Looking at the Liberal Conservatives from an Anarchist Point of View…

Some people might see a dissonance on this blog between my professing to be an anarchist on the one hand, and my engaging uncritically in the mainstream discourse of statist politics on the other.  I don’t see that as a problem at all – the kind of anarchism that I believe in (authentic democracy) is one which will take generations to make viable.  It will never exist in my lifetime and will require an entire paradigm shift in public thinking and political education over a number of years to make possible.  It is an aspiration – a goal; a political system which I feel is most in line with our true nature and species-needs and interests – but it is not the world we live in right now.  I therefore think it would be stupid not to engage meaningfully in the world as it is at the same time as I long for a different one.  That said, I was recently asked for an “anarchist reading” of what was happening here in the UK with the Liberal-Conservative Coalition.  The following is my take on the situation from an anarchist point-of-view:

The anarchist reading of what’s happening in Britain with Cleggameron is this: we had an election where the central narrative given by the politicians and the media was that the British public were fed up with Labour after 13 years in power.  That sense of fed-upness was not particularly clarified other than to make vague allusions to the war in Iraq and the economic meltdown – the fact that Labour had ideologically betrayed its supporters by following essentially Tory economic and foreign policies for 13 years was not mentioned and, in fact, the Tory Party themselves were now painted as the only people who could save us from disaster.

The seeming fly in the ointment came when, during the first ever UK televised debate between the three competing party leaders, Liberal Democrat, Nick Clegg, was allowed to speak for the first time and the British public actually heard him.  Offering a slight alternative to the dominant two-party parameters that had been the norm of discourse for so long, his words were heralded as radical, even though nothing that he said hadn’t already been published in the Liberal Democrat manifesto earlier that week.  The media and public fawned over him and he was able to get a lot of traction out of several key ideas: not renewing the UK’s “independent nuclear deterrent”, Trident; introducing Proportional Representation into our voting system instead of the unfair “first-past-the-post” system; giving an amnesty to illegal immigrants already in the country, etc…all of which were genuine alternatives to what the Conservatives and Labour were offering, making Liberal Democrat’s polling numbers suddenly go through the roof.

Of course, this was all done in the context of safely knowing that the first-past-the-post system we have in place meant it was absolutely impossible for the Liberal Democrats to actually win an election outright, so there was no danger of any of these radical promises actually being fulfilled.  And alongside the pages and pages of publicity for Nick Clegg there then came the very serious discussion of the likelihood of a “hung parliament”: no one party winning a commanding majority of seats in the House of Commons.  This was put over to the public as being either a) a good thing or b) the end of Britain as we know it, but in all cases it was always put over, for good or for bad, as being a fundamental change in politics.  Importantly, it planted an important seed in the public’s mind at a time when faith in our political system was absolutely battered in the wake of the MP expenses scandal, economic catastrophe and two illegal and unjustified wars: there is still a left-wing alternative to Labour, so you don’t need to go off and form any new and radical parties that actually represent something new, and at the very worst, if there is a hung parliament, it will be a chance for “radical” reform of our system which will wipe away all those bad memories of what happened under Labour and let us start again.

Chomsky calls this kind of thing “change of course”.  We last saw it in the UK in 1997: after eighteen years of the Tories, New Labour were voted in on a promise of change and renewal only to continue doing exactly the same things that the Conservative government had done, but in a slightly different way, while throwing enough bones to the working classes to keep them happy.

Unsurprisingly then, after the huge propaganda campaign for it across the media, come election day we had a hung parliament.  Logically, the Liberal Democrats then had two options as to whom they could form a coalition government with: an ideologically linked coalition with Labour (the two parties had very similar platforms on certain key issues throughout the election and are both, allegedly, parties of the left), or a numerically strong one with the Tories, supposedly their sworn enemies on the right.  Now, there are many reasons why the Lib-Dems ultimately chose to do a deal with the Tories, but all that matters to us anarchists in terms of the state protecting itself and the interests of power taking precedent over the interests of people is that, now that they have done this deal with the Tories and the dust has settled, we have seen the real uniformity and similarity of vision between supposed political opponents and a brand new narrative has been established: this is a “new politics” and it is the “change” we all voted for.  All those bad things that happened in the past – they were the doing of people like Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.  They were not systemic problems.  There is nothing wrong with our system.  They were problems caused by individuals and now those individuals have gone.  We can start again.  This is a new era.  Everything will be different now.  Sure – all those nice and radical proposals in the Liberal Democrat manifesto that so appealed to the electorate and gained them all that press coverage have been scrapped in the name of “compromise”, and the policy areas on which the Conservatives stood alone, such as making drastic and immediate cuts in the budget right away and allowing public money to be spent on essentially privatizing education, which the business world adored – the policy areas that 52% of the public specifically voted against – have somehow made it through…but that shouldn’t make one assume for one moment that the notion of a hung parliament and a coalition government has simply allowed our leaders to pull a bait and switch with their manifestos, turn democracy into a pantomime, and cherry-pick out only those polices which best serve the needs of the elite while discarding all the rest and calling it compromise.

There are lots of interesting things to say about what has happened if you want to jump on board the dominant mainstream narrative of the situation and discuss the three parties involved as if they really do represent three different and unique constituencies and ideologies and as if the new coalition government really is a major change in UK politics (which is exactly what I have hitherto done on this blog), but in terms of an anarchist reading I think it’s pretty straightforward: the political elites have saved themselves once again.  They have taken the public’s threatening disillusionment with a crumbling political and economic system and directed its rage and calls for change into something safe and manageable: not revolution, not radical reform, not addressing the systemic problems which are causing our continued despair…but by putting two new faces at the top and letting them perform the same old politics of yesterday in a way that makes it look different. 

"Change of course."  Like how Obama saved America and undid everything bad that Bush did :-)

 

Technorati Tags: UK Politics,UK Election,General Election 2010,General Election,Liberal Conservatives,Anarchism,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party,Cleggameron,Anarchist

Coping With Cameron

So the Liberal Democrats have made their choice, betraying their progressive roots, their progressive membership and the progressive mandate given to them by 52% of the voting population, and have decided to get into bed with the Tories.  David Cameron is now our Prime Minister.

But this is not all as terrible as it seems.

First: the obvious.  Instead of May 12th, 2010, being Day One of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government, we must never forget that, had the election gone differently, May 12th, 2010, could have been Day Six of a majority Cameron government. 

Let no-one tell you any different: the Conservatives did not get a mandate in the General Election and the country has not shifted rightwards in response to their disillusionment with Labour.  The country – 52% of them – voted for a distinctly un-Tory flavour of change, maintaining the progressive values that saved this country after the ravages of Thatcherism.  David Cameron as our new Prime Minister is a pretty scary thought – but it would have been even scarier had he done it on his own instead of with the help of the Quisling Liberal Democrats.

Which brings me to my next point…

While it is easy (and comforting) to call the Lib-Dems traitors for doing a deal with the Conservatives instead of Labour (and certainly, if you were foolish enough to vote for them, they have taken your anti-Tory vote and shat on it), there is actually nothing at all traitorous about it.  As long-time proponents of Proportional Representation, the Liberal Democrats are a political party inherently at ease with the concept of coalition governments with strange and uneasy bedfellows.  If PR were introduced to the country by the next General Election, parties like the Tories would not magically disappear, and if you are committed to the notion of proportionality in political representation then that means understanding that you must work with all parties in order to govern.  There will always be a right-wing in any country, and there will always be those with whom you are diametrically opposed ideologically; but the cooperative spirit of the kind of coalition governments usually yielded by PR means that their actual political power is kept in line with their true level of public support.  If 36% of the population want a Tory government, then there should be some proportional share of representation of those views in government.  Importantly though, PR and coalition government is about compromise and tempering the extremes.  It is about finding common ground and working through party differences for the good of the country instead of clinging to myopic tribalism, and it ensures a more rational and reasonable political dialogue than the black/white, yes/no, left/right dichotomy of our current first-past-the-post system.

On May 6th, we were offered a false choice: are we fed up with Labour?  If so, then we must vote for a party, the Conservatives, who are so fundamentally different ideologically that they see the world in a completely backwards way to our every political instinct.

What about those of us, like me, who were fed up with Labour not because they weren’t right-wing enough, but because they weren’t as left-wing as I would have liked?  Because their taxes on the rich were too low, because they were too in bed with the bankers and the businesses who robbed our country dry? 

That sort of nuance is incapable of being articulated in a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all system.  My disappointment in Labour could not be expressed effectively by anything other than voting for Labour in opposition to the more extreme right-wing alternative.

