The Centre Left

Why Mehdi Hasan is wrong about Islamophobia in the media

2012-01-28T14:52:00.000Z

On Thursday I sent a tweet – slightly intemperate, I admit – drawing attention to a piece by the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan on Islamophobia in the British media, and the fact that I thought it was a problem on the streets, not in the press.

Mehdi, to his credit, politely invited me to read the submission to the Leveson inquiry which prompted the article and a letter to the Guardian signed by various luminaries (almost all on the left), which I agreed to do (the document is 86 pages long, but luckily only the first 16 are relevant. I read all of them, like the true pedant I am). I know this piece is a little long, but it was important to answer properly.

The issue is this: are Muslims being singled out in the British media? I’m afraid I find the evidence rather unconvincing, although there is one exception to this, which I'll explain later.

The evidence to Leveson was given by Inayat Bunglawala, representing the Muslim advocacy organisation Engage, which is a “a Muslim advocacy organisation which seeks to encourage greater civic participation on the part of British Muslims in our democracy”. Well, I’m all for that. Good.

Bunglawala then lists five examples of what Engage see as Islamophobic headlines or extracts which they referred to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

Lord Ahmed described as “Muslim peer” (newspaper not mentioned). Lord Ahmed had a car accident, and was referred to in an article as Muslim peer Lord Ahmed. Personally I don’t like such habits of referring to people via religion or ethnicity, if they’re not relevant to the story, but then again, this is hardly the stuff of skinhead marches. The PCC did not uphold it, partly because he is often referred to as “Britain’s first Muslim peer”, which he undeniably is. In this case a contraction to “Muslim peer” (even though there are now more than) one seems borderline at best, and so the PCC judgement seems right to me here.

Poppies banned in terror hotspots (Daily Star). The Daily Star prints something which is entirely untrue (quelle surprise), that poppy sales have been banned in areas with a high Muslim population. At a stretch, we might concede that in those areas they didn’t have quite as many people volunteering to sell poppies, and perhaps parts of those communities were annoyed with the “Establishment” over Iraq and didn’t line up to sell poppies. But the idea that they were banned was clearly nonsense, and offensive. Complaint made to the PCC, and a one-paragraph correction was made by the Star.

Christmas is banned, it offends Muslims (Express headline) – this was a story about a council renaming Christmas “Winterval”, to reflect that some people were celebrating other festivals at this time. Personally I don’t care what they call it, but in this case it was changed, so the “ban” was technically true, but the implication that even one Muslim had complained about it, though, was not. If the headline had read, however, Christmas is banned, the council thinks it offends Muslims, it would have been entirely true. Engage claim they never had a “satisfactory response” from the PCC, however I cannot find this in the case search on the PCC website, and suspect one was never formally opened. For the record, here Engage’s rather overplayed framing of this point also led Leveson himself to intervene, saying “That’s not quite fair, is it?”

Muslim plot to kill Pope (Daily Express headline). There was a suspected plot to kill the Pope which turned out almost immediately to be a non-story. However, six men were arrested and questioned and later released, all of whom it seems were Muslims. This in itself is hardly a huge surprise, in the current climate of terrorist threats, and neither does it imply Islamophobia. But the use of the word Muslim rather than, say, Islamist, is not nice. It implies that ordinary Muslims, as a matter of habit on a Saturday afternoon, tend to gather and plot the elimination of major public figures. Here I think the criticism is entirely deserved.

Engage: “Extremist Islamist group” (Daily Mail, Melanie Philips). The final item was rather clever, as it dealt with comments about the Engage group itself and, in the process, the organisation could handily attempt to assert its own non-extremism in a public forum. We’ll see later why it might want to do that. The question was whether it was an “extremist Islamist group”. Do I like Melanie Philips? I do not. She is a dreadful, populist right-wing reactionary, on a wide range of issues, and on top of that she had to leave the Spectator after making a false allegation on her blog there. Is Engage an extremist Islamist group? I would say no: it mixes moderate and extremist views. So this was wrong, technically at least.

On the other hand, it is now time to talk about Engage. Does Engage have links to extremist Islamist groups? It clearly does. It actually has a lot. One of its trustees, Mohammed Ali Harath, is a founder of radical group the Tunisian Islamic Front, and CEO of the Islam Channel, recently censured by Ofcom for its medieval views on such subjects as wife-beating and the unacceptability of women who wear perfume. Harath is a known friend to Hamas and visited its leaders in Gaza. Engage also campaigned against the exclusions of hate preachers Zakir Naik and Raed Salah from the

. It criticised police over deportation of legitimate terror suspects. It defended the comments of Paul Flynn MP on the suitability of the Israeli ambassador to be Jewish, while the rest of the country condemned them. Last July, it was dropped by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia after the resignation of the chair and vice-chair of that group in protest at its associations and behaviour.

What conclusions can we draw from all this? I believe they are as follows:

One. That the PCC is fairly useless and toothless, but we knew that. It does not protect religious groups, or members of the public in general, from misleading reporting and even downright lies. That is largely the point of Leveson in the first place.

Two. There does not seem to be compelling evidence of a general problem in the British media’s reporting of Muslims. Indeed, I would say that serious media (Times, Guardian, Independent, not to mention the BBC and ITV) are scrupulous in reporting fairly on Muslims. Even at the Daily Mail, a paper which I have no time for, it is difficult to identify a serious problem if you do a search on the word “Muslim” at their website.

Three. However, there are two newspapers, the Star and the Express, who have the same owner (Express Newspapers), now withdrawn from the PCC. They, and specifically they, have sailed close to the wind with their comments on Muslims, and their withdrawal from the PCC makes it more likely that this will get worse, not better. Hope Not Hate, a fine organisation campaigning against bigotry of all kinds, have noted this and written to the Star’s editor. This is all yet another argument for mandatory regulation, as it seems likely that Leveson will advise.

Four. Engage has presented a reasonable, moderate face to Leveson, and has actually made some useful points in the process. But the idea of it being a reasonable, moderate organisation throughout is seriously open to question. Indeed, it seems extraordinary that Leveson would take it seriously at all after its dropping by the APPG and given some of the connections it has. But I have been careful not to dismiss its points through a mere ad hominem, because it is quite clear that we can treat the points it made quite seriously and still come to a different conclusion. That said, that does not mean that we should accept Engage as what they purport to be, representatives of moderate Muslims.

One has to conclude that, if that is the best that an organisation founded to promote Muslims’ profile in the media can do in terms of raising complaints, reporting of Muslims in the media is hardly a problem on the scale that the Guardian letter would suggest. And, on this evidence, the specific issue that does exist regarding Express Newspapers is one that in any event would almost certainly be solved by a mandatory regulatory framework, along with a lot of other press issues like the profile of other religions, public figures and ordinary people.

It is also evident that senior politicians have failed dismally to sign the Guardian letter, not surprising when you look at the usual suspects in the list of the signatories: figures in Stop The War Coalition, Respect as well as the unpleasant Islamic Forum Europe and our old friend Sarah Colbourne of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). What I find a little more disturbing, however, is that some of these organisations have a real agenda: an interest in demonstrating that the British media is against them, because it helps them then dismiss their criticism if, like the PSC, they often do things which are indefensible. It is an old tactic of the hard left, to blame the media as twisting the real truth.

Finally, Bunglawala made the following comment in his opening remarks:

“I think the same standards should be applied to Muslims as to any other faith group or any other minority group community.”

I truly hope that he will remember that commitment to even-handedness, next time he sees some highly objectionable piece in the Guardian, such as this extraordinary puff-piece on unpleasant Holocaust cartoonist Latuff.

Or, perhaps, he will not need to look further than his own website.

Smart people learn from their enemies

2012-01-24T19:25:00.000Z

The furore over last week’s defection of former Labour staffer, Luke Bozier, to the Tories provides a convenient excuse for a closer look at the party that he has just joined. Not with a view to doing the same, you understand – it’d be a cold day in hell for most of us – but with a view to a bit of hard-nosed, non-partisan analysis.

Leafing through Alan Clark’s idiosyncratic history of his party, The Tories, there are some interesting lessons for Labour. Not ideologically, of course: but about the nature of politics, and the nature of power. And power is something which the Tories were uncommonly good at securing and retaining during the period of the book, from their successful defenestration of Lloyd George in 1922 through to their rout in 1997. Indeed, during this period, as Clark points out:

“…the Conservative Party was the dominant political force in Britain – even when, for short periods, it was in Opposition”.

An analysis which is essentially correct: during that 75 year period, the Tories were never in opposition for more than six consecutive years. The harsh electoral reality was that Labour was only ever seeing how long it might keep the Tories out for, before their inevitable, swift return. To be fair to the historian’s objectivity with which Clark documents his subject, he also concedes that its electoral popularity was sometimes at the expense of the national interest. But for a model of how to dominate an electoral landscape, you can’t do much better than the Tories during this period. A party for whom winning was always a serious business: until, in 1997, when they lost the plot.

Now, if you can’t swallow your pride and learn from those who do something well, then you’re probably not destined to do it very well yourself. Let’s not forget the various Tories in the current cabinet who consult Blair’s A Journey on a regular basis – not because they agree with him, but because they think he was rather good at being prime minister. Smart people learn from their enemies, and Clark was someone who, while having witnessed high-level politics first-hand, could still analyse it with a surgical detachment.

In his Diaries he often wrote, as Roy Hattersley once said of the poet Blake Morrison, “with a reckless respect for the truth”. Never fiercely tribal, he was genuinely impressed by Labour’s renaissance, as Alastair Campbell’s own diaries reveal. As Labourites, while we might vicariously enjoy the politics-laid-bare of his writing, we may still find Clark personally unpleasant or even loathsome. A man who could veer between high principle and low cunning, he was certainly no saint. But stupid he was not, either: in fact, his analysis was often unusually lucid.

For a good example of this, we need look no further than the first few pages ofThe Tories, where he discusses the fate of the various Tory premiers:

“…the inseparable linkage between political aspiration and economic reality…all who sought to ignore this came to grief…”

He is talking about the Tories, but the historical moral applies equally to progressive parties; something Bill “the economy, stupid” Clinton well understood. And, over the last couple of weeks, it seems that the Labour leadership has finally assimilated that lesson. We should all be cautiously pleased.

For over a year, denial has been the order of the day: listening to the shadow cabinet on the economy has been rather like listening to the orchestra on the Titanic, resolutely refusing to stop playing the same tune as the waters rise menacingly around it. The recent statements of both Miliband and Balls on the importance of fiscal probity have now broken with that denial, and not before time.

It is a first step: as Progress’ Robert Philpot has written, there is still a yawning gap when it comes to defining what Labour would do with public services. But the fundamental point, made by Hopi Sen in his Renewal essayduring the summer, and refined by the pamphlet In The Black Labour, has hit home. What is Labour actually for, in times of austerity? A new model is surely required, if we are to avoid the public perception of attempting to defy economic gravity.

Although our prospects still look somewhat bleak as of today – some recentpolls having been possibly the worst since the election – this important change is to be applauded for providing an honest, credible foundation for a program for 2015. There’s plenty for the coalition to screw up by then: what one of Cameron’s predecessors wryly termed “events, dear boy”, can easily intervene. And we have at last shown ourselves to have some seriousness about winning, perhaps even in time to turn this boat around by the next election.

But it’s a tall order. In his December interview with the FT, Miliband himself, to his credit, made a telling comment: “I always said it would be a long journey to be just a one-term opposition”.

A managing of expectations for posterity, if ever there was one.

This post first published at Labour Uncut

Democracy falters, in a country near you

2012-01-19T14:22:00.001Z

All of us sometimes have mixed feelings about the EU but, in one area, even its harshest critics would have to reluctantly agree that it has succeeded. In its expansion eastwards it has helped consolidate democratic rule where there previously was none, aligned militarily and politically towards the West and away from an increasingly less democratic, and periodically sabre-rattling, Russia.

In a moving passage from his autobiography Denis Healey describes how, in 1956, as the news came over on his car radio that the uprising against the Communists had failed, he pulled over to the side of the road and tears of frustration rolled down his cheeks. Britain, on one of the Tories’ most incompetent watches, had abandoned its Hungarian neighbours to their fate in favour of a hubristic, end-of-empire and ultimately doomed intervention in Suez.

Now a long-liberated country within our cosy European democratic club, and a mere two-and-a-half hour flight away, Hungary’s current troubles are nothing like as dramatic as 1956. But they are nevertheless extremely worrying. For a start, the current governing party, Fidesz are a populist party of the far-right who are against more or less everything which the Labour Party stands for. They are anti-immigrants, they are fiercely nationalist, and would be best described as of the hard right. Now, all that is defensible up to a point: we may not like the parties people vote for, but at least they can vote, which is a big advance over the Hungary of twenty-odd years ago. And if they choose to vote for unpleasant parties, well, that’s democracy.

But it’s not quite that simple, because there’s a special trick: sometimes you can vote away democracy without really knowing it. What is truly worrying about Fidesz is that, despite having been voted in democratically, now in they have decided to move the constitutional goalposts, as the Economist reports.

“Hungarian democracy lacks checks and balances, say European and American diplomats. Fidesz has changed the electoral boundaries in its own favour. Its allies have been appointed to almost every independent institution…The government has reduced the jurisdiction of the constitutional court and sacked scores of judges. Officials say that the new appointees will exercise their mandates independently. But they cannot explain why it is only friends of Fidesz who can be safely entrusted with such responsibilities.”

And this change is entirely legitimate, because they have a two-thirds majority. This does not mean, of course, an immediate return to authoritarian rule, but neither does it mean, ultimately, the preservation of true democracy.

In the absence of a coup which destroys it by force at a stroke, democracy essentially depends for its survival on one thing: that anti-democrats do not get elected and then use constitutional means to unpick democracy peacefully, piece by piece. Which is, ufortunately, precisely what has started to happen here. Because once you start unpicking it, you’ll find that it unravels more and more quickly as you go on until it disintegrates entirely. And, like cuckoos, once anti-democrats are in your nest, you’d better find a way of getting them out, sharpish.

In short, it rather means a move towards the kind of pseudo-democracy we highlighted here a few months back. It has gradually happened inRussia under Putin. It is what is currently well underway inVenezuela, under the odious Chávez. And if you want a look at how the endgame of all this looks, well, Zimbabwe is a good place to start.

Now, this does not happen overnight, and the clock can still be turned back. But it requires a huge effort on the part of a people hit by an economic crisis, and for whom the last twenty years have often been more painful slog than glorious, democratic Brave New World. Talk to a young Hungarian and you’ll find that people are very worried. Many are leaving. And as for those who are not: if you’ve never known democracy apart from this, as only a few Hungarian pensioners have, you might wonder what all the fuss was about. And you might wonder whether it was really worth fighting for.

Message to young Hungarians: it is. And as the Economist also points out, the EU and Europe’s right-wing leaders could do much more to stop what’s happening, starting with throwing Fidesz out of their EU grouping of the right, the European People’s Party. They need to, if they are not to end up feeling like Britain did after Suez.

Or even, one day, sick to its stomach, like Europe did after it looked the other way in Bosnia.

Abbott, Flynn and why we lefties think we can never be racist

2012-01-09T16:18:00.000Z

My third piece for the New Statesman, about Diane Abbott and Paul Flynn is here.

By the way, the original Centre Left piece about Paul Flynn, in case you missed it, is here.

Labour’s Groundhog Year

2012-01-06T12:00:00.002Z

The New Year. Our thoughts and hopes for the future. A difficult year behind. Another one ahead.

Sound at all familiar?

In the film 1993 film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a character who realises that he is getting up to the same song playing on his clock-radio, I Got You Babe, every day and that all the same things are happening in the same order. After a while, he realises that he is stuck in a nightmare where the same day repeats forever: he must change and reinvent himself in order to break out.

Anthony Painter’s LabourList piece summarised rather well how the year has not been a good one. But there’s something more: already we seem to be in danger of restarting our own Groundhog Year, destined to go through the same in 2012.

First, the New Year’s message from Ed Miliband: as Peter Hoskin notes in the Spectator, it’s remarkably similar to last year’s. Yes, there is an important nod towards fiscal conservatism (perhaps the work of my good comrades Painter, Lent, Cooke and Sen in Into The Black Labour did not go unnoticed, after all), but essentially the same points are made. Brave troops inAfghanistan, check. Politicians alienated from the public, check. Optimism, check.

Not that repetition in itself is bad: sometimes you have to bore people to death with your message before they get it, as Peter Mandelson famously observed. But what if the message is simply failing to resonate?

Polly Toynbee disagrees: however her message, as Hopi Sen observed, is also essentially the same as last year’s. We need only hang on in there saying the same thing, and the voters will come round.

Troop-rallying pieces there have been several more, and welcome, up to a point. God knows, Labour’s troops are in need of some morale-boosting. But there is a distinct feeling that we have not moved forward. As a reaction, some have looked to deflect, rebut and generally silence internal criticism. But, as I said at Labour Uncut yesterday, trying to silence criticism is not the answer. It is essentially a position of weakness, not of strength. Besides, the obvious fact is this: it won’t work. The world has changed since 2000, and we can no longer control every blog-post that goes out by an informal system of peer pressure.

There is one very significant difference this year, of course – the polls. We started 2011 in the lead, but no longer. We are either level, or behind. And our economic polling has been consistently awful all year. Why has this happened, because the coalition has had a brilliant year? No. The coalition has had a terrible year, by any standards. We are still in a sprawling economic crisis with the economy flat-lining and a string of wing-it decisions and policy reversals. We have nowhere to look but inside ourselves, with a little honesty and humility.

This is not a counsel of despair. There is hope and there is time to change. This is a counsel of wake up, people. I Got You Babe is playing, again.

The public may just have generously afforded us a “gap year” during 2011, although this is by no means certain. But they will not give us another.

This post first published at LabourList

Political blogging: why it’s good to critique your own team

2012-01-05T14:20:00.001Z

During 2011 a number of people, often well-meaning, sometimes not so, have questioned the choice of some bloggers at Labour Uncut and elsewhere to analyse dispassionately and sometimes brutally, not just the Tories and the Lib Dems, but the Labour Party under Ed Miliband. The inference being that, as loyal party members who want a Labour government, bloggers should make only supportive comments (which, by the way, those same people often do), and not critical ones.

Some history: at the beginning of the New Labour government in the late 1990s, the UK political internet was in its infancy, and there was really no such thing as blogging in the UK. The only real outlet that party people had was through the traditional media, and largely the only people who could really get arrested in the traditional media were MPs (and with the local press, councillors).

Many of our present-day Labour bloggers were, around that time, part of a machine which had become obsessive about its control over these outlets, and for very good reasons: the Tories were good at it and, in that world, the party with the most discipline over what went out and how the other side’s views were rebutted had a real chance of winning the battle for influence. In the end, taking their lead from the Clintonian Democrats, it was a battle that Labour won conclusively.

And discipline still matters: it really is necessary for elected reps to temper what they think personally with what their party leadership thinks and what is politically acceptable for them to say to party, constituents and country. That is the normal way of politics, and probably always will be.

However, there is a flip-side: not only in the process did Labour become unduly obsessed with the need to control everything, but that need has also now become diluted, for a few reasons. The multiplicity of media channels means that it’s become harder to control what goes out, even for elected representatives, and because of this information overload, the public is less bothered about each piece of news from a party. Finally, they are also increasingly looking for authenticity, rather identikit politicians toeing the party line.

What about the internet? Well, the big change there is that suddenly not just elected representatives can get their stuff “out there”. This changes things, for the obvious reason that party members, who lack the constraints of elected reps can be heard, either directly or through being picked up by the national media. And, crucially, it changes things for a second reason: unlike elected reps, who still need to sing from the same hymn-sheet up to a point, the party has no realistic control mechanism over what bloggers say anyway.

