In 2010, I voted for Ed. Well, actually, I voted for the other Ed, for I was a Broonie to the end. But by the time I did so it was clear that my second vote, for one bro or the other, was the important one.
To be honest I didn't cast either of my Eds votes with any great enthusiasm. It was more that neither was David. For David was Blair. And Blair was Iraq.
And Iraq was unforgiveable.
I read with interest the Lord Ashcroft focus group report. Patently it reflects that Corbyn has no chance of winning a General Election. Which is why I didn't vote for him.
But, let us be clear. Sure there were lots of £3ers whose loyalty to the Labour Party, or anything, is, at best, ephemeral. Sure there was some dodgy dealing when it came to affiliated members. But Corbyn won among full members of the Labour Party. Peter Kellner's research seems to indicate that he probably won among Party members of more than five years standing. Even if he might have, among that group, ultimately faltered after transfers, nobody doubts that he won a plurality.
And the reason was Iraq.
Not actually Iraq but what Iraq represented.
The vast majority of Labour Party members knew Iraq was a mistake. Obviously we have within our ranks a peacenik cadre who think any war is a mistake. That appears to include our current leader. But most of us don't take that view. We are certainly for the use of military force. But only when it is for a justified purpose and reasonably clear as to its objectives.
And we simply could not see the justified purpose of Iraq. Or, in so far as it seemed to have objectives, agree with these objectives.
But even that wasn't the point. The point was that something opposed by the vast majority of Labour Party members; that something opposed in their hearts by a majority of Labour MPs; that something which the second most important figure in the Party (Brown) could send coded signals was not his doing; that this something happened anyway.
For the iron grip of New Labour was such that the Party's view was irrelevant. And worse still that for anybody even at the very top of the Party to dissent was instant political death. When Robin Cook resigned he did so in the certain knowledge that he wouldn't be back. Any back bench MP, no matter how able, joining the rebellion, knew that doing so would end their career. Forever. You can't help feeling the younger Miliband was only saved from this fate by not being an MP. That is, of course, assuming he would truly have voted with his conscience if he had actually been there.
It would be an interesting exercise, if you could, to go back to that 2003 PLP and ask them, unattributally, how they would have voted in a genuinely free vote. Not hiding behind the "if we knew then" formulation but, truly, what was their view at the time. My feeling is that even among the "Red Tories" there was nothing like a majority for participation. For all of these people had been elected as Labour MPs. And nobody achieves that imprimatur without some feeling for our Party. And the Party's view was more or less unanimous. But they knew that dissent was suicide.
In Scottish terms there was the march. I was on that march. It was a great day. Possibly the last great march of my lifetime. NUS Scotland reunited over several generations. And now able to afford a good lunch afterwards. But where were my comrades of twenty years standing? Jack, Wendy, Frank, Pauline, Jackie and so many others? They were at the march's destination, inside the SECC. For Blair was there and as MSPs they were expected to stand beside him. Or die. Who knows, perhaps if I'd been an MSP I'd have made the same call. Although I can't help feeling that last September the 15% who got the blood and soilers to their 45% were incubated that day.
And then of course we, Party majority opinion, after Iraq, were proved right. And yet, under the iron diktat of New Labour, even that could not be acknowledged. No matter how patently true subsequent events proved it to be.
But, and I emphasise the but, the long term significance of this was not really about Iraq. It was about the disconnect between the leadership of the party and the opinions of the thousands of activists who had worked to get them elected which that represented. Iraq was just the lightning rod.
And, twelve years on, Corbyn has proved to have been the earth to that lightning rod.
Almost all the post election analysis has been about why Corbyn won. But, at least as importantly to those of us who haven't given upon the Labour Party altogether is why the others lost.
None of them offered any role to the wider Party except followship. To the right for Liz; straight on for Yvette and whatever the day of the week the polls suggested for Andy.
Corbyn, if not perhaps many of his ultra left allies, suggested that we let a thousand flowers bloom. It's hopeless politics in the real world. But he wasn't appealing to the real world. He was appealing (as it turns out very appealing) to the Labour Party.
He won't last.
But let us be clear. If next time round any of the contenders stand on a platform of "I'll be your leader and you'll shut up" then they'll suffer the same fate as Andy, Yvette and Liz.
For we remember Iraq.
Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Saturday, 12 September 2015
Refugees Welcome?
I've been a legal aid lawyer all my life.
And what goes with that is a lot of interaction with homelessness.
Not just in relation directly to "housing" matters. To people losing their home for reasons related to the house itself: its uninhabitable condition; its occupants inability to meet the continued cost of living there or its owner's unwillingness to allow their occupation.
No, homelessness also arises for other reasons: domestic violence; pathologically antisocial neighbours; vigilantism against certain types of offenders; chronic private debt; failed business ventures.
It is all part of my "daily grind".
And I do what the law allows me to do to help while recognising that, to some degree at least, many of the clients are the partial, or more, authors of their own misfortune. And regrettably, even some of those who are not, would not be people with whom you would wish greater familiarity.
But, every so often, you do get a case where you have someone who seems a genuinely decent individual, or family, who is facing uncertainty as to where they would be sleeping that very evening.
And here is the thing. I've got a big house. Until Maureen became ill, we had three spare bedrooms and one spare bathroom. We even have a largely unused garage that could be used for storage. Arrangements that have, now that we have to accommodate Maureen's illness and the carers who go with it, proved to be a Godsend but which were, for many years, a middle class indulgence. We bought the house perhaps in anticipation of kids who never came but we stayed in it because we liked it and we could afford it. Simple as that.
But for fifteen years I dealt with all these homelessness cases without once considering that, as a final resort, these clients could come and stay with me.
Now, you can rationalise this in any numbers of ways. That individual acts of charity only excuse the failures of the system. That there is "no point" in helping help only some when you can't help more. That it is patronising to select the deserving case(s). Less charitably, that perhaps there is something, on wider acquaintance, that might reveal them to be not quite so deserving.
All of these things might have a grain of truth although similar arguments have never stopped me making any number of charitable donations to domestic causes that I properly believe should be funded by general taxation. Or indeed stopped Maureen, before she was ill and in a way I have continued, sponsoring individual African children, through a charity of her choice.
No, the reason in the end I never took any of these people in was selfishness. I like where I stay and I have no desire to share it with anybody else, no matter how deserving.
So, if I had been a politician asked to take in a Syrian refugee, my answer would have been "Sorry, but no."
And it is utterly delusional to suggest that this would not be the similar response of the vast majority of other British people asked the same question. Not just to their home but to their Country.
So why are we pretending otherwise?
Because no-one wants to admit being selfish. Or at least no decent liberal, let alone socialist, does.
Britain is proud of the 0.7% of GDP we spend on foreign aid and it is to he credit of the Prime Minister that he has maintained that New Labour commitment in the face of siren calls from his own right wing. But could we do more? Of course we could. A 1% increase in the basic rate of income tax could significantly enhance that commitment and, yet, even then, the poorest British citizen contributing to that would remain infinitely better off than every single recipient of that aid.
The right might trot out their arguments: "too much would be diverted to corruption"; "it would still be a drop in the ocean"; "the Lord helps those who help themselves"; etc, etc. But the left should be more honest. The British people wouldn't vote for this. Nor would the Scottish people. The Scottish Government does have devolved competence to develop its own aid programme, notably to Malawi, but why is it not much larger? Because Scots would rather have no tuition fees. Here. And free prescriptions. Here. And, it would appear shortly, to have reduced Air Passenger Duty. Here.
I say all of this only to expose the hypocrisy of those whose response to the Syrian Refugee crisis is apparently "let them all come here."
The one thing you can say about the Greens is that they have a, sometimes unworldly, honesty. Caroline Lucas last week pointed out that if Britain took our share of the Syrian refugees currently wishing to resettle in the EU then that would amount to "only" 240,000 people. A figure Ms Lucas, with commendable consistency, suggested we volunteer to accept as it was "only" 0.4% of the UK population. Although presumably as she trotted out her "we've got room" message she wasn't proposing them housed anywhere in the green belt. Despite that being where the room is.
Nicola, never wishing to be outflanked by the evil Tories, has largely stuck to suggesting Scotland could take "more" than whatever Cameron is suggesting but the only figure that she has actually given is "at least 1000". Which is actually less than our share of Cameron's belated figure of 20,000. But Scotland's share of Ms Lucas's figure would be about 20,000 for us alone. Maybe another 19,000 is implied in the First Minister's "at least" formulation but somehow I doubt it. It seems improbable anyway that the leader of a Party predicated on getting back the money "the English have been stealing from us" wishes to do so only to give it away to people of some other nationality.