The Liberal Democrats have long been aware of the inefficiencies and unfairness of our current voting system and have campaigned against it for years.  Part of that desire for a “new kind of politics”, however, does involve working with other parties, even parties who you are not naturally inclined to work with.  Proportional Representation means coalition governments, and coalition governments mean compromise and give-and-take.  The Lib-Dems siding with the Tories over Labour does not mean that the Liberal Democrats are now duty-bound to support every insane Conservative policy that comes along; it means engaging in conversation with their Conservative Cabinet colleagues and limiting their excesses whilst making small progressive inroads of their own.

That they ultimately opted for a Conservative coalition instead of a Labour one is disappointing, yes, and it will certainly stop me from ever voting Liberal Democrat in the future, but in the long-term it was the best thing that they could do if they are serious about bringing this “new kind of politics” to Britain.

First of all – by choosing to form a government with the most difficult and unlikely of the two courting parties, the Liberal Democrats will show, if the coalition works, that coalition and compromise is possible and desirable within the UK.  If political enemies like the Lib-Dems and the Tories can work effectively side by side and the country does not fall apart, then when the referendum for a new voting system occurs they already have a fantastic body of evidence to point to in its favour.

Related to this was the question of legitimacy.  Although intellectually and ethically it is quite clear to me that a Lib/Lab deal would have been absolutely legitimate on paper (a majority coalition representing the 52% of the country who voted against a shift to the right), legitimacy ultimately rests on public perception.  From the moment the idea was seriously broached, the media were all over it and denouncing it as a possible “coalition of the losers”.  Furthermore, with Gordon Brown resigning, there would be no possible way of carrying out the Lib/Lab coalition with an elected Prime Minister.  Again – although that is intellectually and ethically acceptable, and there is no constitutional or legal requirement for the direct election of a Prime Minister in our Parliamentary (not Presidential) democracy, public opinion – shaped and twisted by the media – was that one of the central failings of Labour over the past few years was the unelected nature of Gordon Brown’s ascent to power.  That opinion was, in my view, wrong, and even irrelevant, but it is what it is: the public were fed up with a man in Downing Street that they did not have a say in voting and to replace one unelected Prime Minister with another would have been both a Public Relations and a Proportional Representation disaster.  Public Relations because it would look like the Lib-Dems were propping up an unpopular and rejected Labour government (even if, in actual fact, that wasn’t what was happening at all; the slavish Conservative media would be sure to promote that narrative regardless) and Proportional Representation because when the inevitable referendum occurred the Conservative argument against it would be clear: unelected leaders, unpopular governments propped up by minority losers…this is what PR would mean for the country.

We must remember – a referendum on PR is not a vote for the House of Commons to make, and it doesn’t matter how much political support it can muster.  It is a public vote, and how the public perceives the issue will be crucial.  On this point, I believe that the Liberal Democrats have been quite savvy.  They will lead by example: show that they are capable of compromise and that PR and coalition does not mean that we can’t have strong and stable government.  By doing this, they will take away from their main political opponents on the issue – the Conservatives – the validity of much of their opposition; when the referendum comes their argument will look flimsy and out-dated. 

The final reason why the Liberal Democrats’ decision is not an absolute disaster is this: it gives the Labour Party time to regroup.  They can listen to their base, build on the support that they received on May 6th, woo former Liberal Democrat supporters disgusted with their party for the deal they have done with the Conservatives, elect a new and electable leader, clean off the stench of the last thirteen years, and generally sort themselves out to come out fighting by 2015 – or sooner if the coalition breaks down.

Certainly the lesson they must learn from this election is that progressive politics has not died out in this country, despite Tony Blair’s best attempts to assimilate the party into the right.  Labour made two major mistakes: illegal and unjustified wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and not regulating banks and businesses sufficiently to stop them from playing roulette with our money.  Their downfall came from their own flirtation with the policies of the right and their revival must come from recognising the appeal of the left, capitalizing on the exodus of Liberal Democrats angry at their party for selling them out, and then offering a genuine leftist alternative to the Conservatives and the soiled Liberal Democrats by the time election day comes.

Had they not been offered this opportunity; had they clung on to power against media and public opinion and been demonized for their actions, tarred with their record and attacked by Conservatives at every turn, you could be sure that the postponement of their demise by a Liberal Democrat deal would have led to a much greater death down the line, and a possible banishment to the political wilderness from which they might have never recovered.  As it is, they have managed to bow out of the government just in time to not be burdened by the unpopularity sure to come once “savage cuts” in public spending occur, and they have allowed the country to be reminded, over the next five years, why it was that we ejected the Tories so unceremoniously back in 1997.

Theoretically – a five year recharge and revitalization of the party, helped along by continuing demonstrable evidence of the paucity of the Conservative vision – could leave Labour primed to reclaim power in 2015 and fix the inevitable mess.  And if the Lib-Dems play it right, and that election is fought under rules of Proportional Representation, we could see the next five years become nothing more than a Conservative swan-song.

Of course I’m angry that we now have a Conservative Prime Minister.  If you voted Liberal Democrat on May 6th then you must feel incredibly cheated and let down.  But this is no ordinary Conservative Prime Minister – this is a Conservative Prime Minister kept in line by a Liberal Democrat Deputy, leading a Cabinet watered down by a handful of Liberal Democrats.  I don’t believe Nick Clegg’s decision was the right one, but I do think it was the best one he could make under the circumstances.  Whatever happens over the next five years, I’m fairly certain that British politics will never be the same again, and whilst this may look like a disaster in the short-term, in the long-term this could be the greatest gift the progressive left have ever received.

 

Technorati Tags: General Election 2010,General Election,UK Election,Politics,UK Politics,David Cameron,Nick Clegg,Labour Party,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party,Progressive Majority

Democracy: It’s More Than Just Numbers

Right now the central question in British politics is what the next government will look like.  Will Nick Clegg choose to align his Liberal Democrat party with David Cameron’s Conservative Party (who got 36.1% of the overall UK vote), or with Gordon Brown’s Labour Party (who only got 29%).  Despite the substantial ideological differences between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, there are those who believe that forming a government with the defeated Labour Party would be a betrayal of democracy: a “coalition of the losers”, unfairly placed to rule above the clearly victorious Tories.  There are others, however, and I am one of them, who believe that, far from being a “coalition of the losers”, a coalition Labour/Liberal Democrat government is exactly what democracy requires.

Looking at the election results, although it benefits the Conservatives immensely to view their numerical majority of 306 MPs and their net gain of ninety-eight seats as a decisive victory and rejection of the incumbent Labour government, in reality it is hardly that.  Though Labour did indeed lose ninety-two seats on May 6th, and only returned 258 MPs compared with the Tories’ 306, their loss was hardly a resounding rejection.  Indeed, considering the appalling low polling numbers in support of Labour over the past eighteen months, one could even argue that support for the party had increased across the country throughout the election campaign.  On election day, Labour remained strong in many parts of the country where the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats hoped to make a gain, and though they undoubtedly suffered a loss and part-rejection of their last thirteen years in power (sometimes where it was justified, such as anger over the illegal and unjustified wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; sometimes merely as a scapegoat, such as over the cross-party expenses scandal, or the current global economic crisis that is more a failure of unregulated globalised capitalism than it is of any specifically Labour policy) that loss and part-rejection did not translate into a massive swing rightwards towards the Conservatives.  The Tories got some gains, but not enough, and though there may indeed be disillusionment with Labour after thirteen disappointing years, what was made clear at this election was that the alternative to Labour which the voting public sought was not a Conservative one. 

While 36% of the public did vote Conservative; 52% of the public did not.  29% chose to continue with the present Labour government rather than pursue the Conservative agenda on offer, and a further 23% voted for the Liberal Democrats who, on all central areas of key policy and ideology, were in direct opposition to the Conservative Party and had much more in common, ideologically, with Labour.

I think it is fair to say that the central concern of this entire election, underlying all other questions of policy, was this: how are we going to deal with the economic crisis?  How will we secure recovery and get the country’s finances in order?  Are we going to raise taxes or cut taxes?  Invest or make cuts?  Are we going to protect frontline services or put them at risk?  Basically: how can we propose to do anything about crime, education, health, immigration, defence, etc, if we don’t know first where the money’s coming from and how we are going to tackle the deficit?  And on this central issue, the split between the Conservative Party and both Labour and the Liberal Democrats was clear: the Conservatives were alone in advocating making massive cuts in public spending immediately, whereas both Labour and Liberal Democrats believed that such measures could be risky for a fragile economy right now and, instead, proposed not making cuts until 2011.