There are two ways we can react to this new world: we can embrace it for what it is, a way to get real debate going in the party through activists unconstrained by the realpolitik of party office (although the normal, reasonable constraints, of avoiding being insulting, overly personal or otherwise unpleasant still apply) and who, in almost all cases, have a strong desire for the party to succeed, otherwise they would not be bothering to take the time to write, usually for free.

Or we can, ostrich-like, deny that the world has changed, and attempt to cling to the old world where all comment is to be controlled, for fear that anything else will give succour to our enemies. In the absence of other controls, we can attempt to use peer pressure, rather than rational debate, to stop bloggers saying what we do not wish them to say.

But this is plainly a fallacy: it will not give succour to our enemies. Why? Because, apart from anything, they’re all at it.

It is interesting that in the Labour Party we seem to have developed a different attitude. ConservativeHome and LibDem Voice have for some time provided healthy debate within their parties. ConservativeHome, for those who have never visited, is full of rank-and-file Tories who fear that – hilariously – that closet lefty, Cameron, is betraying traditional Tory principles. And they show little embarrassment in saying so.

LabourList and Labour Uncut, started more recently, have been doing a sterling job in taking back the internet agenda for Labour, but we still see much apparent discomfort in the comments sections. We fall into easy habits, talking of “loyalty” and “unity”, in order to try and keep party thinking aligned. It is easy to confuse “unhelpful comment” and “comment that I disagree with”. But all comment, in the end, is helpful. Robust debate is, on the contrary, an overwhelming positive, and it is precisely this Darwinism of ideas that can lead us all to arrive at a decent, defensible common view of where the party is at and where it needs to be. The wisdom, in the words of James Surowiecki, of crowds.

Those of us who have worked within the party structure can readily admit that the modern party has sometimes owed too much to the disciplined organisational tradition of erstwhile Trotskyites; and whilst that thinking once instilled some much-needed discipline into the party machine, it also had a negative side-effect. One of the less attractive aspects, paradoxically, of New Labour was at times a bullying attitude towards dissent: an attitude that could often be traced directly back to those “born-again” politicos and staffers who had been Trots in a previous incarnation, rather than to the leadership itself.

In short, crowds are often wise, but with a caveat: they can only be so when they avoid the groupthink that Uncut writers Peter Watt and Anthony Painter have recently warned against. In other words, they need to avoid being purely self-selecting: the crowd needs to include the widest possible range of opinion, including, arguably, those who are not party members, as many supporters of primaries contend. And whilst one might not agree with much that blog A or blogger B writes, their right to say it must be defended, because their ideas must sink or swim on their own, without interference from over-enthusiastic censors telling us all what to think.

We must have the same tolerance for all ideas, because this new development of political blogging is, if used correctly, potentially a hand up out of the mire, not someone pulling us further in. In any event, it is certainly here to stay, and there is unlikely to be any effective mechanism to control it. And if you don’t like it, you can always, as with the telly, just switch off.

So, we can keep trying to pretend that we all agree. Or we can rejoice in the fact that not everyone agrees with us, and that neither is it the end of the world.

This post first published at Labour Uncut

Hats off to Val Shawcross

2011-12-31T15:38:00.000Z

If Andrew Gilligan's blog is to be believed (I admit, a not entirely moot point), we learn, via the excellent Harry's Place, that Val Shawcross, Ken's running-mate in the London mayorals, has commented on the former's lack of wisdom in his choice of friends the extremist Al-Qaradawi, and his comments to Jewish journalist Oliver Finegold that got him suspended as Mayor.

In other words, at last, someone senior in the Labour Party has clocked the damage that these things has caused, as Gilligan says, to the support of "liberals, gay people, Jews, feminists and democrats" for the mayoral campaign, and to the party in general.

Chapeau, Val, for speaking out. I hope you are not the last.

The best of 2011 - who's Number One?

2011-12-27T19:46:00.002Z

Just in case you missed them first time around, here were the best-read posts of 2011 at the Centre Left:

5. UCU and the siren call of “my enemy’s enemy” - written after the union's extraordinary, Kafkaesque decision, on being accused of anti-semitism, to rewrite what anti-semitism means.

4. The New Politics (reprise) - Huhne’s Reagan Defence - on the decision of Chris Huhne to claim, somewhat implausibly, that he had forgotten all about a night about which exists a taped conversation between him and his wife.

3. Our tolerance of extremism will do for us - on the various attempts of the British left to abhor racism without, whilst tolerating it within.

2. Faith schools: a bad idea just got worse - on Michael Gove's allowing the total exclusion of non-faith teachers

1. A response to Richard Burden MP on racist extremism And, at no. 1, many thanks to Richard Burden MP, for entertaining us with his irony-free plea to exclude a visiting Bible-basher from the UK as a homophobe, while defending overtly homophobic and racist preacher Raed Salah, friend of suicide-bombing terrorists Hamas. Well done, Richard, you really have brought credit on our party with that flawless logic.

Thank you all so much for your continued interest, support and debate through the year. We'll be doing our best to keep it coming this end during 2012.

2012: A year to fix the party

2011-12-22T16:26:00.000Z

As our leaders sit back and take stock during the holidays, they might reflect, not just on the daily parliamentary grind against Cameron and the coalition, but of something else: of the time that opposition affords parties to deal with their own problems and, in dealing with them, help show their fitness to govern.

They’re not small, these problems. The unfinished business of the party organisation, freely acknowledged by Tony Blair in A Journey, is coming back to haunt us, as it becomes clear that this year’s exercise of Refounding Labour has done precious little to advance, well, the refounding of anything at all.

The party machine now finds itself caught in a giant pincer movement: in the North it is in a race against time to sort out its broken party so that it is in a state to fight Salmond before he springs the referendum on them in 2014 or 2015. And in the South it has the problem of London: of Ken fighting an election he is surely destined to lose, in an Olympic year when all eyes will be on London; of Tower Hamlets and left-wing politics in the East End, from which a faint odour has been increasing with each passing year; and of the Jewish community which has surely been alienated until after the next general election, let alone the London one.

Scottish Labour had a chance which it last week failed to grasp. Realistically, it was probably never going to vote for Tom Harris, but it could have voted for Ken Macintosh, whom at least the membership wanted. The candidate list was weak overall, and the mood amongst Scottish Labour favouring MSPs over MPs, coupled with it being a pretty poisoned chalice anyway, meant that Westminster’s big guns stayed at home.

The result is that Scots now have a choice between a very familiar Alex Salmond, who they don’t necessarily trust 100%, but who is the devil they know: and a Johann Lamont, decent enough but whom they’ve never heard of and who was elected thanks only to the union vote. At first glance, it seems like racing a well-travelled racehorse against a small pony, on its first outing and with a bit of a gammy leg. We shall see.

And so we come to London. Of course we must fight to win, but let’s face facts: we have also made a misjudgement in selecting a candidate who has already lost once. Forget the baggage, forget the polls, although there are tough stories on both: for Ken to go on and win would be the first time in British politics a losing figure had done so in a major election since Harold Wilson won in 1974. (Moreover, from a worse base: Wilson’s 1970 loss was an upset for the pollsters, who expected him to win. Ken’s was not.)

Next, Tower Hamlet’s ex-Labour mayor, Lutfur Rahman, yesterday won an adjudication from the Press Complaints Commission against the Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan, the claim being essentially that Gilligan was smearing him. Gilligan has previous on this – let’s not forget his key role in the David Kelly affair – but the reality is not so straightforward. The part of the complaint dealing with Gilligan’s describing the Islamic Forum Europe (IFE) as “extremist” and Rahman as “extremist-backed” was not upheld. This story is clearly by no means over, whether or not you trust Gilligan’s journalism. Labour is currently holding its nerve about not readmitting him to the party. It needs to continue to do so.

Finally, let’s not forget the sterling work that various senior members of the party have done during 2011 to alienate the Jewish community, two-thirds of whom live in Greater London. First there was the invitation of racist preacher Raed Salah to speak at Parliament; recently, the botched reaction to the foolish comments of Paul Flynn on the ambassador to Israel; and finally, well, Ken is not exactly loved in the Jewish community, as Nick Cohen reports, whether we like this fact or not. And his open support of independent Rahman, who has refused to deny links to the IFE, and his council’s to unsavoury Islamist preachers such as Abdul Raheem Green only serves to reinforce this (not to mention alienating many in the East End party, who will now not campaign for him). And yes, in brutal electoral terms, the Jewish vote is dwarfed by the Muslim vote in London, but that kind of thinking leads us only to a very ugly place, as Cohen points out.

Labour has a window to sort itself out, which is a mere three-and-a-half more years under Miliband. After that, there are really only two possibilities: he will either be in office, with other concerns, like Blair: or on the back benches (the probability of staying on after a defeat has to be close to zero).

But the real work in Scotland and London needs to be now, in what will be the crux year of 2012. We must use this year wisely: our party, and perhaps the very integrity of our country, depend on it.

This post first published at LabourList

And the winner of the 2011 "Reagan Defence" Award is...

2011-12-21T15:15:00.000Z

...a late entry, the irrepressible CNN talk-show host Piers Morgan, for apparently having forgotten most of his life as editor at the Daily Mirror during yesterday's Leveson inquiry hearings.

He beat off stern competition, however, from News International's Les Hinton (also forgot about phone-hacking during Leveson) and of course the government's very own Chris Huhne (forgot about any details of a rather important speeding ticket).

An eminent field, surely worthy of comparison with the untouchable President Reagan, who memorably forgot about everything that ever happened to do with Iran-Contra.

So, congratulations to Piers. As @SimonNRicketts tweeted yesterday:

Piers Morgan is only being filmed from the waist up at the #leveson inquiry because his pants are obviously on fire.

Two reactions to extremism

2011-12-19T10:21:00.001Z

Compare and contrast:

a. Tory MP, snapped next to man dressed as Nazi, sacked.

b. Labour MPs invite real, declared anti-Semite to speak at Westminster: still in post.

I am no fan of the Tories, but...something's not right here.

It’s the financial markets, stupid

2011-12-17T20:39:00.003Z

‘The real game’s not over here’ – Lou Reed

What is the main thing driving the urgency of a solution to the euro crisis? Why, the financial markets, of course. Not because they should be calling the shots, but just the obvious reason, that you need to keep them on board in times of crisis because, if not, in that water there are sharks who will kill you. That is the way it has always been, from the South Sea Bubble to the current crisis.

First of all, there was the summit, which had the UK media, not to mention those in Europe and across the world, in a frenzy. But not about the dismal failure of the summit to agree a credible package to save the euro. No, a much more readable story was Cameron’s walkout and Britain’s isolation. But some softer voices, the business editors and the FT , made the point.

And then, not content with more than six months of wilful foot-dragging, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on Wednesday, showed equally questionable logic as she broke the first rule of monetary management: whatever you’re saying, be bloody sure about it. According to the BBC , she said:

‘I am convinced that if we have the necessary patience and endurance, if we do not let reversals get us down, if we consistently move towards a fiscal and stability union, if we actually complete the economic and currency union… then what I have always stated as our goal since the beginning of the crisis will come to pass’

What did you say? In that sentence, there are four ‘if’s: count ‘em. One, two, three, four. Talk about hedging.

If there are legions of traders, their fingers poised over the Sell button on their terminals in London, New York and Tokyo, what you do not do, what you absolutely do not do, is sound unsure. You do not if and you do not but. Because when you sound unsure, they sell. They sell, because they do not believe you and soon, the plunge becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Unsurprisingly, the euro has touched an 11-month low.

Tony Blair understands this: he told the Wall Street Journal that governments had ‘a matter of weeks’ . Sadly, Angela Merkel, for whatever reason, despite the fact that you might intuitively expect parties of the right to understand this stuff, appears not to. Well she, and the other eurozone leaders, had better shape up: time is now very short indeed.

As they once used to say about a rather more important trans-European crisis: it could all be over by Christmas.

The coalition is on life-support

2011-12-14T10:18:00.013Z

“Mummy, what is that man for”? This exquisite, though probably apocryphal, comment from a small child has been variously said to be about many politicians over the years, including Herbert Asquith. But Asquith’s successor a century later, Nick Clegg, may suddenly be finding that a real and painful question, as he reflects on the wreckage of last week’s European summit.

But first, what happened: Cameron vetoed a treaty amendment on European integration, leaving the remaining countries no alternative but to set up a separate group which would implement the deal outside the EU. It was technically a veto, but only technically: it stopped nothing. The sticking point was said to be the financial transaction tax (FTT), an oddly unfair idea that a group of countries with relatively small financial sectors could jointly gang up to tax the one country which has an unseasonably large one, and which would certainly have damaged British interests. In that sense he was right to veto. Since the FTT is unfeasible without Britain, it was very likely a deliberate ploy by Sarkozy, as Ben Brogan suggests, to insist on this point which he knew Cameron could not accept, thus removing the “difficult” Cameron from the scene and clearing the way for an EU which might just have a chance of agreeing what it needed to agree.

However, this does not mean a triumph for Cameron – far from it. It is, as former Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, told John Rentoul, “the worst foreign policy disaster in my adult lifetime”. But not because of the FTT. It is a disaster because it should never have come to this. Sarkozy took this action precisely because he knew Cameron was hamstrung and would never co-operate. Rather than the EU limping around with a British club foot, Sarkozy ruthlessly opted for amputation. But Sarkozy is no fool: he must have seen the attractions of a deal, but didn’t see it as possible.

Perhaps the smartest observation over the weekend came from the Times’ David Aaronovitch, who tweeted: “I think this another of those increasingly common mega-events no-one can usefully call”. The truth is precisely that: no-one really knows with certainty whether the EU-26 will pull off the convergence deal. They will need to move their backsides for this to work, as Tony Blair points out in this interview. But if they do, Cameron will look a fool, beholden to his swivel-eyed backbenchers. If they don’t, he will look a far-sighted sage. We simply don’t know. Yet.

Ed Miliband, of course, is left in the unenviable position of not knowing, either. So, rather than risk getting it wrong, he is forced to fudge his answer. Inelegant, but perhaps necessary, given that he could not come down on the wrong side of an argument this important.

So where does this leave the coalition? Well, look at it this way: the Lib Dems used to standfor the three E’s: education, environment and Europe. Oh, and PR. Which have all been sold down the river respectively by (i) tuition fees, (ii) the Tories’ “put the husky to sleep” U-turns, recently highlighted by Mary Creagh MP, (iii) last week’s Euro-summit and (iv) the AV referendum, which they lost.

All the things that the Lib Dems once stood for, in short, have now been washed away in a political downpour which has left Clegg high and dry. On this summit, Clegg has done the only thing he could do: go along with Cameron’s position, then act cross about it afterwards, as he did on the BBC on Sunday.

If, then, there is any clear lesson to be learned from last week, it must surely be this: thatthe coalition cannot continue after 2015. Why? Because the remaining, long-suffering Lib Dem voters, such as they are, will surely not now wear the Tories as partners in a general election. Even if Clegg does not split his party, which seems at least a possibility, they will likely survive only as a rump which distinguishes itself from the Tories in some way. But beyond that, it makes little sense to try and predict when and where the coalition will finally collapse.

The frustrating thing for Clegg is that he is actually right, in the sense that Britain is now “marginalised” in Europe. In not just the continental but the international press in general, almost all papers led, predictably, with gleeful “Britain isolated” headlines, and that is all that most people abroad can see. Incidentally, the worrying thing is that few of these observersseemed to be focusing on the rather more important issue of whether or not the summit achieved its aim of saving the euro, which the FT, among others, rather seemed to think that it did not. But that is another story.

On the home front, even were he not before, Cleggis surely a lame duck now. We have seen how much sway the Lib Dems really have over the things they care about: precious little. He can no longer hide that from his voters, and politics can be a cruel business. He has a non-job holding things together as best he can for the next two-and-a-half years – though with a ministerial car, if he succeeds – and then, in all probability, either some international role, or oblivion.

His goose is not yet cooked, but the oven light has gone off and the timer’s on.

This post first published at Labour Uncut

Flynn: tolerating the intolerable

2011-12-08T09:38:00.000Z

Last week, two things happened which produced condemnation by our politicians. Jeremy Clarkson appeared on national television threatening to shoot strikers in front of their families. And Paul Flynn MP, interviewed by the Jewish Chronicle, spoke against having a Jewish ambassador for Israel, after suggesting in Parliament that he might be working for a foreign power.

Clarkson is a big-mouth and a boor. He may even, from his recorded comments, be described as casually xenophobic. He is also – many may not realise this – extraordinarily successful at an international level (Top Gear has 350 million viewers per week in 170 countries – believe me, despite their protestations the BBC will not sack him any time soon). I don’t particularly warm to him or his alleged humour, but that’s beside the point.

On the other hand Flynn is, by all accounts, worthy: a hard-working MP who has previously won Backbencher of the Year and who has written at least one rather good book, which I have read. I have always thought quite highly of him and never thought him remotely racist.

And yet…there was something much more disturbing about what Flynn said. Clarkson was merely being Clarkson, a cartoon figure of the right. In fact, the day of a strike, he was clearly looking to court controversy, wind up the lefties and sell his book, which is precisely what he has achieved. He also represents no-one apart from himself, and surely more controversial subjects have been broached in practically any episode of Little Britain. And he did issue, at least, a qualified apology.

Flynn is one of us, a representative of our proudly anti-racist party, and yet he was happy to trot out the centuries-old anti-Semitic trope of “divided loyalties” – that a Jew could not be loyal to their country first. He thoughtlessly mixed religion and nationality. He made what amounted to a personal attack on a public servant, partly on the basis of their religion, which they are hardly able to change. His Tory committee colleague and friend, Robert Halfon, who is Jewish, showed all the signs of being genuinely shocked and puzzled at his behaviour rather than politically opportunist. And Flynn has also failed to apologise.

But it gets worse: what received little press coverage was the extraordinary defence given by Flynn for his remarks, that he was merely representing the views of two of his constituents. And who, pray, were these two: not any old constituents, were they? Step forward, some old Palestine campaigning chums, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin.

Blogger Lucy Lips shows Bartolotti, former Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) member (yes, them) and Galloway acolyte, pictured holding a Syrian neo-Nazi flag and then with Hamas terrorist leaders, quoting her sympathy with the anti-Semitic views of one of them, al-Zahar: “It seemed to me that he no longer separated Zionism from the ordinary Jew, but…one could hardly blame him”. There then follows a brutally accurate observation:

“what Paul Flynn MP has done is the equivalent of a Labour MP expressing concerns about the trustworthiness of non-Anglo Saxon British public servants, at the behest of a British National Party activist”.

It’s instructive to compare and contrast in this tale of two censures. The swift and unequivocal condemnation from the Tories is an entirely consistent reflection of Cameron’s attitude to racism within his own party (and, of course, a political open goal). And his predictable comment on his friend Clarkson was that it was “a silly thing to say and I’m sure he didn’t mean that”. But what was important, of course, was that it also had the ring of truth: Clarkson was obviously not going to pick up a gun and shoot them.

But Flynn clearly did mean his comments, rightly condemned by politicians across the political spectrum. With one notable exception, that is: his party leader. Miliband lambasted Clarkson’s comments as “absolutely disgraceful and disgusting”. In contrast, as the Jewish Chronicle’s editor, Stephen Pollard, pointed out, on the subject of Flynn he allowed it to be briefed that the comments were “unacceptable” but was personally silent (it was left to other Shadow Cabinet members to speak out). As he was over the three Labour MPs who invited the anti-Semite Raed Salah to speak at the Houses of Parliament. In both cases the Chief Whip spoke to the MPs involved, and in both cases nothing further happened.

We may speculate as to why: Miliband’s sensitivity about his own Jewish roots; his unwillingness to confront union bosses, who have singularly failed to condemn Flynn either and broadly support the PSC; or thinking the issue not sufficiently important. But all these reasons fail to convince: there are times when you have to do what is right. “I have rarely felt such a sense of disappointment in a Labour leader as I do today in Ed Miliband, writes Jenni Frazer in the Chronicle…Flynn has now brought this attitude into respectable conversation”. Unwittingly, perhaps, but he has: and Miliband has looked away.

