The cuts won't work, they'll just make it worse

From my old mate Mark Perryman at Philosophy Football, this is his latest offering - just £9.99 from here.

I've said this before, but you probably don't read my longer postings so I'll say it again: as a twenty-year old ultra-Thatcherite Bullingdon Club member, Osborne could never in his wildest dreams have believed that he would achieve everything he went into politics for within six months of taking office. And he would have thought you were mad if you told him he wouldn't even need to win an election to do it!

Labour's strategic failure, continued... (Tower Hamlets episode)

I had a long-ish post here the other day that I should probably provide a shorter summary for before I add an addendum to it.

My argument is that Labour has cued itself up for three very severe structural defeats that will be difficult to reverse in recent months, because they've lost sight of what their mission is. Instead of a strategy to attain a sustainable progressive outcome, they've been transfixed with a tactical approach that guaranteed short-term electoral success (i.e. being able to win general elections on an ever-dwindling share of the overall vote until 2005).

My argument was that, if Labour had understood the centrality of a high standard of liberal democracy to achieving it's social democratic ends...

• the LibDems would never have considered an electoral pact with the Tories on the spurious grounds that capitalist realism = liberalism,
• the Tories would be unable to assault the notion of public service broadcasting and replace it with hugely valuable (to themselves) propagandists
• we would have a coherent response to the CSR cuts - one that had a long-term provenance in the way that the Tories anti-state rhetoric has had in recent years

I say this because last night, Labour lost the Tower Hamlets mayoral election to a communalist candidate. That candidate was helped by tacit support from Ken Livingstone - Labour's next Mayoral candidate.

Now, it's not the end of the world if we sometimes lose local elections. If I had may way, we'd not have local Mayoral elections in the first place (it's another aspect of Labour policy that has been incompatible with liberal democracy).

Labour can neither bitch too loudly about losing to a communal candidate as we've not had an explicit and ideological rejection of the practice of communalism ourselves.

Neither can we bitch about the uneven application of party rules - especially where Ken Livingstone is concerned - because Labour disgraced itself in it's handling of the mayoral selection in 2000 and it still has active intervention from regional parties, unions and various central court jesters in local selection processes as Teresa Pearce learned to her cost a few years ago in the selection at Erith & Thamesmead.

Labour's real problems are not of a left-right nature. It's almost a spiritual failing. We're not that much of a good party any more, and we won't succeed until we become one again.

Just saying, like.....

The neo-liberal helecopter arrives

Over at K-Punk:

"....where, previously, neoliberals had used the crises in other political systems (state socialism, social democracy) as an opportunity to helicopter in their 'reforms', on this occasion they are using a crisis brought about by neoliberal policy itself to try to electro-shock the neoliberal programme back into life.

I heard one buffoon on television saying that "we've been in denial for the last ten years". If there's denial, it's happened in the last two years, and on the part of the neoliberals and their friends in the business elite, who - after demanding at gunpoint unprecedented sums of public money - are now brazenly continuing to peddle the story that they are the friend of the taxpayer and that it is welfare claimants, not them, who are the scroungers who have brought the country to the "brink of bankruptcy"."

Labour and the CSR - tactics and strategy

Over at Labour Uncut, Dan Hodges has a fairly pessimistic account of Labour's failure to set their stall out properly over the months since the election in preparation for the CSR. As far as it goes, there's not much to disagree with there - Labour got into a muddle and the response was weak.

But where I'd part company with Dan is on the question of how important this actually is. For me, that Labour MPs articulate this - “We haven’t got a line or a message” - as the problem is a large part of the problem itself.

Dan's post outlines what tactical response Labour should have deployed but quite often, he's referring to it as a missing strategy. There's a difference between tactics and strategy and he may be right that Labour have failed to agree on a tactics over the months since May, but the real problem is one that has existed since the early 1990s: That short-term tactical considerations have eclipsed - not trumped strategic ones.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I'd be happy to admit that Labour figures like Roy Hattersley, Robin Cook and John Smith may have allowed the pendulum to swing too far the other way - where Labour's soul was right but it didn't have the ruthless day-to-day response on headline issues.