From the three party manifestos:

CONSERVATIVE:  “Labour will not take action to cut waste in government. They have identified £11 billion pounds of waste, but they do not plan to start dealing with it until April 2011. So Labour will continue wasting money while putting up taxes on working people. We will act immediately to cut government waste…we will take immediate action to cut a net £6 billion of wasteful departmental spending in the financial year 2010/11, with further savings in future years.”

LABOUR: “We will continue to support the economy while growth is still fragile, sticking with our targeted increase in public spending over the next year to sustain the recovery…Once the recovery is secure, we will rapidly reduce the budget deficit.  We have set out a clear, balanced and fair plan to more than halve the deficit over the next four years and we will stick to it.  We will achieve this through a combination of: fair tax increases; a firm grip on public spending including cuts in lower-priority areas; and strategies for growth that increase tax revenues and reduce spending on benefits.”

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: “We have already identified over £15 billion of savings in government spending per year, vastly in excess of the £5 billion per year that we have set aside for additional spending commitments…If spending is cut too soon, it would undermine the much-needed recovery and cost jobs.  We will base the timing of cuts on an objective assessment of economic conditions, not political dogma.  Our working assumption is that the economy will be in a stable enough condition to bear cuts from the beginning of 2011-12.”

On this vital and immediate question, therefore, the British public have spoken: 52% of them do not want the fragile recovery jeopardized by making cuts in public spending too soon.  Despite this, David Cameron made it clear in his “big, open and comprehensive offer” to Nick Clegg: “We remain completely convinced that starting to deal with the deficit this year is essential.”

The second important issue at the forefront of the election now is the question of electoral reform.  As soon as it became likely that this election might result in a hung Parliament, a major discussion throughout the country began around the prospects, likelihood and desirability of changing the voting system to some form of proportional representation.  The importance of this issue became amplified by the election results themselves: the Liberal Democrats received 23% of the votes, yet returned only fifty-seven Parliamentary seats, whereas Labour, who only had 6% more votes than the Lib Dems, received 31% more seats.  Meanwhile, back in first-past-the-post-land, we were left confused and unimpressed with a Conservative majority that was not majority enough to govern.

There came a complex and subtle message from the electorate on May 6th that our clumsy and outdated electoral system is structurally incapable of deciphering: we are unhappy with Labour, but we are equally unhappy with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat alternative.  Who, therefore, should govern our country?

Returning to this question of whether or not the General Election was a massive rejection of thirteen years of Labour government, the answer was clearly: no.  It was a rebuke, certainly, but a rejection?  Hardly.  A truly responsive democracy must allow for more than black or white options: in a complex and diverse world there will always be shades of grey.  Labour have let a lot of people down and have made a lot of mistakes over their thirteen years in power, but in certain areas, and on certain questions, they have done great and popular things.  Why must it be that, for the handful of mistakes, an entire programme is rejected, or that, for a few bad apples, we must expel the entire bunch?

Similarly – the surge in Liberal Democrat numbers before the election did not translate into votes on polling day.  Why?  Well, likely because voters were all-too aware of the stacked deck against their vote in a flawed, first-past-the-post system.  No one wants to waste their vote, so they voted cautiously instead: for Labour, if they didn’t want the Tories to get in, or for the Conservatives if they were sick of Gordon Brown. 

Certainly in this election we can read a disappointment in what Labour have done – but that disappointment was clearly not enough for people to reject them from government entirely, nor were the alternative agendas proposed by the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats popular enough to gain mass support.  True democracy, therefore, must be more than YES or NO – in a representative democracy there must be a mechanism in place for nuanced representation: not simply YES or NO, but a qualified YES or NO – something that tells the party you support that you are not going to abandon them entirely and switch your allegiances across the political spectrum, but that you are dissatisfied with certain aspects of their record and that they must change or it will cost them votes.  

It is clear that, to do this, electoral reform is needed.  For Liberal Democrats, such reform has been at the forefront of their agenda since their inception, and if they are to remain a party of their principles, then a demand for electoral reform must be the price they ask of any potential partner in coalition.

In their 2010 manifesto, they make it clear: “Liberal Democrats will change politics and abolish safe seats by introducing a fair, more proportional voting system for MPs.  Our preferred Single Transferable Vote system gives people the choice between candidates as well as parties.” 

Similarly, Labour – though late to the party – were not afraid to acknowledge this need for electoral reform in their own 2010 manifesto, weeks before a hung Parliament became a reality and it became politically useful to hold such a view: “People want a greater say in how the country is governed and for politicians to be more accountable to those they serve.  So while we are proud of our record of devolving power and reforming the constitution, we believe that further and more radical reform is imperative if we are to renew our democratic public life.  Britain needs a new constitutional and political settlement for a new era.  To begin the task of building a new politics, we will let the British people decide on whether to make Parliament more democratic and accountable in referenda on reform of the House of Commons and House of Lords, to be held on the same day, by October 2011.  To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons.”

The Conservatives, meanwhile, on this vital matter of national interest, yet again do not share the opinion of the 52% majority.  As they put it in their manifesto: “We support the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections because it gives voters the chance to kick out a government they are fed up with.”

And that is precisely the problem.

As the results of May 6th show – the country did not necessarily want to kick the government out.  Or at least: they did not want to kick the government out and replace them with a distinctly Conservative one.  Only 7.1% more voters specifically chose the right-wing Conservative agenda on offer than chose the existing Labour government, and, taken as an ideological whole – those opposing a shift to the right and sharing a progressive vision of the future – 52% of the voters rejected the Conservative programme.      

Now, numerically it could be argued that, similarly, 59.1% of voters rejected the Labour programme, or that 65.1% of voters rejected the Liberal Democrats’, but when we look beyond the numerical results and to what the three individual parties were actually offering, I think there can be no argument at all that ideologically the Conservative party stood alone and were rejected by the majority.  They were the only explicitly right-wing party on the ballot out of the three, and stood at significant odds from Labour and Liberal Democrats on the two main issues of the day – making immediate cuts to public spending instead of waiting until 2011, and opposing proportional representation – and so the 52% who voted against this lone platform is therefore a much more significant figure than any other combination of Lib/Con or  Lab/Con.  It represents a 52% shared progressive mandate against the Conservatives’ meagre 36% of support.

We have been taught by first-past-the-post politics to think of winners and losers, but real democracy is more than just a number of arbitrarily distributed seats.  Although with 306 seats to Labour’s 258, it seems like the Conservatives are the “winners” of this election, when we actually consider what our votes mean, and what it was that 52% of the electorate actually voted for on May 6th, then it is clear the direction that this country needs to go.  Whilst certainly sense and decency suggest that Nick Clegg, as apparent kingmaker in this scenario, ought to hear out what the Conservatives have to offer in the face of their numerical victory, he should feel no shame in joining the majority of the population in rejecting a Conservative proposal if it does not concede important ground.  To form a coalition with Labour instead would not only make much more sense ideologically, but democratically too.  An expression not of the “coalition of the losers” but of the combined progressive majority in this country who opposed the Conservative programme.

Democracy is more than just numbers.  It is about translating mechanical votes into meaningful representation.  The first step, therefore, is in forming a government reflective of the nation’s true feelings; the second is in introducing proportional representation so that in future those votes can speak clearer.  Neither of these things can be done with a Tory government, and I hope that Nick Clegg looks beyond the misleading numbers and makes the right decision for democracy.

 

Technorati Tags: General Election 2010,General Election,UK Politics,Politics,Hung Parliament,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party,Labour Party,Nick Clegg,Democracy

The Anti-Conservative Majority

This bears repeating from yesterday, because the false argument against the idea of an alleged “anti-Conservative majority” continues to be spun.  From The Tone of Our Oppression yesterday:

 

There is a distinctively anti-Tory majority in this country that is not the same as the arguable anti-Labour or anti-Lib Dem majority one could extrapolate from the exact same polls, because both Labour and Liberal Democrat support comes from a place of shared progressive values, no matter how different the proposals of each individual party as to how best to manifest those progressive left-leaning values in practice, whereas the Tories are alone in popular support for regressive, right-wing thinking.

 

As I said this morning: on investing in the economy and securing the recovery now, and holding off cuts until 2011, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are in agreement and opposed to Conservative plans. Both parties are also in agreement for the need for electoral reform, whereas the Conservatives oppose it.  On that basis, the two parties – Labour and Lib Dem – absolutely do form an “anti-Conservative majority”.