For all of these people would need housed; their children educated; their health care needs attended to and, not least, they themselves ultimately found employment. Now, all this could be done. We live in one of the very richest countries in the world. Taxes could be raised; money could be borrowed; the world scoured for the professionals to come here to deliver the support services required
Except that there is no sign at all that the electorate are prepared to make such a sacrifice to address poverty and disadvantage here. So, really, are they going to do so for people from half way across the world?
We should stop kidding these poor refugees on. "Refugees Welcome" might give a warm feeling to those expressing that sentiment but even most of those asserting that are not truly proposing to welcome them in the numbers remotely necessary to solve the problem within these shores alone.
The evil Tory Government is right. Not because they are evil Tories because they are the Government. Any British (or Scottish) Government. Not just people holding up signs. We can only do so much here. Because that is all the electorate will be prepared to fund. The solution lies not in misleading people risking drowning off the Turkish coast that if they are persistent enough they will one day find themselves in comfortable British suburbia. In the short term it can only be by mitigating the conditions in the refugee camps on Syria's borders. And in the longer term by somehow resolving the modern Hell that Syria itself has become.
For the British people are selfish. So, for what its worth, are the peoples of all other Countries in the West. There might be a small minority among us who, genuinely, would make the financial sacrifices involved to make a difference. But it is beyond cruelty for them to ignore their own minority status and, in the process, to give desperate people utterly false hope.
And what goes with that is a lot of interaction with homelessness.
Not just in relation directly to "housing" matters. To people losing their home for reasons related to the house itself: its uninhabitable condition; its occupants inability to meet the continued cost of living there or its owner's unwillingness to allow their occupation.
No, homelessness also arises for other reasons: domestic violence; pathologically antisocial neighbours; vigilantism against certain types of offenders; chronic private debt; failed business ventures.
It is all part of my "daily grind".
And I do what the law allows me to do to help while recognising that, to some degree at least, many of the clients are the partial, or more, authors of their own misfortune. And regrettably, even some of those who are not, would not be people with whom you would wish greater familiarity.
But, every so often, you do get a case where you have someone who seems a genuinely decent individual, or family, who is facing uncertainty as to where they would be sleeping that very evening.
And here is the thing. I've got a big house. Until Maureen became ill, we had three spare bedrooms and one spare bathroom. We even have a largely unused garage that could be used for storage. Arrangements that have, now that we have to accommodate Maureen's illness and the carers who go with it, proved to be a Godsend but which were, for many years, a middle class indulgence. We bought the house perhaps in anticipation of kids who never came but we stayed in it because we liked it and we could afford it. Simple as that.
But for fifteen years I dealt with all these homelessness cases without once considering that, as a final resort, these clients could come and stay with me.
Now, you can rationalise this in any numbers of ways. That individual acts of charity only excuse the failures of the system. That there is "no point" in helping help only some when you can't help more. That it is patronising to select the deserving case(s). Less charitably, that perhaps there is something, on wider acquaintance, that might reveal them to be not quite so deserving.
All of these things might have a grain of truth although similar arguments have never stopped me making any number of charitable donations to domestic causes that I properly believe should be funded by general taxation. Or indeed stopped Maureen, before she was ill and in a way I have continued, sponsoring individual African children, through a charity of her choice.
No, the reason in the end I never took any of these people in was selfishness. I like where I stay and I have no desire to share it with anybody else, no matter how deserving.
So, if I had been a politician asked to take in a Syrian refugee, my answer would have been "Sorry, but no."
And it is utterly delusional to suggest that this would not be the similar response of the vast majority of other British people asked the same question. Not just to their home but to their Country.
So why are we pretending otherwise?
Because no-one wants to admit being selfish. Or at least no decent liberal, let alone socialist, does.
Britain is proud of the 0.7% of GDP we spend on foreign aid and it is to he credit of the Prime Minister that he has maintained that New Labour commitment in the face of siren calls from his own right wing. But could we do more? Of course we could. A 1% increase in the basic rate of income tax could significantly enhance that commitment and, yet, even then, the poorest British citizen contributing to that would remain infinitely better off than every single recipient of that aid.
The right might trot out their arguments: "too much would be diverted to corruption"; "it would still be a drop in the ocean"; "the Lord helps those who help themselves"; etc, etc. But the left should be more honest. The British people wouldn't vote for this. Nor would the Scottish people. The Scottish Government does have devolved competence to develop its own aid programme, notably to Malawi, but why is it not much larger? Because Scots would rather have no tuition fees. Here. And free prescriptions. Here. And, it would appear shortly, to have reduced Air Passenger Duty. Here.
I say all of this only to expose the hypocrisy of those whose response to the Syrian Refugee crisis is apparently "let them all come here."
The one thing you can say about the Greens is that they have a, sometimes unworldly, honesty. Caroline Lucas last week pointed out that if Britain took our share of the Syrian refugees currently wishing to resettle in the EU then that would amount to "only" 240,000 people. A figure Ms Lucas, with commendable consistency, suggested we volunteer to accept as it was "only" 0.4% of the UK population. Although presumably as she trotted out her "we've got room" message she wasn't proposing them housed anywhere in the green belt. Despite that being where the room is.
Nicola, never wishing to be outflanked by the evil Tories, has largely stuck to suggesting Scotland could take "more" than whatever Cameron is suggesting but the only figure that she has actually given is "at least 1000". Which is actually less than our share of Cameron's belated figure of 20,000. But Scotland's share of Ms Lucas's figure would be about 20,000 for us alone. Maybe another 19,000 is implied in the First Minister's "at least" formulation but somehow I doubt it. It seems improbable anyway that the leader of a Party predicated on getting back the money "the English have been stealing from us" wishes to do so only to give it away to people of some other nationality.
For all of these people would need housed; their children educated; their health care needs attended to and, not least, they themselves ultimately found employment. Now, all this could be done. We live in one of the very richest countries in the world. Taxes could be raised; money could be borrowed; the world scoured for the professionals to come here to deliver the support services required
Except that there is no sign at all that the electorate are prepared to make such a sacrifice to address poverty and disadvantage here. So, really, are they going to do so for people from half way across the world?
We should stop kidding these poor refugees on. "Refugees Welcome" might give a warm feeling to those expressing that sentiment but even most of those asserting that are not truly proposing to welcome them in the numbers remotely necessary to solve the problem within these shores alone.
The evil Tory Government is right. Not because they are evil Tories because they are the Government. Any British (or Scottish) Government. Not just people holding up signs. We can only do so much here. Because that is all the electorate will be prepared to fund. The solution lies not in misleading people risking drowning off the Turkish coast that if they are persistent enough they will one day find themselves in comfortable British suburbia. In the short term it can only be by mitigating the conditions in the refugee camps on Syria's borders. And in the longer term by somehow resolving the modern Hell that Syria itself has become.
For the British people are selfish. So, for what its worth, are the peoples of all other Countries in the West. There might be a small minority among us who, genuinely, would make the financial sacrifices involved to make a difference. But it is beyond cruelty for them to ignore their own minority status and, in the process, to give desperate people utterly false hope.
Thursday, 3 September 2015
It's Still Over.
And so, almost exactly a year on from the last one, we have an opinion poll indicating that Scotland would vote Yes in an Independence Referendum.
Now, logically, this should be a problem for those of us who oppose Scottish Independence. Our majority is apparently slipping.
Except it is not. For an instant answer to an unspecific proposition is of course very different from what would be involved were there to be another referendum.
Ironically, the people for whom this poll is a problem are the leadership of he Nationalist movement. Not the common herd, who even now are no doubt seized with a spirit of "one more heave". Hope over Fear as they would have it. Hate over Sense might be a more accurate description. Whichever, not much thinking is involved. But the Nats do have a thinking element.
That thinking element went for broke last September. Until late on, they hadn't ever really thought they had a chance. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of their tartan clad foot soldiers, they had read all the polling data. More to the point, they knew that they were walking an intellectual tightrope on the economic argument; that the truth was that an Independent Scotland would lead to an immediate reduction in living standards. Some genuinely thought that in the medium to long term this would be reversed. Others that, even if it wasn't, the sacrifice was nonetheless worth it for a flag. But, of course, neither scenario was the proposition being put to the electorate. Although that was covered up as best as possible the thinking element feared at one point the curtain would be pulled back to reveal not the Wizard of Oz but an old man with a trumpet.