New Labour was fantastic at understanding how the media worked and what people understood as their options. They were brilliant at maneuvering the Tories into a corner where they had the choice of either endorsing Labour's populist position or owning up to an option that they'd never be able to sell.

At times, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, they were so good at it. And John Major, Hague, Howard and IDS were the perfect for this kind of sucker-punching. But the Tories - both in opposition and now in government - agree with one of the only articles of faith that I ever heard from post-1994 Labour spokesmen: That elections are fought on the centre ground. They also have demonstrated that they know something that seems to have barely occurred to most senior Labour Party figures: That when you're in government, your first priority must be to drag the centre ground to where you want it to be.

Hattersley, Cook and Smith all, in their own way, had a politically literate understanding of what democratic socialism was. They had positions on the kind of arcana that sends even the chattering classes to sleep: Party democracy, electoral reform, what constitutes legitimate democratic deliberation, why Parliament matters, why the press need to be challenged and regulated more effectively.

The Tories have also grasped the importance of these issues - perhaps in a more atavistic and instinctive way than the way Labour's liberal left does it's thinking. The Tories have asked themselves: What are those objective allies that the left relies upon? Parliament has generally been more socially progressive that the public's reflexes have allowed it to be. We don't hang people, we allow immigrants in sometimes and we're in the EU, for starters.

The wider conservative milieu conducted an incredibly successful assault on the legitimacy of representative democracy in the closing years of the last government. One that Labour were unable to resist because it didn't occur to many of them that it was happening. And the results have been stunning.

As a twenty-year old ultra-Thatcherite Bullingdon Club member, Osborne could never in his wildest dreams have believed that he would achieve everything he went into politics for within six months of taking office. And he would have thought you were mad if you told him he wouldn't even need to win an election to do it!

Yet for Labour to focus on what their long-term strategic interests were - it would have been regarded as a distraction by most New Labour 'strategists'. They would undoubtedly have made the day-to-day work of top-down government a bit harder, but then a grasp of how party democracy could have been made to work would have brought many more hands to the pump. Labour's need to avoid 'embarrassment' during the party conference season trumped all other considerations.

The kind of responses that we may have got from some of Labour's older heads - had they still been around - wouldn't have been folksy and populist, and at times they would have jarred. This week, the Guardian newspaper was jeered at (by News Corporation journalists in particular) for leading on the BBC cuts on the day that half-a-million public sector jobs were going to be butchered. Middle class wankers, I hear you say, and I suppose it's a point of sorts. But New Labour (unlike Labour) spent no time understanding who the objective allies were that democratic socialism could count upon.

The Tories' outriders have, for years, pedaled the line that the BBC is some kind of Trotskyist enclave. It's a position that's easy to disprove, but it's not the important one: Public service broadcasting is the objective ally of those who want the spirit of liberal democracy to be strengthened. There are people on the left and right who fit into this camp (ffs, even Henry Porter grasps this one!). And those people, in turn, are the objective allies of democratic socialism.

Labour could - and should have made it impossible for the Tories' well times assault on public service broadcasting - an assault that will perhaps do the centre-left for more long-term political damage than anything else that's happened this week.

Listening to Alison Garnham of the Child Poverty Action Group on the recent Moral Maze Radio 4 programme (11.40mins in on the 20/10/2010), you can hear a fairly good position on what progressive taxation should look like (along with a defence of universal benefits). It's one that - if it had been articulated by New Labour and it's successors, it would have given Labour a methodical basis on which they should oppose the Child Benefit cuts. No-one in the Labour Party seemed capable of making Alison's simple points.

One of the reasons that the Lib-Dems were able to enter into a coalition with the Tories was that Labour's clumsy approach to questions of individual liberty legitimised a good deal of the informal coalition building between liberals and conservatives before the election. At the time I was moaning about how daft the wider left was in participating in it, but it's a flank that older Labour heads would never have left exposed in the first place.