Indeed, right now, the vote share is like this:

Conservatives – 36.2%

Labour/Lib Dem combined – 52%

Combined with the commonality of shared progressive policy and opposition to key Tory platforms, I’d call this a distinctive and morally authoritative anti-Conservative majority formed by a Lib/Lab pact.

 

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,General Election 2010,General Election,Hung Parliament,Labour Party,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party

Volcanic Ash and the Paucity of the Conservative Vision

If ever there was a working metaphor for exactly what is wrong with the Conservative Party’s vision of a decentralized Britain, with basic public services put into private hands, it is the current travel crisis.

With Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, sending dangerous plumes of ash into the skies of Europe and air-space now locked down, leaving thousands of people stranded across the world, the Labour government have decided today that it is time to call in the Navy to try and bring people home.  Alternative commercial carriers – ferries, Eurostar, coaches and cars – are simply pushed to capacity, and there are more people needing passage than there are seats, so the plan is to send out three Royal Navy ships to help repatriate those that the private sector have had no choice but to leave behind.

The lesson here is stark: for all the good-will in the world, the private-sector is not perfect, and we cannot rely on private enterprise when it comes to providing necessary public services.

Sometimes, as has happened here, human need demands more than the private sector can offer.  The system breaks down, or is ill-equipped to deal with requirements that extend beyond the basic drive for making profit, and we need some form of public, not-for-profit, intervention to perform the function unburdened by cost-benefit analysis.

Train, ferry and coach companies are not evil – but they are not able, by market economics alone, to cope with the sudden influx of needy passengers desperate to get back to jobs and loved ones across the sea.  They can only do what they can do, with the limited amount of tickets they have left to sell.  Meanwhile, it makes perfect economic sense, as demand for their product grows and grows, to start charging ridiculous amounts of money for the few tickets they have left; to exploit the needy and desperate willing to pay anything to get home.

Government cannot just sit back and let private enterprise perform its tasks for it.  It cannot abdicate its responsibility and hope the free-market will sort it out.  Sometimes, it has to act – to send in Navy ships where commercial ferries are failing, to regulate banks who are not regulating themselves, to impose fines and taxes on persistent polluters who don’t care about the environment they are poisoning so long as they make money, to provide welfare and housing to those the private sector has left behind.

We really are all in this together, and, until the perfect anarchist utopia materializes, part of that means creating some sort of permanent and responsive central safety net – or government – for when things go wrong…or, better still, for ensuring things don’t go wrong in the first place by allowing that central safety net to oversee the smooth and continuous running of various laws and regulations that protect citizens from harm, be it harm from natural disasters, or the harms that are more man-made.  This is something the Conservative Party do not understand, and just another in a long line of reasons why you should not vote for them on May 6th.

 

Technorati Tags: Volcanic Ash,Travel,Conservative Party,General Election,General Election 2010,Labour Party,Navy,Eyjafjallajökull,Economics

Before The Debate…Some Thoughts on the Manifestos…

I have spent much of this week reading the complete 2010 manifestos of the three main UK political parties – Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative.  I will never get that time back. 

The most important phrase I read in any of these three documents has got to be this: “our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent.”  That phrase is to be found near the start of the Conservative Party’s so-called “Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”, following a fairy-tale passage about how “the Party has remoulded itself for the modern era, applying its deepest values and beliefs to the urgent problems of the hour” after “a journey that began four and a half years ago, when the Conservative Party itself voted for change by electing David Cameron as its leader.” 

Once you debunk the fact from the fantasy – and once you have trawled through the massive 131 page manifesto – the paucity of this opening salvo becomes apparent.  A more truthful statement would read: we are the exact same party we always have been, “our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent”, but after losing three consecutive elections, four and a half years ago we decided to cynically manipulate public opinion with the appearance of change by voting in the seemingly young and vibrant, David Cameron, to reboot the party’s image for the 21st Century.  The only real change we stand for though is changing things back to how they were the last time we were in charge.

The big idea at the heart of the Tories’ manifesto in 2010 is the notion of their so-called “Big Society”.  The very use of the phrase “Big Society” here is a deliberate piece of theatre: how best to re-introduce many of the same selfish and individualist ideas of the discredited Thatcher government to a political audience who remember only the failings of Thatcherism and the unpleasantness of the “nasty party” of the 80s and 90s?  Why, you deliberately distance yourself from the most defining statement Thatcher ever made about Tory-style individualism and fend-for-yourself governmental abandon – that there is “no such thing” as society – and appear to embrace exactly the opposite idea. 

Don’t be fooled though – appearance is all that it is – and as you read exactly what Mr. Cameron means by creating his “Big Society”, you discover that, in the ideas within: “our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent.” 

The apparent push for “people power” and “we’re all in this together” sloganeering is, in reality, the same old Conservative shtick in a brand new 2010 window-dressing: deregulate everything, cut centralized government power and devolve the running of nearly everything to private enterprise under the facade of empowering local communities, give more tax cuts to the rich, take more benefits away from the poor, and make sure the City remains doing big business for the few, no matter how bad the unemployment gets for the many… 

“We will increase the private sector’s share of the economy in all regions of the country”

Yawn.

“We will improve Britain’s international rankings for tax competitiveness”

Yawn again.

“Anyone on Jobseeker’s Allowance who refuses to join the Work Programme will lose the right to claim out-of-work benefits until they do, while people who refuse to accept reasonable job offers could forfeit their benefits for up to three years.”

Yawn times three.

“We are proud of the last Conservative government’s industrial relations reforms, which helped bring about our economic revival in the 1980s, and we will always be prepared to build on them if necessary”

Yawn to the power of – what?  They’re actually proud of that horror?  Shit – this is worse than I thought!

“A Conservative government will reduce the amount of paperwork that the police have to deal with, starting by scrapping the stop form entirely and reducing the burden of stop and search procedures.”

And they want to go back to the stop-and-search prejudices of before?  “Our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent” indeed. 

Whilst the Tory manifesto has clearly attempted to appeal to the people of Britain with this seemingly radical idea of reclaiming government from Westminster and running the country for ourselves, throughout the document only one thing was made clear: “we’re all in this together” and “the Big Society” means, essentially, that once again under a Conservative government you will be entirely on your own.

Private businesses will run rampant, with no regulation and ever-more weakened unions, government protections and government services will be sold off to the highest bidder, or scrapped completely to pay for more tax cuts, civil liberties and basic human rights will be repealed once again in the name of “cutting red tape” and “reducing the amount of paperwork” for police, unemployment will rise up at the same time that benefits will be plummeting right down, education will become polarized, and citizen will compete against citizen for an ever-depleting pool of public resources whilst the wealthy will accrue more and more.

As an avowed anarchist, I actually found it quiet insulting to see how much the language of radical decentralizing and the self-empowerment of local communities was co-opted by the Conservatives to paint a picture so very far removed from what real self-governance would look like, and if ever my argument about the importance of tone in our inevitable oppression at the hands of external governments held true, it was in the reading of the Conservative manifesto. 

When it comes to the actual actions each party is proposing in this election, there is a vast similarity of objectives.  Everybody wants to cut public spending, balance the budget, fix our schools, protect the NHS, improve the environment, continue the war in Afghanistan, re-link state pensions with earnings, commit to an 0.7% budget for aid, support the Millennium Development Goals, etc, but the importance here is in the underlying philosophy which is guiding each party and the way in which this philosophy informs the spirit by which those objectives are intended to be met.

For instance – the Labour party intend to throw a lot of people off their benefits too if they are elected in on May 6th (for the record: I don’t condone this, but am working within the parameters of the given debate).  Like the Tories, Labour will similarly be implementing a new policy if elected in the new Parliament: after two years on benefits, unemployed people will be given a job that they have to take or risk having their benefits cut off.  But the difference here is the tone.  Whereas the Conservatives’ plan places sole responsibility on the unemployed, painting them in the traditional Tory light as work-shy shirkers and scammers and enforcing claimants to take whatever job they are given or risk being barred from collecting benefits for three whole years (a completely arbitrary policy which gives no guarantees of financial security to the claimant and could literally condemn a person to life-threatening poverty if they refuse to take a poorly compensated job), the Labour plan is made in tandem with two very important and co-related policies: an increase in the minimum wage, at least in line with average UK earnings, and the “£40-a-week Better-Off-In-Work Guarantee”.  What this means, in theory, is that when you are forced into taking that job at the end of two years of benefits, the job – whatever it is – will pay you at least the minimum wage, and that higher minimum wage will ensure that by working for a living instead of collecting benefits, you will actually take home £40 a week more than you do on Jobseeker’s allowance.  Instead of the cruel and stupid Conservative notion of just kicking people out of the system and leaving them to rot, the tone of Labour’s nearly identical plan is massively different, and with that tone comes a much more humane proposal.

