Europe: the last touchstone issue in British politics
Posted on Friday 9 December, 2011
Filed Under Conservative Party, International |
22 Comments
OPPOSITION to the European Union resonates with the Conservative right to a degree that no issue seems to excite any section of the Labour Party anymore, in ways that are essentially unfathomable to those that stand outside the tribe.
For that reason alone, David Cameron’s decision to veto treaty changes designed to prop up the eurozone could prove a pivotal moment in Britain’s domestic politics. Nothing he could have done or said could be better calculated to restore his faltering standing among his activist base. This is Thatcher’s Bruges speech, all over again.
Bear in mind that the old distinction between eurosceptics and pro-European Tories has been ratcheted well to the right. The latter category no long exists, and the division is instead between pragmatists of broadly eurosceptic disposition and out-and-out Little Englanders.
That the prime minister’s move was motivated far more by deference to the City-led financial capitalism that dominates the UK economy then outright opposition to the EU project itself will be lost on the majority of the troops, for whom Cameron now constitutes a hero. Those who only yesterday were comparing him with Chamberlain will be left looking pretty foolish.
The political motivations of Standard & Poor’s
Posted on Tuesday 6 December, 2011
Filed Under Economics |
13 Comments
FIRST they downgraded America. Now it is the turn of the eurozone. Standard & Poor’s is well aware of the weight financial markets attach to its pronouncements, and of late has developed the alarming habit of timing them to maximise their impact.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have issued a statement, noting curtly that they ‘take note’ of the ratings agency’s decision to put France, Germany and 13 other countries on credit watch, implying a 50% chance of a downgrade in the next six month.
But the two leaders are almost certainly furious at this intervention, which just two days ahead of a summit meeting in Brussels later this week that is widely seen as the single currency’s last best hope.
The very real outcome of a downgrade would be to make it more expensive for the European Financial Stability Facility bailout fund to borrow on the back of bonds, leaving less cash to assist indebted countries.
What’s more, if the sovereign debt is downgraded, many corporates will be downgraded, too. What S&P have done this morning damages virtually every bank in Europe.
Cambodia: the trial of Brother Number Two
Posted on Monday 5 December, 2011
Filed Under International |
11 Comments
YOU have to wonder whether Nuon Chea believes his own defence. But the man they called Brother Number Two in 1970s Cambodia now insists that it was the Vietnamese and unspecified ‘rogue elements’ that did the killing in the country’s now world famous killing fields.
‘I don’t want the next generations to misunderstand the history,’ he has told a United Nations-backed court in Phnom Penh, where he is on trial for genocide. ‘I don’t want them to misunderstand that the Khmer Rouge are bad people, are criminals. Nothing is true about that.’
Unfortunately for Nuon Chea, the verdict of history is already largely in. Estimates of the death toll during the four years in which the Communist Party of Kampuchea were in charge of Cambodia vary hugely. Yet when even apologists open the batting by talking down the body count down to a mere 740,000, you get some idea of the enormity of what occurred.
Ed Miliband vs Hugh Gaitskell: a thought experiment
Posted on Sunday 4 December, 2011
Filed Under Blogging, Labour Party |
10 Comments
SUNDAY afternoon finds me engaged in a spot of leisurely freelance journalism. I’ve just knocked out 1,000 words on employment trends for a union magazine, for which I will get not ungenerous NUJ rates. Now I’m writing something for a small circulation leftist publication, for which I will of course not get a penny. The following words stare up at me from my laptop:
Then there was the election of Ed Miliband to the leadership, by the narrowest of margins. Red Ed – as he was misleadingly dubbed by the tabloids – sometimes seems to speak in a strange kind of political code.
This or that comment is designed to be read between the lines as an encouragement to the soft left, although even then, they are usually counterbalanced with some ostensibly even-handed sop to rightist opinion. Is he or is he not to the left of, say, Hugh Gaitskell? Discuss.
I rather like those two paragraphs, some form of which will no doubt end up in the final version. But I’d be interested in readers’ opinions on the last point. Let me suggest a thought experiment.
If you were arranging Labour leaders on a scale from right to (not particularly) left, where would you slot in Ed M in relation to Gaitskell? Or Callaghan, for that matter? Answers in the comments box, please.
Book review: ‘Tony Cliff: a Marxist for his time’ by Ian Birchall
Posted on Sunday 4 December, 2011
Filed Under Book review |
18 Comments
THEY say that no man is a hero to his valet. But the late Tony Cliff was very obviously a hero — and more — to one of his chauffeurs. Ian Birchall, who took 10 years to research and write his mammoth 559-page life story of the founder of the Socialist Workers’ Party, casually mentions in the book that he used to undertake driving duties for his subject.