In the 60s, the Tories were nearly destroyed by Enoch Powell. In the 70s and 80s, they were still friends with the bad guys: on the side of P W Botha and Pinochet. But they learned their lesson. The wheel has come full circle and the Tories are now, with the possible exception of their ill-advised grouping within the European Parliament, the party of zero tolerance to extremism. Office-holders within their party are representatives and must behave accordingly. Transgressions are condemned immediately, and without reservation, at the highest level – often the party leader – and disciplined, which is exactly how it should be.

Labour, on the other hand, is now another party. It has become the party of indiscipline, and tolerance of the intolerable.

UPDATE: According to the JC, Paul Flynn has today finally made a statement apologising for his remarks, two weeks after the original claim in Parliament and one week after the interview with the JC. The JC’s Martin Bright is quite right in saying it was the “honourable thing to do”.

However, this does not answer why he made such statements in the first place, and why he took the word of two people with the background and history described above, against that of a senior public servant, whose only real crime seems to have been that he was Jewish.

Neither does it answer, two weeks after the issue first came to light, the continued silence from the leadership.

This post first published at LabourList

Miliband the seer, Miliband the invulnerable

2011-12-01T10:32:00.003Z

Last Thursday, Ed MIliband was speaking at the IPPR on the economy, doughtily willing that Labour’s alternative can soon be heard again, in light of Britain’s increasingly dreadful prospects. In spite of the response of many commentators, that here was a battle he couldn’t win, his words indicated that, on the contrary, he genuinely believes things are going his way on the economy and that Labour merely needs “one more heave”, as Dan Hodges puts it. He and Ed Balls need only keep saying the same thing, and the political tectonic plates will have shifted their way by the general election.

Never mind that Labour’s economic polling is awful and has shown little sign of shifting over the last year, in spite of the crisis. Never mind that the Tories have two fairly foolproof deflection strategies for this mess – blame Labour and blame Europe. Team Miliband is convinced that the tide is turning and it is just a matter of time.

Why? It’s instructive to examine the psychology behind this. There seem to be two factors at play. One is about the vision thing. There are a few people in any generation – a very few people – who have the extraordinary gift of seeing the future. Not literally, like a soothsayer, but the visionaries: the Steve Jobses or the Thomas Edisons. Or the political figures who define a generation: the Mandelas, the Luther Kings, the FDRs, the Kennedys. People who see the trend lines in today’s thinking and can extrapolate them out, accurately, into the future, along with a road map. They anticipate, and they get it right. These people are extraordinary (not to mention usually pretty successful in their chosen field).

Those around Ed Miliband – understandably, or they would not be there – need to believe that he is one of these people. He has read the runes during his “Fresh Thinking” tour of Britain, and in the organic tea leaves brewed up by the Occupy movement, and has seen the future. It is a world after a paradigm shift: a public-demanded move towards “good” capitalism and away from “bad” capitalism (that same bad capitalism, for the record, which has awkwardly persisted for most of history). Since 1918 there have been six recessions, but arguably only one economic paradigm shift to the left, which followed the Second World War. But a war has not happened; an economic downturn has. It is, of course, possible that Ed is one of these visionaries. But it also seems unlikely, just as it seems unlikely that we are undergoing a marked sea change in public opinion (which, as Hodges has pointed out, appears by all accounts to be moving to the right).

There is a second factor, which has kicked in since July this year: risk-taking. On phone hacking, Miliband made a decision to confront Rupert Murdoch which was genuinely brave. Perhaps even recklessly so, as we argued here, but he pulled it off, and all credit to him. Risk-taking is an important ability in a politican, and at that moment the often over-cautious Miliband Mk I changed completely.

But in the same way that Team Miliband seems to have overestimated the impact of the economic crisis on people’s thinking, the New Statesman’s Rafael Behr observes, correctly, that it may also have read too much into phone-hacking and that really not that much has changed:

He made a difficult and brave judgement call - took a risk - and got it right. It was a turning point in his leadership. But Miliband and his team read more into it than that…If Labour could reverse the orthodoxy that said you have suck up to the Murdoch empire, what other orthodoxies of recent political memory might be ripe for reversal? It was an episode that emboldened Miliband and encouraged him to develop more broadly the language of "vested interests" and "ripping up the rule book" and "predatory capitalism" as expressed in his party conference speech and in last week's article in the Observer praising the St Paul's protest.

Nevertheless, since the summer Miliband has seemed compelled periodically to demonstrate that there are plenty more dotty ideas up his sleeve – and if you’ve read his Guardian piece on the St Pauls protests or witnessed his conference speech, you’ll understand – which he will happily take forward unprompted. Now, with this determination to follow his instincts, it seems clear that he is not going to be easily swayed or influenced by people outside the inner circle. But you can picture senior Tory strategists, reflecting on this, smiling to themselves as they recall Humbert Wolfe’s epigram on journalists:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

On the one hand, they won’t be able to manipulate him, or catch him out in a moment of low cunning. On the other hand, they will reason, there’s probably no need.

It takes a lot of strength to convince those around you that you have the necessary vision, and that the risks you are taking will pay off. People who know Miliband well say he has a great deal of self-belief. And that’s a very good thing: it is undoubtedly a necessary condition for political success.

But it is surely not a sufficient one.

This post first published at Labour Uncut, and linked by Stumbling and Mumbling

Labour's business: out today

2011-11-28T21:08:00.000Z

Today, Alex Smith and Luke Bozier launch Labour's Business, their excellent work on how we need to engage with business (rather than alienate it). I've done Chapter 3, Reaching Out: engaging
with business at every level of the party and there are other chapters by Anthony Painter, Hazel Blears and Kitty Usher among others, and Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna has done the Foreword. So I am quite honoured to be in such hallowed company.

Anyway, take a look and see what you think, feedback (public or private) most welcome.

How we all look from the other side of the world

2011-11-24T13:52:00.001Z

We are all taught at school about the five, or even the seven, continents. But in business and elsewhere many still think of the world in three groupings, matching the three broad time-zones, or the three big financial centres, of the developed world: Europe, America and Asia. In each there exists an informal hub for the Anglophone, Anglo-Saxon world: in Europe there is Britain, in the Americas, the US. In Asia, largely old-world but arguably the most dynamic and developing of the three areas, it is economically confident and rapidly-expanding Australia.

Last week I was in Sydney and it was fascinating to view our troubled continent from there. While Australia still holds a great affection for Britain (the Royal Wedding was huge), the link pretty much ends at the emotional and historical. Labour Prime Minister – and how tantalising those words sound nowadays – Julia Gillard now presides over an economy which has not known recession since 1991 (not even in the Asian crisis of 1998) and has been protected from the worst of the global financial crisis, largely thanks to an Asia-fuelled boom in demand for its mining output. Its population has doubled in the last half-century and, compared with the UK, jobs are relatively easy to come by, with unemployment currently at around 5%.

The learning point from the comparison? All politics, as Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once famously observed, is local. Information does not flow as freely across borders as you might think.

First, Australia “gets” the rise of Asia, because it is part of it. In fact, it has spent most of the postwar period aligning itself towards it and away from the British Commonwealth. We in Europe, largely, do not. Yes, we know that China is growing and we must engage. We know we can make things there very cheaply. But we do not, perhaps, recognise just how much and how quickly the geopolitical ball-game is changing because of that. Now, this understanding is not the sole reason for Australia’s success. But its Asian alignment has clearly helped.

Second,the reverse lack of understanding is also true: the euro crisis is probably not being jumped up and down about in Asia simply because its full extent hasn’t yet impinged upon people’s consciousness. “My colleague came back from Europe last week and told me that we just don’t get how big a deal the euro crisis is”, a senior Australian fund manager told me. But this is not good news. Because when other world players really do understand the trouble we’re in, the big hedge funds will really start to move in (Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha, was quoted on Monday as saying the euro had a “major flaw”). What is disturbing is not that such judgements are being made, but the fact they are coming this late in the day implies that, internationally, people are only just waking up to the crisis.

But neither is it surprising: our own leaders have taken months to recognise the scale of the crisis, and still seem to be dragging their feet as to the solution. Furthermore, the intricacies of European politics and what the EU actually means are lost on many. From the outside, it is easy to think of the EU as what it is not: a United States of Europe with a universal single currency, a uniform set of laws and free movement of labour.

Third, there is an underlying reason why not those outside Europe might not immediately see the gravity of the situation. Much commentary that you read on the euro crisis, because it is the terrain of specialists, is by economic staff. It is the business editor of this publication or the economics guru of that: after all, their readers, businesspeople and financiers, have a great deal to lose from a possible disaster.

Now, it is sometimes comforting to look at the world as economists do, as a set of reliable mathematical equations. But all models are based on a set of assumptions which have to hold; those same economic commentators may not be quite so well versed in the underlying politics of Europe, with its Byzantine structures at EU level and its long history of irrational, emotionally-tinged politics. If you cannot get your head around the foot-dragging by Europe’s leaders, it is easy to assume that it is because the problem is not all that big. This is a dangerous misreading: it is quite that big, and more. Just because from outside you cannot see the economic logic of failing to prevent an entirely preventable slump in the world’s largest trading bloc, does not mean that Europe’s leaders will behave logically and fix it.

What does all this tell us? Well, we could certainly benefit by taking our stare away from our European navels and looking out to the rest of the world, before they truly wake up to the trouble we’re in. Not only could they teach us that the real game is being played out far from Europe and we had better shape up: they would also be unlikely to forgive us easily for dragging them and the rest of the world into recession.

The Centre Left goes to...Australia!

2011-11-05T10:15:00.001Z

The Centre Left is, as they say in all the best rock bands, "on hiatus" (usually, apparently, around the time they start "not feeling it") for a couple of weeks.

On the minus side, the last major left-wing government in Europe, Spain, will probably fall while I'm away (although a last-minute rush for Rubalcaba is still possible, given that the alternative is fairly awful). Come to think of it, so might the rest of Europe, which might have me returning to a dystopian, Mad Max landscape, peopled by hordes of marauding Greeks. Ok, maybe not.

On the plus side, I will land in one of the only (perhaps the only) major left-wing democracies left in the West (and no, a cohabiting Obama does not count). And the surfing is apparently rather good, too.

Who knows, I may return to regale you of tales of how Labour Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard explained to me how the left could win again in the UK (it worked for Tony Blair with Paul Keating, after all, as noted here). Well, as I'm going to Sydney and I imagine she works in Canberra, coupled with the fact that, er, she has no idea who I am, probably not. However, I should note that my former Party colleague and fellow Labour Uncut writer, John McTernan, has just disappeared off to be her spin doctor. So you never know how or when those learning points might filter back to the UK to win the day for Labour...

See you all in a couple of weeks.

The world still doesn’t know about the PSC

2011-11-04T14:37:00.000Z

Well, from my New Statesman article last Friday about anti-semitism, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and their fellow-travellers, I learned a couple of things: that there are an awful lot of crazy people in the world, most of whom, it seemed, wanted to comment on my piece; and that there are also sensible, decent people on the left who simply don’t know this stuff is going on.

Anyway, since PSC chair Hugh Lanning has now posted a response piece at the NS, I should try and correct what he has said. It is not difficult to take apart his argument, but I shall do it, for completeness and because I am, frankly, a bit bloody-minded.

For the record, Lanning’s response contains no links to sources, although this lack of corroboration is not surprising considering the weakness of the argument. Also for the record, my original piece contained links to twenty-one sources, one of which linked to ten further sources.

First, this:

“Those who support Israel’s actions are attempting…to portray those supporting Palestinian rights as anti-Semitic”

I can only take it that Mr Lanning means me. However, in his opening lines, he’s actually made an entirely wrong assumption, as I’m afraid is typical of everyone I have come across in the PSC: they assume that anyone who criticises them is an Israeli puppet who slavishly follows everything their government says. Well, I don’t support Israel’s actions: at least certainly not the settlements policy and a bunch of other stuff. And I think Netanyahu is a very poor leader for Israel. But such nuances are clearly beyond Mr Lanning. Anyway, wrong assumption.

And I support Palestinian rights, by the way, and I’m not anti-Semitic. This piece was against the PSC (and others), not against everyone who supports Palestine. So, that assertion, backed up by nothing, is also incorrect.

Second:

“Rob Marchant’s blog post which focused on criticising the PSCbegan with four incidences — three of which had nothing to do with PSC”

Interestingly, I did not claim otherwise: the piece specifically said that only the last two were to do with the PSC, the paragraph was a general one about the rise of anti-Semitism.

In fact, what the PSC claim – and, to be fair, may be true – is that the “Scottish PSC” and the “PSC” are not the same organisation. Odd that two organisations that have almost the same name are entirely separate, but let’s assume that’s the case, as it may well be.

It is interesting that Lanning’s claim is more than that: they are “nothing to do with the PSC”, because that is clearly false. Even if the organisations are legally separate, they work together, they attend the same demos and clearly share the same objectives. What is further interesting, note, is that there is no condemnation of Donnachie’s action (his conviction, as you may remember, was for a “racist breach of the peace”). And that is because, of course, as Lanning fails to mention and Stephen Pollard reports in the Telegraph, PSC director Sarah Colborne attacked his conviction.

In short, your argument is this: a very similar organisation to ours, with almost-but-not-quite the same name, has been associated with a racist incident, where members demonstrated outside the court and defended the convicted person in the press. And our organisation, thePSC, defended and supported it in doing so on record. But it’s ok, because technically it is not the same legal entity as us, so we’re in the clear and have nothing to apologise for. We need make no comment either way.

Next week: the People’s Front of Judea claim that the anti-Roman graffiti was done “by the Judean People’s Front”, so they’re in the clear.

Similarly, neither do they disassociate themselves from Viva Palestina and the “Go back to Russia” comments of its organiser Carole Swords. It is almost so obvious as to not need repeating: either disprove these assertions, or agree that they are correct and condemn these people. But don’t just say “it’s our friends, not us personally, so we don’t have to say anything”. Weak, weak, weak.

Third:

“and the fourth he completely misrepresented. PSC did not organise a protest outside the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance because of their “er, being Israeli” — it was because of their close collaboration with the Israeli armed forces.”

So, let me get this right: if they had been an orchestra with no connection to the Israeli military, you would not have thought them a legitimate target for jeering and barracking in the middle of a performance? But that’s funny, because you run a campaign against any kind of Israeli productsbeing bought in the UK. Those Israeli companies are nothing to do with the Israeli armed forces or even the Israeli government, but you consider them a legitimate target. So, I’m afraid it’s rather difficult to believe that you did it because of links to the Israeli armed forces, because that would be rather inconsistent with your stated policy. It’s pretty clear that you would have barracked them anyway, isn’t it? But hey, that’s just a conjecture, albeit a very reasonable one.

Fourth:

“While the blog attacks Sheikh Raed Salah, it fails to mention that Jews for Justice for Palestinians also challenged the British government’s treatment of Raed Salah.”

I’m sorry, but I’m flipping out a bit here now. You are talking about Raed Salah, who you invited to speak at the House of Commons, and are quibbling about some procedural failure in the Home Office, all the while failing to mention rather important things from my piece like (i) this fairly disgusting poem of which he admitted to being the author during the tribunal (after previously denying it), (ii) this video, and (iii) the loss of his appeal and the fact he is about to be deported. Most of all, you fail to mention the comments of the tribunal judge, which are worth repeating:

“We are satisfied that the [Raed Salah] has engaged in the unacceptable behaviour of fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK. We are satisfied that [Raed Salah]’s words and actions tend to be inflammatory, divisive, insulting, and likely to foment tension and radicalism”

You are still defending, against all evidence to the contrary, this man who it would be clear to any reasonable person is an unpleasant extremist and racist. You could have admitted your mistake in inviting him to speak, but you are not big enough to do so and instead paint yourself into a corner, where you argue that black is white and white no colour at all.

Fifth:

“It also fails to mention that PSC has a clear policy against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in all its ugly forms and takes action to enforce this policy within the campaign.”

Ah well, that’s okay then. If you say that you are against anti-Semitism, everything’s ok. Well, no, it’s not. If I claim I am against racism and then invite David Duke to speak at my meeting, probably very few people will believe my claim. What you have done is not all that dissimilar, really, is it?

Sixth:

“As an ex-manager from the Labour Party surely knows, member organisations do need to deal with breaches of their policies and principles when they are aware of them, and PSC is committed to doing so.”

Oh, but I do: I surely do understand a political organisation must take action against its wayward members. It is interesting though, that you did not comment on any of the pieces about various of your members in ten separate local branches. In the Labour Party, anyone found carrying out these kinds of actions would immediately be reported to the Regional Office and disciplined, and quite possibly thrown out. I would be delighted to hear exactly what disciplinary action has been taken against each one of these people, if any.

Seventh:

“That is why we believe there has been a concerted attempt to smear the PSC.”

This is interesting, from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

con·cert·ed, adj: mutually contrived or agreed on

In other words, that I and a group of other people have ganged up on the PSC in order to smear them. Well, I have to make a terrible confession: I conspired with no-one at all in the writing of this article. Mostly I have used sources freely available on the internet, although for the odd one I am indebted to sources such as Engage and Harry’s Place. But I wrote this off my own bat, because I felt strongly about it. So your assertion is incorrect, just like the first six points.

The rest of the article bangs on, predictably, about Israel and Palestine, which was not the point of my post, as in the end I needed to point out in the comments, several times. It was about anti-Semitism, a subject which concerns me as a citizen. And that’s all, really. I am quite certain there are injustices inPalestine which need to be sorted out. As there are injustices in Israel. It is, as they say, complicated.

But what moved me to write the piece was nothing to do with the Palestine situation. It was simply that on racism there should be no quarter given, ever. And least of all in my party, the party that practically invented racial tolerance.

Finally, a few people said to me after reading the article that they didn’t know about this, and that it was shocking.

Learning point, if a blindingly obvious one: we, all of us, need to keep on going out into the world and boring people to death with this stuff until everyone, and I mean everyone, knows.

Thanks for listening.

This article first published at Harry's Place

Labour vindicated on the economy? Not so fast

2011-11-03T09:00:00.003Z

Polly Toynbee

On Monday Alastair Campbell ran a positive blog piece which points out that a billion pounds worth of infrastructure projects signals a change in the Tories’ previous policy of “no plan B”:

“It is not exactly plan B. But it is an admission of sorts that plan A isn’t working, that their hope that the private sector would fill the gap left by their huge cuts in the public sector (most of which are yet to be felt incidentally) was exactly that – a hope.

Now that the hope has been shown to be largely hopeless, their magic wand having failed to deliver, and more bad figures due this week, they are having to turn back to good old-fashioned public money kickstarting. And about time too.”

Now, I realise that Campbell is not saying that the debate is over, nor anything close. His analysis is largely correct. Much has also been made of the letter from 100 economists calling for a plan B. I will go as far as to say that they are right to call for one, and it is indeed good to see, in a purely non-partisan and, well, patriotic sense, some arguments being made as to how to stop our economy flat-lining. But I will let greater minds than mine pick over Compass’ “Good Society” plan, not least because we will be in no position to put any plan in place for a few more years yet.

No, my real concern is about an alternative, hubris-laden reading of the current economic situation which goes further. In the absence of proof – so far – of a longer-term slump to vindicate us, there is a fervent hope that George Osborne is anyway now in the process of realising that there really is a need for Keynesian stimulus, and now we are all set for a comeback in our economic credibility, as commentators in Britain and across the world agree that we were right all along. Polly Toynbee’s triumphal piece on Monday was entitled “Vindication for Ed Miliband is in the air”: you can imagine her punching it.

Well, no.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It may even be true that Osborne is starting to think about stimulus: the Tories have got the path to growth wrong (as world-renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz argues here), and Ed Balls has largely got it right, as many of us have said before (although neither has he got everything else right, by the way, for example, his ill-advised comments on the 50p tax rate). But, sadly, the rest is not true. We are not about to be lauded for our foresight.