All political parties running for government this year have put the environment high on their list of priorities, but whereas both Liberal Democrat and Labour manifestos make the moral case for tackling climate change alongside pointing out the business and job-creation opportunities that a green economy would bring, the Tories’ emphasis is purely on the business side of global warming: “We have a vision of a greener Britain,” they tell us.  “It is a country that leads the world in the market for green goods and services…Instead of pulling bureaucratic levers from above telling people what they can’t do, we will provide people with the information they need to make more responsible choices. Instead of holding businesses back by imposing unfair retrospective stealth taxes, we will unleash the power of green enterprise and promote resource efficiency to generate thousands of green jobs”     

Again: it’s all in the tone, but it is clear to me that the Conservatives don’t care about the environment, they care about capitalizing on the environmental markets, and the emphasis on “responsible choices” and not “holding businesses back” means an ineffective voluntary transformation to a green economy instead of making real legislative changes to enforce the urgent environmental changes that we need.  And whilst we’re on the subject of the Conservatives’ pro-business/anti-public stance, it should be pointed out that the Conservative manifesto – which repeatedly endorses private solutions for public problems in all areas of British life, and the underlying mantra that “the markets” will sort everything out – is the only manifesto out of the three main parties to not mention the BBC.  Whereas both Labour and Liberal Democrat documents pledge to protect and maintain the BBC as a vital public service broadcaster, the Tories – who have, of course, been endorsed by Rupert Murdoch, a long-time opponent of the BBC’s publically subsidized competition to his commercial media empire – remain worryingly silent on the subject.  Indeed, on the Arts and Culture in general, the Conservative manifesto is strangely mute.

It is the little things like this which show you that no matter how much the Tories may talk a good game, and say all the right things to appeal to people disgusted with the state of politics in this post-Iraq, post-expenses scandal, post-economic disaster world, fundamentally little has changed in the party that got us all here in the first place. 

I encourage all of you with sufficient time and stamina to read all the party manifestos, and I hope, like me, you’re looking forward to watching the first of the three live debates tonight.  Just make sure though that when you do, you keep this one vital thought in your mind at all times; repeating it over and over like a mantra that will protect you from harm; a mantra that might just save your lives: “our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent.”   

Don’t believe the smoke and mirrors: Same Old Tories, Same Old Dangers…

 

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,General Election 2010,General Election,Conservative Party,Labour Party,Liberal Democrats,Manifesto,Conservative Manifesto,Labour Manifesto,Prime Ministers Debate

General Election 2010: Selly Oak Constituency. More reasons I will NOT be voting for Nigel Dawkins…

The announcement of the 2010 General Election means, of course, party literature falling through your door at an alarming pace, and I was delighted yesterday afternoon to see my local Conservative candidate, Nigel Dawkins, grinning up at me from a campaign leaflet pushed through my letterbox. 

“And so it begins,” I thought, and immediately began to deconstruct it. 

First off, we have the cringe-worthy photograph on the cover.  Ignoring the negative campaigning of the highly emotive and factually dubious headline (“My children’s share of Gordon Brown’s debt will be over £75,000”), we have a nauseatingly stage-managed picture of Dawkins sitting on a park table alongside his three children.  Two of these children are in their respective school uniforms: look! The picture says.  I’m a local dad with local kids who go to local schools.  My children wear the same school uniforms that yours do.  Vote for me!  Vote for me and my local children!  The third child is in her Brownies uniform, complete with badge-laden sash.  Again: look at my locally engaged and community minded kids.  I’m one of you.  My kids go to Brownies too!  Vote for me.  Vote for me please!

Beneath all this, we have what seems to be the running theme of Dawkins’ campaign at the moment.  A tag-line: “In 10 years of serving you as a city councillor, I have never claimed a single penny in expenses”.

No prizes for guessing why Conservative Central Office chose Dawkins to run for MP then?  Shameless opportunism?  Surely not.

Inside the leaflet, we have an expansion on this theme, framed around the damning details of local Labour opposition, Steve McCabe MP, having claimed not only £5,500 in expenses for a new bathroom, but recently having paid for a leaflet entitled “Annual Report 2009” with tax-payers money instead of funding the leaflet himself. 

The highly expensive, full-colour, glossy Nigel Dawkins leaflet I am reading this information in, Dawkins makes sure to tell me, is different than those of evil Steve McCabe.  “This leaflet,” he tells us, “has been produced, printed and delivered by Nigel Dawkins and the Selly Oak Constituency Conservative Association.”  Indeed, above that statement is a pledge: “I am not a member of any other organisation or political group other than my political party and nor will I ever be.  I promise that I have never taken any money, nor will I ever take money for any reason, including contributions to my election expenses, from any other organisation.”  “No talk, no expenses claims,” goes the slogan on the next page, “Just 10 years of action and hard work.”

Now, this all seems very admirable until you actually think about it.  First of all, we have to remember something very important when Nigel Dawkins tells us he has never claimed a single penny in expenses: whilst that may well be so, he has not been an MP either, and thus has not been entitled to claim from the clearly flawed and abused MP expenses system that was put in place by Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Government during the eighties and nineties in order to circumvent the pay-freeze imposed on public sector workers and give MPs a package of bonuses and pay-rises through the back door.  I too have never claimed a single penny in MP expenses, because I too am not an MP.  “If I am elected as your MP”, Dawkins tells us, “I will only ever claim for travel costs and rented living accommodation”.  Well, of course he would, because we are now living in a post-expenses-scandal world.  Sadly, Dawkins has missed the gravy train years of ridiculous MP expense claims, and would no longer be able to get away with the sort of stuff his predecessors did.  Meanwhile, his record on expenses as a councillor, claimed through a completely different expenses system than that of MPs, is largely irrelevant when it comes to the hypothetical question of what expenses he might have claimed had he been an MP.  It is classic smoke and mirrors.

Similarly, we must look deeper into the idea that Dawkins will accept no money from anyone “other than my political party” for his campaign publications, or anything else.  That might be all very good and well, but where does his political party get its money from?  A related attempt to smear Steve McCabe comes from the “great shock” of discovering him to be a member of the UNITE union.  “Birmingham MPs should not be members of a trade union!” Dawkins’ leaflet loudly blares in big red writing.  Ignoring for a moment the patently ridiculous idea that no MP should be a member of a trade union (how far do we take that idea?  Should no one who has ever been a member of a trade union be an MP?  And what exactly is wrong with representing unions, and thus the rights and interests of organized working people – British citizens – in Parliament?  There seems to be no similar outrage when politicians court the professional lobbying organizations of workers’ bosses, such as the CBI?  But I digress…), wouldn’t you rather know that your local MP is getting support from Britain’s largest trade union, with over 2 million members across the country, who openly explain their goals, purpose and political ideals quite clearly on their website and let you know exactly what they want from the politicians that they lobby, than that he is getting his support from the usual collection of shady corporations and private donors whose lobbying and interests remain secret?  Councillor Dawkins may well only get his money from his own private coffers or from the Conservative Party, but unless we know exactly where that money is coming from and what it represents, that makes Dawkins no less bought or compromised than anyone else.  If anything, it makes his allegiances far less transparent. 

It would be nice if we all had vast sums of wealth to borrow from in order to fund our own personal political campaigns, but because of the great financial disparity in this country – as promoted in the individualistic economic policies of the Conservative Party – it is only the rich who do.  Do we really want a politics reserved only for those who can afford it, as Councillor Dawkins seems to suggest?

Finally, after a photo-spread rightfully celebrating some of the local council successes in improving near-by parks and leisure facilities (victories that Dawkins absolutely deserves to take some credit for, though it should not be forgotten that the Birmingham city council, though Conservative-led with 49 elected councillors, also has 36 Labour councillors, 32 Lib Dem councillors, and 3 Respect Party councillors who all work together to make these things happen.  Indeed, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Selly Oak, Dave Radcliffe, a Selly Oak councillor, has equal claim to many of these success stories and local victories, and Dawkins’ attempt to co-opt and spin these combined political efforts as his own personal crusade has been sticking in my throat for months), we come to the last page of the leaflet: “The issues that people want answers to…” and here we have the reminder, if one was ever needed, that we’re not just voting for friendly old Councillor Nigel Dawkins here in Selly Oak when we put a cross next to his box on May 6th, we’re voting for a Conservative, as part of a national campaign by the Conservative Party to get back into power.  Thus we have the usual Tory drivel – above a slightly suspect Union Jack-heavy photo of Dawkins that wouldn’t look out of place on a BNP pamphlet – about “Labour’s ‘open-door’ immigration policy” causing “the largest and most sustained rise in immigration in our history” and the promise that the Conservatives will “reduce immigration to the levels of the 1990s – tens of thousands a year, instead of the hundreds of thousands a year under Labour”.