Then suddenly and unexpectedly they thought they might actually win. And these people, the thinking Nationalists, genuinely believe in independence. So they thought "to Hell with it!" and allowed themselves to become allied with a complete absence from economic, even factual, reality.
So we had tens of thousand of Yes leaflets issued maintaining there were secret oilfields whose existence would only be revealed after the vote; we had the nonsense of an entirely invented "export duty" which allocated much of the value of the Scots whisky industry to its English ports of export; above all we had fantasy spending promises predicated on a price of oil that bore no resemblance to any respectable independent forecasters view or even the affordability of these spending promises no matter what the conceivable price of oil. All of this then whipped up into a hysteria over the failure of the "Main Stream Media", and particularly the BBC, to "reveal the truth".
All of this would inevitably have unraveled had there been a Yes vote but the Nationalist calculation then was that it would be too late to go back. As I pointed out before the vote, the stated intention that independence would have been achieved by March 2016, before the next Scottish Parliament elections, was precisely to rule out any opportunity for second thoughts then on the part of the electorate.
Now the problem with this was what happened if the Nats didn't win. As they didn't. It is clear now there are no secret oil fields; export duty no more exists today than it ever did and oil is now trading at something south of $50 a barrel as compared to the"predicted" $113 in the White Paper. Any early rerun of the referendum would therefor start with it being clear, not based on simple opposition assertion but by by now established fact, that the proponents of independence in 2014 had been proven to be, at best, lunatically optimistic and, at worst, actively deceitful. Yet it would be the same people who would be asking the electorate to "trust" them with their support in any re-run.
It is for that reason alone that there will be no cast iron commitment to a second referendum in the SNP's 2016 manifesto. Not that they couldn't win the election on that basis but rather that they would simply lose any Referendum again. Memories will need to have faded a bit before this problem goes away. The same thinking Nats know that.
But there is something else that would need resolved before a second referendum but which cannot. Cannot ever I'm afraid. That is the issue of currency.
There is an emerging consensus on the Nationalist side that they were badly damaged in 2014 by their adherence to the Pound and events since in Greece have demonstrated in spades the illusory nature of suggesting that a significantly different economic policy could be pursued, within a currency union, against the wishes of the larger partner(s) to that union.
So, the nationalist argument, is shifting to suggesting that an independent Scotland should, at any re-run referendum, be proposed to have its own currency. With one bound they would thus be free, they claim.
But say what you like about Alex Salmond, he is not daft. Would he, in an ideal world, have preferred to have fought in 2014 on the proposition of a separate Scottish currency? Of course he would. He's a nationalist and proper nations don't use another nation's currency Why didn't he then? Because, as I say, he is not daft.
If there was the proposition for a separate Scottish currency that currency would immediately have a shadow value on the international trading exchanges. And if that shadow currency was predicated on Scotland emerging into the modern world with a massive public spending deficit and no governmental proposals to address that, (the current SNP proposal), then you can be guaranteed that the value of the shadow Pound Scots would trade internationally at significantly less than the value of the Pound Sterling.
Now what would that mean in base politics? It would mean that the proposition being put before the electorate at any future referendum would be that anybody in Scotland paid by the Government (pensioners, Civil servants, the chronically sick and the unemployed) would, immediately on independence, suffer a significant cut in their own standard of living. The Scottish Government might tell them that their payment in Pound Scots was worth as much as their former payment in Pound Sterling but that assurance would last no further than a trip to Tesco to buy an imported banana, never mind the outcome when they tried to convert their currency to pay their (still Sterling denominated) mortgage or car loan. This was why, in the end, Syrzia realised that they couldn't "end austerity" by leaving the Euro. The value of the New Drachma wouldn't be simply what the Greek Government said it was worth. It would be what the World was prepared to pay for it. But private and public debts owed in Euros would still be payable in Euros. Even if the debtor only had Drachmas.
And that's why Eck stuck so firmly to Plan A a year ago, even when it clearly was damaging his own cause. It was still doing him less harm than any alternative.
This problem won't go away. And there is one other new factor and that's the Tory majority government. When Osborne, Balls and Alexander ruled out a currency union, there was at least something to the bluff the Nats pulled. I paraphrase: "Osborne might be a Tory Bastard but Labour and the Libs are Parties with big supports in Scotland. If it comes to it, they'll prove more flexible".
Well, Balls and Alexander are no more, alongside their big supports in Scotland. There is only the Tory Bastard now. When he says no it will lack all credibility to insist he doesn't mean it.
But between the Scylla of the redundant plan for a currency union and the Charybdis of a devalued free floating currency, there is no electoral safe passage for the good ship Independence Referendum II. And there never will be.
So it is all very well for the Bravehearts to demand another go as soon as possible. As indeed it is all very well in a random poll for people to answer Yes to an unspecific proposition. The thinking Nats realise that before you can request a meaningful answer however you need to have framed the question. And they are scratching their heads how to do that in a way with any realistic prospect of success.
I'll save them the bother. As I say, they can't.
The problem for the thinking Nats is that it isn't entirely clear a majority of the SNP membership appreciate that. After all, thinking and nationalism have seldom been easy bed fellows and this poll only strengthens the internal hand of those not particularly given to the thinking. So the poll might indeed hasten an attempt at a second referendum. The problem, as the thinking Nats know, is that it wouldn't unfortunately affect the inevitable result.
To lose one Referendum might be unfortunate but to lose two might look awfully like carelessness.
Now, logically, this should be a problem for those of us who oppose Scottish Independence. Our majority is apparently slipping.
Except it is not. For an instant answer to an unspecific proposition is of course very different from what would be involved were there to be another referendum.
Ironically, the people for whom this poll is a problem are the leadership of he Nationalist movement. Not the common herd, who even now are no doubt seized with a spirit of "one more heave". Hope over Fear as they would have it. Hate over Sense might be a more accurate description. Whichever, not much thinking is involved. But the Nats do have a thinking element.
That thinking element went for broke last September. Until late on, they hadn't ever really thought they had a chance. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of their tartan clad foot soldiers, they had read all the polling data. More to the point, they knew that they were walking an intellectual tightrope on the economic argument; that the truth was that an Independent Scotland would lead to an immediate reduction in living standards. Some genuinely thought that in the medium to long term this would be reversed. Others that, even if it wasn't, the sacrifice was nonetheless worth it for a flag. But, of course, neither scenario was the proposition being put to the electorate. Although that was covered up as best as possible the thinking element feared at one point the curtain would be pulled back to reveal not the Wizard of Oz but an old man with a trumpet.
Then suddenly and unexpectedly they thought they might actually win. And these people, the thinking Nationalists, genuinely believe in independence. So they thought "to Hell with it!" and allowed themselves to become allied with a complete absence from economic, even factual, reality.
So we had tens of thousand of Yes leaflets issued maintaining there were secret oilfields whose existence would only be revealed after the vote; we had the nonsense of an entirely invented "export duty" which allocated much of the value of the Scots whisky industry to its English ports of export; above all we had fantasy spending promises predicated on a price of oil that bore no resemblance to any respectable independent forecasters view or even the affordability of these spending promises no matter what the conceivable price of oil. All of this then whipped up into a hysteria over the failure of the "Main Stream Media", and particularly the BBC, to "reveal the truth".
All of this would inevitably have unraveled had there been a Yes vote but the Nationalist calculation then was that it would be too late to go back. As I pointed out before the vote, the stated intention that independence would have been achieved by March 2016, before the next Scottish Parliament elections, was precisely to rule out any opportunity for second thoughts then on the part of the electorate.
Now the problem with this was what happened if the Nats didn't win. As they didn't. It is clear now there are no secret oil fields; export duty no more exists today than it ever did and oil is now trading at something south of $50 a barrel as compared to the"predicted" $113 in the White Paper. Any early rerun of the referendum would therefor start with it being clear, not based on simple opposition assertion but by by now established fact, that the proponents of independence in 2014 had been proven to be, at best, lunatically optimistic and, at worst, actively deceitful. Yet it would be the same people who would be asking the electorate to "trust" them with their support in any re-run.
