the world, certainly the largest, is India in
which 814 million people went to the polls in May, 2014. These elections were
widely publicised as resulting in the overthrow of the Gandhi family which had
ruled India for four generations and bringing the Bharatiya Janata Party to
power led by a man of humble origins with no family connections to assist him.
However, as Patrick French has shown in a recent book, <i>India: a Portrait</i>,<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
nearly 30% of members of the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha, were connected
directly by family to their political posts whilst, startlingly, all members
under 30 were the children of former politicians. There is little sign of voter
disillusion with electoral democracy in India with the 2014 election showing
the highest ever turnout at 66.4%, a respectably high figure for a country with
such a huge, poor rural sector. However, the importance of dynastic connections
suggests that even in this vibrant democracy there are some problems.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In
the USA, the democratic problem is, as always, money and its connections with
power. Efforts to limit the amount of money which individuals or corporations
could spend supporting political candidates have been regularly ruled as
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. According to the respected journalist,
Gary Younge:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white;">In a system
where money is considered speech, and corporations are people, this trend is
inevitable. Elections become not a system of participatory engagement
determining how the country is run, but the best democratic charade that money
can buy. People get a vote; but only once money has decided whom they can
vote for and what the agenda should be. The result is a plutocracy that
operates according to the golden rule: that those who have the gold make the
rules.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #4f81bd; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">[iv]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Once,
powerful unions were able provide some counterbalancing finance to that of
corporate interests. However, the decline of unions and the almost exponential
growth in the scale of expenditure on elections have greatly reduced this
influence. Even so, American democracy has always been a bit rough-and-ready
and tinged with corruption, though the scale of this may be increasing, whilst
the very decentralised nature of US politics does provide scope for some
genuine democratic initiative. The real
centre of the democratic ‘crisis’ lies in Europe.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It
is sometimes forgotten just how recent democracy is in much of Europe and how
fractured has been its history. Only Sweden and the UK can really claim to have
enjoyed unbroken democratic governance since the late nineteenth century with
the gradual extension of the franchise to include women as well as the working
class less than a hundred years ago. Even so, the disappearance of fascism from
southern Europe in the 1970s followed by the emergence of parliamentary
democracy in the Communist countries of Eastern Europe in the 1990s seemed to
suggest that this form of governance was inevitable and immutable, so much so
that in 1992, Francis Fukuyama was able to pronounce that:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="background: white;">What we may be witnessing is
not just the end of the</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 4.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Cold War</span></span></span><span style="background: white;">, or the passing of a particular period of post-war
history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's
ideological evolution and the universalization of Western</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 4.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">liberal </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #252525; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">democracy </span></span></i><span style="background: white;"><i>as the final form of human government</i>.<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">[v]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Fukuyama
has in recent years rather backtracked from this position but only at the
margins despite the conspicuous failure of the efforts of the USA to impose
liberal democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan. Why then the sense of a democratic
crisis particularly in Europe? In a number of ways it is the culmination of two
trends which have been developing for years, indeed decades.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
first is the gradual decline of public involvement and interest in the
processes of electoral democracy. The most obvious of these is participation in
elections, something which appeared to have stabilised in Europe in a period
from the 1950s through to the 1980s at around 80-85%.</div>
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After this decade there was a slow but
steady decline throughout Europe, something which seems to have accelerated
into this century. In 2001, the UK had the lowest turnout since the advent of
mass democracy whilst France fell to a record low of 60.4% in 2007. A raft of
other countries, including Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Finland, have
also recorded record lows. A second indicator of decline in involvement is increasing
voting volatility, which is the number of voters who shift their party preferences
around from election to election. This lack of stability in voting preference
suggests disillusion with the democratic process. A third and in some ways the
most significant, has been a major decline in the membership of political
parties. The U.K. is the most extreme example with an aggregate loss in party
membership over 1.1 million between 1980 and 2009, a drop of 68% but most other
European countries have seen falls of 30-50%. There does not seem to be any
left/right bias in this fall; just a uniform decline in participation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This
fall in membership has been accompanied and may be partly caused by the gradual
hollowing out of the meaning of ‘membership’ which has occurred in most
European parties. Outside of small-town direct democracy, political parties are
the key agency of modern participatory democracy, acting as they do to
formulate policies and to promote leaders. They provide the collective
participation necessary to provide elected governments with some kind of
bedrock in the popular will.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Essentially,
this hollowing-out process involves a transformation of ‘members’ into ‘active
supporters’, that is people who are willing to assist with campaigning at
elections by delivering leaflets and so on but who have little or no influence
in the formation of party policy or the development of its leadership. This
loss is mirrored by exactly the same phenomenon which was noted by Mbeki, the
growth of a <i><span lang="EN-US">self-serving
‘professional political class</span></i><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> composed of people who have made politics
their career from an early age and have been promoted up the party ladder,
often by becoming advisers to established politicians or, initially, by using
family contacts. This ‘political class’ has become enmeshed with business
interests, particularly in the financial sector, and with state agencies to
form a circulating but sealed elite group who have largely gone to the same
schools and universities. So for many voters all main parties ‘are the same’
thus making a mockery of multi-party democracy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
other side of the collapse of the membership-based party has been the growth of
‘wild’ parties, that is parties with no historical base but which suddenly
achieve electoral success based on popular discontent with the established
parties. Syriza in Greece which <span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">polled only 4%
of the national vote in 2009, became the main opposition only in 2012, received
27% of the vote in the European elections and has now won a stunning electoral victory in national elections with the rightwing governing party
down to 23%<span style="color: red;">,</span></span> is the prime example of this phenomenon
together with the U.K. Independence Party which topped the vote in the European
elections also with 27%. </div>
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In Italy, the Five Star Party founded by the comedian,
Beppo Grillo, astonished the establishment by obtaining over 25% of the popular
vote in 2013 national elections and over 21% in the 2014 European elections even
though the party has been racked by rows over the alleged autocratic control of
its founder. Both Syriza and the Five Star Party can be seen as left-radical
but the more dominant trend in the growth of ‘wild’ parties has been that of
the far-right anti-immigration groups such as UKIP. In the 2014 European
election, far-right parties topped the poll in Denmark (the People’s Party with
26.6%) and France (National Front, 25.0%) whilst for the first time, <span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">more or less
openly neo-Nazi parties – the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) and
the Greek Golden Dawn (XA) – for the first time entered the European
Parliament. This movement to the right is far from uniform over Europe though
as a perceptive analysis is the Washington Post noted,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 6.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“<i>the abysmal performance of radical right
parties in Eastern Europe is that mainstream right-wing parties in the region
leave little space for the far right, given their authoritarian, nativist and
populist discourse.</i>”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_edn7" name="_ednref7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[vii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The common feature of all the right-wing parties is their vituperative hatred
of immigrants, the most disturbing of all the political portents in Europe.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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The
second trend which mirrors the first has been the growth in importance of
supranational bodies, notably the European Commission but including such as the
IMF, which have little or no democratic basis but which exert power within
countries comparable to or exceeding national government. Added to these are
the other array of supranational bodies, the international corporations in
particular financial ones which answer to no democratic authority at all. A
prime example of the combination of these two power-bases is the pending
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, an exceedingly complex treaty
to be struck between the EU and the US government which amongst other things
will enable transnational corporations to sue national governments inside the
EU for any unilateral regulatory process which damages the interests of the
corporation. National legislatures will have no say in agreeing in this package
and although the European Parliament will vote on the whole deal, it will have
no power to amend it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A
consequence of this bipartite congruence is that increasingly, national
governments are seen as lacking many elements of real power. The failure to
control the international financial markets even though their collapse in 2008
required bailouts by nation states is a prime example of this. The result is a
further decline in interest in electing these supine governments.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
‘democratic deficit’ of the EU has long been a topic of continual if
ineffective debate. Essentially, the problem has always been that closer
national ties have always had a political objectives but ones disguised as
economic matters. Initially these could be seen as the benign hope that closer
trade links would extinguish any possibility of the wars between European
states which had effectively blighted the first half of the twentieth century.