In my mind, “immigration” in politics has always had a slightly nasty sense of racism about it, be in from the Right or from the Left.  It is to my great dismay that all parties here in Selly Oak seem obsessed with stemming immigration as a priority because, personally, immigration is just not something I feel too strongly about.  Indeed, I feel proud to live in a country that helps the disadvantaged from around the world and which offers opportunities to all people, no matter what their race or country of origin.  However, at least Steve McCabe’s position on immigration seems to be born from practical experience in government, with an inherent sense of fairness and human decency amongst his track record of proposed “solutions”, and isn’t just some nostalgic appeal to the past, based on fear and dangerously sweeping promises that offer no real explanations of what such a reduction in numbers would entail. 

The same veiled xenophobic “fear of the unknown foreigner” oozes from Dawkins’ position on Europe too: “A Conservative government would change the law so that never again would a Prime Minister be able to agree to a treaty that hands over areas of power from Britain to the EU without asking the people in a referendum”.  It smells like an argument for democracy at first whiff, but it doesn’t take long to register the same stench of anti-European prejudice beneath it that has for so long permeated the Conservative Party.  Not only is it based on some underlying fear about Europe, but it is an easy and disingenuous promise to make: the Lisbon Treaty has already been signed, as had Maastricht been before it (by a Conservative Prime Minister, I might add!).  Never again would a Prime Minister be able to agree to a treaty that hands over areas of power from Britain to the EU without asking the people in a referendum, because never again will such a treaty be needed; it already exists and therefore the issue is moot. 

Further redundancies like this are to be found throughout the rest of the page.  Alongside repeating his empty record on expenses as if new expenses legislation is a distinct Conservative policy and not just the universally endorsed consequence of all MPs – Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative alike – being caught with their hands in the cookie jar one too many times, there is the equally vacuous promise to “give teachers the power to restore discipline in the classroom”.  What does that even mean?  Give them guns?  Bring back the cane?  Or perhaps that ridiculous idea Michael Gove has already broached about putting soldiers in the classroom?  Whatever Dawkins means by the claim, it isn’t clear on the leaflet, and it isn’t meant to be.  It is meant merely to sound appealing, and remind us of the spectre of David Cameron’s infamous “Broken Britain” without offering any sincere evidence, solution or meaning to the problem allegedly being discussed.  Which is the same thing that Nigel Dawkins has been doing regarding “Industry and Jobs” ever since the Cadbury buy-out by Kraft: promising changes in policy and “woulda, coulda, shouldas” under a Conservative government that are simply contradictory and untenable under the free-market economic philosophy that guides Tory economic policy. 

“Labour’s ‘everything is for sale’ industrial policy”, which Dawkins calls “a disaster”, is simply a continuation of the exact same Conservative “everything is for sale” industrial policy that destroyed British industry and jobs throughout the 80s and 90s.  Labour’s “neglect of manufacturing” which has “wreaked havoc on jobs” is a direct descendant of the deregulation and privatisation enacted by the Tories during the reigns of Thatcher and Major, and still promoted by the Party to this day.  There is absolutely no sign whatsoever of David Cameron denouncing the misguided free-market economic system that has brought us here.  If anything, it will only get worse under a Tory government, as the continued insistence on public spending slashes and tax cuts for the rich as a solution to our economic woes show only a continued commitment to doing everything in their power to make life easier for the rich whilst crushing the lives of the poor.

Those of us who remember the 1997 election will remember the failed Conservative smear-campaign of “New Labour, New Danger”.  The idea they were selling at the time was that Tony Blair’s re-vamped new Labour was somehow even worse than the Labour Party of the past.  In 2010 I feel we need a similar slogan: “Old Tories, Old Danger”.  The Conservatives can try to spin it and distort it any way that they may like, they can even try to fool us with empty ideas about a vote for them being a “vote for change”, but once you actually unpack and unravel their hollow and meaningless platitudes the evidence becomes obvious: although the leadership may have changed and some of the faces we’re seeing on TV appear to be young and new, the Conservative Party of 2010 is the same old party we booted out of office back in 1997; the same old party it has always been.  And Councillor Nigel Dawkins is just the latest in a long-line of Tory opportunists trying to present himself as something different when, in fact, he is anything but.

 

Technorati Tags: UK Politics,General Election,General Election 2010,Election,Selly Oak Constituency,Selly Oak,Nigel Dawkins,Steve McCabe,David Radcliffe,Conservative Party,Labour Party,Liberal Democrats,Campaign Leaflets,Tories,Media,Spin,Propaganda

Why I’d Rather Vote For A Mass-Murderer With An Ostensible Conscience, Than One Without…

This weekend a fantastic sequence of events occurred and, in their occurrence, I was reaffirmed in my self-hating decision to vote Labour in the General Election.

My decision to vote Labour in 2010, despite being disgusted by their nearly thirteen years of continuing the exact same foreign and economic policies as the Tories, and never before voting for them in my life (thus far it’s either been Lib Dem or Green all the way), is one I’ve discussed several times on this blog.  The basic motivation – to remind the long-term-memory-deficient – is to put up a strong front against the expected Conservative victory by voting tactically for their closest opposition because, though Labour are bad, the Tories are arguably worse, and I’d rather vote Labour and get Labour, the lesser of two evils, than vote with my heart and allow David Cameron to win by default.

Still, it makes me feel dirty to lend my support – if only strategically – to a party and government responsible for so much death and destruction during their time in power.  From Hawk Jets to Indonesia, to the ongoing horrors of Afghanistan and everything in between; from tuition fees and the private finance initiative to academies and the new deal; the Labour Party might well be the lesser of two evils in that, under an ostensibly left-wing government there are always superficial yet significant real-world improvements alongside the business-as-usual thrust of continuity capitalism, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that they’re not still an evil.  I do not support the Labour Party; I merely oppose the Conservatives. 

But when I read the paper on Saturday morning and re-lived Gordon Brown’s shameless and unapologetic defence of the Iraq war during the Chilcot Inquiry, there was a very real moment of despair.

I can’t vote for these blatant murderers, I thought.  I really can’t, in good conscience, place a cross in the box for a man who bankrolled the illegal and unjustified invasion of a sovereign nation and still cheerleads that decision today…

But then I read the story underneath the report on Chilcot.

The one about the Young Britons’ Foundation.

The Young Britons’ Foundation, according to the Guardian, are a right-wing group “whose leadership has described the NHS as ‘the biggest waste of money in the UK’, claimed global warming is ‘a scam’ and suggested that the waterboarding of prisoners can be justified.” They also have suggested that police should shoot down protesters. 

At least eleven prospective Conservative Party candidates running in the upcoming General Election have undergone training at the YBF, a group that it’s chief executive, Donal Blaney, calls a “Conservative madrasa”, designed to “radicalize” young Tories into extreme neo-conservativism, and at the recent annual YBF parliamentary rally at the House of Commons, shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox and Conservative Party chairman, Eric Pickles both spoke.  Former YBF speakers include David Cameron’s former chief of staff, Alex Deane, shadow education secretary, Michael Gove, shadow arts minister, Ed Vaizey, Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, and former Tory ministers, John Redwood and David Davis.  In other words, if you vote for the Tories this spring, then you will be getting graduates and supporters of this rather ugly neo-conservative boot camp, with close links to neo-con groups in the States, forming your next UK government.* 

That’s why I’ll be voting Labour – because as bad as Labour is, the Conservatives are still worse.  Gordon Brown might be a murderer, but at least he’s an accountable murderer. 

And just to punctuate the point that a right-leaning left-wing government is still better than a right-leaning right-wing government, lo and behold a leaflet for the BNP came through my door the very next day.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: the ideas expressed by racist and fascist groups like the BNP are so detestable that I always assume some level of sophistication in the way that they manipulate and recruit people to join them; so it always amazes me when I read some of their moronic campaign literature and realize that it is simply written by idiots, for idiots.