It is for that reason alone that there will be no cast iron commitment to a second referendum in the SNP's 2016 manifesto. Not that they couldn't win the election on that basis but rather that they would simply lose any Referendum again. Memories will need to have faded a bit before this problem goes away. The same thinking Nats know that.
But there is something else that would need resolved before a second referendum but which cannot. Cannot ever I'm afraid. That is the issue of currency.
There is an emerging consensus on the Nationalist side that they were badly damaged in 2014 by their adherence to the Pound and events since in Greece have demonstrated in spades the illusory nature of suggesting that a significantly different economic policy could be pursued, within a currency union, against the wishes of the larger partner(s) to that union.
So, the nationalist argument, is shifting to suggesting that an independent Scotland should, at any re-run referendum, be proposed to have its own currency. With one bound they would thus be free, they claim.
But say what you like about Alex Salmond, he is not daft. Would he, in an ideal world, have preferred to have fought in 2014 on the proposition of a separate Scottish currency? Of course he would. He's a nationalist and proper nations don't use another nation's currency Why didn't he then? Because, as I say, he is not daft.
If there was the proposition for a separate Scottish currency that currency would immediately have a shadow value on the international trading exchanges. And if that shadow currency was predicated on Scotland emerging into the modern world with a massive public spending deficit and no governmental proposals to address that, (the current SNP proposal), then you can be guaranteed that the value of the shadow Pound Scots would trade internationally at significantly less than the value of the Pound Sterling.
Now what would that mean in base politics? It would mean that the proposition being put before the electorate at any future referendum would be that anybody in Scotland paid by the Government (pensioners, Civil servants, the chronically sick and the unemployed) would, immediately on independence, suffer a significant cut in their own standard of living. The Scottish Government might tell them that their payment in Pound Scots was worth as much as their former payment in Pound Sterling but that assurance would last no further than a trip to Tesco to buy an imported banana, never mind the outcome when they tried to convert their currency to pay their (still Sterling denominated) mortgage or car loan. This was why, in the end, Syrzia realised that they couldn't "end austerity" by leaving the Euro. The value of the New Drachma wouldn't be simply what the Greek Government said it was worth. It would be what the World was prepared to pay for it. But private and public debts owed in Euros would still be payable in Euros. Even if the debtor only had Drachmas.
And that's why Eck stuck so firmly to Plan A a year ago, even when it clearly was damaging his own cause. It was still doing him less harm than any alternative.
This problem won't go away. And there is one other new factor and that's the Tory majority government. When Osborne, Balls and Alexander ruled out a currency union, there was at least something to the bluff the Nats pulled. I paraphrase: "Osborne might be a Tory Bastard but Labour and the Libs are Parties with big supports in Scotland. If it comes to it, they'll prove more flexible".
Well, Balls and Alexander are no more, alongside their big supports in Scotland. There is only the Tory Bastard now. When he says no it will lack all credibility to insist he doesn't mean it.
But between the Scylla of the redundant plan for a currency union and the Charybdis of a devalued free floating currency, there is no electoral safe passage for the good ship Independence Referendum II. And there never will be.
So it is all very well for the Bravehearts to demand another go as soon as possible. As indeed it is all very well in a random poll for people to answer Yes to an unspecific proposition. The thinking Nats realise that before you can request a meaningful answer however you need to have framed the question. And they are scratching their heads how to do that in a way with any realistic prospect of success.
I'll save them the bother. As I say, they can't.
The problem for the thinking Nats is that it isn't entirely clear a majority of the SNP membership appreciate that. After all, thinking and nationalism have seldom been easy bed fellows and this poll only strengthens the internal hand of those not particularly given to the thinking. So the poll might indeed hasten an attempt at a second referendum. The problem, as the thinking Nats know, is that it wouldn't unfortunately affect the inevitable result.
To lose one Referendum might be unfortunate but to lose two might look awfully like carelessness.
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
In Partial Defence of Corbynism.
"Now we're far from that valley of sorrow,
But it's memory we ne'er will forget,
So before we continue our reunion,
Let us stand to our glorious dead."
That is the final verse of Jarama Valley, probably the most famous song to emerge from the International Brigade who fought for the cause of the Spanish Republic.
It's original lyrics were actually written by a Scotsman although it was thanks to Woody Guthrie that the song became truly well known.
Anyway, the version of the song now sung in Scotland traditionally starts with Jarama Valley and then as the valley of sorrow is left in its final verse, segues into the much more upbeat Bandiera Rossa. The reason for that is that this is how the two songs are linked at the end of The Laggan's 1978 folk Album, I am the Common Man and there is virtually no Labour activist of my generation who doesn't possess somewhere a copy of that work. It is almost now a part of the traditions of the Scottish Labour Party.
Now the reason I am telling you this is that Jarama Valley/Bandiera Rossa was sung lustily last Friday night at the conclusion of the rally that Jeremy Corbyn held in Glasgow.
And, although I wasn't there, it seemed from the footage that I saw that a large majority of those present already knew the words.
I'm not voting for Jeremy, I never was, but I am getting more than slightly annoyed at some of the spinning against his supporters. The vast majority of these people were members of the Labour Party before the General Election. Never forget that as recently as December last year, Neil Findlay, Corbyn's Scottish Campaign manager, secured nearly one third of the votes of individual members in the contest to succeed Johann Lamont as leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Patently, none of these members then voting joined only to support the Corbyn surge and, with respect all round, this was despite Findlay being a much weaker candidate than Corbyn, while Murphy was a much stronger opponent than even the combined efforts of Burnham, Cooper and Kendal.
And a good further chunk of Corbyn's support seem to me to be people who had at one time been members of the Party, who had lapsed or consciously resigned, but who have been lured back by the prospect of change. Corbyn is the mechanism for that change but contrary to some of the mockery of these supporters he is NOT seen by them as a messianic figure. These people certainly want to change the Party but they have not taken leave of their senses and it is still, legitimately, their Party as well.
Now, that's not to say that Corbynism doesn't have its lunatic fringe, conspiracy theorists up there with the zoomiest of Scottish Nationalists; entryists from the ultra left and the devious right; keyboard warriors blind to the absurdity of those who paid £3 to become only associate members, even now, calling on those who have been in the Party all their adult lives to "JOIN THE TORIES"!
But it would be a critical mistake to tar the whole of the Corbyn movement with this brush.
A lot of longstanding members of the Labour Party: Election Agents, Branch Secretaries, local Councillors of many years service, have decided to vote for Corbyn. Good grief, today, he has even been endorsed by the Daily Record.
Some of these people genuinely think he can get elected as Prime Minister but I suspect most, in their heart of hearts, know he can't. But I think there are three or four other things going on here.
Firstly, as I pointed out in my penultimate blog, they really doubt that any of the other current candidates can win the big election either. Certainly the utterly inept way they have conducted their leadership campaigns hardly fills you with confidence in their ability to go head to head with Cameron or Osborne in 2020.
Secondly, Party members did not want the internal debate about why we lost immediately closed down, yet that was/is what is on offer from each of the other three. "I'm the leader now, we can't afford internal strife, so just leave it to me." That was essentially what happened in 2010 after Ed won and we then sleep walked to disaster. Certainly, if you phrase it that bluntly, it is absurd to say that the electorate gave the Tories a majority mandate and voted in huge numbers for UKIP because they thought the Labour Party was too right wing. But equally, things were altogether more complicated than it simply being all down to Labour's lack of economic credibility. Yet in many ways to install any one of the other three within four months of our defeat would be to be seen to have effectively endorsed that conclusion without it first being rigorously tested. A period of debate is sometimes a good thing and only Corbyn offers that.
Thirdly, I should say that I depart not one sausage from what I said in last blog. Many of Corbyn's supporters are confusing what is unpopular with them with what is unpopular in the Country. But, at the same time, we can't simply give up on what the Labour Party is meant to stand for: First class public services funded by progressive taxation and a continued concern for those at the bottom of society. Even if that is not universally popular. Kez said this week that people in Scotland no longer understood what the Labour Party stood for. It wasn't just in Scotland. I agreed almost entirely with Brown's attack on Corbyn at the weekend but amidst the repeated quotations from our great leaders of the past he missed one of the most important: "The Labour Party is a Crusade or it is nothing." The man who said that remains the only Labour Leader to have won four General Elections.
And finally there is this. Once installed, it is very difficult to remove a Leader of the Labour Party against their will. That was the problem with Ed. We knew in our gut (and from our canvassing) that he wasn't going to sweep the Country about two years out but he wasn't for shifting. And neither, once installed, would any of the other three candidates this time be for shifting.