You see, it’s not always enough merely to be right. You need to be seen and accepted to be right.

There are three reasons why we can forget about the key to the next election being a “we were right all along” argument winning over the electorate.

- First, don’t underestimate the Tories' adaptability. A tweak here, a tweak there and – voilà! – Keynesian stimulus through the back door, just enough to get to Norman Lamont’s legendary “green shoots of recovery”. Do we seriously believe that if we reach the point where everyone says that the Tories are getting it wrong – which is by no means the case – that they won’t gently tack, to get to where they need to be? In fact, it is exactly what the Economist suggests here and what Campbell has noted above: it is the obvious course of action. In extremis, Cameron can always threaten to sack Osborne if he is too stubborn, which it probably won’t come to because Osborne is not stupid, either. As Keynes himself said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

- Second, it’s no use in 2015 having been right in 2010. No-one will really care, even if they believe it to be true. There is a host of other reasons that low growth will be blamed on, the euro-zone crisis being the most obvious. If, as seems very likely indeed, our economy is knocked for six by an imploding euro, that is all people will remember in 2015. That, and quite possibly even then, a vague remembrance of the Tories’ line about it all being Labour’s fault.

- Third, simply, we have to control the politics, not just the economics, as we have argued here before. Our reputation will take a lot more than that to restore: check our abysmal economic polling. End of.

The unpalatable fact that we need to learn to accept, in spite of the vital importance of rebuilding our economic credibility, is that Labour’s economic reputation is unlikely to surpass that of the Tories in time for the next election.

The best we can hope for is that the public and opinion-formers in the media reach a “six one, half-a-dozen the other” conclusion: that there wouldn’t have been much difference between Balls and Osborne in terms of the handling of the recovery; that the economy becomes a neutral, and not the negative it currently is. That may just happen, and that’s what we must fight for. And even then, the reality is that it would be despite Balls’ association with Brown, not because of it.

But a vindication in the eyes of the public, and a return to the economic credibility we won with blood, sweat and tears, sadly, is a pipe-dream.

Let’s get real.

This piece first published at LabourList, and was selected for "What we're reading" at Progress Online

Cameron’s history notes 1: Achilles, revisited

2011-11-01T12:05:00.001Z

Last week, David Cameron had a bad week. But it’s important to understand what kind of a bad week. He’s had not a defeat, but a sour victory in the Commons against his own rebels; but so did Tony Blair on two memorable occasions – Iraq and tuition fees – when he feared he might have to resign, and didn’t. These things, although nerve-wracking at the time, are to some extent part and parcel of being a prime minister.

The extent of the defeat, though large, was rather to be expected over an issue as touchy as Europe and the relative weakness of his electoral position. However, neither does his government look “in office but not in power”, as Norman Lamont described the Major government. And his rebuke by Sarkozy for trying to interfere in a subject, the euro, which Britain long ago put on the long finger its joining up, was also to be expected. Many have criticized his handling of the Commons vote, saying that he was looking for a fight; but it is hardly his fault that half of his backbenchers defy rationality on this subject. And some believe that, despite the bad headlines, he called it right.

On top of all this, on a much more important subject he knows that, economically, things aren’t looking great. But, if he needs to, he’ll sit down with Osborne and they’ll cook up some way to change plan A into plan A+ without anyone noticing too much.

In any event, these are the immediate concerns, and Cameron excels in the tactical. No, oddly, the recurring dream that is waking him up, sweating, in the middle of the night, is another. Something which surely does not exercise Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg in the slightest: it’s that this is a taste of what the future holds for him on Europe. The story is a variation on one well-known from his classical education. He is running through the Trojan forest, chased by the bigbête noire, with a spear and – thwack! – he feels the hit in the back of the heel and hears only a distance voice murmuring, “beware the Greeks…” as he loses consciousness. Yes, Cameron is surely aware that the Achilles comparisons come easily to almost every Tory leader on this subject.

For example, Hugo Young observed of MacMillan that he was “only the first of a long line of Conservative politicians broken on the wheel of Europe”. Cameron is too smart not to know this. The trick for him is to make it through his premiership avoiding the Brussels bear-traps.

In the last half-century, ignoring the one-year reign of Alec Douglas-Home, there has only been one Tory Prime Minister whom Europe did not break: Thatcher. MacMillan, Heath and Major all had nasty experiences. MacMillan’s career was effectively ended by his unsuccessful application to join the EEC; Heath’s was seriously set back by the same failure, although he managed to recover, but modern-day Tories revile him anyway for being the most pro-Europe premier ever; and finally, Major was destroyed by his Eurosceptic opponents within the party and Britain’s disastrous Black Wednesday exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism. In addition to all of this, during the leadership of William Hague, the first Tory leader in seventy years not to become Prime Minister, the Tories’ obsession with sovereignty and their scaremongering about the loss of the pound was to make them look extremist and unelectable for several more years, around the turn of the millennium.

Cameron has, till now, done the smart thing for any Tory leader: he has avoided the subject. He cannot avoid it forever, as the last week has shown. He may well yet, as someone recently observed, find that the idea of petitions being debated in Parliament is his Freedom Of Information moment: the moment when he innocently supported what he thought would be a difficult-to-argue with democratic idea, only to find that it opened the door to a nightmare.

But it is no longer Europhiles versus Euro-sceptics, as it was in the 90s. The Europhiles are an endangered species. The debate has all moved to the right, and become madder: it is pull out altogether on the one hand; versus, on the other, stay in but still on the margins. Cameron is no Europhile, far from it: he is simply a person who realises, having seen the larger worldview that a prime minister has, that pulling out would be utter madness. The argument, in short, has moved from integration versus not, to pulling out versus not.

The Tory Eurosceptic argument is based on a fatal misconception: that, after 40-odd years of battering by the Murdoch press, the British public has become as rampantly anti-EU as they are. They are not. They are, as John Rentoul puts it, “grumpy” about Europe. They do not instinctively gel with it, as the Germans, French or Benelux do (although that is changing, too, as they now realize they have been subsidizing low interest rates to fiscally incontinent, debt-loving economies across Europe).

But neither do they really prioritise it as much as other things in their lives, especially in the middle of a nasty period of austerity. And it’s impossible to get any sense out of anyone on the subject, once they fall into the Euro-black hole. The nicest, most rational right-wing journalists and Tory backbenchers just start frothing at the mouth when the subject is mentioned. AsMartin Kettle nicely puts it in the Guardian, “all political parties risk falling prey to their own mythologies about the voters”. And he goes on to say that the Tories' Euro-obsession could yet cost them the next election.

What it does underline is that Cameron is not a strong leader in an electoral sense. It has been easy to forget, with a low-profile Labour Party still licking its wounds, that Cameron is not at all lord of all he surveys, although, like the well-bred chap he is, he does a good, airy impression ofnoblesse oblige. It is easy to believe his propaganda. But this, Europe, is his particular weak point. This is where, like many before him, he has most chance of coming unstuck. The question is for Labour: are we ready for him?

It is also likely that, as the economy recovers, he will grow in political power as the Tories realize that a second term may well be in reach and Cameron’s power of patronage extends. But, even if he has played this as well as he might have done, which is not at all clear, he is unlikely to suture effectively the deep wound that Europe cut a long time ago in the Conservative body politic. And, going on previous precedents, it will most likely do for his leadership at some point.

After all, Europe is not going anywhere. Calais will still, frustratingly for him, be the exact same distance away from Dover in five or ten years’ time, and his backbenchers will still be as irrational as ever on the subject.

And when that time comes, we should be ready.

Anti-Semitism is the new black

2011-10-29T09:18:00.001+01:00

My second piece for the New Statesman is here. It's also the no. 2 post over the last couple of days appearing in the Most Popular section on the NS site.

Competition for the Reagan Defence Award, 2011

2011-10-24T19:22:00.001+01:00

For those who followed the wonderful story of Chris Huhne's extraordinary inability to remember important events about his wife's driving offence - the "Reagan Defence", in honour of the ex-President who miraculously forgot all details of the Iran-Contra affair - today's news is that he's got competition.

Simon Hoggart delightfully recounts the appearance of Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International, who could not answer a question seven times during his appearance before the House of Commons culture committee regarding phone hacking. But, as Tom Watson MP gleefully pointed out, this was an improvement: during his previous appearance, his memory had failed a total of thirty-two times.

Watch it, Chris: your crown's not safe yet.

Polling, polling, polling. Raw hide?

2011-10-20T14:01:00.003+01:00

Image: CBS

(With profuse apologies to the late Frankie Laine, or the Blues Brothers, depending on your generation. Sorry about that.)

Just in case anyone is still feeling a bit too upbeat after Mark Ferguson's piece yesterday at LabourList, a question: is our polling taking a turn for the better, or giving us a good kicking?

Five months ago we took a look, here at the Centre Left, at whether Labour's poll lead was soft or hard, and concluded the former. However, a year into the new leadership, it behoves us to take another look, to see whether the picture has improved or declined since then. In particular, a Populus poll for the Times at the weekend has sent many Labour pulses racing by showing an 8-point lead over the Tories.

It's also notable that, during conference week, there was a marked split between left-leaning commentators on how things had gone, especially that Leader's Speech. Few had a nuanced view on it: people either thought it had finally encapsulated Ed Miliband's vision and made it connect with people, or thought it fuzzy, vague and windy. The really important thing, of course, is simple: did the public engage with the vision or not? If it did, it should surely be reflecting in the polls.

So, there are four important developments we should include:

First, let's deal with that encouraging poll. Yesterday there was another YouGov poll for the Sun, which showed no significant change from the previous poll: that is, with Labour slightly (3%) ahead, after the previous YouGov Sunday Times poll's 3% lead, as well as the ComRes poll last weekend (2%). On the YouGov polling, therefore, the Fox affair has had no notable impact. As YouGov's Anthony Wells said of the Times poll in his excellent UK Polling Report at the time, "a sudden change in support...could be the start of a trend, it could just be an outlier". Moreover, in view of the subsequent Sun poll, it seems difficult to believe that this is not an outlier. Theoretically possible, but unlikely, seems the best response to the proposition that this is the start of a turnaround. Sorry.

Second, our conclusion that the previous overall poll lead in voting intention was soft seems to be being borne out by the trend: a virtually static gap of a few percentage points since the start of the year. Currently the Tories are pretty much neck and neck with Labour, even without the support of the Lib Dems. In other words, even with this one poll, which shows all the signs of being an outlier, we are failing to develop the lead we need. It's hard to dispute the view of our own Mark Ferguson yesterday, that the poll lead is "soft as warm butter".

Third, a disturbing development was the release of the first poll immediately following the conference speech, which showed a 12% drop in personal polling for Ed as leader. Again, Anthony Wells' comment about outliers applies. And, as Political Betting's Mike Smithson fairly pointed out in the same piece, conference week polls have a habit of showing unrepresentative figures. Wise heads, we thought, should therefore not base too much on this, and wait for further polling. That said, the sheer size of the drop, even after allowing for "conference week effect" to add on an error margin, is at least cause for concern.

Fourth, well, we waited as advised. That "further polling" arrived on Saturday in the shape of the Comres poll (hat-tip: John Rentoul) for the Mirror and Independent on Sunday with supplementary polling on the party leaders. It did not show a drop of 12%. But it did show a drop of 4% in a month, giving a rating of -28% to Ed Miliband, his lowest-ever in these polls, and which confirms a downward trend from -15% at the end of last year. Although it's important to note that all party leaders have negative ratings at the moment, neither is it at all good news: the other two have the handicap of being in government in the middle of a harsh austerity program.

My good colleague Alex Smith was one of the ones who thought the speech a clear, radical vision. But even so, he pointed out that:

"undeniably, this new strategy is risky. It could contribute to the obliteration of Labour's already tentative support."

Risky it surely was: that is one thing - perhaps the only thing - on which pretty much all commentators are agreed. And it is, obviously, unwise to jump to conclusions on the basis of one-off polls. However, conversely, repeated polls over a period of time should not be ignored, and there are two conclusions we can probably draw from the cumulative evidence above.

The first is that we find it hard to conclude that the gamble, that was the conference speech, has paid off. It is unusual to spend several days after a conference speech rebutting media attacks; the immediate poll was strongly negative (although we should allow for errors in this); and the subsequent polls confirmed, if not the magnitude, that there had been no upward change in the trend. If anything, it's worse. In other words, what's certainly clear is the absence of a "conference bounce". One could argue that there will be long-term benefits from the speech and the strategy articulated therein as yet unrealised, but that argument looks weak in the face of these numbers.

And the second is that Ed's personal polling continues to be, well, pretty bad. Now, this rating is by no means irremediable before the next election. But it needs work. Cameron went on a journey which led to a much better public acceptance of him as a leader. "Let Miliband be Miliband" will not work forever as a maxim for Labour if the polls stay like this and, as John Woodcock MP recently pointed out, although making a rather different point, the West Wing is a work of fiction, not a political strategy guide.

In conclusion: yes, our polling is giving us a kicking, and it would be good to take note. Perhaps, like Gordon Brown with Deborah Mattinson, we could simply dismiss the pollsters who tell us what we don't want to hear.

But we should also remember what happened to him.

This post first published at LabourList, and was selected for PoliticsHome's 5 at 5 and ConHome's Must Be Read

ETA: really the beginning of the end?

2011-10-19T19:46:00.001+01:00

In recent days, rather extraordinary news has been breaking about the last remaining home-grown terrorist group in Europe. Yesterday a conference in San Sebastian, involving no lesser figures than Kofi Annan, Bertie Ahern and Gerry Adams, reached out to ETA and it is strongly felt that a positive response is likely. Other notable figures such as Tony Blair have been involved with the consultations. However, although it may seem strange, no national Spanish politicians attended, for reasons we shall now explore. This begs a few important questions:

1. Why is it happening now?
It seems to have resulted from two things: a growing popular movement for peace (the conference was organised by the “social collective” Lokarri) and positive indications on the part of ETA itself.

While ETA has clearly been in slow decline ever since the “decapitation” of its leadership in 1992, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the timing has everything to do with the impending general election on 2o November, which the conservative PP seem very likely to win: a recent poll gave them a whopping 18% lead over the socialist PSOE. While both parties refused to attend the meeting, they have different reasons.

The PSOE got its fingers burned in 2006: Prime Minister Zapatero agreed for contacts to be made, then was made to look foolish and naïve when the ceasefire collapsed. The PP, on the other hand, has historically been strongly against any kind of contact with ETA and pursued a very hard-line policy when in power under the Aznar administration. It has also, on occasion, played populist politics with the issue by siding with terrorist victims’ organisations, who have a powerful voice and who have also taken a hard-line position. For this reason, when ETA announced a further ceasefire in January, both main parties treated it with scepticism, and neither now want to take a big risk in the middle of an election campaign. That does not mean they do not see possibilities. However, ETA know very well that if the PP win, this may all become very difficult unless an unstoppable momentum is built up beforehand.

2. Are they serious?
It seems so. They actually announced the ceasefire in January this year: problem was, they had cried wolf in 2006 and no-one believed them. Having thus squandered nearly eight years of Socialist government, an environment which obviously made for a better chance of peace, ETA must also, if they have any seriousness at all about disarmament, realise that the involvement of these international figures, as well as the timing, gives them the best possible chance they are likely to get to negotiate for at least another four, or even eight, years. That said, others are accusing ETA and the organisers of “theatricising” the process.

3. What’s the reaction so far?
According to El Pais, the PP leader and likely next Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has been dismissive in public, while instructing his political lieutenants to play the subject down while he formulates his own strategy, so as not to convert it into a major campaign issue. In fact, he “just happened” to visit the Basque country yesterday himself to meet business leaders, deliberately giving the impression of nonchalance about the peace conference nearby. But, privately, he knows ETA is on the way out – it’s just a question of when. And they are banking on the fact that the Socialists won’t have time to make political capital out of it before the election.

As for the Socialists, their prime ministerial candidate, Rubalcaba, has been quiet and cautious: he does not want to rock the election boat, for now at least. Others have been more forthright: the Basque Socialist regional president, Patxi López, called it “magnificent news”. And the still-influential Spanish ex-president, Felipe Gonzalez, criticised the PP for their public dismissal of the conference: “every time we approach the end of ETA, there are certain people who try and distance themselves from it, and deny that it’s true”.

4. And the impact on national politics?
Conceivably, it could be big, but the real answer is “it depends”. The question is this: in an election where Rubalcaba is in serious danger of being crushed, will he risk diverting his campaign and aligning himself more strongly with the peace process, in order that he can both help support it – being in the party of government – and, of no little importance, win support for his own re-election so he can see it through? One could argue that he hasn’t much to lose but, whatever happens, he must tread carefully and look like a prime-minister-in-waiting putting the country’s interest first, not a desperate politician clutching at straws. And, of course, there’s always the possibility that it’s yet another false start.

On the other hand, if this were to become the defining issue of the campaign, and the PP were to come down on the wrong side of it, it is conceivable that the PP could yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, just as their fatal misjudgement in wrongly attributing the Madrid bombing to ETA (in the face of clear evidence to the contrary) cost them the 2004 election. Although perhaps still highly unlikely, it would be an extraordinary irony for a party to lose two out of three elections for the same reason: ETA. But such is the persistent influence of the conflict in this little region on Spanish politics.

Two things, though, are pretty much certain: first, that ETA is weak and, sooner or later, will disarm. And second, that this rather lacklustre and predictable general election campaign just got interesting.

This post first published at Left Foot Forward

Tell people to eat less? Yes, that’ll sort out obesity

2011-10-18T11:58:00.001+01:00

Delighted to announce my first-ever guest piece at the New Statesman: see it here.

STOP PRESS 29/10/2011:

My fine fellow blogger Emma Burnell, whose piece on personal experiences is linked in the article, has recorded this short film for Andrew Neil's Daily Politics.

We can’t spend another 50 years like this

2011-10-15T12:38:00.004+01:00

As I meander through Hugo Young’s outstanding A Blessed Plot, a highly readable history of

Britain

’s vexed relationship with Europe, the theme of head-in-the-sand denial of the inevitable is a constant one.

One particularly striking thing is that the fundamental arguments have not really changed, and that

Britain

’s attitude has usually been one of fatal underestimation of the capacity of "the Continentals" to pull the project off and go ahead without them. Again and again,

Britain

thinks that further integration will not happen. Again and again, it is flummoxed and irritated when it does.

In keeping with our traditionally half-hearted attitude, Young documents how MacMillan, the first, unsuccessful leader to attempt entry, was not a natural pro-European at all, but heavily conflicted on the subject; on the one hand the misty-eyed Edwardian, nostalgic for Empire, on the other the ruthless pragmatist (as the Night of the Long Knives, when he sacked half his Cabinet, duly showed) who realised that Britain’s only realistic future lay with Europe. But not as some kind of glorified free trade area: Mac was canny enough to realise that it was fundamentally a long-term political project that Britain needed to be a part of, if it wanted a seat at the world table. And, ironically, the cause to which he was a reluctant convert ultimately did for his career when he failed.

In MacMillan’s case, it was a Cold War protection strategy against a Russian threat that made him urgently want

Britain

to stand together with

France

. There is a wonderful scene from 1962 where MacMillan, frustrated in the extreme by De Gaulle’s intransigence towards allowing British entry, is reduced to tears

'by the General's unwillingness to share his own sentiments about the common interests of the great powers, among whom he counted France. De Gaulle recounted the occasion, with lordly derision, at a Cabinet meeting a few days later. "This poor man," he said, "to whom I have nothing to give, seemed so sad, so beaten that I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder and say to him, as in the Edith Piaf song, "Ne pleurez pas, milord."'