“Thousands of pensioners freeze to death every winter because Labour cares more about foreign aid than they do about our old folk.  The BNP would put British people first”

No.  Capitalism is what causes pensioners to freeze every winter, because utilities companies care more about profits than they do about human life.  The extortionate price of gas bills have nothing to do with foreign aid, and if you wanted to subsidize the elderly and give them free heat during the winter you could do that by taxing the rich, properly taxing businesses, decreasing the military budget, and a million other simple solutions that have nothing to do with decreasing the pitiful amount of money we give to countries like Haiti and Chile when they need help.  The real undertone here is clear: we hate giving foreigners money and think helping old people makes us sound caring.

“As a working family we know what it’s like to be taxed to death and what effect Labour’s mismanagement of the economy has had on our house price.  The BNP would ensure British jobs for British workers.”

Can you see the theme emerging?  Here it is even more blatant than in the last one, because giving British jobs to British workers really has nothing to do with the tax policy the BNP is ostensibly aggrieved about in the first passage of this promise.  A logically coherent second sentence would read something like: As a working family we know what it’s like to be taxed to death and what effect Labour’s mismanagement of the economy has had on our house price…therefore we promise a progressive new scheme of taxation whereby working people won’t be taxed so much and rich individuals and corporations will be taxed much more.  Even a traditionally racist BNP approach of …therefore we will increase the taxes paid by foreigners living in the UK by 2000% and lower the taxes for “indigenous whites” because we hate foreign people and have no meaningful sense of history or mathematics would have made more sense than what was actually written.  But the BNP weren’t looking for “sense” here, or coherency; they were just looking for invoking that now-familiar racist undertone: the needlessly proffered fear of “British” jobs being lost out to “foreigners”, and an even more insidious allusion to house prices falling – a common refrain for racists who believe their neighbourhoods to be “overrun” with ethnic minorities.

Speaking of which…

“The government prioritises immigrants when it comes to housing.  The BNP will house British families first – it’s only fair.”

Actually, it’s not “only fair” to house British families first over immigrants who may need the housing more desperately – it is prejudiced and discriminatory.  And as the leaflet provides no real information or statistics to prove that the claim the government prioritises “immigrants” over “British” families is true, then we have no real reason to believe that it is.  Also, it should be noted that for the government to have anything to do with an “immigrant” in an official capacity, then it must be presumed that the immigrant in question is a legal immigrant, working within the system and not outside of it, in which case, technically, they are now a British family too, and any housing they are given is therefore going to a British family.  The BNP do not really mean “immigrant” here though – they mean: people of colours other than white. 

“The NHS is in decline and many of our friends find it hard to get operations – yet we’ve fought for this country and paid in all our lives.  The BNP is the only party that listens.”

Considering that the NHS is mentioned by every political party during election time, the BNP are demonstrably not the only party that listens.  They are, however, the only party who randomly invoke the idea that “we’ve fought for this country” in the middle of an argument about underfunding of the NHS.  Because that is the cause of the NHS’s “decline”: underfunding.  A solution, and easy way of improving the service provided by the NHS (which, despite all its faults, is still a million times better than any private alternative) is – and now you might spot my recurring theme – more taxes on big businesses and the rich, and a change of priorities in the budget so that more is spent on healthcare and education, and less is spent on defence and corporate welfare.  The money is there if only it was spent correctly.  Parties like the BNP (and the Conservatives) are only too happy to harp on about the cost of benefit cheats on taxpayers, but when you consider that, in 2009, individual benefit fraud cost UK taxpayers just £900 million, whilst corporate tax evasion, tax avoidance, and tax “efficencies” cost us £18.5 billion each year, it is clear to say that the real criminals are getting away with defrauding our system, including the NHS, year after year after year.

The BNP’s statement about the NHS, however, is not a meaningful policy statement regarding our health services.  Nor is it intended to be.  Again, the undertone is clear: they do not point to the causes of NHS “decline” or offer any solutions.  They simply say: “we’ve fought for this country and paid in all our lives”, which is, again, code for the idea that those who haven’t fought for this country and those who haven’t paid in all their lives – read: bloody immigrants! – are somehow coming over here and taking away our emergency services, so now grandma can’t have her knee operation.  The ignorance is astounding, and it only gets worse:

“We have children and we want them to be brought up in a Christian country and taught about our religion, culture and traditions in school.  The BNP opposes the Islamification of Britain”

Well, firstly, let me just say that I went to a state school in the UK where the Christian religion, culture and traditions were first and foremost on the agenda (“Nothing without God” was our school’s motto).  We also learnt about other religions and cultures in RE lessons, but the primary spiritual concern was Christianity and the Christian faith.  Despite the school’s best efforts at indoctrination though, I came out the other end an atheist.  The reason being: we are a free society and not a fascist state, and despite all the best propaganda in the world, we are still free to choose what we believe.

This is the reason why the UK today is a very different place culturally, ethnically and spiritually than it was, say, fifty years ago.  Not because bloody immigrants have come over here and corrupted our children with their crazy foreign gods and cultures…but because, as life has gone on, society has evolved.  We’ve learnt more about other cultures, religions and traditions, we’ve re-assessed our own, we’ve integrated the bits that we liked and we’ve ejected the pieces that we didn’t.  We are in a constant conversation with each other and that conversation has allowed new ideas to flourish, old ideas to adapt and grow stronger, and a diversity of equally valid lifestyles, beliefs and value systems to blossom and evolve alongside each other for the common good. 

The fact is, the BNP may want their children to be brought up in a Christian country, but in 2010 the UK is simply not a Christian country.  And this is a good thing.  Christians can still be Christians here, but now also Hindus can be Hindus, Sikhs can be Sikhs, Jews can be Jews, Buddhists can be Buddhists, Atheists can be Atheists, and, yes, Muslims can be Muslim.  The existence and acceptance of other religions within our society has not diminished the Christian church at all, but it has freed up the spiritual life of British individuals and shown them a variety of different options of belief.

The biggest threat to the Christian church today is not Islam; indeed the same thing which threatens Christianity is equally a threat to Islam, and is taking believers away from the Qur’an as much as it is from the Bible: it is atheism.  It is the fact that we, as a culture, are slowly moving forward, out of the intellectual dark ages, and as people like myself grow up and re-think the superstitions of our elders, we begin to grow out of these silly and outdated religions and seek a non-religious spiritual and ethical alternative for ourselves.  Sadly for the BNP, this exodus away from religion and into the realm of the humanist and the rational is nothing to do with immigrants, Muslims, or any of the other usual scapegoats of the far-right, it is simply the result of free-thought and free-will: two innate human capacities fascist groups like the BNP seek to wipe out.

“We opposed the war in Iraq and now in Afghanistan.  British troops are losing their lives for a war which only serves out-of-touch politicians.  The BNP would bring our boys home NOW!” 

This final statement is seemingly meant to be the BNP’s big selling point in 2010.  Indeed, the cover of the leaflet says in big, bold writing: “PUTTING BRITISH PEOPLE FIRST! NO to Crime.  NO to Immigration.  NO to EU Rule.  NO to High Taxes.  YES to Bringing Our Troops Home!” all written over a patriotic backdrop of soldiers in the desert sands.  The back of the leaflet says: “BNP: THE ONLY PARTY COMMITTED TO BRINGING OUR TROOPS HOME…Our troops are being sent to their deaths in the Middle East for a political crusade which serves no British interest.”

Now, ignoring for a moment the historical ignorance here which shows the BNP clearly have no real idea why these wars are being fought (the “British interest” at stake here is what it always is in unnecessary foreign invasions: political power and economic gain.  It is not a war which “only serves out-of-touch politicians” – it is a massive albatross around most politicians’ necks and will probably cost Labour the election.  It is a war which, like all wars, serves their capitalist masters and the geo-political dominance of elites, and which we need a massive overhaul of the political and economic system to change); the first question one has to ask here is why exactly the BNP wants to bring our troops home?  One dreads to think what uses Nick Griffin would put our armed forces to at home if he were in power, nor should one be surprised that a fascist party wants to make sure a well-armed military is at their domestic disposal and not stranded overseas where they can’t be easily deployed.

Although the anti-war message is populist at the moment, the philosophy behind it from the BNP is severely hollow.  They are not opposed to the war because it was wrong, unjust, illegal, or immoral.  They are not opposed to it because we have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan and murdered countless numbers of Iraqi and Afghan civilians.  They are not even opposed to it because they disagree with invading foreign countries so long as it is in the “British interest”.  No.  They are only opposed to it because “our boys” are being killed over there for what seems on the surface – if, like the BNP clearly do, you believe the propagandist lies of our government – a war to help out undeserving nations in the Middle East.  In other words, it’s the same old racist undertone that we found in all the other promises: why should we help those brown-skinned people over there?  Why should our troops be dying just to save a bunch of Arabs from themselves?

