Wednesday, April 16, 2014 

The conspiracy theories return.

Only on Monday were we mentioning in passing Sir Peter Gibson's truncated inquiry into alleged complicity in extraordinary rendition by our glorious security services and government. His final report sat waiting to be published for almost 18 months as arguments over which secret documents could and couldn't be included in full raged, regardless of how meek and mild Gibson's actual conclusions were. One of the key claims from all involved was this time the security services had cooperated fully, making the "vast majority" of requested documents available, except for those that couldn't be released without US permission.

Strange then that as Craig Murray posted on Monday, a source in the Foreign Office had told him our own government was lobbying the Americans over the similarly delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report into the rendition and wider torture programme operated by the CIA. Their worry was, even redacted, the release of the report's executive summary could damage the case currently being put before the courts blocking the attempt by Abdul Hakim Belhaj to seek compensation over his rendition. Despite the judge accepting the evidence for Belhaj's rendition via Hong Kong was all but established, to go any further would risk damage to the "national interest", i.e., the UK's relationship with the US.

Now via al-Jazeera America (and Yorkshire Ranter) comes another reason why both this government and the one previous would like the report's summary to remain sitting on President Obama's desk for a while yet. According to two US officials who have had access to parts of the 6,000 page report, it confirms for the first time that despite repeated denials from ministers back then and the Gibson inquiry not receiving any documents (PDF) that said otherwise, Diego Garcia was indeed used not only as a stopover point for rendition flights as was admitted in 2008, but also as a "black site".  This was with the full permission of the government, despite the likes of Jack Straw and David Miliband time after time telling parliament the exact opposite was the case.

If confirmed, it not only means ministers lied to both houses of parliament to protect the United States and its torture programme, it's also the first time the mistreatment of detainees has been found to have occurred on UK territory.  As all the reports up till now have also cleared the government of complicity in actual extraordinary rendition, having not considered the cases of Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi while downgrading the transfers of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna to Guantanamo as "renditions to detention", it would also for the first time leave the government with no wiggle room on that charge, potentially opening the way for more compensation claims, or even prosecution for those who gave the Americans permission to use their base on Diego Garcia as they saw fit.

Once again then we can be glad the eventual follow-up to the Gibson inquiry has been handed to the fearlessly independent Intelligence and Security Committee, the same one which let the intelligence chiefs know the questions they were going to be asked beforehand (although, it must be noted, they probably would have known anyway such are GCHQ's abilities).  It must also be a relief to Baroness Amos and David Miliband that they have since moved on from the Lords and the Commons respectively, as both insisted the government knew nothing about the use of Diego Garcia to host detainees, although there's a certain irony in how both are now involved in humanitarian work, Amoss at the UN and Miliband at International Rescue.  As for Jack Straw, he's set to leave parliament at the next election, probably before any subsequent inquiry reaches its conclusion.  While the chances of Inspector Knacker coming to call are unlikely, to judge by their past involvement in similar cases, it hopefully won't come too late to further tarnish what deserves to be regarded as one of the most ignominious political careers of recent times.  It might not be the equivalent of having your penis slashed with a scalpel, being deprived of sleep for over 11 days, forced into a pet carrier for two weeks or shackled to the ceiling of a cell by your wrists, but it's something.

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4/16/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 

The twilight of the TB-GBs.

There are but three explanations when the media almost as a whole praises a politician when they die, or as is increasingly the case, decides to resign to earn more money elsewhere.  First, they were a genuinely great figure, and there are ever fewer of those; second, they were known for their campaigning, or for being eccentric, and were therefore harmless; or third, they either gave great copy to journalists or lead such a colourful career that they didn't even have to speak to the press personally (that could be left to "friends").  Remember the incredulity when the England manager job went not to Harry Redknapp, the football bloke's bloke, always ready to stop his car and talk on transfer deadline day, but to the staid yet far more interesting if they could be bothered to actually do some proper work Roy Hodgson?  The same applies to politics.