However, the changes in the name of this economic system, the Coal and Steel
Community (1950), the European Economic Community (1957), the European
Community (1993), and, finally, the European Union (2007) precisely mapped the
gradual, if still largely implicit, shift towards political unity as well as
the enlargement of the community which now includes 27 countries, quadrupling
its original size, all without much in the way of democratic agreement by the
electorate of the member countries.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
gradual evolution of the EU into a blatantly political body made a step jump in
1993 with the Maastricht Treaty which set up the euro as a common currency and
established the so-called ‘three pillars of economics, foreign and military
cooperation and home and judicial affairs, all largely undefined in the usual way
of using generalised phrases which could later be turned into specific policy
actions without any democratic basis. Maastricht was remodelled and refined by
a series of further treaties (Amsterdam, 1997, Nice 2001, Lisbon 2007), all
complex and all pushed through with almost no popular democratic approval.
Nearly all attempts to put these treaties to popular vote have resulted in
debacle. In 1992, the Danes rejected Maastricht and the French very nearly did
so. In 2007, the only country to risk a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty,
Ireland, had it rejected and was forced
to run another vote in which every screw was put on the electorate to vote Yes
or, allegedly, risk oblivion. In fact real oblivion came in 2008 when the
financial crisis resulted in the European Commission, backed by the European
Central Bank and the IMF, stepping in to dictate economic policy in Greece,
Ireland and most of southern Europe, insisting that elected governments be
replaced by appointed technocratic leaders if they failed in their duty apply
the financial austerity necessary to save the European banking system,
something which actually happened in Greece and Italy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It
is a an odd irony that the problem of the democratic legitimacy of the EU is
widely recognised even within the autocratic corridors of the European
Commission just as they are being filled with the appointed new Commissioners
who epitomise the problem. Even more ironic is that any move to alter the
current position would almost certainly require a treaty change, something
which is very unlikely to get past popular opinion in several EU members whose
populations are itching to slap down Brussels if not to actually leave. It
seems likely that the U.K., always the most eurosceptic member, will have some
form of referendum on membership in the next three years which could easily
result in the U.K.’s departure and precipitate further disorder. Meanwhile, the
imposed austerity programmes in southern Europe which have led to economic
stagnation continue to fester.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
root causes of the decline in democratic participation throughout Europe are
hard to uncover. However it is striking that the moment in which decline really
begins is also that in which neoliberal individualism bit back against the
collectivism which had characterised Europe throughout the last century up the
1980s. As a recent book by Peter Weir puts it puts it when discussing the decline of the mass party:<o:p></o:p></div>
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A<i> tendency to dissipation and fragmentation also marks the
broader organisational environment within which the classic mass parties used
to nest. As workers’ parties, or as religious parties, the mass organisations
in Europe rarely stood on their own but constituted just the core element
within a wider and more complex organizational network of trade unions,
churches and so on. Beyond the socialist and religious parties, additional
networks ... combined with political organisations to create a generalized
pattern of social and political segmentation that helped root the parties in
the society and to stabilize and distinguish their electorates. Over the past
thirty years, however, these broader networks have been breaking up ... With
the increasing individualization of society, traditional collective identities
and organizational affiliations count for less, including those that once
formed part of party-centred networks.</i><a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_edn8" name="_ednref8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[viii]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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It
is a depressing but undeniably plausible conjecture to link decline in the most
fundamental aspect of progressive advance in the twentieth century, mass
electoral democracy, with the resurgence of the most regressive, neo-liberal
markets. It does suggest that reversing the decline in electoral democracy will
need more than some simple turnaround in party policy. Speculation as to just
where this dual crisis of democratic legitimacy is going would double the size
of this essay and lead precisely no-where.
There are some dark forces gathering and it is almost inevitable that
several countries are going to face serious political challenges from
anti-immigration groups. There are some vibrant progressive forces which
emerged, notably Syriza in Greece, but they are internationally isolated and
have so-far failed to find a coherent strategic policy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In
the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, there is currently a temporary
exhibition celebrating the shared cultural history of Greece and Italy. One
exhibit is a small relief of a “Mourning Athena”. The accompanying description
of this concludes by suggesting that “the contemplative expression of Athena
reflects the sceptical way in which we should view the current political
situation in Europe” When doubts about Europe’s political future appear
inscribed in archaeological analysis we
know that we are in trouble.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>(First published in The Thinker, December, 2014)</i></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span><i>London Review of Books</i>, 22 May 2014, London<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span>Patrick French, <i>India: a Portrait</i><b>, </b>Penguin, 2012, ISBN <span lang="EN-US" style="background: white;">0141041579</span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[iv]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></b></span></a><b><span lang="EN-US"> </span></b><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/06/money-bought-elections-us-donation-rules"><b>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/06/money-bought-elections-us-donation-rules</b></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Free Press 1992<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number"><span style="background: white; color: #0b0080; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">ISBN</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #252525; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-02-910975-2" title="Special:BookSources/0-02-910975-2"><span style="background: white; color: #0b0080; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">0-02-910975-2</span></a></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span>Most of the
quantitative measures in this section have been taken without further
attribution from Peter Weir, <i>Ruling the
Void</i>, Verso, London, 2013 ISBN <span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">1844673243</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Rainsborough/Documents/Democracy.docx#_ednref8" name="_edn8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[viii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> </span>P. Weir <i>op cit</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-49950947335512862142011-10-06T12:28:00.001+01:002011-10-06T12:31:34.592+01:00Is the Green Moment Over?There was a moment, early in 2010, when it seemed as if the sclerotic structure of British politics with its regular metronomic shifts between Labour and Conservative was, finally, going to be broken. With an election inevitable by May and with the smell of the Parliamentary expenses scandal still rising there was much rhetoric about new dawns and a new politics. In April in this blog, I myself asked Is a Revolution on the Way? The answer was a resounding No as, again, I noted in June. In particular, the May 2010 election was a disaster for the left, in particular for the Green Party. This had placed great hopes on it, standing a record number of candidates, over 200 in England and Wales. In the outcome, it only saved its deposit in three constituencies and, overall, showed a drop in votes over 2005, often more than 40% with the voting in London being particularly dismal. In Hampstead, for example, the vote dropped by 62% to only 759.