The paucity of The Third Way as a construct was very illustrative here: It sort of implied that co-ops / mutualism or something was the Labour answer to the unpalatable poles of wholesale nationalisation or privatisaton. But in failing to deal - strategically - with the lack of legitimacy or good practice that new forms of collective action offered, they not only squandered the kind of opportunity that the centre-left will only ever have again if it gets 13 years of uninterrupted power - it also ceded it's best idea to the Tories, who have picked it up (after a fashion) with the Big Society idea.

Dan is right about the tactical failings. But the biggest problem is that the left has no organisation, no widely-articulated philosophical underpinning. We have no idea what we should be arguing for. That's why we bicker about how we argue against a very coherent government.

Been looking for this for a while

Twenty years, in fact. Then it turns up on YouTube.

Healey, 'the squeezed middle', and the challenge to Labour

(Disclaimer: Written in a hurry. Intended to capture an idea rather than make the argument perfectly)

I had an odd reply on twitter recently suggesting that I was involved in a bit of co-ordinated boosterism when I said something supportive of John Healey MP who has done exceptionally well in his bid to join the Shadow Cabinet.

It seems I'm not alone in hoping that he becomes a more prominent and influential member of the Opposition team (Left Foot Forward's Will Straw and Labour List's Anthony Painter have also been noting his finer points. They may all have been co-ordinating each other for all I know, but I wasn't!

I've known John for a long time, and only slightly (he used to say 'no' repeatedly to me when I tried to sell him things in his various Trade Union capacities before he was an MP, - if anything, I should be bearing grudges!). But his view that Labour needs to address a good deal of it's policy focus to the squeezed middle is a useful one for the party to get it's head around for all kinds of reasons.

His particular willingness to pick this up probably does stem from his time at MSF and later at the TUC, as this demographic - one that is over-represented among public sector workers in general and paid-up trades unionists in particular - is electoral low hanging fruit for the party. The messages that Labour will make from within their comfort-zone over the next couple of years are going to have an obvious appeal to these voters, many of whom didn't vote for us last time. A while ago, I outlined one of my hasty ten-point plans for Labour renewal (the things insomnia prompts me to do!) Points 2, 3 and 4 are ones that could be pursued within our comfort-zone - especially with our new fangled anti-NuLab leader!)

But this raises an important question for Labour and its diaspora. I'm in a hurry so I'm going to post two links in lieu of throat clearing:

1. Chris Dillow on the degree to which political movements skew their definition of social justice to match the demands of powerful minorities
2. Hopi Sen on the decline of Trades Unions - less in terms of the numbers of members that they claim and more in terms of their claims to represent a broad swathe of working people

And if that isn't enough laziness on my part, I'd like to link to a post written by someone called 'Why Labour's electoral college is the most mature and democratic means of electing a leader.' I think its a very good system and when I get a moment I'll say why. It's very much to the party's credit that it throws this decision open to millions of people who may not be nailed on Labour voters, but who are members of organisations that share the party's commitment to collective action and a degree of economic democracy.

It's only flaw is in Hopi's point about the narrowness of TU members, and this is something that a Labour big-noise with the ear of the Unions needs to be pressing home.

Unions charge about £10 a month for membership. This is a huge generalisation, but bear with me willya? They bundle a series of offerings together with what John Monks used to call 'the magic ingredient of trade unionism.' The thing is, unless you work in a unionised workplace or one where a spot of solidarity can make an obvious difference, it's hard to make the case for an outlay like this. There is a real opportunity to offer a telephone / web only contact service with cut-down access to TU services and commercial offerings priced at (say) £3. TU Lite anyone?

I've worked with some of the biggest Unions and, in my experience, in many cases, their attitude to aggressive recruitment has often ranged from piss-poor to shameful. In recent years, most of their expansionary energy has gone into mergers with a handful of super-unions growing to dominate the TUC.

I've seen plenty of evidence of TU officials resisting potentially effective means of online expansion because (in my opinion) they felt it would threaten the base of professional organisers. And while this is understandable from the organisers I suppose - we're all guilty of budget maximising in our jobs at some time or other - but I've often been surprised at the indifference from senior Trades Unionists about this. In my last workplace a few years ago (12 staff at the time) I had to repeatedly chase the T&GWU to get hold of membership forms.