Hence the gnashing of teeth over the exit of David Miliband to go and join Thunderbirds, or whatever the simply hi-larious gag still doing the rounds is now (it was worth a smile when alluded to on Newsnight last night; not so much the following morning on every news site).  The vast majority of the media decided that David Miliband simply had to be the next Labour leader, for the reason that he would be more of a continuation of New Labour than his brother, let alone the hated Ed Balls.  Of course, they had come to loathe New Labour, but in the same way that an aristocrat of old still had affection for a sprog spawned through a liaison with a scullery maid, they also felt they had helped to create it in the first place.  When Ed edged out his older sibling thanks to the votes of trade union members, this meant they had both been proved wrong and lost control over a party they thought they could still indirectly exert control over.

With David's departure to New York, they've now lost their least creative way of making mischief in the party.  The reality might well have been that David, although understandably originally embittered, has since reconciled with Ed and spent most of his time away from Westminster, but that's never been an obstacle to making stuff up in the past.  Nonetheless, too much can be made of the claims that if the elder Miliband had taken the offer of being a shadow minister that there would have been endless talk about the relationship between the two and potential policy clashes, including those from himself.  Miliband decided not to rejoin the shadow cabinet because he was doing just fine outside it, as his taking of the job at the International Rescue Committee underlines.  Who needs to be at Westminster full time or even an MP at all when you can still intervene occasionally from the sidelines, as both Blair and Brown have done and still be listened to intently?  Far more likely is that his return to frontline politics would have silenced those who still believe that the wrong brother got the top job, forcing them to accept what the man himself had.

Indeed, as others have noted, David's resignation as an MP only makes clear that regardless of what many, including myself thought when Ed unexpectedly won, he's been far more radical and agile a leader than almost anyone has given him credit for.  No, he hasn't got everything right, far from it, not least on his caution on opposing the coalition's demonisation of benefit recipients, something that David himself made clear in his last notable speech in the Commons, but he's clearly not going anywhere.

That's much to the disappointment of those who still believe the best route back to power is not to oppose the coalition on much of what it is doing, but to carry on in the great New Labour tradition of triangulation, offering much the same, just with a kinder face (except when it comes to civil liberties, where Labour arguably still remains to the right of the Tories).  Miliband senior's departure removes their final hope of the party returning to the politics that won three elections, and then, err, lost them the last, although they continue to try to convince themselves that was all Gordon Brown's fault.  It's never occurred to them that Miliband was just as much of a bottler as the right-wing press accused Brown of being, forever threatening to wield the knife and then always pulling back at the last moment.  Nor is there any indication that David would improve Labour's current poll ratings, which continue to show an average lead of around 10 points.

If today has reminded of anything, it was the remarkably similar response to James Purnell standing down as an MP.  Many of the same people then said what a massive loss to politics it was, what a wonderfully innovative thinker he had been, with some on the right claiming he could have saved the Labour party.  All this was code for the fact that he was a Blairite-ultra, and the man who helped to introduce the work capability assessment which continues to ruin the lives of tens of thousands of the sick and disabled.  If he achieved other than that, it was that he helped to set the stage for the coalition's even harsher cuts. 

The problem such politicians have is that they tend to be liked only by journalists; Purnell's resignation in an attempt to unseat Gordon Brown was followed by precisely no one, despite him imagining it would open the floodgates.  When Purnell went it was good riddance to bad rubbish, although he has naturally since found a job at the ever obliging BBC.  David Miliband could have been a real asset to his brother had he wanted to be, yet if his leaving signifies anything, it's that the TB-GB era of British politics is well and truly over.  And surely, that's something to welcome.

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3/27/2013 07:00:00 pm | |

Tuesday, January 08, 2013 

Caught in their own welfare trap.

It's fair to say that I've been rather despairing of the ever increasing attacks on benefit claimants, both those in work and out of it.  The BBC has joined in, surveys seem to suggest ever hardening attitudes towards those both sick and unemployed, there are numerous first-hand reports of those in wheelchairs being accused to their face of faking their disability for payments, and then there are the people who have died while waiting for their appeal against being declared fit for work by ATOS to be heard.  Recessions and hard times almost always result in those one rung down the ladder being kicked by those above them, but the way in which those at the top, whether in politics or the media, have upped the ante over the last couple of years has still managed to shock.