<br /><br />However, this overall failure was balanced by the one great success, the election of Caroline Lucas as the first Green Party M.P. in the House of Commons. In one way, this success outbalanced all the failures as it provided British politics with a recognisable star, a politician untainted by scandal with intelligence, flair and wit and with an outstanding ability to communicate. This was quickly recognised by Compass, the Labour Party pressure group, whose chair, Neal Lawson, suggested that she was the best leader Labour didn’t have and adopted her as Compass’ non-Labour icon. Perhaps the high point of this recognition was her speech at a rally following a large student protest march which showed that she was one of the few, perhaps only, politicians in Britain, who can move a mass audience with a clear and principled political speech. At the end of 2010, it seemed that the possibility existed for a mass mobilisation around Coalition cuts which could form outside the stifling hand of the Labour Party and which could form the basis for some kind of new left formation. In the chattering class in London there was much talk of ‘pluralism’, something emphasised at the Compass fringe meeting at the Labour conference in Manchester that year at which Lucas made a fleeting trip north of Watford, though when pressed no one seemed inclined to define the idea too precisely.<br /><br />Unfortunately these hopes have now dissipated. The various anti-cuts groups have drifted off into the usual sectarian squabbling, the union backlash promised by Len McCluskey ― the Arthur Scargill of our days ― has failed to materialise and there is no sign whatever of any left formation, coalition, grouping, what-you-will, to challenge the dispirited political hegemony of the Labour Party over English left politics. In particular, Lucas has drifted off into a kind of serial Guardian letter-signing and the Green Party has failed to use her electoral success to improve its marginal position in public perception. It achieved a bounce in membership following the general election (but then so did all political parties even including the BNP) but this did not translate into political action. Indeed, writing as a Green Party member, the sudden prominence of having its first M.P. seemed to throw the party into a kind of genteel panic as to just how it should conduct itself on a national stage. Of course this is understandable given the limited size of the party. Even so, there are some structural problems which have served to constrain it.<br /><br />The first of these is that the Green Party of England and Wales, to give its full title, is not really a national political party at all in the conventional sense. Indeed, historically, it has always been structured in organisational opposition to how other parties function. Essentially, the Green Party is a set of local groups working largely in isolation from each other, each with its own constitution, internal procedures and local membership. There is a small London-based secretariat, regional associations and a national executive but these have little or no contact with the largely autonomous local groups. The branch-secretary of my own party in Manchester, which covers five constituencies and is one of the larger local parties, tells me that he has never had any communication from the national headquarters other than the quarterly review sent to all members. This structure is deliberate and in full agreement with the GP Constitution which asserts that “The general practice of the Party shall be to encourage the greatest possible autonomy of each Local Party in its pursuit of the Object of the Party.” This local autonomy is coupled with a national constitution which for byzantine complexity (it runs to 25 pages) is more like the rulebook for a trade-union resulting from a dozen amalgamations than any constitutional basis for a national political party.<br /><br />The result of this combination of absolute local autonomy and bureaucratic complexity at the national level is predictable; a central secretariat which operates on managerial lines (it is run, astonishingly, by a Chief Executive Officer rather like a City bank) and which absorbs most of the revenue but without any significant contact with or control over local parties, a national executive which has no clear role and which cannot fill its constitutionally defined membership, (this year the two posts of Campaigns and Policy Coordinators went unfilled by any nomination whilst most other jobs had but one nomination), and local groups which vary widely in the emphasis of their activities. In practice, the Green Party operates as a series of informal networks without any clear coordination and with rivalries and political conflicts muffled though still present. An example of the muddle which pervades the party is the ‘job-share’ which invariably crops up whenever two people aspire to the same role. Rather than have the horror of a contested election, the two are asked to work in tandem, an arrangement which, to be euphemistic, always results in much less than the sum of its parts. One of Caroline Lucas’ more alarming ideas was to allow M.Ps to be elected on a similar job-share basis.<br /><br />It is both inevitable that this curious combination of extreme local autonomy and great constitutional complexity that the Green Party finds it very difficult to mount any kind of national campaign particularly anything that requires leading a coalition of political agents. It encourages members to participate in campaigns organised by others; Caroline Lucas and other luminaries lend their names to honorary positions in these and speak on their platforms often very effectively. But national leadership is sadly missing. Instead local elections are pursued with fervour as though the success of the LibDems since the 1980s in building up prominence in local government can be copied, losing sight of the fact that they started with an existing bunch of parliamentary seats and several nationally known leaders.<br /><br />A further problem for the Greens is that on most policy areas, in particular those associated with environmental and economic issues they are out-gunned by much better resourced NGOs whose policy nostrums are difficult to contest. It is not so much that these policies are mistaken but that they are pursued in ways appropriate to a lobby group rather than a political party with little concern for priorities or compromises or, perhaps most important, with the aim of projecting a complete policy package. There have been times in the last few months when the Green Party has seemed to be much more concerned with badger culling than with the economic crisis in Europe. Of course, it can be argued that with its limited resources it is possible to have some impact on the former whilst being essentially irrelevant to the latter. But this misses the point. To be seen as a credible national party, we have to be seen as a political force able, potentially, to provide answers to the global economic crisis as well as the future well-being (or otherwise) of badgers.<br /><br />It is not that the Green Party lacks policy. It has pages and pages of it, all laboriously worked out through the complex mechanisms of its policy formation and which cover all possible policy areas. The problem is that it does not seem to cohere in any way into a complete political programme. To some degree this results from the decidedly wacky nature of some of the central policies, in particular the economic. However, the main problem is political; a kind of nervousness about pushing for a programme which could unite others in the green/red coalition which has been talked about for a couple of decades but which never quite materialises.<br /><br />This is a real tragedy for left politics. Labour manifestly flails around trying but failing to find any replacement for the neo-liberal policies of Blair and Brown and being reduced to Balls’ bombast and Milliband’s soporific clichés. There is on offer a clear political alternative based upon sustainability and equality which breaks with the fetishism of economic growth. A recent exposition of this is Tim Jackson’s book, Prosperity without Growth, but there are numerous other sources. Presented boldly as a way out of the current asphyxiating political climate where all three main parties sound much the same and none are believed, there could be the basis for a major political breakthrough. Unfortunately, the Green Party has failed to take advantage of the post-election window and it may not come again.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-84131420115874685612011-06-28T14:36:00.002+01:002011-06-28T14:48:08.169+01:00From Cancun to Durban<span style="font-weight:bold;">First published in the South African magazine The Thinker in April.</span><br /><br />2010 may go down as the year in which climate change really went global. In August, Russia suspended wheat exports as an unprecedented drought ravaged yields. In January, 2011, the Tunisian president fled following riots caused in part by soaring bread prices whilst similar unrest spread across Algeria and Egypt. Floods in Australia knocked out nearly half its coal export capacity and steam coal prices reached $130/tonne into Europe just as snow-bound British consumers faced big price rises in electricity. Drought in Argentina impacted on soya prices which fed increase in meat prices.