But Corbyn is in a different position. He could fall at any time, for assembling the necessary Parliamentary votes to trigger a challenge would not be difficult. More to the point, he is nearly seventy. I suspect if they had known how things would develop he wouldn't have been the candidate of the Party's left at all. It is entirely credible to see Corbyn leading his coalition of the angry till 2018. We would have our debate and we would see where his leadership and that debate had got us. It might be messy, it would be messy, but would it necessarily be worse than the false, to use a quote from another former leader "unanimity of the graveyard" that prevailed from September 2010 until May 8th 2015?
And in 2018? Hopefully the centre of the Party would have more credible candidates than those currently in the field.
So, do I want Corbyn to win? Certainly not. But would his victory be the utterly unmitigated disaster some predict? Perhaps not.
But it's memory we ne'er will forget,
So before we continue our reunion,
Let us stand to our glorious dead."
That is the final verse of Jarama Valley, probably the most famous song to emerge from the International Brigade who fought for the cause of the Spanish Republic.
It's original lyrics were actually written by a Scotsman although it was thanks to Woody Guthrie that the song became truly well known.
Anyway, the version of the song now sung in Scotland traditionally starts with Jarama Valley and then as the valley of sorrow is left in its final verse, segues into the much more upbeat Bandiera Rossa. The reason for that is that this is how the two songs are linked at the end of The Laggan's 1978 folk Album, I am the Common Man and there is virtually no Labour activist of my generation who doesn't possess somewhere a copy of that work. It is almost now a part of the traditions of the Scottish Labour Party.
Now the reason I am telling you this is that Jarama Valley/Bandiera Rossa was sung lustily last Friday night at the conclusion of the rally that Jeremy Corbyn held in Glasgow.
And, although I wasn't there, it seemed from the footage that I saw that a large majority of those present already knew the words.
I'm not voting for Jeremy, I never was, but I am getting more than slightly annoyed at some of the spinning against his supporters. The vast majority of these people were members of the Labour Party before the General Election. Never forget that as recently as December last year, Neil Findlay, Corbyn's Scottish Campaign manager, secured nearly one third of the votes of individual members in the contest to succeed Johann Lamont as leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Patently, none of these members then voting joined only to support the Corbyn surge and, with respect all round, this was despite Findlay being a much weaker candidate than Corbyn, while Murphy was a much stronger opponent than even the combined efforts of Burnham, Cooper and Kendal.
And a good further chunk of Corbyn's support seem to me to be people who had at one time been members of the Party, who had lapsed or consciously resigned, but who have been lured back by the prospect of change. Corbyn is the mechanism for that change but contrary to some of the mockery of these supporters he is NOT seen by them as a messianic figure. These people certainly want to change the Party but they have not taken leave of their senses and it is still, legitimately, their Party as well.
Now, that's not to say that Corbynism doesn't have its lunatic fringe, conspiracy theorists up there with the zoomiest of Scottish Nationalists; entryists from the ultra left and the devious right; keyboard warriors blind to the absurdity of those who paid £3 to become only associate members, even now, calling on those who have been in the Party all their adult lives to "JOIN THE TORIES"!
But it would be a critical mistake to tar the whole of the Corbyn movement with this brush.
A lot of longstanding members of the Labour Party: Election Agents, Branch Secretaries, local Councillors of many years service, have decided to vote for Corbyn. Good grief, today, he has even been endorsed by the Daily Record.
Some of these people genuinely think he can get elected as Prime Minister but I suspect most, in their heart of hearts, know he can't. But I think there are three or four other things going on here.
Firstly, as I pointed out in my penultimate blog, they really doubt that any of the other current candidates can win the big election either. Certainly the utterly inept way they have conducted their leadership campaigns hardly fills you with confidence in their ability to go head to head with Cameron or Osborne in 2020.
Secondly, Party members did not want the internal debate about why we lost immediately closed down, yet that was/is what is on offer from each of the other three. "I'm the leader now, we can't afford internal strife, so just leave it to me." That was essentially what happened in 2010 after Ed won and we then sleep walked to disaster. Certainly, if you phrase it that bluntly, it is absurd to say that the electorate gave the Tories a majority mandate and voted in huge numbers for UKIP because they thought the Labour Party was too right wing. But equally, things were altogether more complicated than it simply being all down to Labour's lack of economic credibility. Yet in many ways to install any one of the other three within four months of our defeat would be to be seen to have effectively endorsed that conclusion without it first being rigorously tested. A period of debate is sometimes a good thing and only Corbyn offers that.
Thirdly, I should say that I depart not one sausage from what I said in last blog. Many of Corbyn's supporters are confusing what is unpopular with them with what is unpopular in the Country. But, at the same time, we can't simply give up on what the Labour Party is meant to stand for: First class public services funded by progressive taxation and a continued concern for those at the bottom of society. Even if that is not universally popular. Kez said this week that people in Scotland no longer understood what the Labour Party stood for. It wasn't just in Scotland. I agreed almost entirely with Brown's attack on Corbyn at the weekend but amidst the repeated quotations from our great leaders of the past he missed one of the most important: "The Labour Party is a Crusade or it is nothing." The man who said that remains the only Labour Leader to have won four General Elections.
And finally there is this. Once installed, it is very difficult to remove a Leader of the Labour Party against their will. That was the problem with Ed. We knew in our gut (and from our canvassing) that he wasn't going to sweep the Country about two years out but he wasn't for shifting. And neither, once installed, would any of the other three candidates this time be for shifting.
But Corbyn is in a different position. He could fall at any time, for assembling the necessary Parliamentary votes to trigger a challenge would not be difficult. More to the point, he is nearly seventy. I suspect if they had known how things would develop he wouldn't have been the candidate of the Party's left at all. It is entirely credible to see Corbyn leading his coalition of the angry till 2018. We would have our debate and we would see where his leadership and that debate had got us. It might be messy, it would be messy, but would it necessarily be worse than the false, to use a quote from another former leader "unanimity of the graveyard" that prevailed from September 2010 until May 8th 2015?
And in 2018? Hopefully the centre of the Party would have more credible candidates than those currently in the field.
So, do I want Corbyn to win? Certainly not. But would his victory be the utterly unmitigated disaster some predict? Perhaps not.
Monday, 10 August 2015
Is Austerity Unpopular?
I spent almost all of my young adult life hating Thatcherism.
Mrs T came to power just before my twenty first birthday and departed only after I had turned thirty two.
From start to finish she was incredibly unpopular with me and with just about everybody else I knew.
And we didn't bother to hide our disapproval of just about everything she did: the sale of council houses; the attack on Trade Union rights; the privatisation of basic public services; the emasculation of local government; the tax cuts for the rich; the abolition of exchange controls; the cold warmongering; the mealy mouthed attitude to Apartheid South Africa; Cruise Missiles; the imperial governing of Scotland; the destruction of deep coal mining................and that's just the start. Every single one of these things was an outrage, something up with which "the people" would not put.
And against each and every one I protested, I campaigned, I threatened an electoral reckoning. And that's just the examples which come most easily to hand. Not only was I against all this, millions of us were. These policies were incredibly unpopular.
And so they were. With a minority.
For it slowly dawned, following election defeat after election defeat, defeat even after the lady herself had departed the stage and we faced only her mini-me successor, that our problem with Mrs Thatcher and her philosophy was not that it was unpopular but rather that it was actually very popular indeed. So popular that it kept winning elections and actually almost split my own Party over whether it was necessary to reach some sort of accommodation.
Sometimes (actually always) you lose elections not because of the malign influence of the Tory press tricking the working class into a false consciousness as to their objective interests but rather simply because the other side's policy offer is more attractive than your own. That, rather than any more Machiavellian explanation, is really why Mrs T roared up record majorities in 1983 and 87. It's also why the Tories held on in 1992. More people supported the Tory Manifesto (in the broadest sense) than those who supported our own. That's all. The rest was just process.
The fact that our side were outraged about this, much more outraged than we'd ever been about Harold McMillan or Ted Heath* counted for literally nothing. There are no extra votes in being "really, really" opposed to the Tories.