We eventually got an 'organiser' (!) out to make the case for joining in about the sloppiest way imaginable, and it was almost impossible to get the completed form processed once I'd returned them. (Getting them to respond to any attempt to access 'member services' was no more impressive).

I'd also add that there are very honourable exceptions to this observation, but still....

Until Unions are prepared to re-package their offering in order to expand - perhaps offering lite online flavours of membership with options to join the political fund, they will continue to be confined to a declining base and will be failing in their professed mission to be evangelists for Labour politics.

And until this happens, Labour will be tethered to a section of the electoral college that isn't as legitimate as it could be. It will be losing an opportunity to improve our policy and selection processes. As it happens, it will also potentially be a political hostage to fortune if the Tories manage to make their Red Ed charge stick in any way.

So maybe one or two new members of the Shadow Cabinet will be able to pluck up the courage to go to the Unions and ask them to offer a bit more than the odd cheque as part of their commitment to growing the Labour movement?

Comedy gold

Big money getting involved in football clubs. There are some upsides:



I support two teams. Forest, and whoever Liverpool are playing.

Time for an open and honest debate about Migration Watch?

I nicked that title from this post here which offers an argument that I'd fully subscribe to.

Following in the very successful steps of the British Chiropractic Association in using the libel laws to challenge their critics, the right-wing think-tank Migration Watch has turned it's learned friends on Sally Bercow, a Labour activist.

David Allen Green, formerly Jack of Kent and his colleagues at Preiskel & Co are acting for Ms Bercow. For me, the rights and wrongs of this run behind the simple rule that you shouldn't use the libel laws to suppress open debate.

End of.

Obligatory Papal visit-related post

I didn't think I'd find myself taking much notice of the Pope's visit. In religious terms, I'm an agnostic and in cultural terms, I'm a Catholic in the same way as you can be Jewish without believing in God.

I hear the complaints about the historical abuses of the Catholic church along with the idiotic social policies (particularly on contraception) and understand the fury that it causes, but in personal terms, my contact with the Catholic church was largely benign. There is, admittedly, something deeply evil about allowing women who have had celibacy enforced upon them to have access to canes and schoolboys, but if you were at school in the 1970s, being caned was an occupational hazard.

So I'm bored by the Pope's visit. There's nothing in it for me. I'm irritated by it in the same way that Flying Rodent is (but probably with fewer resulting laughs). But there was one aspect of the whole thing that did make me jump out of my chair. It's this bit:

"Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.....

....as we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."

I started listing, in my head, the ways that this line of thinking was deluded before I stumbled on this post by Johnny that does it so much more comprehensively than I could have done.

The LibDems: keeping lines of communication open

Over on Freemania, Tom has what appears to be a good 1st draft for any Labour spokesperson in addressing the deficit.

As their conference kicks off today, I'm a bit concerned, however, that Tom isn't going far enough in terms of ensuring that we communicate how far we understand the LibDems predicament, and how far we're prepared to go in working with them if (and when?) the time comes when both sides think that it's the right thing to do.

If you're providing v1.0 briefings to any Labour politician, it also has to address how the Liberal Democrats have to be spoken of with a view to ensuring that a constructive relationship can be had with them - one where they always know that there is the option to abandon the coalition if it can be shown to be in the national interest, and one where bridges aren't burnt.

So I'd add the following:

• In May, the LibDems felt that they had no option but to enter a coalition with the Conservatives in the national interest. They were right to do so, however galling it is for Labour to admit. Given the scale of the economic crisis, the instability of a confidence and supply arrangement would have been hard to justify. The figures made it very difficult to pull a majority together that included Labour and, as a party, an influential minority of our MPs were already ruling out the possibility of a deal anyway
  
• We understand that they are the junior partners in a coalition that demands a degree of corporate responsibility, and Labour isn't here to take cheap shots at people who have tough choices to make
• We think that the LibDems could have negotiated a better deal on social issues than they did - there seem to be a number of areas (not least, electoral reform) where they appear to have been sold a Pup. We understand the frustration of LibDem activists and back-benchers here.
  