<br /><br />Can climate change been blamed for all this? No one can say with any certainty. The strength of La Niña which has caused the heavy rain is Queensland is not without precedent and, whilst the Russian drought was abnormal, such lengthy episodes have occurred elsewhere. The UK had its coldest December on record but its electricity prices are mainly driven by European gas prices though these are, in turn, impacted by the cost of coal. And there were many other factors at work in Tunisia and elsewhere such as the lack of democracy. Protesters in Cairo were reported as chanting “Bread. Freedom. Social Justice” which summarises it. But as I noted in The Thinker a year ago, the number of extreme meteorological events have been steadily increasing . What 2010 showed was that such extreme weather events bring not just TV pictures of far-off calamity but will increasingly also effect people’s lives remote from that actual flood or drought or snowfall.<br /><br />Such was the background to the Cancún conference. More formally, the “United Nations Climate Change Conference [which] took place in Cancún, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. It encompassed the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA.”<br /> <br />It would be wrong to suggest that Cancún was a failure in that there were any hopes dashed at its conclusion. It was universally expected that it would achieve nothing and so it turned out. Essentially all that was achieved was to insert some of aspirations reached on a multilateral basis at the Copenhagen conference (COP 15) the previous year into the agreed UN statement though without any kind of formally binding pledges. Perhaps the most dispiriting moment of the conference was the sight on the final morning of the Bolivian representative protesting on his own that the agreement was counter to the multilateral rules of the UN whilst it was being gavelled through by the Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa. The previous year’s alliance of small nations had effectively disintegrated with delegates cheering Espinosa so that at last they could flee to the airport.<br /><br />There are, however, two actions at which the COP16 proved adept: the creation of new agencies and the deferral of decisions. The formal opening statement quoted above shows that the ‘Conference of the Parties’ already encompasses six other bodies, each with their own formal structures, secretariats, reports and responsibilities, which have been created in the previous fifteen conferences. Additionally the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which had its sixth session in Cancún, is the body which considers the progress of the Kyoto Protocol and which contains within its own structure a web of committees and advisory panels. COP16 added two new agencies to this network. First, the Conference:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">102. Decides to establish a Green Climate Fund, to be designated as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention under Article 11, with arrangements to be concluded between the Conference of the Parties and the Green Climate Fund to ensure that it is accountable to and functions under the guidance of the Conference of the Parties, to support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing country Parties using thematic funding windows; <br />103. Also decides that the Fund shall be governed by a board of 24 members comprising an equal number of members from developing and developed country Parties; representation from developing country Parties shall include representatives from relevant United Nations regional groupings and representatives from small island developing States and the least developed countries; each board member shall have an alternate member; alternate members are entitled to participate in the meetings of the board only through the principal member, without the right to vote, unless they are serving as the member; during the absence of the member from all or part of the meeting of the board, his or her alternate shall serve as the member;<br />It was further agreed that this Fund would be run, initially, by the World Bank and designed by a Transitional Committee of 40 members supported by a secretariat drawn from relevant “United Nations agencies, international financial institutions, and multilateral development banks, along with the secretariat and the Global Environment Facility”</span><br /><br />Any fund needs money even more, perhaps, than it needs staff to run it and the Conference:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">97. Decides that, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate funding shall be provided to developing country Parties, taking into account the urgent and immediate needs of developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change; <br />98. Recognizes that developed country Parties commit, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, to a goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries; <br />99. Agrees that, in accordance with paragraph 1(e) of the Bali Action Plan, funds provided to developing country Parties may come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources; <br />100. Decides that a significant share of new multilateral funding for adaptation should flow through the Green Climate Fund;</span><br /><br />Essentially, money tomorrow but more meetings today. Just how this new fund will differ either from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) set up as an independent agency in 1994 or the Special Climate Change Fund set up in 2001 to complement the GEF or indeed the Adaptation Fund set up under the Kyoto agreement is unclear given that the GEF already claims to act as the “financial mechanism” for the Climate Change Conference.<br /> <br />The second new agency will be a Technology Executive Committee supported by a Climate Technology Centre and Network. The composition of these is carefully set out in an Annex to the main report:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Annex IV <br />Composition and mandate of the Technology Executive Committee<br />1. The Technology Executive Committee shall comprise 20 expert members, elected by the Conference of the Parties, serving in their personal capacity and nominated by Parties with the aim of achieving fair and balanced representation, as follows: <br />(a) Nine members from Parties included in Annex I to the Convention; <br />(b) Three members from each of the three regions of the Parties not included in Annex <br />one to the Convention (non-annex I Parties) namely Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean, one member from a small island developing State and one member from a least developed country Party; <br />2. The decisions will be taken according to the rule of consensus; <br />3. Parties are encouraged to nominate senior experts with a view to achieving, within the membership of the Technology Executive Committee, an appropriate balance of technical, legal, policy, social development and financial expertise relevant to the development and transfer of technology for adaptation and mitigation, taking into account the need to achieve gender balance in accordance with decision 36/CP.7;<br /><br />With a further eight paragraphs detailing terms of office, procedure and protocols of working. Again, much detail as to how the meeting will be organised but precious little as to what they will actually do.<br />Set aside, for a moment, the implications of this organisational expansion for there is a much larger matter which will be sailing into Durban harbour this November when COP17 convenes in its next venue; the deferral of key decisions as to just how climate change is to be tackled. Three of these are contained in the main report:<br />…Agrees, in the context of the long-term goal and the ultimate objective of the Convention and the Bali Action Plan, to work towards identifying a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050, and to consider it at its seventeenth session…<br />6. Also agrees that Parties should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries, and bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries and that a low-carbon development strategy is indispensable to sustainable development. In this context, further agrees to work towards identifying a timeframe for global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions based on the best available scientific knowledge and equitable access to sustainable development, and to consider it at its seventeenth session;…<br />14. Invites all Parties to enhance action on adaptation under the Cancún Adaptation Framework, taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances, by undertaking, inter alia, the following:<br />(a) Planning, prioritizing and implementing adaptation actions, including projects and <br />programmes, and actions identified in national and subnational adaptation plans and strategies, national adaptation programmes of action of the least developed countries, national communications, technology needs assessments and other relevant national planning documents; <br />(b) Impact, vulnerability and adaptation assessments, including assessments of financial needs as well as economic, social and environmental evaluation of adaptation options; <br />(c) Strengthening institutional capacities and enabling environments