Obviously there can be no objection to authors writing lengthy volumes on persons they admire greatly. Were that not the case, few biographies other than the ghost-written memoirs of footballers and pop stars would ever be produced.
But my guess here is that Bookmarks, the SWP’s internal publishing house, did not have to fight off a flurry of interest from commercial publishers desperately lodging six figure bids to secure exclusive rights on this one.
So was this a decade well spent? By the yardsticks that dominate in this society, Cliff’s sole achievement was to create a political organisation with a four-figure membership that has almost nothing concrete to show for 60 years of continuous struggle.
Read the rest here.
Jeremy Clarkson: the politics of deathwish jokes
Posted on Friday 2 December, 2011
Filed Under Conservative Party, Industrial relations |
39 Comments
THREE quarters of Telegraph readers back Jeremy Clarkson in the row over his ‘execute strikers’ outburst. The Top Gear presenter’s remarks should not have been taken seriously, because he was only joking, they insist.
As Freud explained over a hundred years ago, tendentious jokes are a mask for socially unacceptable feelings, not least hostility. There is presumably some level at which Britain’s most famous petrolhead meant exactly what he said.
And if a joke is defined as amusing story with punchline, or even just a clever witticism, then Clarkson’s ugly little rant doesn’t deserve that designation. He is hardly in a position to plead exoneration on account of his exquisite wordplay.
Yet as a leftie who believes in freedom of speech, I reluctantly find myself agreeing that an apology probably suffices here. Nobody can seriously contend that Clarkson was actually calling for public sector employees to be rounded up at dawn and made to face banker-led firing squads.
N30 open thread
Posted on Wednesday 30 November, 2011
Filed Under Industrial relations |
23 Comments
‘The collapse of decent pension provision in the private sector is not much of an argument for cutting provision for nurses.’ – Philip Stephens, Financial Times.
I’M SHORTLY off to display private sector wealth creator solidarity with public sector colleagues by joining the London N30 demo. Workers of the world unite, and all that. The comments box below is open for reports, observations, comments etc.
Marxism in China: it’s a museum piece
Posted on Tuesday 29 November, 2011
Filed Under International |
36 Comments
SOMEHOW the most vibrant capitalist economy on the planet still lends itself ideological legitimation by claiming adherence to Marxism. What is happening in China plays havoc with key theoretical assumptions of the socialist left and the free market right alike.
How does the obvious disjunction between base and superstructure, at least at the level of ideology, square with traditional readings of historical materialism? Had Hayek lived a little longer, would he have approved of the place as much as he obviously approved of Pinochet’s Chile?
Topics for a blog post another time, perhaps. But what caught my eye today is word that the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau is to launch a China Marxism Museum in Beijing before the end of the year.
The CCTB, for those that have never heard of it, is an offshoot of the central committee of the Communist Party of China. It employs the best part of 300 people to translate Marxist classics and to research the history of world socialism.
N30: trade unions only look dead
Posted on Monday 28 November, 2011
Filed Under Politics, Trade Unions |
17 Comments
HARDLINERS. Militants itching for a fight. Michael Gove is in no doubt about who is responsible for N30.
Yet there are a couple of fundamental flaws with the education secretary’s assertion that those taking part in Wednesday’s public sector stoppage are being manipulated by an unrepresentative clique of hard left union bosses.
For a start, every single one of the unions participating does so on the back of a mandate from its membership, with overwhelming ‘yes’ votes in every instance of which I am aware.
The Tories typically point to the low turnout figures, on the questionable assumption that failure to return a ballot paper is somehow equivalent to opposing a walkout.
Yet the evidence is that the strike is strongly backed, and not just by the strikers. An opinion poll published by the BBC today finds 61% believe N30 is justified, a total that includes almost four in five 18 to 24 year olds.
N30: join the private sector wealth creators’ bloc
Posted on Friday 25 November, 2011
Filed Under Economics, Industrial relations |
25 Comments
GOOD thing I won’t have to take David Cameron up on his stupid idea of bringing the kids into the office when teachers go on strike next Wednesday. I can just picture the chaos that would inevitably result.
The 11 year old would sulk in a corner all day long, telling anyone who politely introduced themselves that she really, really hated them and never wanted to speak to them ever again. Knowing my luck, she would demonstrate her awareness of the F-word within earshot of the chief executive.
The younger one would charm all adults in the vicinity, lisping and giggling as she happily skips around the building, innocently saying things like ‘what happens if I press that button, daddy?’
At that point, she would lunge for the button in question and irreversibly delete the firm’s principal database, compiled through decades of round the clock labour on the part of generations of wage slaves.