In our own case, French obstructionism is no longer the problem; and the modern-day threat is not of a Cold War USSR, but of British irrelevance in a 21st century world where the main players are no longer just the US and Europe; a threat that Blair saw very clearly, Brown did not and neither does Cameron. And, just as we did then, we use our Atlanticism as an excuse, when all the US really wants is to see Britain leading the way in any European political project, because it enhances the strength of its ally and thus that of the Western alliance.
As we stand at the crossroads for perhaps the critical, final pieces of the EU political jigsaw to be put in place, yet again we stand on the sidelines. As we watch the euro on the brink, it is easy to think that

France

and

Germany

will not press on and see through political integration, but that is repeating the perennial mistake. History shows us that they will. They have too much to lose: no French or German leader will want the legacy that the EU collapsed on their watch. Perhaps it will cost Merkel and Sarkozy their jobs, but their successors will do it, or their successors’ successors. It will happen.

And we will be on the outside looking in, noses pressed up against the window, yet again.

To boldly go... Ed's relationship with enterprise

2011-10-12T09:38:00.002+01:00

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks. So, the ship has now set a course and we’ve done the crew changeover. It may be a course that not everyone’s happy with, but let’s face it: they never are, are they? And at least there is a course. The Tory conference wasn’t a failure, but it wasn’t exactly a runaway success, either: what with Teresa May’s cats and Cameron’s dogs, it seemed sometimes that it was raining very hard indeed last week. And the mess now being caused by Liam Fox has helped us. So let’s be thankful for small mercies and look to the future.

In a year’s time, we’ll be looking to the completion of the policy review. We will be practically at the electoral midpoint, and will know for sure whether regaining the London mayoralty was a real possibility or a pipe-dream (the tea-leaves, admittedly, do not look good on this one). We will then be able to start setting broad policy lines in serious, and start long-term planning for the next election. Things aren’t so bad, right?

This, at least, seems to be more or less what conventional wisdom in the party is saying right now. Full speed ahead, we’re on our way. The question is, of course: is this a realistic assessment of where we are? Casting an eye over the three major political developments over the last two weeks – not forgetting the euro crisis, which is likely to have a further, substantial impact on everything – it doesn’t look it. We know that a deliberate step-change has been made as regards the riskiness of the strategy; but it’s useful to look at just how much.

First, the Leader’s speech. The jury is still out as to how it was received in the country – ignored is probably closest to the truth, as Peter Watt fairly notes about most conference speeches – but the media generally panned it (sorry, Peter Oborne does not count). There may even have been a negative impact on personal poll ratings (although, as Political Betting’s Mike Smithson rightly points out, conference week polls are notoriously unreliable. We shall see).

Cameron’s was a lack-lustre speech. But it had two advantages: it made no claims to be game-changing, and it contained serious policy meat. Most importantly, it was prime ministerial. Even if we add, generously, the phrase “all other things being equal”, Prime Minister generally trumps Leader of the Opposition, unless the government is in serious trouble, which it is not. In any event, if (a) your opponents think that the story of conference season is your speech; (b) that angle gets traction in the media; and (c) you spend several days rebutting that story; then, independent of the politics of the speech, something has not gone well.

Second, the Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. The good news is that lots of sensible, bright people have been promoted. Ed Miliband has, to his great credit, learned a lesson from Brown, who often tried to limit the ambitions of those who differed from his worldview, irrespective of talent. So the promotions come from across the political spectrum. The bad news is that two solid elder statesmen, Denham and Healey, are gone of their own volition before it even started. This should give us pause.

Politicians, like anyone, have to make reasonable personal judgement calls about their future. Contrary to popular opinion, spending more time with their family is often a genuine reason, but it’s rarely the only one. The likelihood is that they either think they are about to be sacked, or they simply feel things are seriously wrong and are not prepared to wait for them to change (Liberal Conspiracy has an interesting theory about this in the case of Denham). In both cases, it looks like the latter, which is telling. On top of this, the loss of these two fifty-somethings makes a total of four senior figures who have voluntarily returned to the back benches in the last year, and means that the Shadow Cabinet now looks greener than ever, already one of its weaknesses. It also, with a total of thirty-one attendees, looks unwieldy.

The third and more unsung reason is deeper and longer-term: party reform. It is fundamental to a party aspiring to government that it has a party machine which has sufficient funds to provide reasonable fighting capacity, which provides the optimum, meritocratically-chosen pool of people to become elected representatives and whose decision-making bodies will not act as a brake on reform. The first is untrue in the case of Labour, the second has not been true for some time and the third is at least highly debatable.

One tragedy of the conference, its importance lost on all but the most nerdy of us, has been the opportunity tragically missed by the Refounding Labour reform programme. Further reform is now realistically off the agenda until the loss of an election and/or a change of leader, and possibly not even then. So there will be no revision of a flawed parliamentary selection process. No reform of the voting structures which encourage leadership and parliamentary candidates to make un-keepable promises to union officials. No real involvement of the wider body of Labour supporters. And that’s before we even get to the ideologically-driven gender quotas in the Shadow Cabinet and on the party leadership ticket. On the positive side, we seem to have achieved a modest improvement in funding arrangements for local parties. That’s a good deal?

In short, we are storing up trouble for the future by not taking the opportunity of a generation. There remains only one, partial way out of the unhappy state the party organisation currently finds itself in, and that’s finding other sources of funding, fast. Which probably means rebuilding bridges with business. And, even if this is achievable, the other problems are still there.

Dan Hodges quotes a Miliband insider as saying, “if you want to win an election in one term you have to take risks, a safety first approach just won’t cut it”. And, returning to the ship metaphor in light of all this, we find it somehow lacking. “Full speed ahead” seems now too measured, too complacent. No, following the “ripping up the rulebook” speech, and its assumption of a considerably more risk-friendly strategy, one is tempted to wrench aside that image and replace it with another: it’s still a ship of sorts, and it’s still full speed ahead, but it’s now like we’ve been transported to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Off we boldly go on a new, high-risk assignment, at a dizzying tangent to our previous course.

So, for those with delicate stomachs, it’s clear that you can forget the steady-as-she-goes. As our current strategy stands, it’s warp factor six, please, Mr. Sulu, and don’t spare the di-lithium crystals.

This post first published at Labour Uncut

Where the Tories are weak

2011-10-06T18:31:00.001+01:00

While we are still in the throes of reforming our Party (although that debate is pretty much over, it seems) and defining our policies, we are in some ways a little hamstrung. However, there still is one thing that we can do well on an everyday basis: be a good opposition and attack the government. As they are the senior partner in the coalition, and while we are in Tory conference week, it seems appropriate to focus on the Tories. And, after all, their junior partner may well not even be around to worry about after 2015, at least as part of the government.

This requires a certain looking at our opponents with calm and rational eyes, rather than seeing them as the evil Tories, bent on destroying our country (although they might do a good impression of the latter). While on the one hand, we accept that all Shadow portfolios need to spend their lives bashing their counterparts, there are some which are more likely to bear fruit than others. And, to get maximum impact, we need to understand where they are stronger as well as where they are weaker, so as not to spend our time banging our heads against a brick wall. Or rather as Sun Tzu put it in The Art Of War:

"Now an army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoid the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness.”

It may sound obvious, but we sometimes waste much time and energy trying to argue the toss on arguments we are losing.

1. Hit them where their personnel are weak

Where we have found weak politicians in place, as we have showed on the NHS (although we need a better argument there) and very much on the forestry selloff, we get traction. Because Lansley and Spelman made major mistakes in their first few months in office, and one can’t afford to do that as a Cabinet minister. Warsi is regularly accident-prone in a way a senior player shouldn’t be. These kind of Tories should be our targets and we should hit them mercilessly.

On the other hand, we need to be much cleverer in hitting their more competent members: Cameron, Osborne and Gove may irritate us, but they are all shrewd. Hague is capable of misjudgements, but he is no longer the accident-prone fool we remember from his tenure as leader. Theresa May, lest we forget, was the first to observe that the Tories needed detoxifying. And we wanted to write off Ken Clarke, but we shouldn’t: he is, after all, the most experienced member of the team. All these politicians have weaknesses too, but we need to seek them out and work on them over the long term rather than looking for short-termist attacks.

2. Hit them where their policies involve vested interests or obsessive opinions among their activists

Believe it or not, most ministers will try and do things which they think will both work and be popular. For this reason, sometimes politicians of different stripes end up doing similar things, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. It may be that there is only one sensible policy for the country. But politicians diverge from this in two circumstances: if their vested interests will not wear it; and if their activists will not wear it. In the first, the City reforms are the obvious target. They will not reform properly because they fear a backlash from their donors. In the second, there is one issue where you are almost guaranteed not to get a sensible answer from a Tory activist (or much of the Tory press, for that matter): Europe. Ask most Tories about Europe, their eyes redden and they start to babble. All rationality goes out of the window.

That is not to say that there is a great appetite in the country for all things European; there is not. But where the Tories misjudge the country is in the question of degree. They believe that the average Briton is rabidly anti-Europe, as they are. But they are not. They are mildly anti-Europe, when they think about it, which is not that often. It is an important difference. It is why we are in Europe, not out of it, and partly why the Tories under Hague started to look “swivel-eyed and perpetually angry”, as the Economist memorably described them.

We should not rush out with a massive pro-Europe agenda. But there are moments in history where leadership is required, and it’s clear that the Tories are too hobbled by the subject to provide it. One is coming our way, and we need to play it intelligently.

3. Hit them for their personal weaknesses as a group of politicians

Now, each politician has professional weaknesses, but a group of politicians is also weak in the things that bind them together: similar backgrounds are likely in most political parties, despite the fact that a more heterogeneous team is likely to be stronger: more bases are covered. For example, one of Labour’s current weaknesses is its collective lack of experience in the world of business, as the BBC’s Andrew Neil cruelly picked up on with Liam Byrne last week. But the Tories have one too: they are the Cabinet of millionaires. Last week in Liverpool I spent an hour in the company of an independent-minded right-wing journalist, whose views I respect, and who agreed that this was a big problem for them.

Now, there is nothing more fun for most of us to have a good, honest bit of class war knockabout over this: but we should absolutely avoid this temptation. We must be far, far cleverer. Firstly because it is wrong – inverse snobbery is quite as ugly as its opposite – and secondly because the public will see it as such.

No, the problem is not that they are posh: the problem is that their poshness makes it virtually impossible to understand the problems of an everyday world in which they have never lived. This makes for poor decisions. Now, Smiths-listening Cameron tries to do a reasonable impression of a Tory who understands real life, but it’s laughably skin-deep for a man who has spent his life with the county set. Attacks stick when people can see they have truth to them. So, we must, must push the out-of-touch argument at every opportunity, while resisting the temptation to make this about class. We must ensure they are asked the prices of a loaf of bread or a pint of milk. We must ensure that the public knows that none of them uses the public services they expect others to. And this is the real issue, not where they come from, what they inherited or where they went to school, because none of these things did they get a chance to choose. It is their choices since then.

So, the Tories are in a strong position in many ways: despite their numerous failures, they are in government and their morale is high. They have some talent on their front bench and some of their policies are working. Whether we like it or not, their economic plan may well work out before the election, and it will be tweaked if it really seems to be flatlining growth for too long. But we can and should be clever with our attacks. And we can still bring them down.

This post first published in my fortnightly column at LabourList

Vision and denial

2011-10-01T07:58:00.002+01:00

“The system has failed”, ran the original headline for the speech write-up chosen by the BBC, though they later changed it. But it has not. Britain has problems, yes. But it is not, in Cameron’s words, broken, however politically convenient it might be for either party to use that as a basis for change. And this was by no means a terrible speech; but its fundamental premise of moral decline was flawed, and it became a disappointing, and slightly alarming one.

In fact, in the wonderfully reassuring and welcoming bubble of a party conference, it is rather difficult to give a truly bad speech. The trick is not to sink into the soft, comfy armchair of audience acclaim and be drowned in its melting, enveloping embrace, like in some bad horror movie. Crowd pleasing is easy but, as Ed is only too aware, the real audience is outside.

There were some good things in the speech. Although even an outline of the solutions was nowhere to be seen, ultimately, the “squeezed middle” theme is a broadly correct analysis. There was the “You can’t trust the Tories on the National Health Service” passage on the NHS, made for the TV bulletins and an effective attack line against the Tories which will resonate.

But the speech was not about worrying Cameron (who I doubt will have broken sweat at any moment during the speech), so much as about convincing the public that Ed is prime minister material, and setting out direction of travel.

Ed was also lucky: the first-person “this is who I am” piece missed the news bulletins when the feed was cut off. (sadly, with the uncomfortably cheesy passage about his wife and the birth of his son, he was not so fortunate). Talking about oneself is always a risky business as a politician, which assumes the public has prior knowledge of you, and cares: there is always the possibility that the reaction will be “yeah. And?”

On the delivery, as ever, Ed’s somewhat melodramatic style and tone doesn’t help. The BT Conference Centre is not the Lincoln Memorial and Ed is not Martin Luther King. His pained expression when talking about the riots, for example, makes him look the lecturing liberal, a big turn-off to the public; and on phone-hacking, where he scored a notable triumph in the summer, he now sullies it by sounding holier-than-thou: “I did it because it was right”. The same judgemental language of “something-for-nothing”, “fast buck”, “trickle-down economics” was everywhere (the only phrase missing seemed to be “neoliberal consensus”, but more of that later). And “it’s just not fair” wants to be crusading future prime minister, but ends up with more than a touch of Kevin the Teenager.

But these are really pettifogging criticisms, things that can be remedied with time, experience and good advice. The two more substantive concerns we will come to.

There were two major strands of thinking running through the speech: the Blue Labour strand and the Compass strand. It was easy to see all three of “faith, family and flag” in the speech, although the “faith” part was more in the gospel-style delivery and the moral tone than any explicit references to religion. There was also clearly present the why-oh-why signature tone of Compass’ Neal Lawson, for example the implication that there had been a 30-year long consensus from Thatcherism onwards which New Labour did nothing to break: a direct lift from Lawson’s January Guardian article.

The confluence of two half-formed schools of thought showed through in the thinking, and leads us to the first, obvious substantive criticism: where was the meat?

It was the vision thing, indeed, and some of that is necessary; but vision cannot run the risk of being seen as empty words; nor as hopelessly simplistic; nor as something difficult to translate into a policy that the country will accept, even way off into the future. At some or other moments, it was all three of these things.

The first few words of the “real” speech were surely intended, together with Balls’ speech the day before, to kill, or at least draw a line under, the pre-eminent issue of economic competence. They didn’t. It is not enough to say, glibly, “I am determined to prove to you that the next Labour Government will only spend what it can afford.” When you have lost trust, you need actions, not words. Balls’ welcome gesture about accepting long-term fiscal targets was a start, but that is all. The personal commitment is fine, but no-one will believe it for a long time yet.

Similarly, there was the part about business: differentiating between “good” and “bad” businesses – “producers and predators” – and vested interests. But who is to define a producer and a predator? And why do it with a moral tone, alienating businesspeople as they eye suspiciously a party which they suspect will brand them all predators. Why not instead look for specific problems and fix them? On vested interests: as a basis for policy, he is right about corporates and Tories being too close. But as an attack line it is useless. What about us? The line that ninety per cent of Labour’s donations come from unions is a no-brainer rebuttal for the Tories.

The whole piece about business – nice Sir John Rose, nasty Fred Goodwin – was reminiscent of the original film of Wall Street, in all its Hollywood simplicity: the evil asset strippers arrive to destroy the company and throw the good workers into the street. Banks in general, too, are duly bashed, as ever, followed hastily by the rider, “Of course, the banks and financial services are important to Britain.” How do we explain to the poorly-paid, junior bank worker that the bashing wasn’t aimed at them? And this motif of criticism, followed by a covering “but”, was a recurring theme. But this is not proper policy. It is naïveté.

“Growth is built on sand if it comes from our predators and not our producers”, Ed said of Osborne’s claims. That may be true, Ed: but there is a bigger sin than Osborne’s, and it is a vision built on sand.

And the second, and much more dangerous criticism, is about denial. “Chart a new course” is a good, strong phrase for moving on. But when we hear the words “rip up the rule book”, many of us cock an eyebrow. The point being, if we were really doing something that breathtakingly radical, we wouldn’t need to tell people about it. They’d know. It’s like we’re trying to convince them that we can defy political gravity.

The route we take to “ripping up the rule book” is through our moral compass, and here we are back to Neal Lawson’s clear influence on the speech. Again, we are the unique guardians of the moral health of the nation. A total of 40 times in the speech, we talk about “values” – a word which, for what it’s worth, to most ordinary people sounds like it’s coming from either a sociologist or a corporate brochure – neither greatly trusted in sceptical, post-modern Britain.

There is no greyness: our moral compass tells us things are either right or wrong. “It’s wrong. It’s the wrong priority. It’s based on the wrong values.” But values are a funny thing, aren’t they? Hard to nail. Subjective. Who says yours are right and mine are wrong? You have to be careful with values, you see. Others may not share them.

And so we work ourselves into a place where we feel we are radical. And we feel we have the moral high ground. And that takes us to another, more scary place: denial.

In the religious movement of Transcendental Meditation, believers practice a technique called “yogic flying”. They sit, cross-legged, the yogi induces a state of suspension of disbelief and tells them they are levitating; they, indeed, believe they are levitating. In reality, they are making an awkward shuffling movement which results in their bottoms being momentarily lifted off the floor. It is quite awkward to watch. Human sympathy makes you want to intervene. But they truly believe they are flying.

There were a lot of people – mostly energetic, idealistic young people – visibly enthused by the speech. Ed finished the words “the promise of Britain” and, without waiting for a single clap, the music started. As Florence and the Machine’s inspiring version of You Got The Love lifted the faithful, we were for a moment there. Justine smiled a genuine, dazzling smile at the crowd. A few tons of glitter confetti and it could have been a Democrat convention. It was difficult not to feel moved. We were in 1996, or some other such moment of self-belief, thinking that this was it: we were on our way back.

But we weren’t. The music faded and we were back in 2011. We weren’t flying any more, and the uncomfortable realisation set in that it was a mirage. That the press would probably kill us for this flight of fancy. That it was not Blackpool, 1996, but Sheffield, 1992. That suddenly the lyrics of the song seemed wildly inappropriate and a little, well, soppy for a political conference. That we were talking to ourselves. Again.

Back at home, outside our little Labour bubble, people must have looked on, bemused.

It’s a great song: but it’s just a song. Real life, and real politics, are a bit tougher.

This post first published at Labour Uncut and featured in The Week Uncut, the best-read posts of that week

The Centre Left's conference week highlights

2011-09-29T14:38:00.004+01:00

It's been an eventful week at my first conference in eight years, if extremely mixed politically (I know it's not over yet, but do you really think it's worth staying till Thursday? I'm home already). On Sunday the Refounding Labour party reform package was passed, including some difficult-to-justify gender quotas for the Shadow Cabinet, Leader and Deputy Leader. The Sunday night Progress fringe, which I attended and wrote up for them here, was an excellent show featuring the best of the Labour Party's sensible squad, as well as a barnstorming speech by Ivan Lewis, surely a good tip for higher things.

On Monday, Ed Balls' speech gave cause for modest cheering, when he agreed to long-term fiscal targets to aid our financial credibility. But it was only the first baby step along a long road. But the Leader's speech was both disappointing and worrying: I have a blow-by-blow analysis piece here. There are some other very good articles about it and its aftermath by two fellow bloggers I finally met in the flesh (instead of on Twitter), Anthony Painter and Atul Hatwal, not to mention the usual forensic analysis by John Rentoul. But the upshot is that the speech has not taken us anywhere and, indeed, it seems that Miliband spent much of Wednesday morning justifying it in the TV studios. Worse still, it had ecstatic crits from the current bunch of union leaders, not to mention mad Seumas Milne from the Guardian. Not a good sign.

That same morning Andrew Neil also asked Andy Burnham whether the passage in Ed's speech about responsibility meant we were now going to differentiate between the "deserving poor and the undeserving poor". Which, of course, was exactly what it meant. Poor Andy was cornered. But it wasn't his fault, he was just defending the indefensible, like a good lieutenant. The problem, I'm afraid, was caused by the general.

Difficult, difficult times for Labour.