The BNP leaflet exposes the emptiness and the prejudice of their policies, all wrapped up in a Union Jack and garnished with creepy master-race-style pictures of smiling all-white families.  That people might actually read it, and choose to vote for these racist thugs on the basis of the ill-thought-out drivel inside, speaks more to the stupidity of our nation than it does to the skillful manipulation of the British National Party. 

Still though, again, it was a gentle reminder of why I must vote for the warmonger Brown on election day, despite opposing so much of what he stands for.

Though Labour might be despicable, they at least operate on a level where you can have a serious conversations about their actions, and they have a political base they must appease with social programmes, welfare, diplomacy, and all the other expectations of the left, even if it goes against their elite power-interests.  When you get Labour, you get disappointment, but at least you have a basic framework of shared social understanding – rights, duties, responsibilities, ethics – if only on the surface, by which you are to judge them. 

With these hooligans on the far-right, however, and their more respectable brethren in the official opposition, it is like undoing decades of social progress and starting again from square one.  It is championing ignorance, greed, selfishness, meanness, cruelty and stupidity.  It is voting for racists.  It is voting for homophobes.  It is voting for delusion and pig-headedness.  It is voting for oppression, intolerance, violence and brutality.

The Labour Party might well be a shell of their former selves, and they might even betray everything that they once stood for – but at least there is a shell and a sense of betrayal – with the Conservative Party, and especially with the BNP, you are simply getting exactly what you voted for. 

Voting for Labour might make us feel temporarily dirty, but a Conservative victory will never wash off.

*As I wrote this blog, Conservative Chairman, Eric Pickles, denounced the YBF and tried to sever Tory links with the group following the report in Saturday’s Guardian.  Though the move may be politically expedient now that the YBF have come under fire, it does not really explain why the Conservative politicians listed were happy talking and training with the YBF until it became politically damaging to do so.  I suspect here not a change in belief and policy, but a change in public perception that has necessitated a public distancing from the controversial organization, but not from the ideas which first brought these two groups together.

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,General Election,Labour Party,BNP,Conservative Party,Gordon Brown,David Cameron,Nick Griffin,War on Terror,YBF,Young Britons' Foundation,Democracy

Dear Councillor Dawkins #2…

So I finally got a reply from Councillor Dawkins from the letter I sent a few weeks ago about the seeming contradictions in his public position on the Kraft takeover of Cadbury and the underlying economic policies of his party…

Dear Dr. McKee,  

You are perhaps being a little harsh on me.   I have been making similar points in various speeches over the last few years in public.  Either one can accept that or one can accuse me of being disingenuous. 

I have to disagree with your assertion regarding the Conservative Party. Like most parties we are a broad church with widely held views.  
I have said often is that we are all for free trade. However the free trade of goods does not necessarily have to translate into the free trade of companies. Selling off our priceless manufacturing and exporting companies to foreign companies in no ways makes us a better country.
There are already rules devised by the takeover panel to control the details of hostile takeovers, so it is not a complete free for all. What I have suggested is that we need to reconsider these rules and to determine if they are currently serving the national interest or should they be made harder. For instance instead of 51% of shareholders needing to agree to a hostile takeover it could be 75% needed (that in itself would have scuppered the Kraft takeover as they only managed a 71% agreement).
Another suggestion perhaps is that only shareholders which have held shares for more than 6 months could vote in such circumstances rather than a company falling prey to hedgefunds whose only interest is in making money.  
It may be that we would only  apply these more stringent rules to our exporting manufacturing companies.  It is these companies which have taken generations to build and are vital to this country's wealth building capacity. When they are taken over that wealth producing capacity invariably leeches away from this country.
There is also the issue of a level playing field. We are the most open economy for such takeovers far more so than our foreign competitors.
I seriously doubt that we would have been permitted to buy a company like Cadbury from the Japanese, the Chinese and even the French.
When people mention the Conservative party I always gently remind them that the first company I ever worked for when I left University was Rolls Royce in Derby; a company nationalised in 1971  by a Conservative government in the national interest rather than letting it go bankrupt. The government still has some golden shares in Rolls Royce which prevents it being taken into foreign ownership. Those golden shares have not prevented Rolls Royce becoming perhaps our greatest engineering company and our second largest exporter.
I hope this has been helpful.
Regards,
Nigel

Though it was nice that he had a go at defending himself, I had problems with his reply right away.  First off – yes, free-trade under the neo-liberal style of free-market economics promoted by the Tories since Thatcher does have to mean the free-trade of companies too if it is to remain a coherent theory.  And secondly – isn’t his Kraft-beating idea of a 75% majority just a little too convenient and arbitrary to hold any water?  Why not 69% or 70%?  With no sustaining argument behind it, any number higher than the 51% we have in the current system is basically just taken at random, and that the 75% mark proposed just so happens to be enough to thwart the takeover at Cadbury seems a little bit easy to me.

Anyway, I sent off the following reply and we’ll see how this thing goes.

Dear Councillor Dawkins,

Thank you for your reply to my previous email regarding your recent comments about Cadbury. Although I appreciate your efforts at explaining to me the perceived contradictions that I see in your public position on the Cabury takeover and your continuing membership in the pro-free-market Conservative Party, I am afraid that your argument remains unconvincing.

Yes the Conservative Party is a “broad church” – but, like any church, there are still certain sacrosanct parameters at which that broadness ends (or else what would be the difference between parties?) and for the Conservative Party one of the core elements of its unifying philosophy, for at least the last thirty years, is a belief in the free-market system.

Though you may wish to pick and choose which bits and pieces of your party’s policy-guiding economic philosophy you as an individual subscribe to, the fact of the matter is that under the terms of the endorsed philosophy of free-market economics synonymous with the Tories since Thatcher (not specifically free-trade, but of the free-market ideal behind it), the Kraft takeover of Cadbury was a text-book case of legitimate free-market acquisition: an independent and profitable company was given an attractive offer to sell, its board recommended it, and its shareholders accepted it.

Now I, as someone who opposes this rapacious economic ideology that puts the profits of the few over the wellbeing of the many, agree with much of what you publically say: it is a disgrace that thousands of Bournville jobs might now be lost because lining the pockets of Cadbury shareholders was deemed of higher social value than the economic well-being of this community. But it is Conservative economic policy – and the continuation of that misguided policy under Labour – that got us here, and so long as you are affiliated with that party your words can only seem, at best, tainted, and, at worst, like shameless opportunism. As those words are so often also wrapped up in the hollow whiff of an ugly flag-waving nationalism, I sincerely have my doubts – the issue is not, as you seem to suggest, whether a company is British-owned or foreign-owned, but whether we have an economic system in place which secures well-paid British jobs regardless of the nationality of a particular company’s owners, and which ensures all businesses – British or otherwise – are properly taxed and incentivised to invest their successes back into the local community and not just into their own private pockets.

I would be much more likely to take your position seriously, Councillor Dawkins, if you were seen less on the front-pages of the local newspaper holding a Union Jack in your hand and blaming the Labour Party for not signing a letter, and more in the fine-print of that newspaper, presenting an intellectually honest and coherent opposition to the economic policies and practices that have guided your party for decades.

As far as I am aware, neither David Cameron nor George Osborne have publically renounced this historically Conservative position of economic theory, and though it strikes a populist chord to talk about saving British jobs and tightening the rules on hostile takeovers in the aftermath of what happened at Cadbury, as long as the framework for those rules remain an economic philosophy which puts the needs of businesses above the needs of people, the only real change you and your party can offer, despite your public posturing, is a slightly different shade of the same colour.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Daniel McKee

PS… Whilst I thank you for the wistful nostalgia invoked by reminding me of Edward Heath’s nationalization of Rolls Royce in ’71, may I in turn remind you that it was Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative government which ultimately privatized the company again in 1987, and that Rolls Royce was one of the many companies over the past few years to cut hundreds of British jobs during the economic downturn, despite having an order-book worth over £35bn.

In other news, evidently I am not the only person not buying this for-the-people act…

Technorati Tags: Anti-Capitalism,Cadbury,Cadbury Buy-Out,Capitalism,Conservative Party,General Election,Kraft Food,Local Politics,Spin,UK Politics,Nigel Dawkins