And I wonder if we are making the same mistake over "austerity". "Everybody" is apparently opposed to austerity. Well actually, not everybody. Certainly not those who voted Tory: probably most of those who stood by the Liberal Democrats and certainly not those who voted UKIP in the belief that the Tories were too left wing.**
But what actually is austerity? In the proper sense it is neither left wing or right wing. It is not for nothing that Attlee's second chancellor was known as "austerity" Cripps. Austerity per se is simply an economic strategy based on living within your means. That can be done by lower government expenditure (Osborne austerity) or higher taxation (Cripps austerity). And living within the Country's means is the responsibility of every government.*** If you don't you do end up like Greece, or Argentina before it.
And some of even Osborne's austerity is presumably supported by the left. The reduced Defence expenditure; the de facto widening of the 40% tax band; the limited targeting of Child Benefit.
No, what in reality is meant by the shorthand condemnation of "austerity", is condemnation of two specific aspects of how Osborne proposes to balance the budget: Firstly, by cutting the benefits received, and placing increased conditionality of their receipt at all, by the long term unemployed**** and, secondly, by attacking the wages and conditions of public service workers.
Now, these two things are incredibly unpopular with those affected. But, and this involves some hard reality, are they really unpopular with everybody else?
Well, actually, no.
The "benefit cap" is really a Housing Benefit cap. And, do you know, do I think that lots of taxpayers are happy to subsidise the rent that allows others to live in parts of the country where the self same taxpayers could not possibly afford to live themselves? Somehow I doubt it. Actually I don't doubt it. The polling is clear. Just as it is equally clear that, excepting those who have made that choice themselves, virtually nobody supports unemployment at public expense as being a legitimate lifestyle choice.
And, while I know that some, even most, public sector workers work very hard for little reward, do even I think that is anything like a unanimous condition? Or that outrage, on the part of the self same public sector workers, to a freeze on unnecessary recruitment or restrictions on annual increments provokes widespread sympathy with their outrage? To be honest, I suspect it provokes rather a reverse outrage as to why unnecessary recruitment was being contemplated in the first place or indeed why anybody, in this day and age, gets a guaranteed pay rise for doing nothing more than serving time at their work, irrespective of their performance in the job or of the ability of their employer to pay
The Labour Party for good and historic reasons attracts into its membership those more naturally concerned for the condition of the poor. And the pattern of decline of industrial Trade Unionism is such that those working in the public sector are now hugely disproportionate among our affiliated membership. So, for obvious reasons both "wings" of our movement are self selecting when it comes to opposition to this "austerity". If we were in office and did not have to worry about getting re-elected these things would not be happening. Since some attempt would be needed to get the deficit under control I suspect other pretty unpalatable things would be happening but it wouldn't be these things. Actually, I suspect that internally within the Party there would be a majority for solving the problem by an increase in general taxation. There remains however a dim realisation that this would be electorally toxic. So we are left with the only option of pretending that increased and indefinite borrowing is not equally electorally toxic because "everybody" is opposed to "austerity". Unfortunately that's not true. No matter how much we would like it to be. The polling on that is equally clear. Day to day living is equally clear.
Now, it is possible to build an impressive rainbow coalition of the angry, around bleeding heart liberal professionals and (insofar as they vote) their clients; around public sector trade unionists and around that small part of the youth vote with any interest at all in politics. The problem is that this rainbow is several colours short of the full spectrum necessary to win an election. And that the priorities of its limited membership are positively repellent to any other refracted light.
That's the realisation that seems lost on those swept up in Corbynmania. They cannot grasp that what is unpopular with them is not what is unpopular with the Country. That just because it is very unpopular with them and (some of it at least) only half heartedly popular elsewhere (and then only still) with people NOT REALLY INTERESTED IN POLITICS AT ALL! or ONLY INTERESTED IN THEIR OWN POCKET! or INDIFFERENT TO THE MISERY OF OTHERS! that this really makes any difference at all. Everybody only has one vote. Our job is to attract it, not to write it off. That's democracy.
So let's be clear. It may be that fighting "austerity" is morally the right thing for Labour to do, that's almost a different argument. But anybody who thinks that this will be popular with the voters we need to attract to actually get elected is to confuse the views of these voters with the views of those arguing with them.
And would you vote for someone who starts off wanting to argue with you?
Notes
*Actually, I was quite outraged at Ted. I'd probably have been outraged at McMillan as well but I was only three at the time.
**I appreciate that's not the totality of the UKIP vote but it's a fair chunk.
***Even Keynes thought it necessary to balance the budget over an economic cycle. Even Syriza do. They just think (probably correctly) that, starting from here and without default, this is impossible for Greece to do without debt relief.
****Cutting benefits for the working poor is a different matter entirely in the popularity stakes. As the Tories may learn to their cost in due course.
Mrs T came to power just before my twenty first birthday and departed only after I had turned thirty two.
From start to finish she was incredibly unpopular with me and with just about everybody else I knew.
And we didn't bother to hide our disapproval of just about everything she did: the sale of council houses; the attack on Trade Union rights; the privatisation of basic public services; the emasculation of local government; the tax cuts for the rich; the abolition of exchange controls; the cold warmongering; the mealy mouthed attitude to Apartheid South Africa; Cruise Missiles; the imperial governing of Scotland; the destruction of deep coal mining................and that's just the start. Every single one of these things was an outrage, something up with which "the people" would not put.
And against each and every one I protested, I campaigned, I threatened an electoral reckoning. And that's just the examples which come most easily to hand. Not only was I against all this, millions of us were. These policies were incredibly unpopular.
And so they were. With a minority.
For it slowly dawned, following election defeat after election defeat, defeat even after the lady herself had departed the stage and we faced only her mini-me successor, that our problem with Mrs Thatcher and her philosophy was not that it was unpopular but rather that it was actually very popular indeed. So popular that it kept winning elections and actually almost split my own Party over whether it was necessary to reach some sort of accommodation.
Sometimes (actually always) you lose elections not because of the malign influence of the Tory press tricking the working class into a false consciousness as to their objective interests but rather simply because the other side's policy offer is more attractive than your own. That, rather than any more Machiavellian explanation, is really why Mrs T roared up record majorities in 1983 and 87. It's also why the Tories held on in 1992. More people supported the Tory Manifesto (in the broadest sense) than those who supported our own. That's all. The rest was just process.
The fact that our side were outraged about this, much more outraged than we'd ever been about Harold McMillan or Ted Heath* counted for literally nothing. There are no extra votes in being "really, really" opposed to the Tories.
And I wonder if we are making the same mistake over "austerity". "Everybody" is apparently opposed to austerity. Well actually, not everybody. Certainly not those who voted Tory: probably most of those who stood by the Liberal Democrats and certainly not those who voted UKIP in the belief that the Tories were too left wing.**
But what actually is austerity? In the proper sense it is neither left wing or right wing. It is not for nothing that Attlee's second chancellor was known as "austerity" Cripps. Austerity per se is simply an economic strategy based on living within your means. That can be done by lower government expenditure (Osborne austerity) or higher taxation (Cripps austerity). And living within the Country's means is the responsibility of every government.*** If you don't you do end up like Greece, or Argentina before it.
And some of even Osborne's austerity is presumably supported by the left. The reduced Defence expenditure; the de facto widening of the 40% tax band; the limited targeting of Child Benefit.
No, what in reality is meant by the shorthand condemnation of "austerity", is condemnation of two specific aspects of how Osborne proposes to balance the budget: Firstly, by cutting the benefits received, and placing increased conditionality of their receipt at all, by the long term unemployed**** and, secondly, by attacking the wages and conditions of public service workers.
Now, these two things are incredibly unpopular with those affected. But, and this involves some hard reality, are they really unpopular with everybody else?
Well, actually, no.
The "benefit cap" is really a Housing Benefit cap. And, do you know, do I think that lots of taxpayers are happy to subsidise the rent that allows others to live in parts of the country where the self same taxpayers could not possibly afford to live themselves? Somehow I doubt it. Actually I don't doubt it. The polling is clear. Just as it is equally clear that, excepting those who have made that choice themselves, virtually nobody supports unemployment at public expense as being a legitimate lifestyle choice.