Leader’s speech: holding our breath

2011-09-27T10:42:00.000+01:00

Let’s get things straight. This is not a make-or-break speech (very few are, as John Rentoul recently pointed out). Only a small number of people, apart from the political media and the usual political anoraks, may even pay this speech much attention, for reasons which are, to be fair, not Ed’s fault at all.

To wit: we are a quarter-way through a now-stable electoral cycle, all three main leaders and the government look secure. Labour are highly unlikely to form a government before 2015 and quite conceivably not even then. Many journalists, in the unusual situation of coalition, perceive that the Lib Dems are providing as much of an opposition function within government as Labour are without it, and often pay more attention to their words (as they are more likely to have a direct effect on outcomes) than those of Labour.

Oh, and there’s the little thing of a major European and world economic crisis occupying the news bulletins.

So, what is the real significance of this speech? First, it’s Ed’s first “proper” conference speech as leader – it’s clear that last year’s didn’t count, being all of two days after his election as leader, except as a thank you and a rough statement of intent – and this time people will expect him to set out his stall. Second, and more importantly, as Paul Richards points out over at Progress, the issue overshadowing this conference is that not just Europe’s economy, but the world’s economy, is looking distinctly vulnerable. So everything will be viewed through that prism and it is important to be wise to that.

Hence, the trick is balance: to focus it on the modest-sounding but important business which needs to be carried out in opposition, in this case (a) party reform and (b) getting some new policies together, without sounding like we’re holding some kind of myopic wonk-fest while the world is on fire. And then to hold it all together with some unifying vision which will inspire the delegates. A tall order, you might say.

What’s the easy thing to do with this speech? To repeat the trick which was necessary last year but is no longer; to go long on the vision and short on practicality. To say things people will want to hear. To say that our current difficulties are the fault of bankers and the super-rich. That there is a malaise in our “broken” society, to appropriate Cameron’s word. Or to imply that government is responsible for changing, as in this Guardian interview, for the ethical nature of said society. To lead, as conference trailer pieces are indicating it may, on “vested interests” (cue – as, in another room, deals are done with three union leaders – the faint tinkling of stones raining down on a glass house). Crowd duly pleased.

What’s the hard thing to do with this speech? To be practical. To be prescriptive. Acknowledge that most of what’s happening, from job losses to cuts to riots, is down to a global crisis, which at this point is mostly out of our hands. And that, whatever happens, there is unlikely to be much money for Labour to spend in the foreseeable future, and that we will need to adjust our whole ethos to that new reality, as Hopi Sen very coherently argues. To say that the party organisation cannot renew itself to the extent of making it ready for government unless it makes some dramatic changes: then announce them. To reveal some basic lines – drill-down detail not required – of policy. Strategic policy, that is, not merely tactical headline-grabbers. Crowd a bit more uneasy, to say the least.

Finally, in a Leader’s Speech there is also an opportunity to surprise. For conference nerds, you will all know that there is always one surprise; something controversial, which the conference wasn’t expecting and which is slipped in while everyone’s excited (the textbook example being 1994’s Clause Four rewrite moment). Normally it is to nudge the party in the direction of the electorate on some key issue. There is then usually then a bit of grumbling, followed by grumpy acceptance and most people go home happy. It does not make a good speech in itself. But we will know something about what the future historic view of the speech will be if this element either nudges the party in the other direction, away from the electorate and back towards its comfort zone; is merely unambitious; or is missing altogether.

So, while the speech is likely to change little in the perception of the public or the media, it will tell us, the party faithful, something rather important.

It’s simple, yet vital: where exactly are we headed? Rightly or wrongly, the conference speech has long been the cornerstone which defines direction of travel and headlines on policy. The party has glimpsed bits and pieces here and there, in interviews and sound-bites. But everyone is patiently awaiting that definition.

And that’s because they have a legitimate concern, of course: that if we have not started to articulate a clear direction of travel with broad electoral appeal after one year, it encourages the real fear that we will not be able to articulate one after two, three or four years either.

We can’t hold our breath much longer. We’ll burst.

The Centre Left goes to Liverpool

2011-09-24T21:04:00.000+01:00

So, arrived in Liverpool for Labour Party conference. Writing this in a somewhat, er, basic hotel in Bank Hall, one of the perhaps slightly less beautiful parts of the city (no, it's not the area in the photo). Which, for the record, I have booked, and to which I have travelled some distance at my own expense. This, dear reader, is the glamorous, jet-set life of the political blogger.

Let's be honest, party conference attendance is not exactly a majority interest, is it? Looking around me, I get to thinking what, perhaps, normal men of my age might be doing this Saturday night.

Come on: strange I may be, but I defy you to look me in the eye and say that I do not love my party.

The euro paradox: the lesson is better institutions, not less

2011-09-23T12:36:00.002+01:00

This week, our sleepy European politicians seem to be waking up to the dangers of the euro crisis: even George Osborne seems to be starting to panic just a little. Aside from the delicious irony of a Euro-sceptic Tory Chancellor arguing for more integration, there are important lessons which we need to be drawing.

Britain, it is surely obvious, will be as affected by a euro-zone disaster as much as any other major European country; that is, an awful lot. To disabuse oneself of Osborne's rather ill-judged recent suggestion that the pound is a "safe haven", one has to look no further than the euro-sterling exchange rate, which has barely budged over recent months. In simple terms, the markets are discounting the fact that the economies are rather locked together, and that what ever miserable misfortune may befall the euro and Europe is likely also to be visited on sterling and the UK in similar measure.

The immediate danger is that, by the time these lethargic leaders are appearing on the media saying "time is short to save the euro", the markets, which move at the speed of light, have already discounted that some time ago, have realised that politicians are very likely not going to save it and are now moving to ensure that it is impossible to do so.

The convenient, short-term lesson which many are drawing is "Britain good, Europe bad". This, as Britons, nicely fits with our comfy scepticism towards Europe. Hugo Young's brilliant volume on Britain's fraught relationship with Europe, This Blessed Plot, documents how Europe's history, from Churchill on, is full of Britain being at the centre of the constitutional decision-making, while standing outside of the main results of it. We have become experts at deciding what everyone else should do.

It started with Churchill at the creation of a modern Europe which did not include us, passing late entry into the EU by Heath, on less good terms, and arriving at Blair's central role in defining the euro, while remaining outside of it. Cameron and Osborne are just the last in a long line of British politicians of all parties to carp or cheer alternately during a major European upheaval, but always with the proviso that it is from the sidelines.

On the one hand, Europe's leaders are rightly criticised for allowing a system to develop which had inherent flaws that many economists warned of at the time. But using this as a stick with which to beat the European concept is the wrong lesson. The obvious conclusion of a world in which China will dominate, and a world which is rearranging itself into new sets of geopolitical players, is that a Europe which cannot speak with one voice is ultimately doomed to irrelevance.

What the euro crisis points up, more than anything, is the obvious fact that Europe's decision-making process, and the institutions which underpin it, is entirely dysfunctional. To state the obvious: a Franco-German dinner is not the ideal way to decide the future of Europe, and anything which requires agreement across countries cannot continue to require months, if not years, of wrangling.

The short-term reading not only fits a subconscious wishful thinking of the public majority, deeply buried in the British psyche, believing - in the face all evidence to the contrary - that Britain is still some kind of Great Power. Young quotes civil servant Sir Henry Tizard, observer of the Churchill-Attlee era of European birth:

We are not a Great Power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a Great Power we shall soon cease to be a great nation.

This "Europe bad" reading also plays to the prejudices of the Tory right, whose visceral dislike of all things European is so emotionally-based that it often rejects anything containing the word "Europe" out of hand, before even listening to the argument. And, at present, they clearly hold the dominant view on the issue within their party.

When your opponent reacts emotionally, rather than rationally, to a policy challenge, sooner or later they will come unstuck because people will see their inherent contradictions. And, as John Rentoul pointed out in the Independent on Sunday, there is also a risk that there may be another round of damaging Tory in-fighting on the subject:

What would be dangerous for Cameron's chances of re-election...would be if the economy, already falling behind Osborne's "on the road to recovery" forecasts of last year, became part of a divisive argument within his own party about Britain's relations with the rest of Europe.

All in all, the Tories are unlikely to have a coherent, outward-looking policy towards Europe by 2015. It may sound counter-intuitive, but there is ultimately a medium-term opportunity here for Ed Miliband: if, that is, he chooses to take it.

This post first published at the Huffington Post

The seven-year itch: a cautionary tale of tax, cuts and debt

2011-09-19T20:49:00.000+01:00

There was this bloke. And there was this girl. They met, fell in love, got married, usual story. It was a big, special wedding – everybody went. A match made in heaven, everyone said. People came out of their houses to wave as they went to the church. Kind of wedding that fills everyone with hope for the future.

She was popular, always a lot of boys round her. But she was smart, knew what she wanted. Sometimes it looked like she wasn’t paying much attention, but she did when it counted. Didn’t stand for any nonsense. He, on the other hand, was a bit of a tearaway. Heart in the right place, but not very together, a lot of the time. And a drinker. A long history, in fact. Lots of girlfriends, but in the end, they all went, because of the drink. But not this one: this time it’d be different.

So, on the day they married, he promised to her that that was it with the drinking. And it was true. Never touched a drop. Day in, day out, he would walk home past the pub, think how lucky he was to have found her, and kept straight on walking. Life seemed charmed.

And then, one day, about seven years later – or was it eight? – someone asked him to stop for a drink. One couldn’t hurt, could it? And he did that, just one. He realised that he could have one or two, and it didn’t matter. He was delighted. He’d not only controlled his drinking, but he’d got it to the point where he could have one or two. And that’s all it ever was, genuinely. She could see what was happening, but she could see that it was only one or two. So, she turned a blind eye. It was under control, she told herself.

But there’s always one day, isn’t there? One day, he came home, stopped off for a couple of pints and then had to go and pick her up. And, as luck would have it, as dusk fell, there was one hell of a storm. A real storm. Sheets of rain, lightning, couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Car in front braked. He swerved and skidded, into a ditch. Lucky he wasn’t going too fast. Nobody hurt, thank God. But his reflexes weren’t quite what they should have been, or he’d have stayed on the road. She was furious, obviously. “Fix it!” she screamed. She also smelt the booze on his breath, but said nothing.

The next morning, he got up early. Took the car to the garage. He emptied his savings out, told them to do whatever it took, whatever it costed. They did. They put three men working on it, and by the end of the afternoon, the car was sorted. All right, it wasn’t perfect, but it was fine. A few scratches they couldn’t take out. He paid the whopping bill and, with a smile on his face, set out for home. It was fixed.

But he got home to find his wife gone. He couldn’t believe it. The note simply said, “You broke your promise”. And it was at that point that things started to fall apart.

Within a very short time, she’d moved in with someone else. Slightly boring, conservative type. Not even really that into him, but she needed to be with someone, and the kids needed some sense of stability.

He, on the other hand, was devastated. Couldn’t quite get his head round it. Kept thinking she’d come back, but she didn’t. He stopped drinking altogether, of course. Begged her to come back, but she wouldn’t return his calls. Wouldn’t even give him the time of day.

Another year went by. Seven more years, in fact, since that fateful day when he’d had the first drink. Then, one day, they met by chance on the street. She wasn’t keen, but he persuaded her to have a coffee with him. He wanted a chance to explain himself.

“Listen, I know I let you down, but it was just one slip”, he was saying. “You see, I never did get drunk, you know, not like in the old days. I mean, I said I’d changed, and I had. I had it all under control, I only ever had two pints and went home. I was just once over the limit, on that day, just once. Not even drunk. And I’ve been on the wagon ever since”.

“I just want to know”, he said, a pleading look in his eyes, “what I can do to convince you to come back. What is it that you want from me?”

She looked at him and sighed in genuine pity. “I don’t know if you got drunk or not, and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

“You just don’t get it, do you? You’re an ex-alcoholic. You can’t afford to have even one drink, because no-one will trust you. I don’t trust you. That crash happened while you were over the limit.”

“You could have killed us both. Don’t you see? It’s not enough to tell me you’ll never have another drink”, and she looked him straight in the eye, “you’ve got to make me believe it”.

With that, she got up and left.

Moral: in any relationship, in the end it doesn’t matter what you say you’re going to do. It’s what you actually do, and what people think you’ll do in the future. And there, perception can be just as important as reality.

How does the story end? Will she ever come back, or is this relationship doomed to end like all his others?

Only you, dear reader, can write the ending.

The boy Miliband done good

2011-09-14T13:43:00.006+01:00

So, Ed got boos and catcalls at the TUC - as it happens, catcalls which are, rightly or wrongly, likely to be very useful indeed for his standing in the country, as Jack McConnell points out, showing as it does that he is standing outside of what is likely to be a very unpopular and widespread program of strike action.

In fact, although the media has tried to make a big deal of this, as usual, in the end it seemed almost uneventful. What they didn't really focus on is that the heckling largely came from non-affiliated unions, which have chosen not to take any part in the Labour Party's structures, and the fact of the heckling may have had as much to do with an increased militancy on the part of these non-affiliated unions as it has to do with any serious falling-out between Labour and unions.

It's notable that in this BBC coverage, the Beeb interviews someone from the PCSU, who has the nerve to be outraged about not being supported by a party that they, er, can't even be bothered to pay affiliation fees to. Subtext: the media are trying to create a story where there isn't really much of one.

The big unions, which are affiliated to the Labour Party, seem to have given a much more muted response - the GMB's Paul Kenny sounded almost relaxed about Ed's speech, although TUC chief Brendan Barber managed ill-advisedly to mention direct action group UKUncut in his response to the BBC's Andrew Neill here, a group who I'd say are doing very nicely at alienating most of the public. Neill then rather easily takes him apart, both on their and the TUC's support for civil disobedience and on the TUC's undeniable links with the hard left. They really need to do better if they want to get the public on side for the strikes: at the moment this kind of carelessness by Barber is making unions look much less credible than they used to in the days of his predecessor John Monks.

So, Ed has set out his stall: he will not back these strikes, as he did not back the strike in June (although in that case, again, it was by non-affiliated unions only).

But it's not over yet. The affiliated unions are the ones to watch, and this may just be the calm before a party conference storm. Union leaders not at all pleased about the potential downgrading of their power in the proposals for reformed party structures (although it is right that this should happen).

In three weeks' time we'll know if Ed's strategy has paid off. But still all to play for, and that will be the real test. If, as Peter Watt and others have argued, he has overplayed his hand, it could be a rather ugly conference. In any case, I'm not sure he has had much choice.

Scottish Labour: everyone’s problem

2011-09-08T09:39:00.003+01:00

I imagine that, in the run-up to his conference speech - and having had a rather unexpectedly busy summer - Ed Miliband is turning his thoughts to his grand plan for Britain. And rightly - this will be a defining moment for his leadership. But, at the same time, it might be a little too easy to forget a rather pressing issue north of the border.

Now, it seems clear that Labour failed to win in 2007, and was decimated in 2011, largely because it stopped having a convincing argument for the electorate, as in Westminster. But, unlike Labour nationally, it has already had four years to regroup from the initial defeat, and is patently going backwards rather than forwards. For a country which has been dominated by Labour for surely the majority of the last century, it has been a fall from a great height indeed. And it's not over yet.

Kevin McKenna's somewhat cruel, but accurate, piece in the Observer this weekend gets to the nub of the matter:
"those of us who thought that it couldn't get any worse for Labour after their electoral evisceration in May were a bit hasty in our rush to pass judgment. It just has. Almost four months have passed since Gray served notice of his intention to quit."
He then envisages the awkward scene to unfold today on parliament's return: Labour leader Iain Gray being greeted by Alex Salmond, amid the embarrassment of finding himself still without a replacement after the recess, with the throwaway line: "Still here?"

The leadership vacuum is leaving the Scottish Party a beached whale, writhing helplessly, and no lifeboat on the immediate horizon endowed with the political strength to lever it back into the water. Jim Murphy, the only cabinet heavyweight with a brief to address the situation, is immersed in a review of the party and, if anyone can pull this off, the highly competent Murphy can. The Scottish Labour Party has historically been a tower of strength: it is full of thousands of decent, hard-working Labour members working towards what we all want, a Labour government in Westminster and in Holyrood. But it is also part of the problem, and fair to say that, if the national party is in a poor state after the halt on reform after 1997, the situation is palpably worse in Scotland, for two reasons.

The first is that it is not particularly healthy for a party to enjoy hegemony in any area over a long period of time, because the normal democratic checks and balances, such as the electorate periodically throwing out the incumbents, cease to apply. It is still less healthy for that hegemony to be then suddenly thrust into government, as it was in 1999, and stay there for eight years (albeit in coalition), because the strength of that hegemony is leveraged and multiplied, along with its toxic effects. And the gradual decimation of the Tories in Scotland over the last 50-odd years has exacerbated Labour's dominance.

This combination of hegemony and government almost invariably leads to, at the very least, arrogance and carelessness. And in the worst case, corruption (look at the Japanese LDP, for one example of many). We can be fairly thankful that, so far at least, no significant corruption seems to have been uncovered in Scotland in recent years; but neither has it been a stranger to scandal, as Henry McLeish and Wendy Alexander found out. Losing two leaders out of five to resignations over matters of misconduct certainly fits the description of carelessness. Finally, the party has - let's be honest - like most political parties, a few dark corners too; corners which once produced the unsavoury likes of George Galloway: not expelled, incredibly, until 2003, giving him ample time to damage the party's image. All these things no doubt contributed to Scottish Labour's decline.

There is a second, deeper issue, though. Tony Blair in A Journey makes clear that Scotland was always left "to Gordon". In spite of that, my former colleague Lance Price notes in his diaries that the initial 1999 Scottish campaign was somewhat lacking in political direction: it seems that Brown rather took his eye off the ball. The election was won anyway, on a tidal wave of popular sentiment, but the party machine also appeared semi-detached during those years, despite being funded centrally. What happened, in effect, was that Scotland was rather coddled. It was rarely asked to answer to No. 10, because of the tricky Blair-Brown politics.

Now, on the one hand, a degree of autonomy was vital: devolution had created a devolved government, after all, which could not be run, or be seen to be run, from Westminster. On the other hand, the Labour-led administration did not benefit from the experience of many Westminster heavyweights; and, while it was a success early on, it was also forgotten the way that its failure might rebound significantly on Labour at UK level. Some accountability back to the national party is essential if a unified national organisation is ever to work; but that accountability was rarely to be seen.

The upshot of this is that there has been for some time a Scottish party in a less-than-healthy state with less than full accountability, which has been an integral part of Labour's electoral decline there. But why does all this matter so much, anyway? Primarily because the people of Scotland, and Scottish members, deserve a functioning Labour Party. Anything less is not only bad for Scotland; it is bad for democracy. Secondly, let it not be forgotten, it is a vital political stronghold which has been the source of some of our biggest political figures, from Keir Hardie onwards. A third reason is practical: our performance in Scotland and the run-up to next Holyrood elections in 2016 will undoubtedly impact on the way Scots vote in 2015, and a poor outcome in Scotland could drag down the Westminster vote (although a good one could boost it). But there is a worse, lurking danger, no matter how remote it may seem now.

Back in May, I argued that Scotland was not likely to gain independence any time soon, despite Salmond's storming victory, and I stand by that. But the longer this damaging vacuum continues, the more this faint possibility becomes less so. Tom Harris MP has nobly thrown his hat into the ring, ostensibly to try and flush out other candidates. He would surely make a great First Minister himself but, whoever it turns out to be, it needs to be someone with a radical plan for rebuilding the party, and that is before they even start on a radical policy programme to take on Salmond, and on fighting the referendum No campaign.

The most likely result as of now still seems to be that the Scottish people, in the end, will rebuff Salmond on independence when they see the whites of his eyes. But there is always the chance, getting less slim by the day, that Salmond will simply slip through his referendum while Tory and Labour opposition is weak - and one way would be to do it quite soon. He is currently, after all, as McKenna remarks, "master of all he surveys". And that is the Armageddon scenario for the vast majority of Labour members: the breakup of the United Kingdom would have been, at least in part, down to Labour's simple failure to get organised in time. It is bizarre to think that Cameron is probably praying for a stronger Scottish Labour.