for adaptation, including for climate-resilient development and vulnerability reduction; <br />(d) Building resilience of socio-economic and ecological systems, including through economic diversification and sustainable management of natural resources; <br />(e) Enhancing climate change related disaster risk reduction strategies, taking into consideration the Hyogo Framework for Action where appropriate; early warning systems; risk assessment and management; and sharing and transfer mechanisms such as insurance, at local, national, subregional and regional levels, as appropriate; <br />(f) Measures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate, at national, regional and international levels; <br />(g) Research, development, demonstration, diffusion, deployment and transfer of technologies, practices and processes; and capacity-building for adaptation, with a view to promoting access to technologies, in particular in developing country Parties;<br />(h) Strengthening data, information and knowledge systems, education and public awareness; <br />(i) Improving climate-related research and systematic observation for climate data collection, archiving, analysis and modelling in order to provide decision makers at national and regional levels with improved climate-related data and information; <br /> 15. Decides to hereby establish a process to enable least developed country Parties to formulate and implement national adaptation plans, building upon their experience in preparing and implementing national adaptation programmes of action, as a means of identifying medium and long-term adaptation needs and developing and implementing strategies and programmes to address those needs; <br />16. Invites other developing country Parties to employ the modalities formulated to support the above-mentioned national adaptation plans, in the elaboration of their planning effort referred to in paragraph 14 (a) above; <br />17. Requests the Subsidiary Body for Implementation to elaborate modalities and guidelines for the provisions of paragraphs 15 and 16 above, for adoption by the Conference of the Parties at its seventeenth session;<br />…<br />80. Decides to consider the establishment, at its seventeenth session, of one or more market-based mechanisms to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote, mitigation actions, taking into account the following: <br />(a) Ensuring voluntary participation of Parties, supported by the promotion of fair and equitable access for all Parties; <br />(b) Complementing other means of support for nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country Parties; <br />(c) Stimulating mitigation across broad segments of the economy; <br />(d) Safeguarding environmental integrity; <br />(e) Ensuring a net decrease and/or avoidance of global greenhouse gas emissions; <br />(f) Assisting developed country Parties to meet part of their mitigation targets, while ensuring that the use of such mechanism or mechanisms is supplemental to domestic mitigation efforts; <br />(g) Ensuring good governance and robust market functioning and regulation;<br />…<br />84. Decides to consider the establishment, at its seventeenth session, of one or more non-market-based mechanisms to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote, mitigation actions;<br />85. Requests the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention to elaborate the mechanism or mechanisms referred to in paragraph 84 above, with a view to recommending a draft decision or decisions to the Conference of the Parties for consideration at its seventeenth session;</span><br /><br />There is an understandable tendency for eyelids to droop when confronted by a page of this kind of officialise but it is really necessary to read it attentively in order to appreciate the awesome task which will confront delegates to COP 17 in twelve days between 28 November and 9 December.<br /><br />First, one should note the compression of the choices to be made. After sixteen annual sessions, the conference will finally try to decide upon a “ timeframe for global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions” taking into account the different pace of change which social justice demands between developed and less-developed countries. At the same time, it will try to decide upon an appropriate “process to enable least developed country Parties to formulate and implement national adaptation plans” as well as reviewing at least two mechanisms “to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote, mitigation actions”, one or more of which will be market-based and one or more of which will be non-market based. Now it should be apparent to the least technically-inclined that these choices are not independent. Clearly, any adaptation strategy depends crucially upon the timeframe within which that adaptation has to be made. Peaking of emissions within ten years carries quite different implications for climate change impact than peaking within fifty years. Similarly different mitigation mechanisms are likely to be effective within quite different time-scales so their adoption must also depend upon decisions about time-scale. It is also probable that both adaptation and mitigation mechanisms are likely to interact with each other so cannot be considered in isolation.<br /><br />Second, round every corner in this complex maze, the issue of money , specifically how much money is going to flow from rich to poor countries and just when, confronts one. A commitment to providing $100 billion annually from unspecified sources by 2020 gives precious little insight into just how much and under what mechanism money is going to flow before then, in particular how much is going to be provided to poorer countries to develop the “national adaptation plans” for meeting climate change. Here one might note another decision deferred to Durban: a request for<br /> <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">…the Subsidiary Body for Implementation to continue its consideration of the second comprehensive review of the implementation of the framework for capacity building in developing countries at its thirty-fourth session on the basis of the draft text contained in the annex to this decision, with a view to preparing a draft decision on the outcome of this review for adoption by the Conference of Parties at its seventeenth session.</span> <br /><br />This draft Annex contains the ominous clause “that gaps still remain and the availability of and access to financial and technical resources is still an issue to be addressed, in order to progress qualitatively and quantitatively on the capacity-building implementation”. In other words, poor countries still lack the money even to undertake the required adaptation plans let alone implement them. The Green Climate Fund with its 40-person Transitional Committee will, in the end, be responsible for allocating much of the promised funds but fails to answer any of the pressing immediate problems of financing both adaptation and mitigation. Both are to be answered by decisions in Durban.<br /><br />There are two dream scenarios for Durban. The first is that the first Afro-American President of the USA will go to Durban and promise to make as a key feature of his re-election campaign US commitment to immediate and binding action to save Africa from the worst effects of climate change and to immediately commit substantial, quantified funds to adaptation. A dream but not one to bet the farm on. Over half US citizens are now reported to doubt climate-change and it would take a miracle for Obama to secure re-election with such a policy having failed to get what was then a nominally Democratic Congress to pass even a modest climate change bill.<br /><br />The second dream is more realistic: that China should present a new policy initiative committing itself to substantial domestic emission cuts and to guarantee significant funds to transferring new technology to poorer countries. In other words to grab the leadership role abdicated by the USA. There are indications that the Chinese government has focussed on environmental technologies, in particular clean energy, as the main vehicle for shifting its manufacturing sector up to a new level based upon technology rather than cheap labour. Chinese-built electric cars are already entering the US market and it has taken a lead in the manufacture of photovoltaic panels. Judicious purchase of overseas firms with the right technical base is already underway using a handy war-chest of more than $1 trillion of US Treasury bonds. The key technology is undoubtedly carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS), an essential to reducing carbon emissions in any country based upon coal as its primary fuel. CCS is a tricky bit of heavy-duty chemical engineering but it is not quantum electrodynamics and will succumb to a healthy dose of investment. There have been rather half-hearted pilot programmes in Europe and the USA but the barrier to success has always been that it has been very difficult to impose investment in the required centralised transport and storage systems on the free-market structure which has evolved in both continents. Progress has also been hindered by the fact that powerful environmental lobbies have largely opposed CCS development preferring to support enhanced conservation and renewables, technologies appropriate to mature energy sectors but not to ones with rapidly growing electricity demand based on coal. Neither of these will trouble China and if it could crack CCS and then offer it to the world, it would not only gain leadership in climate change but also reap substantial financial rewards.