Today marks the end point.  The Conservatives have overreached themselves to such an extent through the benefit uprating bill and the rhetoric surrounding it that the only result will be the undermining of the entire narrative.  It should be remembered that the current popular attitude towards welfare is not the work of either the Tories or the tabloids, it's thanks to Labour's helming of the system.  Not, as the tabloids and Tories have it that they failed to reform it, but rather that they set in motion the exact reforms the coalition have supercharged.  The work capability assessment was Labour's invention, as was replacing incapacity benefit with employment and support allowance, while abolishing income support.  All this was put about with the equivalent of a nod and a wink, which while preferable to the "strivers vs skivers" of late had the same end result: encouraging the tabloids to print ever more articles about scroungers or the very few claiming huge amounts of housing benefit.

This shaming of claimants has been so successful that Labour has completely gone along with it. Faced with Osborne's wheeze of freezing benefits at 1%, they've wanted to talk only of the effect on those in-work, as if those out of work aren't striving for a job, or the sick and disabled making do on their meagre payments aren't worth an in line with inflation rise. Those on the right of the party balked at even this, imagining they were walking straight into Osborne's trap.

As so often in the past, politicians have once again underestimated the public.  Osborne felt certain this would be just as popular as the benefit cap, the undeserving poor put in their place, with minimal impact on those claiming tax credits.  Depending on how the question is asked you get different results, but overall it looks as though opinion is close to evenly split on whether the move is justified or not.  It's certainly nowhere near the 75% support the £26,000 cap receives. What's more, this is the point at which support is going to peak.  Once everyone fully realises how either they or their friends and family will be affected, the number in favour will drop further.

More than anything else, the Conservatives and Osborne continue to mistake their showing in the polls for actual popularity.  The fact is, almost anything government touches is instantly passé: once you're completely open in your loathing for the poor and poorly paid in general, as opposed to the underclass or those taking the taxpayer for a ride, the fightback begins in earnest.  When the politics are so base and so transparent that you're putting up billboards denouncing Labour for daring to say the low paid, the sick and the out of work should see their benefits increase with inflation, something they agreed with last year when Osborne said the same people deserved the rise, you're inviting the parodies and vandalism that will inevitably follow.

It's still come to something though when it's David Miliband, of all people, who exposed his party's cowardice in not going all the way in denouncing this bill for what it is.  It is rancid, and the Liberal Democrats should never be allowed to forget that they supported it. Miliband showed where the money to fund the rise could come from, and even dared to say the problem was unemployment, not the unemployed, underlining just how far the debate has moved from reality when something so obvious has to be pointed out.  When there are simply not enough jobs to go round, where is the fairness in expecting those on JSA to make do on an extra 71p a week?

Even if the Tories are regretting their attempt to create a dividing line, as the likes of Andrew Sparrow and others are implying, and are now attempting to tone down the rhetoric, it's far too late.  The damage has already been done: it's a measure highly unlikely to win many votes, especially coming 2 years before an election, despite the Tories seeming to believe it's just around the corner through the billboard campaign, and it will reinforce amongst those who are claiming what the Tories really think about them.  This is a government that demands responsibility above everything else and yet it refuses to take any itself, whether it's on the double-dip recession that never merits a mention, or the humiliating failure of the work programme.  As Liam Byrne said, in opposition Iain Duncan Smith made clear that "Conservative policies have to work for Britain's poorest communities and ... must be measured by that standard".  Duncan Smith presumably agrees then that the spread of food banks is a wonderful example of the Big Society in action.

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1/08/2013 09:45:00 pm | |

Tuesday, September 28, 2010 

A new generation for change?

It would be unkind and unfair to categorise Ed Miliband's first speech proper as Labour party leader as being remarkable only in being unremarkable. No speech which challenged so much of what became New Labour orthodoxy, even if without offering any actual alternative in many cases, could possibly be described as such. It was however, in spite of the content, delivered soporifically, nervously and received in a similar fashion by the audience, unsure on many occasions whether they should be applauding or not. Harriet Harman was certainly not the only person in the hall who should have been pulled up for her hypocrisy in applauding the new leader's personal admission that he believed the Iraq war to have been wrong.