We are approaching a point at which it is going to become clear that there are two responses to the current crisis. One is to act pragmatically in the national interest. The other is to adopt a vicious and opportunistic assault on the very idea of collective action and the enabling state. At that point, the LibDems are going to have to reconsider their relationship with the Conservatives, and if they need to act in the national interest, Labour will be there to help them.

Labour recognises the need to reassess many the assumptions that guided our day-to-day decisions in government. There are many aspects of public management that we could have handled better, but all of the evidence shows that Labour's policy approach was working very well - (and better than anyone knew in May) and that the ill thought-out ideological battering that the Conservatives are proposing is very likely to undo the progress that the economy has been making.

******

Personally, I'd add a bit of waffle around the need for the LibDems to at least be structurally progressive with tough demands around media regulation, I'd attack the bizarrely imperfect understanding within the coalition of what makes for good decentralised democracy (isn't it odd that a party whose defining demand has been electoral reform has such a shallow understanding of what makes for good democratic change?), and I'd acknowledge the opportunity that Big Society thinking has to reassess Labour's negligence in seeking innovation around collective action during our 13 years of government. But that would probably take the oul' eye of the ball, wouldn't it?

Pat Metheny - The Orchestrion Project

Have a go on this:

Top Left-wing Blog

I normally get a bit snooty about Iain Dale's Total Politics polls (and moreso since this blog dropped out of them a few years ago), but leaving that aside, congratulations to Will Straw and Shamik Das of Left Foot Forward for being chosen as the best left-wing blog this year - only a year into it's existance. It's certainly everything that a good group blog could be.

I've had a few modest contributions, but I've also thought about sending a few pieces in but decided not to. 'This one isn't good enough for LLF' I"ve said to myself at the time.

When tinfoil hat-wearers accept....

... an Invitation to Join the Government of Britain, it was always going to be a laugh.

I posted something on Twitter earlier asking if we can we make it illegal for anyone to use the word 'freedom' in the name of a political party / pressure group / think tank or even a blog?

In answer, via Mabel, I got a link to this excellent site that should be allowed to sidestep any such ban.

Peterloo 2010?

Chief Superintendent Derek Barnett appears to be suggesting - in a roundabout way - that his colleagues are there to act as the enforcers behind the Government's cuts agenda in the coming months. But at a price.

As Bad Conscience picks up the story, it seems that - when he pictures this service being performed in his own minds eye, he thinks of Peterloo.

Another thing to add to the list of things that Labour should have done better: Not reward the cops for this kind of crude budget-maximising. It seems to come so naturally to them, having been unchallenged on it for so long.

Leaked memo on Transparency

From an impeccable source.

Local councils and (anti) censorship

Maybe it's something that everyone else knows, but I didn't. At the tail-end of this old-ish film clip about Shane Meadows 'This is England' film from a few years ago .....




... (now being sequeled with a TV series), Mark Kermode raises the question of why a film that incorporates an educational message should be given an '18' classification by the BBFC - on the grounds that it includes a bit of racist language and a few violent scenes.

Meadows makes the point that there are plenty of all-action flicks that qualify for a '15' cert while involving slaughter on a vast scale, and I'm sure I don't need to rehearse all sides of this argument for you again.

But for me, the interesting revelation is that a lot of local authorities chose to overturn the BBFC decision and instead apply a '15' certificate for local showings.

It's news to me that this can happen - and I think that it opens up all kinds of possibilities in terms of cultural autonomy. What I'd like to know (and I'll look into it if I get time - unless someone wants to explain it to me) is this: What is the process by which a local authority reviews the BBFC's classification, changes it and then communicates it to local cinemas?

Public speaking - a case study

Via Boing Boing: Here's a test for you. How long can you watch this video for before you have to turn it off?

Boris: Astute

As a piece of personal-positioning-cum-political-mischief-making, this article by Boris Johnson is well worth a read. In it, he...