<br /><br />In a wider context, the future role of China and also in India (now the third biggest carbon emitter in the world having overtaken Russia in 2009) in progressing action on climate change can be seen as just part of the historic shift eastwards in economic leadership. How these two countries respond to the environmental challenge could become a defining moment in this shift.<br /> <br />But if this second dream is better based in reality, it remains just a possibility without any base in government action and in its absence there has come to be increasing focus on just whether the annual UN Climate Change Conferences can possibly deliver any significant agreement on new policies. It has been reported that even the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has given up on the process and there seems little optimism that COP 17 will be able to tackle the long list of deferred decisions.<br /><br />It is eighteen years since the so-called Earth Summit in Rio kicked off what has now become an annual jamboree for the environment business. Rio was claimed to open up a new kind of international conference which banished back-room deals in smoke-filled rooms in which ‘openness and transparency’ were its watchwords and environmental lobbies of all kinds were promised full participation. In Cancún, as well as 190 country delegations of varying sizes, no less than 1,297 environmental groups took advantage of this and were given full observer status ranging from Aarhus University and A SEED Europe from the Netherlands to ZeroFootPrint from Toronto and the London-based Zoological Society. In addition, 83 so-called inter-governmental organisations ranging from the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development from Niamey to The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites were accredited. The exhibition centre adjacent to the conference had over 250 stalls whilst journalist accreditation was capped at 2000. No one really knows how many people attended in one capacity or another. Perhaps 20,000. As well as the six official meetings running simultaneously, some 250 side-events were organised, each given a 90-minute slot . Most of this can still be seen on Climate Change TV ( http://www.climate-change.tv/ ) which was run from an onsite studio.<br /><br />All done in the name of openness and transparency but, in practice, deals are still done in backrooms, possibly less smoke-filled, and the conferences are dominated by rumours as just who is being pressured to do what and by whom. When a delegate from a poor African country stands up to effectively denounce the policy agreed by the group of African countries, it is widely (and probably justifiably) assumed that they have done this because the Americans have threatened to remove their US aid allocation. In both Cancún and Copenhagen, the final document agreed by the conference was essentially cobbled together by delegates from a small group of countries and pushed through despite objections from those outside the inner circle.<br /><br />The Kyoto Protocol agreed in 1997 remains the high-point of this mode of international negotiation. It took a further eight years for enough countries to ratify Kyoto for it to actually come into force and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, since then, the annual get-togethers have not served any real purpose apart from absorbing huge amounts of time and money. The reality is that the basis of any new agreement essentially depends upon China and the USA as the major players with the EU, Russia and India acting as important secondary agents. The process set up at the Earth Summit in Rio was intended to ensure that, by allowing full inclusion, the importance of the issue could not be dodged and the major actors would be forced to accept their responsibilities. The problem is that the solution has become the problem as now these major agents are able to use the cacophony of the event with its mass of simultaneous meetings of a dozen different bodies and thousands participants, each trying to make their voices heard and insisting on their equivalent importance, to erect a smokescreen about their actual intentions. They are able to hide inside the pandemonium.<br /><br />What is required is a forum within which the major national agents are fully exposed to the pressure of world expectation but are also isolated and required to reach agreement about action within their own small group. Just how this can be achieved remains unclear. Not one of the 1,297 observer NGOs or 83 IGOs let alone any of the 190 member country delegations is going to voluntarily cede their status provided they can finance the trip. Durban is set to be just as much of a mass circus as Cancún or Copenhagen. The South African government could kidnap the appropriate delegations as they landed at Durban and seclude them under armed guard in a remote town with only sandwiches and one beer a day each until they signed an agreement. This, however, seems unlikely. But the South African government as the President of COP 17 is going to take on a heavy responsibility for steering it to even a moderately successful outcome, success being defined in terms of some decisions actually being taken rather than once again deferred. A third successive failure would cast serious doubt over the point of the annual Climate Change Conference.<br /><br />It is not possible to make any forecasts as to where the world will stand on 10 December, 2011. Just one certain prediction; look elsewhere than Durban for any pre-Christmas break in early December if what you want is quiet beaches and cheap hotels.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-80021904058162836942010-12-09T10:18:00.001+00:002010-12-09T10:21:57.276+00:00Hello; Anyone Out There?Six months into the Coalition and it might be a good moment to examine how Labour has reacted to it. Or it might be, if any reaction could be discerned for even after electing a new leader who promised a new start, Labour has just disappeared. Some from EB’s office suggest that this is part of a grand strategy to let the Coalition hang itself from the hook of public expenditure cuts and that no reaction apart from kneejerk condemnation is needed. Others suggest that EB is proving to be a hopeless leader, has no idea of what to do and will be dumped in a year or so in good time for an election in 2014 under someone new.<br /> <br />But both rest upon a false assumption; that Labour has plenty of time to get its act together. This is a fallacy not because the hope that the Coalition will soon fall apart is justified. Every passing month shows that both LibDems and Conservatives recognise that they have to hang together for the full five years. There will be quite public rows over exactly what course to steer and what concessions each must make. There will be a few defections from the LibDems and, maybe, from the Conservatives but not enough to alter the balance of power. LibDem councillors, in particular, will be decimated next May and the tuition fee debacle will cause huge strain . But both parties see that they must shift the existing electoral advantage to Labour more in their favour by adjusting constituencies and they must weather the impact of public expenditure cuts and hope next to go to the polls on an economic upturn. For both they need the full five years.<br /><br />No, the reason that Labour has got to find its voice rests upon two likely issues over which it soon has to make radical policy decisions.<br /><br />The first of these is the banks. It remains one of the two great mysteries of Brown’s government that in 2009, it did nothing about the banking collapse apart from bailing them out with some £200 billion of public money. (Or was it £200 gadzillion? It still remains largely opaque as to just how much was poured into the banks and how much of it will ever come back) In 2009, remember, taxing the banks, even breaking them up would only have partially assuaged public anger. Issuing deportation orders to all non-EU bankers, especially Americans working for Goldman Sachs, and taking them, shackled, on board planes bound for Luanda with three huge private-sector security guards to sit on them; now that would have been more like it. But Darling, no doubt under direct orders from Brown, essentially did nothing. He refused even to order the banks we own not to pay bonuses. Action, almost any action commensurate with the damage the bankers inflicted, would have gone a long way towards Brown winning the election. Yet, effectively, he did nothing.