In short, this is not Scotland's problem. It's everyone's problem.

This post first published at LabourList, and featured in Progress Online's "What We're Reading"

For your entertainment, an update on the delightful Mr Chávez

2011-09-02T12:31:00.004+01:00

I know it’s starting to become a bit of an obsession, but I can’t help myself. Since my letter some time back asking why supposedly respectable trade unionists from the TUC were giving backing to the anti-democratic, constitution-twisting President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a few more nuggets have surfaced:

A few weeks ago, Chávez decided to repatriate all gold reserves held abroad (as well as, at the same time, nationalising the entire domestic and foreign gold-mining industry). When concerns were expressed on how the treasury might find space for it all on its return, he kindly offered the basement of the presidential palace as a suitable location. The aim suggested by Reuters, to help prop up the economy ahead of next year’s elections, seems more than plausible, however I am sure that there is also complete separation between that fine democratic leader and the Venezuelan state on this one, and that the gold reserves would be perfectly safe there from, say, suddenly disappearing into a Swiss bank account.

I am indebted to the very knowledgeable Alek Boyd for pointing out to me that Ken Livingstone’s so-called 2007 “oil deal” with Chávez to subsidise London transport was, in fact, nothing of the sort (I was away when it happened and missed all the detail). It was a cash deal, in which oil never changed hands, in return for expertise provided to Venezuela, but most importantly, a propaganda coup for Chávez in legitimising his nasty regime. In other words, Chávez was very happy to fritter away $32m dollars per year from his developing country’s public purse as a PR exercise. What Ken later described in the Guardian as “a piece of mindless vandalism” by Boris Johnson, in canning the deal on taking office, was nothing less than an entirely fair and just action to stop the Venezuelan taxpayer pointlessly subsidising London commuters. Thanks to Alex also for this piece, detailing a $29 billion hole which has apparently been found in a government fund which is generally used at the whim of the president. If my calculations are correct, that'd be about 10% of GDP.

All of this, however, pales into insignificance with the increasingly insane pronouncements of the man himself, who was recently in hospital for cancer surgery. Unable to deal with the defeat of his friend Colonel Gaddafi, he suggests in this video that the taking of Libya's Green Square was in fact a fabrication, filmed with actors in Qatar. (For film buffs, a kind of Middle Eastern Wag The Dog, if you like, but without Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.) Even if you don’t understand Spanish, it’s worth watching the video just for the baffled looks of the other people around the table as he utters these words. (Hat-tip: Harry's Place)

Although you have to admit that some of this is pretty funny, it is at the same time no joke for normal Venezuelans, whose economy is being destroyed, as well as for democrats and supporters of human rights everywhere. Demagogues usually start making pronouncements which make no sense at all as the country slides into autocracy and chaos and the prospect of repression and bloodshed starts to hover, however faintly, on the horizon. We have only to look to Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe or that self-same Gaddafi for examples. Chávez is, after all, a very significant regional power with some decent oil wealth and an army.

All of which begs the question: when it is so clear where all this is ultimately heading, why on earth do supposedly sensible members of the Labour movement continue to defend, and support, this monster that they have, in some small way, helped to create?

Labour must never be allowed to get this broke again

2011-09-01T10:23:00.000+01:00

Yesterday the Guardian reported that proposed new rules for party funding could result in the Labour Party being "ruined". But this is only a metaphorical straw landing on a camel with an already decidedly poorly back.

Peter Mandelson's memoirs are interesting for many reasons, but one of the most important is as the first insider account of the Brown government and the 2010 general election campaign. What I hadn't realised, as a former party staffer, and what blew me away, was just how tight money was in relation to the two previous elections, for both of which I'd been on the payroll.

Part of the reason is for external factors beyond the party's control: membership of all political parties is down, and Labour's larger corporate and individual donations all but dried up following tougher declaration rules that it itself introduced, and the subsequent 2007 funding controversy, which resulted in the resignation - and subsequent clearing - of General Secretary Peter Watt. This has left only one real source - union donations - to fill the gap.

The leanness of the campaign cannot be overestimated. We usually had about 250 staff at election time, swollen from the normal 150. In 2010 it was, however, just 150 at the peak of the campaign. There was, astonishingly, no paid advertising: ormally a large portion of the party's income was set aside for billboards. How did we ever end up there, at the time a party of government, scrabbling around for coppers to fight an election campaign?

But part of it is within the party's control, and it has long been a problem of political leadership. This is not down to my fine and long-suffering former colleagues on the party staff, but senior politicians on Labour's National Executive and some, but certainly not all, General Secretaries.

Firstly the party needs firm, independent financial structures and accountability, like would exist in any private company. Politicians are used to wielding power; used to demanding things and getting their own way. Some General Secretaries will stand up to them and tell them their pet project is a bad idea and that it is a poor use of party funds. And some will say, "no problem". This is not good for the long-term health of the party. There need to be mechanisms which stop this happening, and insist that the books balance over the electoral cycle; rather like those you might find at the Treasury over the economic cycle. This problem is exacerbated by both senior staff and politicians changing jobs after each election, often leaving someone else to clear up the financial mess.

Secondly, it needs proper, long-term political ownership of the party organisation. Tony Blair admits in A Journey that one of his regrets is that he did not give the party machine the attention it needed once Labour were in power. He's right. Although his innovation of a Party Chair should have helped, in practice it became an ill-defined, part-time role which suffered from the usual game of ministerial musical chairs. So, after 1997, the reworking of party funding, along with fixing all the other failings in party structures and the rulebook, and the long-desired creation of a truly mass-membership party, never happened.

It is not to overstate the case to say it simply must be a major and urgent focus of these few years we have in opposition, because in government it will not get done. Again. But why does all this matter? It matters because our lack of focus on this issue means we are now fighting the Tories at half-strength and because we could even suffer the ignominy of insolvency; because we are ceding extraordinary power to trade unions, which is in their interests more than it is in ours; because staff reductions mean we are losing vital long-term skills and knowledge we have built up; because it is, objectively, bad for democracy to have a poorly-funded opposition; and, perhaps most importantly of all but least noticed, because it makes us not look like a serious party of government.

After all, if a party can't be seen to manage its own finances properly, why would you trust them with the country's?

This post first published at the Huffington Post

Brand the Tories right wing? I Woodwouldn’t

2011-08-30T09:36:00.003+01:00

Oh dear. To read the Observer report of Shaun Woodward’s leaked memo on how Labour should attack the Tories, the question which springs to mind is not so much, is this going to be genuine Labour strategy as, what on earth was he thinking?

The thrust of the piece is that Labour should attack the Tories for reverting from their “cuddly conservative” projection to a more traditional right-wing positioning, and to make this the Brown-style “dividing line” between us and them, on which we should base our attack.

Now, there is much to be said for dividing lines, indeed their judicious use has been a great help to Labour over the last twenty years. And there is no doubt that Cameron is now pursuing a more right-wing agenda than was being projected in the run-up to the general election. However, for a whole raft of reasons, Woodward has badly miscalculated.

Firstly he has missed that, in the current political environment, being seen as from the right electorally is not necessarily a bad thing. In the wake of the riots – unlike various politicians and commentators – voters are in the main looking for punishment over understanding (whether they are right to do so is quite another matter). They trust the Tories over Labour on the economy. And they are not alone in a more international sense (perhaps someone should point out to Woodward the prevailing conservative hegemony across Europe).

Next, the attack strategy highlights three areas – law and order, immigration and welfare – where they polling indicates they particularly want to see more conservative policies – and they are issues that currently matter a great deal to people. In fact, Cameron has been rather smart: he has moved to the right principally on issues where he feels that he has public opinion on his side as cover for doing so. In doing so, he also leaves the Lib Dems nicely squeezed between public opinion on the one side and their increasingly uncomfortable left-leaning backbenchers on the other. They don’t particularly like where they are – see various comments over the past twelve months from Vince Cable – but neither do they really have much choice and are, from Cameron’s point of view, pleasantly heading for an irrelevance which will allow him to dump them by 2015.

Thirdly, the attack is based on a fundamentally incorrect premise. “He is still seeking to separate himself out from a toxic Tory brand”, writes Woodward. Well, some news for you, Shaun: we are no longer in a place where we can pin the “toxic brand” tag on them. The Tories didn’t fail to gain an overall majority because their brand was still toxic: that part of the operation was a success. They will not bring back unpleasant policies such as section 28, because they know the world has changed. What they failed to do was to go the whole hog in taking on vested interests in the party, and to come up with a convincing, coherent policy program to underpin it, which could win over the country. But they did detoxify the brand, otherwise they could not have come so far.

It’s worth listening to Jerry Hayes, a former leftish Tory colleague of Woodward’s, in a rather amusing piece on the memo:

“the idea that the British people are going to be persuaded that Cameron is an old fashioned rightwinger is almost as deluded as a Labour leadership who are remotely considering it. Tory back benchers, grass roots and the rightwing press are constantly whinging that he’s an old lefty.”

Woodward is no fool. He is a competent administrator of long years of experience who made a decent fist of Northern Ireland, and can claim a good insight into the functioning of the Tory political machine. The problem is that it is the Tory machine of more than ten years ago, which has as much relevance to the current machine as Ed’s operation does to that of Tony Blair on arrival in Downing Street.

Lance Price, in his excellent “Spin Doctor’s Diary”, gives an good insight into Woodward through his account of his defection; that he is a decent, right-minded moderate – if one with a slightly high opinion of himself – who was genuinely disgusted with the direction of his then party. The problem is that it is not the same party as the one he left, not even close. The final error seems to be that he is still projecting onto the Tories the things that made him leave the party.

Right-wing does not scare normal people like it scares us, Shaun. The public, unlike the party, the Guardian’s readership or the Westminster commentariat, does not spend so much time worrying about left and right. The swing voters we need to cultivate worry simply about which politicians will deal with law and order, immigration and welfare, those very areas where you argue we have to separate ourselves from the Tories.

Finally, although Shaun is running the attack operation, this is just a memo, right? But it would not be the first time that we had wrongly differentiated ourselves from the Tories in the very areas which the public see as crucial: for example, our economic and tax strategy over most of the last year has seemingly yet to convince the public, despite our poll lead. It is good to have dividing lines; it is fatal to be on the wrong side of them.

Sunder Katwala and the IPPR’s Mark Stears argued yesterday that we shouldn’t worry about this memo because Ed will not follow this advice anyway. We must hope, for all our sakes, that they’re right.

STOP PRESS: M'learned colleague Dan Hodges has kindly reproduced the whole memo at the New Statesman, here.

This post first published at Labour Uncut, and featured in the New Statesman's Best of the Blogs.

Hard choices (reprise)

2011-08-28T11:28:00.002+01:00

Nearing the end of the Mandelson memoirs: love or hate the Prince of Darkness, they are essential reading for those who want to understand Labour's last twenty years, and the Brown years in particular. Memoirs must always be read with the caveat that you view the world through the author’s prism. However, at their best, they can be fascinating in revealing, through events, the strengths and weaknesses of personalities.

And what do we find, tucked away on page 526, but a little insight into the mind of Ed Miliband - written, of course, before he ever became party leader - on Labour's 2010 manifesto, which he wrote:

"It adopted radical rhetoric, but when it was boiled down it was vague and appeared to avoid any hard choices."

Critically, the observation is not to do with Ed's politics, but his way of operating. Now, to be fair, since about June of this year, Ed has shown a much greater appetite for hard choices or, at least, risk-taking, as I acknowledged in my penultimate post, and others. But this nugget shows where his default behaviour had been coming from a mere year before, in early 2010.

We need to hope that this change is permanent and the result of an ongoing learning process, as it was for Blair, rather than merely a blip in an inherent and inescapable personality trait. Brown, let us not forget, was famously risk-averse, and it ultimately hurt him. But people can change, and politics is a game which rewards adaptability.

I refer m'learned colleagues to my own, earlier post on those same hard choices.

Warning: Euro-iceberg approaching

2011-08-25T09:28:00.000+01:00

As we pass an unusually newsworthy summer on the domestic front with phone-hacking and riots, not to mention economic wobbles in the US and China, let alone Libya, it might be wise to return for a moment to the iceberg edging towards our own continent, its long-term significance for Britain ultimately liable to outstrip all these things.

For a measure of just how significant, you must admit that it is newsworthy, not to say deliciously ironic, when that full-blooded Tory George Osborne finds himself somewhat sheepishly agreeing that

"the remorseless logic of monetary union leads from a single currency to greater fiscal integration".

In other words: you Euro-chaps really should get cracking on giving away more sovereignty.

Excuse me? As Nick Cohen relates:

“We have become so used to hearing it that we fail to notice the strangeness of a eurosceptic Tory chancellor begging Europeans to integrate faster...Osborne is panicking because the theories of what will happen if the EU tries to keep muddling on and a major European country defaults range from the alarming to the catastrophic. Liquidity would freeze, British banks' capital would be wiped out, Britain would go back into recession…and the deficit balloon beyond control…he must support a policy he has spent his career opposing.”

Osborne is therefore, for the moment, containing his Schadenfreude at seeing the euro-zone on the brink. And so perhaps, given the seriousness, we should contain ours at his own humbling.

Last week, Sarkozy and Merkel had another of their cosy meetings, as they had done back in July. As predicted, their agreed sticking-plaster to resolve the immediate problem of Greece and reassure the markets didn’t work. The European Central Bank had to intervene to buy up Spanish and Italian bonds, and a new meeting was arranged.

The good news is, at that meeting they quietly committed themselves to that bête noir of the Tory back benches, a political integration project which could yet save the euro-zone. The bad news is threefold: the plan has inherent flaws; it may simply be too little, too late, as this Reuters piece suggests; and the sticking-plaster still hasn’t stopped the underlying infection in Spanish and Italian debt which, if left untreated, may yet result in a terminal euro-gangrene.

Now, let’s not underestimate the magnitude of what, relative to the measured and Sir Humphrey-like world of Brussels-speak, has occurred. It’s a big deal, and to get there, one can’t entirely blame them for bypassing the formal protocols and openly thrashing out a bilateral proposal which others will now need to sign up to.

However, in doing so, they seem to have rather eschewed the input of everyone else, that is, the other twenty-five countries. And, furthermore, what is a big deal in traditionally consensual, incrementalist Euro-land is still not necessarily the kind of radical action plan the markets were looking for. In short, the plan, however cunning, may not work.

The flaws are significant: first, they need to take a lot of awkward countries with them who could well be further alienated by this lack of consultation. Second, if you wanted to embark on a long-term structural project like this, “you wouldn’t start from here”: that is, in the jittery aftermath of a banking crisis, infused with a near-universal fear of low growth.

Third, the plan is full of not necessarily workable ideas. Jointly-owned “Eurobonds”, to carry additional debt, are being suggested as a medium-term solution, but seem a political improbability (Merkel’s coalition partners are against, for a start). And then there is the “Tobin tax” to be paid on each transaction taking place on the financial markets: oft touted, never implemented. That is partly for the very good reason that London is by far the most important financial market in Europe, and might not want to risk its business disappearing off to New York or Tokyo. And it would be especially difficult to achieve in any case: the UK is not even in the euro, has a Tory government, has a big dependence on City income and a long history of being at least mildly sceptical of all things European.

And overall, it’s not so much that the plan itself might not work, although it might not; it’s rather the time you have available versus the hoops you have to jump through to get there. Negotiations, treaties and parliamentary votes would have to be managed in twenty-seven countries. Realistically, it ain’t going to happen soon.

It’s a plan that, arguably, should really have started with the birth of the euro twelve years ago, so it could come to fruition around now. But to try to implement such a grand scheme on the fly, in the kind of timeframe the markets will demand, seems a very tall order. Especially since, as Gavin Hewitt points out, they have even not addressed the immediate problems of the possibility of further problems with its weaker members: the failure to increase the bailout fund – still not large enough to save Spain or Italy – was the gaping hole in last week’s package.

At least now Europe’s leaders seem to be starting to see the acute danger of their situation. As they should: after all, metaphorical alarm bells and sirens are not merely sounding, but screaming. Europe, in contrast, is reacting in its customary, measured way.

As for solutions, they seem to be two-fold: embark on a huge, and perhaps insanely ambitious, project of integration: or kick out the troubled economies who are not pulling their weight. Nothing is sure, and I am not a betting man. But I’d have to say that the first of those two options is looking very tricky to pull off.

And the second, given the treaties which underpin the EU, might be very messy indeed for European relations, if some of these were to be reneged upon (a euro-zone expulsion was described by a top EU lawyer as “legally almost impossible”). Let alone the economic consequences.

So, if that happens, as it could, expect some fireworks. European summits have historically thrived on moving things forward slowly; as a relatively unwieldy mechanism for resolving fast-moving crises, they have a pretty mixed record. A fact to which the still-uncomfortable memory of a certain Munich conference, a mere seventy-three years ago next month, might attest.

Labour’s riots response: wrong on tactics, wrong on strategy

2011-08-18T16:22:00.001+01:00

It was a mere few days ago that we were praising the willingness of a reinvigorated Ed Miliband to make hard decisions. The dumping of the Shadow Cabinet elections. The explicit non-backing for an unpopular strike. Most striking of all, two occasions on which he had gone out on a limb against powerful interests – even though the endgame of both is still uncertain – his sure-footed handling of the parliamentary debate on phone-hacking, which finally had Cameron on the back foot; and his determination to adjust the representation of unions in party decision-making.

It seemed like Labour had things all sewn up for the summer recess, and we could look forward to a renewing summer break and a gentle trot into conference season, enjoying the first truly glad, confident morning of the Miliband leadership. But oh, how quickly events can intervene, dear boy.

Labour’s political response to the riots has shifted from a neutral position of non-partisan solidarity, to one which is tactically wrong. And, worse, it is strategically wrong.

The challenge of last week was carefully to carve out a political position which was distinct from the Tories’, whilst not launching into full-frontal attacks which would look like opportunism at a time when statesmanship was being called for. It was never going to be easy to navigate that fine line, but Miliband gave a decent Commons performance, backing Cameron himself while still managing to line up persistent backbench criticisms on the cuts in police budgets. On the whole, creditable.

And then it all came apart. Somehow, Ed was seemingly kidnapped and tortured on Thursday night, so that by Friday’s Today programme, the refined message started to come out as, “whilst we can’t condone the rioting, I have to say that…” and the tactical errors began.

Tactical error one. An inconsistent argument. The point is, no-one saw this coming. The best thing would be to say, “we don’t know”, and leave it at that. Because we don’t. Our response instead was “it’s complex”, so let’s not prejudge. And then to do precisely that. In other words, it may be complex; or it may be darned simple: you just don’t know which. Best advice: hold your counsel.

Tactical error two. Bashing the rich. Peter Oborne’s awful piece exemplifies the self-flagellating Zeitgeist of the middle classes over the riots. And it is careless to allow the Guardian to paraphrase your words as “I can’t excuse looting, but the rich must share the blame”(to be fair, they later changed the headline, because it wasn’t what he actually said. But what he did say was asking for trouble). The usual suspects were wheeled out, most of which were patently unconnected, like phone-hacking, MPs’ expenses and the banking crisis. Reasonable people don’t think, “a journalist hacked someone’s phone, so I’ll smash up next door’s shop”.

Tactical error three. Calling for a public inquiry: that last refuge of a politician in the face of a crisis. But it also contravenes the first law of Her Majesty’s Opposition: never call for the PM to do something specific unless you know they will have to do it anyway. It makes you look ineffectual when they don’t, and can even have the opposite effect (Ken Clarke, let’s not forget, is still in post). At time of writing, a rumoured deal on a commission, short of an inquiry and probably more of a PR exercise for the Lib Dems than anything else, may save Labour’s blushes as a half-way house. It may not.