And, while I know that some, even most, public sector workers work very hard for little reward, do even I think that is anything like a unanimous condition? Or that outrage, on the part of the self same public sector workers, to a freeze on unnecessary recruitment or restrictions on annual increments provokes widespread sympathy with their outrage? To be honest, I suspect it provokes rather a reverse outrage as to why unnecessary recruitment was being contemplated in the first place or indeed why anybody, in this day and age, gets a guaranteed pay rise for doing nothing more than serving time at their work, irrespective of their performance in the job or of the ability of their employer to pay
The Labour Party for good and historic reasons attracts into its membership those more naturally concerned for the condition of the poor. And the pattern of decline of industrial Trade Unionism is such that those working in the public sector are now hugely disproportionate among our affiliated membership. So, for obvious reasons both "wings" of our movement are self selecting when it comes to opposition to this "austerity". If we were in office and did not have to worry about getting re-elected these things would not be happening. Since some attempt would be needed to get the deficit under control I suspect other pretty unpalatable things would be happening but it wouldn't be these things. Actually, I suspect that internally within the Party there would be a majority for solving the problem by an increase in general taxation. There remains however a dim realisation that this would be electorally toxic. So we are left with the only option of pretending that increased and indefinite borrowing is not equally electorally toxic because "everybody" is opposed to "austerity". Unfortunately that's not true. No matter how much we would like it to be. The polling on that is equally clear. Day to day living is equally clear.
Now, it is possible to build an impressive rainbow coalition of the angry, around bleeding heart liberal professionals and (insofar as they vote) their clients; around public sector trade unionists and around that small part of the youth vote with any interest at all in politics. The problem is that this rainbow is several colours short of the full spectrum necessary to win an election. And that the priorities of its limited membership are positively repellent to any other refracted light.
That's the realisation that seems lost on those swept up in Corbynmania. They cannot grasp that what is unpopular with them is not what is unpopular with the Country. That just because it is very unpopular with them and (some of it at least) only half heartedly popular elsewhere (and then only still) with people NOT REALLY INTERESTED IN POLITICS AT ALL! or ONLY INTERESTED IN THEIR OWN POCKET! or INDIFFERENT TO THE MISERY OF OTHERS! that this really makes any difference at all. Everybody only has one vote. Our job is to attract it, not to write it off. That's democracy.
So let's be clear. It may be that fighting "austerity" is morally the right thing for Labour to do, that's almost a different argument. But anybody who thinks that this will be popular with the voters we need to attract to actually get elected is to confuse the views of these voters with the views of those arguing with them.
And would you vote for someone who starts off wanting to argue with you?
Notes
*Actually, I was quite outraged at Ted. I'd probably have been outraged at McMillan as well but I was only three at the time.
**I appreciate that's not the totality of the UKIP vote but it's a fair chunk.
***Even Keynes thought it necessary to balance the budget over an economic cycle. Even Syriza do. They just think (probably correctly) that, starting from here and without default, this is impossible for Greece to do without debt relief.
****Cutting benefits for the working poor is a different matter entirely in the popularity stakes. As the Tories may learn to their cost in due course.
Wednesday, 29 July 2015
An utterly depressing piece. (After a brighter start)
I've been really busy.
Andi and I were away for three weeks, initially with her folks in Hungary and then, a first even for me, in the Abruzzo. Can't recommend the latter too much as a holiday destination. The Adriatic remains as azure as ever and the sea food better than even my memory from further south recalled. And the hilltop towns inland, now restored, are the equal of much of Tuscany or Umbria. Two hours from Ciampino, straight across the peninsula on the A24, although not perhaps a road to be driven by anybody who suffers from vertigo.
And on our return we've bought a new wee house! Which needless to say, despite being in "move in condition", hasn't actually proved to be in move in condition to Andi's satisfaction. So, walls have had to have been scraped, perfectly good carpets dismissed from further use, and plans made for patio doors, decking and even canopies to be installed at some indeterminate future date.
And then there's my work. Trials held back for my return to be actually conducted. Ridiculously impatient clients demanding appointments to discuss their affairs with their lawyer who has, after all, only been unavailable for a mere three and a half weeks. None of this helped by my secretary of thirty years having decided she is going to retire. And to top it all, a coincidental Scottish Legal Aid Board "peer inspection" where even files in which the Crown unconditionally abandoned proceedings are sent off in fearful anticipation that some distant colleague might observe that this was an inadequate result.
So, I'd have had plenty of reasons for not doing much blogging.
But, to be honest, its not just that.
I'm really wondering what is the point to current Labour politics.
I've always kind of thought that the principal purpose of the Labour Party was to advance the cause of working people. Not just to complain about it but to actually do something about it. And for that, be in no doubt, you need to get elected.
Other than at a local government level, and then only within the constraints of a Council Tax freeze over which we have no control, Labour has not done any advancing of the interests of working people anywhere since 2010.
It is easy to blame/get annoyed with Jeremy Corbyn and those intent on voting for him for the way the leadership election has unfolded. "This man could never win a General Election" is an easy charge to make. And a true one.
But the real villains of this piece are not the Corbynites. Most of them readily concede that their man can't win anything other than an internal election. But it is not fair to say that (most of them) don't care.
It seems to me rather that much of the momentum for the Corbyn surge flows not from a desire to write off electoral success by choosing the man but rather from a rather fatalistic belief that none of the other candidates in the field would bring electoral success either. Given that starting point, there might even be some logic to deciding to go out with a bang rather than a whimper. Who would "remember the Alamo" if Davy Crockett had conceded Santa Anna had a reasonable claim to the fort and reached terms on a negotiated surrender?
Now, whose fault is that?
I started with little enthusiasm for any of the declared candidates and as the campaign has continued if anything my enthusiasm has waned.
It is all very well for her partisans to try and project Liz Kendall as the new Blair but she is not. Blair certainly had a successful political message but he also had other merits:
Andi and I were away for three weeks, initially with her folks in Hungary and then, a first even for me, in the Abruzzo. Can't recommend the latter too much as a holiday destination. The Adriatic remains as azure as ever and the sea food better than even my memory from further south recalled. And the hilltop towns inland, now restored, are the equal of much of Tuscany or Umbria. Two hours from Ciampino, straight across the peninsula on the A24, although not perhaps a road to be driven by anybody who suffers from vertigo.
And on our return we've bought a new wee house! Which needless to say, despite being in "move in condition", hasn't actually proved to be in move in condition to Andi's satisfaction. So, walls have had to have been scraped, perfectly good carpets dismissed from further use, and plans made for patio doors, decking and even canopies to be installed at some indeterminate future date.
And then there's my work. Trials held back for my return to be actually conducted. Ridiculously impatient clients demanding appointments to discuss their affairs with their lawyer who has, after all, only been unavailable for a mere three and a half weeks. None of this helped by my secretary of thirty years having decided she is going to retire. And to top it all, a coincidental Scottish Legal Aid Board "peer inspection" where even files in which the Crown unconditionally abandoned proceedings are sent off in fearful anticipation that some distant colleague might observe that this was an inadequate result.
So, I'd have had plenty of reasons for not doing much blogging.
But, to be honest, its not just that.
I'm really wondering what is the point to current Labour politics.
I've always kind of thought that the principal purpose of the Labour Party was to advance the cause of working people. Not just to complain about it but to actually do something about it. And for that, be in no doubt, you need to get elected.
Other than at a local government level, and then only within the constraints of a Council Tax freeze over which we have no control, Labour has not done any advancing of the interests of working people anywhere since 2010.
It is easy to blame/get annoyed with Jeremy Corbyn and those intent on voting for him for the way the leadership election has unfolded. "This man could never win a General Election" is an easy charge to make. And a true one.
But the real villains of this piece are not the Corbynites. Most of them readily concede that their man can't win anything other than an internal election. But it is not fair to say that (most of them) don't care.
It seems to me rather that much of the momentum for the Corbyn surge flows not from a desire to write off electoral success by choosing the man but rather from a rather fatalistic belief that none of the other candidates in the field would bring electoral success either. Given that starting point, there might even be some logic to deciding to go out with a bang rather than a whimper. Who would "remember the Alamo" if Davy Crockett had conceded Santa Anna had a reasonable claim to the fort and reached terms on a negotiated surrender?
Now, whose fault is that?
I started with little enthusiasm for any of the declared candidates and as the campaign has continued if anything my enthusiasm has waned.
It is all very well for her partisans to try and project Liz Kendall as the new Blair but she is not. Blair certainly had a successful political message but he also had other merits:
- He was far from a political unknown before he was elected
- He sought the leadership, thanks in part to the Granita deal, with the support of pretty much all of the Party's other front line representatives
- He inherited, anyway, a pretty united and determined Party from John Smith so he himself did not have to strive to build that unity
- He genuinely seemed something "New". It cannot be emphasised how much new Labour needed that. If Brown had stood and won we might still have claimed to have been "New" but we would never have done so as convincingly.