<br /><br />This is not just a matter of history, of how apparently sane and politically-astute politicians just lose the plot. Nor is it just a matter of giving Cameron an easy ride though it does mean that the minor changes Cable eventually come up with will look like a revolution in comparison. The key point is that it seems very likely that another financial crisis is on the way if one takes the words of Strauss-Kahn, the IMF boss, seriously which is probably wise. Osborne is not committing billions to the Irish banks out of a soft heart nor to save the Euro. He is doing it because of the exposure of British banks to loans to these Irish banks which are likely to go pear-shaped if they go bust. In effect, another few billions are going to prop up British banks and more will be required when the bond-markets turn to another weak link.<br /><br />Not are weak European bank the only problem. The Chinese banking system is only kept afloat by the huge influx of dollars financing the US trade deficit. Once this flow is cut — and there is every sign that the US will have to act soon — these banks will start to tumble as the Chinese experience the consequences of their very own property bubble. And then HSBC, an offshore bank now effectively owned by the Chinese, will come under extreme pressure because of its exposure to duff Chinese loans. Expect the usual signals of the ‘we are too big to fail’ kind to begin flowing. (Don’t believe the claims that HSBC together with Barclays sailed through the last crisis unscathed. They lapped up the cheap money provided by the Bank of England then effectively sold themselves to the Chinese and Abu Dhabi respectively).<br /><br />If these crises do come about then Labour will need a policy to distance themselves from the Coalition and it ought to be a fairly radical one, not an ‘us-too but not quite so much’ which has characterised its response to most recent Government policy initiatives. (On this topic, quite the most stomach-churning of these has been Ed Balls sneering that the new immigration controls were not tough enough and would do little to meet Conservative targets. Come back Phil Woolas. At least it was obvious that you were a racist).<br /><br />A new banking crisis may not, in the event, happen even if probable. That cannot be said of the alternative vote (AV) referendum, a crisis for Labour policy which is fast coming down the tracks now that desperate attempts to delay it have failed in the Lords. An AV system is, remember, a Labour manifesto commitment something dreamed up by Brown’s policy advisers notably one Edward Miliband who was responsible for drafting it. The reasons they went for this option are, again, a political mystery. It was obvious for some time before the election that a commitment to proper constitutional including electoral reform could win Labour the election. It was not just outside analysts who believed this. Apparently all the Labour focus groups reported just this. Yet, as with banking reform, the dim Oxford minds who formulate these things felt that too radical a reform would alienate important interest groups, in one case the bankers, in this one the Neanderthal wing of Labour going under the generic name of Prescott’s Mates. So they plumped instead for the Alternative Vote system which they hoped would sound like electoral reform to the stupid electorate whilst actually boosting Labour results in an even more unfair way than first-past-the post.<br /><br />The basis for this reasoning was that LibDem voters, seen as soft guardianistas who didn’t agree with the Iraq war, would nearly all put Labour as their second preference. In any election with three main parties, the AV system pivots around the second preferences of whatever party comes third so Labour could be expected to pick up gains from the Tories in all those seats where the LibDems come in third. And on a virtual re-run of the May election, with the LibDems going 80% for Labour, this expectation is fully justified with Labour picking up 285 seats (258 in real life), the Conservatives just 250 (306) and the LibDems jumping up to 85 seats (57). Still a hung Parliament but with Labour now in the driving seat and expecting to be the government either as a minority or in coalition with the LibDems. All this, remember, with the assumption of the May voting in which Labour received barely 29%, which just serves to show how wildly disproportional AV can be.<br /><br />However with the Coalition set for a full term and the prospect of some form of electoral deal to sustain it afterwards, the horrid thought is that perhaps the LibDems may not be so cuddly and that they might switch their second preference solidly to the Tories. If a split of 60% Conservative and 40% Labour is assumed then the Tories trot home with 328 seats, Labour slumps to 208 seats and the LibDems still go to 85 seats. A tiny majority for Cameron, probably reduced to minority by a different slant in Scotland and Wales. And if the split were to be 80% Tory then they romp home with 369 seats whilst Labour drop to 166.<br /><br />The result of such calculations is that Labour has gone decidedly wobbly on AV with some of its old brutes, Prescott, Reid and Blunkett just for starters, coming out firmly against it. Already they have tried diversionary tactics which began with Jack Straw’s ridiculous claim that the proposed boundary changes would be ‘gerrymandering’. Certainly they will favour the Tories but only to balance out the existing Labour bias in the electoral system. Then there came the claim that having a referendum on the same day as the English local and the Scottish and Welsh national votes was in some way undemocratic for reasons that remain quite unclear. Finally EB has tip-toed into supporting the Yes to AV campaign but only whilst declaring that Labour’s main emphasis next spring will be on the local elections. Understandable, given the almost certain decimation of the LibDems in these, but also a clear case of bullet in foot if they fail to deliver real support for the AV campaign.<br /><br />The problem for EB is that many in the Labour Party are opposed to AV just like they are opposed to any kind of constitutional change. This is an old Labour habit. The alliance between Michael Foot and Enoch Powell to defeat any reform of the House of Lords is just the most despicable of the knee-jerk reaction of Labour to any suggestion that the system we have needs any kind of reform. Just why this is so is obscure. In the early years of the Labour Party, it actually supported proportional representation, only for this to disappear once they can close to power. It may be that somewhere in the DNA of yellow-dog Labour is the feeling that any constitutional reform is just a trick by the ruling-class to deprive the workers of their rightful position as the country’s ruler. Or it may just be the kind of supine aversion to any kind of radical change which has so dogged its leaders for decades and which finally delivered the obsessive triangulation of Blair. And which doomed the Brown regime.<br /><br /><br />Whatever. If Labour weasels out of full commitment to the tiny reform represented by AV then it risks loosing popular support just when it will need it most, in the final two years of the Coalition. As the Labour pressure group, Compass, has finally perceived, coalition politics has arrived in Britain and will retain a lasting popularity. Labour needs to grasp this fact and accept that AV will require a long-term commitment to forming a new, radical coalition. If it retreats into a position that only a Labour majority in everything is acceptable then it will totter into electoral defeat in 2015.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4304545109906473924.post-32281993308687159022010-10-04T12:13:00.002+01:002010-10-04T12:18:43.736+01:00Can Ed really ride two horses?Funny old thing, Labour Party democracy. They elect a leader that neither the membership nor their M.Ps want because of ballot of eligible union members with a turnout of around 2% apparently based upon the basis of the voter ticking a box marked “Labour supporter”. Many Labour members ended up with two, three or even more votes depending upon their membership of an affiliated union and one or more of the ‘societies’ affiliated to the Labour Party (the Jewish Labour Movement, the Fabians, Christian Socialist Movement and so on, seventeen in all) who more less discretely ask if new members are eligible to join the Labour Party. In practice, if you want to vote in Labour elections just pay the society or union membership subscription and you will get the ballot paper even if you are in the BNP. Understand all this? Thought so.<br /><br />Still, the ballot did tell us some interesting things about the Party’s membership. One thing is just how small is the number of what might be called old-time socialists. Diane Abbott’s vote of around 8% of the members suggests that members of the Labour Representation Committee with its heroic defence of Labour as a socialist party, at least potentially, might as well fold their tent and look elsewhere, perhaps to form a party which would represent their views. In fact, about 55% of LP members seem to have views which accord with the centrist or even centre-right positions of David Miliband and Andy Burnham whilst less than 40% agree with the roughly centre-left positions taken, at least for the moment, by the two Ed’s. (Both born Edward, incidentally, though Ed does sound, how shall we say, more matey. Perhaps Dave Miliband might have won). So was Ed elected by trade-union votes and by a tiny fraction of eligible voters? Well, yes, of course. And does that matter? Well, perhaps.