• casts doubt on the coalition economic strategy, perhaps anticipating it backfiring
• endorses Ed Balls as the most competent leader for the opposition
• applies a serious dig to both of the favourites for that job
• underlines his position as candid friend to The City

There's lots to pick from there (read the whole thing) but this bit is worth repeating:

"...the People's Party is on the verge of making a historic mistake. They are about to elect one of the two Miliband brothers as their leader, when neither of these perfectly amiable north London intellectuals has ever said anything memorable about anything."

Lone Wolf

This lot are really worth a listen. The best LP I've heard in ages. Well constructed complex and literate songs. I suspect that this lot will have a trajectory that goes outside the space that's normally reserved for rock bands. Listen to the whole LP here.

Labour leadership: four gambiteers and none worth an X

I'm quite depressed and pessimistic about the prospects for the Labour Party at the moment. As far as the leadership contest goes, I'm almost-but-not-quite adopting the Derby County v Leeds United approach (hoping they all lose). Mil perfectly encapsulates my view on this here. Likewise, I don't think that pyramids are a very sustainable management model for political parties any more, and I don't think the Labour will sustain one very successfully for very long.

I keep getting e-mails saying 'Join my campaign against....' this and that and I made a mental note early on not to vote for anyone who imagines themselves at the head of some parade with the rest of us just anonymously plodding on behind. This only leaves me with Diane Abbott to vote for as far as I can see and - with all due respect to her - I don't think she's ever been under any illusions about actually winning the contest.

None of these four boys have ever been in a fight in their lives. They were all parachuted into safe seats by a party leadership that prized compliance more highly than anything else. If anyone imagines that Labour can beat the Coalition in an election by using some clever fix that puffs up some Union General Secretary here, and ensures that some Regional Secretary will fix them there, then they are in for a very large disappointment.

And if anyone really imagines that Ed Milliband's pitch as 'the left candidate' is any more than a bit of short-term chessmanship, I hope they will have a stern word with themselves next time they look in the mirror. I've not seen any attempt to address the question of how Labour renews it's historic mission to promote collective action or to improve the participation of the widest section of the population in their own governance. The questions haven't even been broached. There's no politics on offer really. Politicking isn't the same thing. I've seen little evidence that any of them have any convictions that couldn't reasonably be described as a short-term gambit.

The nearest thing I've seen to an impressive statement was Ed Balls Bloomberg speech - admittedly, a good fine sweep over the issues of the day. He's a good columnist. But having met the bloke (admittedly, a long time ago) he's also an arrogant and charmless tosser who wouldn't be capable of any form of policymaking that doesn't involve some tablet of stone authored by himself and imposed by way old-fashioned arm-twisting. Expect years of bickering and backbiting if he gets anywhere near the new frontbench (as I'm sure he will).

I've not seen anything conversational in any of the candidates. I've not seen any pretense that the party itself may have more brains or experience as a whole than any of these Sonnenkind can draw upon from within their small circle of temporary allies.

We do need a leadership contest. We need the concept of leadership - as it is currently understood - to be contested and defeated. New Labour's approach to leadership was based upon a crude and self-serving notion of what was possible within the confines of a hostile media. It involved everybody conniving in the pretense that a single line that united the party could be pushed out to a credible media.

We are like every other party. We're not united. We never will be. We're a loose alliance of people who would object to each other being in government slightly less than we object to Cameron or Clegg. The other parties are identical in this respect - the only thing that changes is the identity of the hate-figures.

We need people in leadership positions who are prepared to do the dirty work of running towards arguments rather than away from them. The Tories didn't even win the election and they're acting as though they've got a 150-seat majority. Unfortunately, we've had a set of processes within our party for nearly 20 years that wrung anyone with this sort of backbone out of frontline politics.

That's why I'm pessimistic. I suppose Ed Milliband's shallow and unconvincing pitch to renew party democracy (it was so flimsy I didn't get beyond the first para - can't even remember where now) should appeal most, but I really can't imagine I'll vote for any of them at the moment.

At this rate, Diane will probably get my X as I labour under the illusion that it will somehow send a message to someone somewhere.