- Sometimes you also have to be honest in politics, he also benefited from being an attractive man physically, with a clever wife and three young children. He struck you (and I was no great partisan of his, far from it) as somebody who would have been successful in life no matter what he chose to do.
- He did not seem to be obsessed with personal ambition or even, particularly, politics.
- He did seem to be somebody with a clear idea of where the Country (and not just the Labour Party) needed to go.
Now, Liz Kendall doesn't have any of these advantages. She was a pretty obscure figure before she declared and since then her usp seems simply to be "I've got the same politics as Tony Blair; Tony Blair won elections; vote for me". Possibly, I accept, as a result of the Corbyn factor, nobody could regard her as a unifying candidate. But in some way most importantly it is not really clear what she is for other than fiscal rectitude and a realistic assessment of the Country's toleration of Welfare. These might, I agree, be obstacles to us winning that have to be confronted, but people also want to know what you are actually seeking power for. People ultimately in the Country as a whole but initially at least people in the Labour Party contemplating voting for you. No-one is ever going to win an internal Labour election on a platform of fiscal rectitude alone. Even Tony Blair couldn't have done that.
If that is a criticism of Liz Kendall however it is magnified in relation to Yvette. I wanted her to stand last time. I'll probably end up voting for her this time. But the Corbynite critique of New Labour is not without some merit particularly in relation to our latter period in office. We drifted into a sort of managerialism which did lead you wondering a bit about what we were achieving other than (I accept not unimportantly) keeping the Tories out of power. The only excitement was of the wrong sort; the collapse of the Banks and the occasional terrorist outrage.
Our loss of power should have been an opportunity to reflect on that, to look at how we might create a new offer to the electorate in a digital age where the divide between the relative comfort of educated white collar workers in the private or public sector increasingly drifts apart from the life experience of those, largely uneducated, sectors of the workforce in marginal employment or no employment at all. An offer based on the realisation however that political power cannot be secured based on the support of the latter group alone.
That just never really happened. We went along with Ed's 35% strategy and kind of sleep walked through our five years in opposition until rudely awoken, one would have hoped, on the morning of May 8th.
Except Yvette still doesn't seem to have woken up. You don't need to subscribe to Liz's shock therapy to believe that the Party needs a pretty major rethink, yet I simply haven't seen or heard from Yvette, never mind what that rethink needs to be, even a recognition that a rethink is needed at all.
She's just there, competent and, insofar as I understand her distinctive pitch, a woman.
And then, finally, we have Andy Burnham. Of those standing, I was inclined initially to give him my support. But his campaign has been all over the place. Everything from "more Blairite than Liz" (consistent with his time as a Minister, at least) to "Shoulder to shoulder with Jeremy Corbyn, just more electable". He just comes across as a complete chancer prepared to say anything to get elected. The problem with that is that such a reputation sticks.
My favourite Labour leader in my lifetime was Neil Kinnock. He inherited a Party in tatters and rebuilt it to the point where, had there been any justice, we would have won in 1992. I could see where Kinnock wanted to go but the pace at which he could proceed was hampered, particularly originally, by internal Party considerations. So, what I and others internally saw as a consistent direction of travel, others, in the wider electorate, saw as inconsistency. And that stuck. Fatally.
Andy Burnham is in danger of acquiring a reputation in three months that it took Kinnock years to achieve. Ask him if he thought Ed was too left wing or too cautious you get the distinct impression that he'd want to know a bit about the questioner before giving his answer. Big politics doesn't work like that.
But I kind of come back to where I started. Whoever wins will get my vote in the general election. As Tony Benn famously observed after the debacle of 1983, "Eight and a half million people voted for Socialism". So, even if it is Jeremy, I won't be entirely alone. But do I think, if they come from the present field, any of these candidates is capable of winning a General Election? I'm afraid I very much doubt it.
That's why I'm so fed up. Ten years is a long time in politics.
Sunday, 19 July 2015
Just (another) book review
I love Iain M. Banks' Culture Novels. Read every one, often twice. Consider Phlebas at least three times. And I still cry at the end.
But, if you were being hyper (favourite Banks word) critical there is a certain repetitiveness about the plot(s) as the novels continue. Mere (very future) pieces of flesh and blood living out the narrative at the indulgence of more immortal artificial intelligences.
Nonetheless you keep reading, certainly because the storytelling is so good but also because of the added extras of worlds so different, so fantastically different, from our own that you revel in their description.
To that degree Banks was a true descendent of Sir Walter Scott, who described a historical time and place as precisely as Banks described a future time and place, Great plots but with an added bonus.
Well, now we have Andrew Nicoll. I have to confess he is a pal of mine. And we now have his fourth novel The secret life and mysterious death of Miss Jean Milne. .
It is an odd synthesis of Banks and Scott. A historical novel, or more properly novella, set in an almost recognisable Scotland of our, almost, living memory but then describing that "almost recognisable" place as if it was one of Banks ring worlds on the edge of the known universe.
Broughty Ferry, the posh suburb of Dundee, where, in 1912, Police Sergeant Fraser of the Broughty Ferry Constabulary (total compliment 16) suddenly finds himself a key investigator, or at least key witness to the investigation, of the murder, in her own home, of the local spinster Miss Jean Milne.
As a police procedural, of time and place, the book more than holds its own. The same again as a (mere) whodunit. But this is not the book's real achievement. That is not so much to conjure up as to recreate a lost Scotland. A Scotland where professional men were invariably "Mister", unless they were "Doctor", even among themselves. Where Policemen always told the truth, no matter how inconvenient. Where the "cars" (trams) were the height of transport sophistication and the electric telephone as wondrous a thing as the modern internet. Where local rivalry and distinction, in this case between Broughty Ferry and Dundee, but just as easily as between Glasgow and Rutherglen or Edinburgh and Leith, was a matter of almost vital importance to the junior partner involved.
I won't even really start to summarise the plot, for the book itself moves forward quickly in that regard. There's a murder, no obvious perpetrator, then too obvious a perpetrator and then.........
But the plot is not the star of this production. That lies as I say in its evocation of different but vaguely familiar world. I paid 49p for it on the Kindle. Or 9/11d in the old money. Worth every penny.
But, if you were being hyper (favourite Banks word) critical there is a certain repetitiveness about the plot(s) as the novels continue. Mere (very future) pieces of flesh and blood living out the narrative at the indulgence of more immortal artificial intelligences.
Nonetheless you keep reading, certainly because the storytelling is so good but also because of the added extras of worlds so different, so fantastically different, from our own that you revel in their description.
To that degree Banks was a true descendent of Sir Walter Scott, who described a historical time and place as precisely as Banks described a future time and place, Great plots but with an added bonus.
Well, now we have Andrew Nicoll. I have to confess he is a pal of mine. And we now have his fourth novel The secret life and mysterious death of Miss Jean Milne. .
It is an odd synthesis of Banks and Scott. A historical novel, or more properly novella, set in an almost recognisable Scotland of our, almost, living memory but then describing that "almost recognisable" place as if it was one of Banks ring worlds on the edge of the known universe.
Broughty Ferry, the posh suburb of Dundee, where, in 1912, Police Sergeant Fraser of the Broughty Ferry Constabulary (total compliment 16) suddenly finds himself a key investigator, or at least key witness to the investigation, of the murder, in her own home, of the local spinster Miss Jean Milne.
As a police procedural, of time and place, the book more than holds its own. The same again as a (mere) whodunit. But this is not the book's real achievement. That is not so much to conjure up as to recreate a lost Scotland. A Scotland where professional men were invariably "Mister", unless they were "Doctor", even among themselves. Where Policemen always told the truth, no matter how inconvenient. Where the "cars" (trams) were the height of transport sophistication and the electric telephone as wondrous a thing as the modern internet. Where local rivalry and distinction, in this case between Broughty Ferry and Dundee, but just as easily as between Glasgow and Rutherglen or Edinburgh and Leith, was a matter of almost vital importance to the junior partner involved.
I won't even really start to summarise the plot, for the book itself moves forward quickly in that regard. There's a murder, no obvious perpetrator, then too obvious a perpetrator and then.........
But the plot is not the star of this production. That lies as I say in its evocation of different but vaguely familiar world. I paid 49p for it on the Kindle. Or 9/11d in the old money. Worth every penny.
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