<br /><br />So what problems does the winning Ed now face? Two obvious and immediate ones.<br /><br />The first , clearly, is just what he stands for in terms of policy and what has come to be called ‘vision’. Neal Lawson, leader of the Labour pressure-group, Compass, was ecstatic about Miliband’s first speech to conference when he spoke to a fringe meeting. It “ticked all the policy boxes” of Compass and meant that this centre-left group was now “mainstream”. Well, Compass policy boxes are a bit of a mix but some, mentioned by Neal, are very specific. So it is odd in view of Lawson’s ecstasy to find that ‘high pay commission’, ‘loan sharking’, ‘Royal Mail’, least of all ‘Trident’ are not mentioned in the text of his speech. A motion on Trident put forward by the Hackney CLP (that pesky Abbott) was actually ruled out by the Conference Arrangements Committee as being not ‘contemporaneous’ (sic) the day after Compass published an email to be sent to George Osborne by their supporters saying cut Trident not public services. Perhaps it should have been sent to Ed Miliband. He did use the phrase ‘good society’ four times however, a phrase on which Neal claims copyright and might be construed as a leftward shift (though it would not be surprising if it found its way into David Cameron’s lexicon).<br /><br />The point of course is that Ed Miliband is trying to pull off a difficult circus trick, that of riding two horses simultaneously. He knows that he has to shift a bit to the left if only because the policies of the old Labour government closely resembles that of the new Coalition. He knows that the Iraq war has left a poisonous legacy inside Labour which has to be expunged. He knows that public service cuts following budget deficit reduction have to be opposed. But at the same time he cannot disclaim too much of his legacy if only because he was in the Cabinet when all the neo-liberal polices of Brown were being pushed through.<br /> <br />So the war in Iraq was a “mistake”. But was it also ‘illegal’ as Nick Clegg rightly claims. If so then are Blair and his colleagues in 2003 war criminals? And what about the post-war behaviour of the British army in Iraq? The upcoming inquiry into torture allegations will ensure that this will not go away. And what about the ongoing war in Afghanistan, not illegal as such but unwinnable and increasingly unpopular? Well, that seems OK, at least for now.<br /><br />Public service cuts? “<span style="font-style:italic;">Well , I [Ed Miliband] believe strongly that we need to reduce the deficit. There will be cuts and there would have been if we had been in government. Some of them will be painful and would have been if we were in government. I won’t oppose every cut the coalition proposes. There will be some things the coalition does that we won’t like as a party but we will have to support</span>” Public services are not mentioned. Opposition to cuts? Well, Ed Miliband supports trade unions but only responsible ones. “<span style="font-style:italic;">That is why I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes.</span>” So, not just no strikes but no threat of strikes. Just what weapons this leaves the loyal trade-unionists who voted for him is unclear. Perhaps they can wave placards in their lunch-break. On the other hand, he does believe that care-workers should be paid better. In a later television interview he was pressed about deficit reduction. He stuck to the overall policy of Alistair Darling but felt that he would like to see more of the reduction coming from higher taxes. What taxes? Well, tax the banks and crack down on tax dodgers. Expect to hear much more on the lines of ‘Show us your taxes. Ed”.<br /><br />Trying to ride two horses at once is a skilful and elegant trick but, ultimately, it usually requires a choice between one of them to avoid the nasty consequences of them pulling too far apart. There is no sign so far that Ed Miliband understands this nor what his ultimate choices will be. His problem is really that Nick Clegg and most of the LibDems are settling themselves rather comfortably in the centre and centre-right part of the political spectrum once occupied by New Labour. When in power, this occupation pushed the LibDems into rather uncomfortable postures leaning to the left. Now the position is reversed and Clegg and Cable seem to have a fairly clear strategic perception of where they want to be. Labour hasn’t.<br /><br />The second problem Ed Miliband faces is possibly more immediate and perhaps more important. The fact is that much of his party and most of his M.P.s distrust and dislike him. It’s not personal, he is possibly a very nice bloke; in Michael Gove’s faint praise, he is “intelligent, decent, humane”. But Labour is now a regional party of the English north and the Celtic nations with an enclave in inner London. And up here, they really do not like him. They dislike his comfortable passage wafting from a cosy Hampstead comprehensive to a place at Oxford, presumably on the basis of a ‘good interview’, after a time as an intern to Tony Benn. (Another man who has shortened his given name to something more matey). They fail to understand just why he then entered the charmed circle of Labour advisers after a brief spell working or possibly interning in television nor are they deeply impressed by a further stint ‘teaching’ at Harvard on the basis of a Master’s degree in economics. They have had clever children in comprehensives who never got near an Oxford interview and who still search for a break into some kind of media job. They simply do not understand nor like the mechanisms whereby London Labour looks after its own. They rather remember his dad not as a towering Marxist scholar but as an old Trot who occasionally wrote dull and not particularly original books trashing the Labour Party whilst mostly writing articles in obscure journals about how the working class should behave whilst not bothering to get involved in any actual political activity. They hate the way in which London fixes safe northern seats for their golden boys (and occasional girls) where they do not understand the local dialect and keep their visits to a minimum. They don’t really get the stuff about being the son of penniless Jewish refugees; it runs much less well if your dad was a Fife miner. They hate the idea of a Hampstead salon where the likes of (gulp) Tony Benn, Tariq Ali and Ken Livingstone smiled at the young Milibands. They dislike snuggling up to the LibDems who are hated up here even more than the Tories. And, deep down, they hate the knowledge that none of their own has, any more, the political stature to stand up to what Jon Cruddas, an erstwhile left M.P. who scored a spectacular own-goal by supporting Brother David but who can smell a wind when it is blowing, called “a metropolitan liberal faction”. Faction is a dangerous word to use in Labour circles as Cruddas must surely know. The last one was Militant.<br /><br />Does he know about these pressures? Probably not. It is unlikely that he learnt much about the Labour Party as he floated up in his balloon and he probably still sees the ferocious Blair/Brown conflict as just a matter of two combative individuals rather than the personification of two long antagonisms inside not just Labour but of the entire British left, a fault line between its initial constituents which has never fully closed. Labour was set up as an open federation of the trade unions and the progressive intellectual societies which elaborated a full political programme. In a Gramscian paradise, this combination would be seen as the ideal historical bloc, the proletariat with its inherent but inchoate ‘common sense’ and the organic intellectuals turning this into the ‘good sense’ needed to change society. But in the real world, this kind of federation which has never progressed to the unified structure of most social-democratic parties requires a leadership drawn from all parts of the federation. Throughout most of its history, this is exactly what Labour had with strong leaders from the unions buttressing the middle-class Oxbridge intellectuals, something true of both left and right factions.<br /><br />This has now effectively collapsed with Oxbridge winning by default. The disappearance of strong leaders from the labour movement both inside and outside Parliament is one of the great problems of the British left (Jack Dromey, anyone? Or Bob Crowe, just to balance the sides?). However it is a fact of life and is unlikely to be remedied anytime soon. Both Blair and Brown managed to avoid the problem, the former by his uncanny ability to float above any class or national label, the latter by his long apprenticeship in the snake-pit of Scottish Labour. But with Ed, the issue has finally come home to roost. He will, undoubtedly, try to shift the basis of Labour away from its cumbersome federal roots and more towards the supporter-based movement as against party favoured by his brother. But he is going to be handicapped, possibly fatally, by the label applied so openly by Cruddas. The knives are already being sharpened; the only real question is who will wield them.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968758022511410448noreply@blogger.com0