Tactical error four. Suggesting that Labour will do its own inquiry if Cameron does not. This seems to have been a way of addressing tactical error three, but is clearly not thought through. Who will do it? How will it be funded (the party is broke, don’t forget)? How will it be seen as independent when it has the backing of only one party, and what heavyweight independent figure will want to be associated with it? Are there any precedents for such an idea that have worked? In other words, even if you get it off the ground, it can be easily dismissed by the other two parties.

Tactical error five. Blaming the last Labour government. Again. While the Tories will inevitably turn their guns on us from time to time, we need to avoid the compulsion to load the shells for them.

But these are really tactical errors, which may shortly be forgotten. What is more worrying is the strategic error of the emphasis on underlying causes.

Part of the answer to these may indeed be that there is a small section of society who are not getting the help and support they need in some way. But it may not be. It may equally be that a disturbance stemming from a tiny criminal element simply ended up snowballing into a big problem because of a serious police failure.

We. Don’t. Know.

The Economist put it best:

“The left is imploring the public to consider the underlying causes of the riots. They should be careful what they wish for. Voters might conclude that the deep-seated causes are not poverty, discrimination and austerity—the riots took place in a country whose government currently spends half of its national income—but welfare dependency, broken homes and moral nihilism.”

And if it turns out to be the case that this calls for solutions which are not traditionally left-wing ones, we will have come down on the wrong side of a very important argument. What’s more, initial evidence on public opinion indicates that, although people feel government cuts are not helping and there may be economic-related causes, they are looking for, as John Rentoul points out, “the most punitive response possible”.

So, since Friday, our position on the riots has wandered into being muddled and inconsistent. And which is strategically quite wrong, because we have fallen into the trap of most of the British media; of making hasty assumptions about causes without actually knowing the answer. We have said everything, and nothing at all.

This post first published at Labour Uncut

The week the tectonic plates shifted

2011-08-12T11:14:00.002+01:00

Night view from the Peace Hotel, Shanghai

Think for a moment, if you can, beyond the riots. Beyond the slow-burning flames engulfing parts of the Murdoch empire. Beyond the British cuts and the British growth problem, to that delicate balancing of immense forces which is global geopolitics.

And, last week, amongst the domestic news, you saw some truly momentous events. Some momentous in themselves, some merely telling indicators, signifying how far we’ve come incrementally along a historical road.

In 1988, I was in Shanghai, on a trip having just finished university. In 2004, sixteen years on, I was there again. And, the second time, the view across the Huangpu River from the beautiful Art Deco Peace Hotel was a bit different. By my second visit, there was now a wealth of skyscrapers where there had been shanty town.

During those sixteen years, Shanghai had grown into a city of 17 million souls, and its country was well on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy, a feat which most observers reckon it will achieve before 2015. I tell this story simply because I believe that actually visiting Shanghai – or somewhere which has experienced similar growth like the Shenzhen enterprise zone, a little north of Hong Kong – is about the only way you can fully grasp the enormity of the change which has taken place in the world over the last two decades. The other thing that I remember clearly is that everything I bought cost roughly one-tenth of the price back home. It doesn’t take a genius to see why everything is seemingly made in China nowadays, and what a massively disruptive effect that that must perforce have on the economies of Europe and the US.

Last week, we saw three events. The first was the onslaught of the markets against Spanish and Italian debt, only days after EU agreement of a band-aid package to save Greece, punishing European leaders for their lack of will to back a longer-term solution. The second was last-minute breaking of the dollar debt deadlock on Capitol Hill, between Republicans and Democrats, apparently down to the capitulation of President Obama, leading anyway to the first-time-ever downgrade of dollar debt. The leadership vacuum in both cases was palpable, as the Daily Telegraph's John McTernan points out. And the third, most strikingly of all, was China’s unprecedented reprimand to the US over the debt issue.

Extraordinary. China was telling off the world’s only remaining superpower, as if it were a naughty child. I am a big stakeholder in your country, it was saying. I am reminding you that I have arrived and that you need to pay attention.

Two immense trading blocs, unable to resolve their problems in a satisfactory way. And a third, looking on expectantly, knowing that shortly it is to be more powerful – economically, at least – than the US and, eventually, quite probably the EU as well. Irritated with one party because it thought it wasn’t pulling its weight, and probably merely mystified by the machinations of the other, the Europeans seemingly doomed to be entangled in silly regional disputes about languages and sovereignties, while others quietly take control of the world. Not to mention their inherent laziness, all those long holidays and short working hours: how are they ever truly going to be competitive?

I mean, not to condone it: but you can imagine how that might be the view from Beijing.

The US on its knees. Europe in disarray. How a firm, authoritarian hand might help those silly old democracies, they must be musing. (And, by the way, how much longer before that country, currently on a mission to build up its military capacity significantly, makes a move on Taiwan which, unlike the little dance it led the US in 1998, in the end succeeds?)

For those who truly believe that Britain has a future in a Europe only as a loose trading bloc, think again. Europe is likely, in my lifetime, either to achieve some kind of workable political convergence, which is definitively not a super-state; or to have accepted forever a role as a minor-league player next to the US, China and, perhaps, even a renascent Russia in world affairs. An inward-looking Europe, un-consulted and unloved on the great matters of late 21st century geopolitics.

True Europeanism is not for those who dream of a massive statist bureaucracy, as the Tories would have you believe. True Europeanism is simply wanting to fight for European values to endure in a world where the other players will be much bigger than the relatively small individual countries we will be by then. A world where such smaller countries will struggle to be heard.

Or the alternative future: A Europe which didn’t take the opportunity to speak with one voice because it was obsessed with questions of sovereignty and voting. And ended up having no voice at all. Just like Merkel and Sarkozy have a carve-up meeting before a Euro-summit, one day it will be Obama and Hu, or their respective successors, having a cosy dinner before they tell everyone else what’s been agreed.

As Tony Blair put it in A Journey:

“Possibly we have not yet internalised the true significance of China’s rise…If Europe wants to be strong, capable of partnering the US, China and others, and also attractive as a partner, it has to focus on certain fundamental decisions.”

But we are not focusing. We are running away from those decisions, as Merkel and Sarkozy showed over Greece. To get to that alternative future, where we are not a bit-part actor, Europe will have to be a player. And, whether we like it or not, that means that we need to settle our differences with those neighbours with whom, after all, we really have an awful lot in common.

We are at a crossroads, where the choice for our leaders lies between statesmanship and a legacy of dithering and missed opportunities.

The clock is ticking.

This post first published at ProgressOnline

Parliamentary recall: the return of gesture politics

2011-08-10T09:02:00.001+01:00

So, parliament is to be recalled for a day to debate the disturbances in London and elsewhere. Now, there is clearly an arguable case for the home secretary, the mayor of London and even the Prime Minister to be there for COBRA, but...parliament? Why?

First, a necessity for parliament sitting arises if we need to pass laws. Is there a need, as blogger Pat Osgood sensibly pointed out, for primary legislation? Of course there is not.

Second, six hundred holidays have been interrupted, not to mention those of parliamentary staff. Is there a reason why MPs have holidays? Yes. You can slag off MPs all you like - they're a convenient whipping boy, after all - but like everyone else with demanding jobs and no time, they need to spend some time with their families, at least once a year. Is that so hard for us to understand?

If they have to debate the country going to war, or some similar vital historic event, that's one thing. But a few bored looters and rioters with nothing better to do of a weekend and, what's more, an issue they can do absolutely zero about?

Later, let's have the review of what went wrong and the lessons learned. But, for crying out loud, leave our backbenchers out of it for now and fix the problem. The right people should be brought back from holiday, not any old people. Is there any possible reason to recall our politicians for a debate which, we can confidently predict, will earnestly condemn, loudly froth and will achieve precisely nothing?

No, it is gesture politics, pure and simple. And it is precisely this kind of pointless symbolism which is turning large numbers of people off politics and off politicians.

Well done, Cameron. Big thumbs up.

This post first published at LabourList, and linked to in a response posted at Jane Is The One

In the hands of the many, not the few

2011-08-09T10:41:00.010+01:00

So, we are having a debate about the role of unions in the Party. Perhaps Ed, as my Uncut colleague Peter Watt suggests, is on a hiding to nothing: he is paddling against a strong current of realpolitik that dictates that this cannot change, at least whilst the party is taking ninety per cent of its donations from unions.

But, this aside, perhaps we should examine something more important: rather than whether Ed will win, we should look at whether or not Ed is right.

Firstly let’s frame the debate: every time we try to have a debate about the right level of involvement for unions in party decision-making, the familiar refrain comes out from all corners of the labour movement: “man the barricades, someone is trying to Break The Link!” The siren goes up, we all rush to the defence of The Link, the devilish intruders are repulsed, and the debate stops again.

But breaking the link is essentially a straw man: no serious, contemporary party figure (nor especially – God forbid – any sitting politician, a very large proportion of whom are union-backed) is suggesting that we should do such a thing. Most of us are members of, and support, unions, even if we don’t always agree with everything they do. And how would we survive, let alone campaign? It is natural that, in part-funding the party and being linked to its decision-making mechanisms, unions should have a say.

However, the more nuanced debate that needs to be had is: how much of a say? Because, on the other hand, the current system does beg a question. The question of whether or not it is right that three leaders, whose interests are naturally sometimes directly aligned with those of the party, and sometimes not, control a very sizeable block vote.

So, are we comfortable with that? Because perhaps we shouldn’t be, and it’s quite possible that the upcoming, wholly independent study into party funding may not be, either. Why?

First, let’s just return to the totemic Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution: “power…in the hands of the many, not the few.” Let’s face facts: it has always been union leaders, rather than union members, who in reality control the votes. And one important change which exacerbates this effect is the sizeable consolidation that the union movement has undergone in recent years. Now surely, even if the current deal were accepted as right and just, a change in the environment should warrant a corresponding change in the system. Current state of play: three leaders of three super-unions control 40% of conference votes, against 50% for party members. Hardly “the many, not the few”.

Second, the paradox of money and influence: it is not good for money to be seen to buy influence, even if it does. Odd, isn’t it? The world at large has a convenient doublethink when it comes to political parties. It doesn’t want to pay for political parties one hundred per cent. But it doesn’t like to think that money buys influence, either, and that’s not really realistic, is it? Unions, admittedly, do not get to formulate much of party policy. But where they do get a say is in the small-yet-important, more party-oriented things: candidate selections, rulebook changes. Union figures predominate in many of the committees which run the party and where these things are decided.

Third, we may have to change anyway. It is quite possible that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will criticise the current setup and call for changes, as this Guardian editorial points out, and it could be rather embarrassing to find ourselves publicly censured on the matter. Much better, surely, to anticipate and be seen to embrace change, than be dragged kicking and screaming towards it.

Fourth, transparency. The whole party organisational system is cloaked in unnecessary secrecy. The party does not even provide a copy of the rulebook containing the voting rules (although you can usually get hold of one), or the makeup of the NEC’s committees, on its website. No wonder people outside the party think the worst. It’s surely preferable to be open and upfront about what unions influence, and what they don’t, than leave it to people’s feverish imaginations. The influence needs to be transparent, through appointment of people and through votes, and it needs to be demonstrated that it is emphatically not a transactional influence, where deals are done in return for money.

In short, influence needs to be seen to be visible and above board, whatever the final settlement is. And, on that settlement, the answer to the question: “who governs Labour?” needs not to be – or be seen to be – “Ed and these three other blokes”. Because that is how it looks from the outside.

Once in a generation, an opportunity comes around to change these things, the last having been around 1994. In that moment, we voted for “power…in the hands of the many, not the few”. If we don’t want that statement to have turned out to be ironic, we need to grasp now that opportunity for our own generation.

This post first published at Labour Uncut, and appeared in The Week Uncut, the week's best read pieces. Listed in the daily Progress newsletter What We're Reading list and a response posted by Jon Lansman at Left Futures

How pseudo-democracy fools us all

2011-08-04T08:55:00.003+01:00

Democracy, as even that oft-pessimistic Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, noted in his rather good volume Age Of Extremes, is one of the great unsung advances of the twentieth century. The post-war period, especially, saw a huge increase in the proportion of the population living in democracies, a development for which we should all be thankful. Think about it: just India, Russia and South America account for around a quarter of the world’s population and, within the space of a mere half-century, all had flipped over to democracy.

But there is a caveat. Before all this, countries were largely either undemocratic (that is, totalitarian or feudal) or democratic. No messing about. It was the Allies versus the fascists, or the West versus the USSR and China. That’s not to say Britain wasn’t friendly to some awful regimes, but you knew that and accepted it as realpolitik. In the old days, you knew where you were. There were some foolish people who pretended the USSR was free, but they were just that – foolish.

Nowadays, in the media age, countries have a nasty habit of blurring the line between democratic and undemocratic. Why? Because it’s become in their interests to do so. And the phenomenon is on the increase. As respected CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria put it in a much-quoted 1997 essay (£) in Foreign Affairs:

“Democratically elected regimes, often ones which have been re-elected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring limits on their power and depriving citizens of basic freedoms. From Peru to the Palestinian Authority…we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon…illiberal democracy.”

A democratic veneer can be used to great effect to get a toe-hold in an international community where you might otherwise be a pariah. More importantly, it also allows you to build support networks outside your country, as long as you pull the wool over the eyes of the international media, and your supporters, with sufficient aplomb.

And it’s not as hard as you might think: the former may be too blindly convinced of your case to notice; and the latter tend to have short attention span, resources and interest to pay too much attention to a far-flung country (although there is also a very special prize here for the Guardian, which will happily provide anyone with a platform no matter how indefensible their views, as this piece from yesterday nicely shows).

But all this avoids an important point: democracy is not a gradual continuum which swings smoothly between the authoritarian and the fully democratic. It is, if you like, more of a stretched rubber band. If it can be weakened in a few places, it will snap. And it may snap without you even being aware that it has: that your country will still look, to the casual observer, like a democracy. You can pay lip-service to it, and still be in the international clubs.

Now, let’s be sensible. Despite what the wild-eyed conspiracy theorists might tell you, we’re not talking about Western Europe or the US. They all have healthy democracies, with some occasional flaws. For example, Italy’s repeated re-election of Berlusconi is clearly as much about its perennially weak governments and the incompetence of the Italian left as it is about his unwelcome dominance of the media. Italy is not in danger.

No, pseudo-democracy is quite distinct. Look at those free and fair elections we had, the president will say (despite the documented irregularities). Look at our free press (even if it’s largely under my control, I’ll allow a few critics for form’s sake). We are the underdogs, humbly holding up our alternative model to the West (who will will always come up with some “useful idiot” to argue in our favour).

The current master of this game is surely Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who gets left-leaning Westerners to build him support and raise local funds, by posing as a paragon of alternative politics. Clearly the Castro brothers haven’t done badly either over the years, although perhaps now losing their touch a little. And although no longer a torch-bearer for the left, Putin’s oligarch state, with its tight media controls and odd constitutional changes, surely runs them close as a pseudo-democracy. Even Iran’s current, unpleasant regime is a nominal democracy and has its Western supporters. And let’s not even go into Labour’s recent, barely-reported attempts to link up with Palestinian terrorists in Gaza; a fledgling democracy has certainly been set up, but it’s clearly not a very nice one.

But there are also newcomers to the game in other places which have not known democracy long, either: the ex-Soviet republics, varying from the healthy democracy to the entirely despotic. And some even closer to home: right inside the EU, a suspicious new media law enacted by Hungary’s dubious government – to ensure “balanced coverage” – as well as some nasty flirtations with the far-right from other ex-Communist countries, shows that Europe is by no means immune from these developments.

The point is this: governments often need to engage with these countries, for reasons of realpolitik, even while holding their noses. Fair enough. And, even then, there are some regimes so awful that we do not even have diplomatic relations with them.

However, what is neither necessary nor desirable is for political parties and trade unions to support and organise for these non-democrats, as if they were beacons of a desirable, alternative way of life. We do not need backbenchers and union delegations cloaking them with a legitimacy they do not deserve.

And there’s one last development which is worth noting. Back in the Cold War days, the left-right balance in this respect was more equal. The Labour left would flirt with Communist regimes, the Tory right with unpleasant right-wing regimes like Chile or South Africa. We were equally wrong-headed. But the Tories, apart from the odd foolish mistake like their choice of group in the European Parliament, largely learned their lesson about the toxicity of association. Labour, with its laudable traditions of tolerance, apparently did not. That problem is now exacerbated by the relaxation of party discipline that goes with the early years of opposition, coupled with a modest leftward shift in trade union leadership (and, arguably, party membership). It’s a trap, and one that Tories would love us to fall into.

Pseudo-democrats are coming to a country near you, soon. Don’t be fooled: left and right are irrelevant here. They end up the same. And the thing to remember is that a half-democrat is really no democrat at all.

So, please: don’t give them your support, don’t give them your time and, most of all, don’t give them a free platform. You can rest assured you wouldn’t get one in their country.

This post first published at LabourList and response pieces were posted by Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling and by Niklas Smith at his eponymous blog here.

Racism: you couldn’t make this stuff up

2011-08-01T16:38:00.003+01:00

“Appeasing racists and the...ideology that is behind them does not lead to success or cohesion. Concessions and encouragement...lead them to demand and get more.”

Jeremy Corbyn MP, who continues to defend racist Islamist preacher Raed Salah, rightly vilifies white racists in the Morning Star.

But without, apparently, seeing the slightest hint of irony.

Enda Kenny, we salute you

2011-07-28T14:35:00.002+01:00

In all the media frenzy which followed first Hackgate and then the tragic

Oslo

killings, one event has passed with perhaps less coverage than it should have had. A week ago, a speech by Enda Kenny, Taoiseach of Ireland, directly and firmly criticised the

Vatican

for its handling of the child abuse scandal which has done so much to damage the Church and especially in

Ireland

Before anyone starts feeling a jerk of the knee, this is not an anti-religious or anti-Catholic piece. Legitimate criticism of the Vatican is not the same as an attack on the Church. It is a recognition of what is essentially a management failure; and that is in the sense that, if the Catholic Church had been a business, its shareholders would have long ago insisted on a change of management. It being a religious institution, and accountability not really being its strong suit, that clearly has not happened. And the necessary changes arguably still do not go far enough: as the speech points out, we are talking about actions occurring

“as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.”

Kenny’s was a rousing speech with some fine passages which are noted in this magisterial piece at normblog, which I commend to you all. It is tough but unflinchingly fair. But it was truly remarkable for two things: firstly that it was – correct me if I’m wrong here – perhaps the first-ever direct criticism of the

Vatican

by a sitting president or prime minister; and secondly that that criticism came from

Ireland

, historically one of the most Catholic countries on the planet. It is not to exaggerate too much to say that, in future histories of

Ireland

, there is likely to be a “before” and an “after” to this speech.

It was right and it was appropriate, but it required an act of rare courage to articulate it. I believe that it also tapped into a deep vein of resentment which some Irish have felt for some time towards the Church, its power and the traditional deference towards it. The twentieth century portion of this vein can be traced to the creation of Ireland under De Valera, when the Long Fellow craftily connived with the Church to maintain his grip on power; it passes through atrocities such as the “laundry girls” who were made virtual prisoners in Church-run laundries for the crime of having had a child out of wedlock; and it ends in the present-day scandal of child abuse among priests, notable less for its existence than for the undeniable cover-up which followed. At the very least, it needs to be remarked that the relationship between Ireland and the Church passed through a very unhealthy period.

This is not the end of the Catholic Church in

Ireland

: but the

Vatican

needs to take note of it, because it sends a very serious signal at global level. Young Irish people will need to have a good reason to get involved in the Church, which at the moment they can't see - quite the opposite, in fact. The Catholic Church is likely to be around for a long time yet, but the Vatican needs reform. And if it wants not to end one day to see its empire come crashing down like so many dominoes, as we have seen happening with another multinational organisation over the last few weeks, it needs to read these signals well, and act. And this time, with seriousness and without reservation.