The stony faces of the old Labour cabinet on hearing Miliband go the mile which was probably required, cynical as it also undoubtedly was, may go some way in winning back old supporters, delighted at seeing them aghast at their new overlord raking over the past which they themselves refused to revisit. All the same, this was hardly Khrushchev in 1956, and probably not even Theresa May and the "nasty party", not least because Miliband is not in a position of power in which to put his changes into immediate effect, even if we knew what they were going to be in practice. More like Khrushchev, Miliband was also complicit in some of which he denounced. It takes a lot of chutzpah to talk of how his parents arrived in Britain and the opportunities which this country gave them when he voted in the last parliament for a stricter asylum system. It takes even more to lament how Labour got it wrong on civil liberties and how the party should return to being the party of them when he voted for all of the key measures which made this a less free country. For someone who quite rightly said the most important word in politics should be humility, he should have added that he had personally got it wrong, even while being loyal to his party. It would have emphasised his authenticity exactly when he needs to be seen as fundamentally honest.

This was first and foremost, somewhat like Nick Clegg's effort last week, a speech directed at his party rather than the country. It was also incredibly formulaic, even as introductory speeches go. It ticked all the modern political speech boxes: the moving life story, the love for parents and family, the quoting of the possibly imaginary "ordinary" voter he encountered, concerned about the effect immigration was having on his friend's wages; the only thing he didn't thankfully do was emulate Cameron and walk around the stage in the deeply insincere manner which he has so perfected, operating without notes. If this was truly the result of work since late Saturday afternoon, then it shouldn't be judged too harshly. He attempted to master the difficult balance of putting the conference at their ease and flattering them while also having to address their failings, even if they weren't personal ones. He told them they had lost 5 million votes; how do we get them back?

No one should have expected him to provide immediate answers and he didn't. Rather, it at times seemed instead like an uncomfortable, overly confrontational attempt to get everything that went wrong with New Labour out in the open and done with in one massive purge, echoes again of Krushchev, however deceptive. As such it didn't really work, not least because he seemed to get things the wrong way round at least once, or at least the transcript has him as doing so, strangely during his espousal of what New Labour got right: surely they were right to emphasise that being tough on the causes of crime was as important as being tough on crime itself, not the other way round? Or was that a Freudian slip, based on guilt at how New Labour had in fact been tough on crime but forgot about the causes in its perpetual triangulation strategy? (Update: neither, see comments)

That which he did get right was well put across, rising above the general tenor: he promised not to oppose every cut, he recognised that migration from within the EU had not been handled properly, was emollient on welfare reform, refusing to give in to stigmatisation, and was strongest of all on admitting the party had become naive about markets, recognising that work is not all that matters, correctly identifying the paradox of being the biggest consumers in history whilst yearning more than ever for that which business cannot provide. If he was to develop thinking on that in particular then he will move the party beyond just policy and into a strategy for changing the way the country feels and thinks about itself, vital to providing a vision of an alternative, optimistic Britain.

The real problems with both the speech and him personally were unfortunately manifest. On paper, it reads well, or at least as well as any recent speech by any main political leader in this country; spoken, he just couldn't seem to find the right delivery. It had echoes at times of Iain Duncan Smith making his ill-fated quiet man conference address; it really was that bad. Certainly, he's got more than enough time to alter that, but first impressions do have an impact. For someone who's just spent the last four months speaking day after day to audiences it was especially lacking. Moreover, that the rhetoric was all but identical in places to that of either Clegg or Cameron also stands against it; perhaps we shouldn't expect anything drastically different when he is superficially so similar to both men and that style is deemed to be successful, yet that doesn't alter how empty it felt.

Worst of all was the idea that he somehow represents a new generation, a new generation for change as the slogan abysmally has it (and surely we can also now consign Kings of Leon to the dustbin of musical history now that they're the soundtrack to the Labour party conference). We really can't seem to get away from change as a motif, as vacuous as it currently is, and Miliband's variety is the most dubious yet. The fact is that even if he himself is leading this new generation, the vote for the shadow cabinet overwhelmingly shows that it's the same old faces that will be making it up. Can they really expect us to swallow that they will be the agents of change, sweeping away New Labour's mistakes when so many sat in angry silence as Iraq was dealt with? It simply isn't credible, and as a result, the entire speech wasn't. As argued yesterday, just as Miliband needs to be determined to make this a one-term government, and he did an efficient job of attempting to woo disaffected Liberal Democrats in the main, especially by not even mentioning them, he also needs to be prepared to fail, and anoint a real new generation that can beat the Tories in 2020 if he doesn't manage it in 5 years' time.

If it's odd to be disappointed and pessimistic after a speech which did so much which those of us on the left urged to be done for so long to reinvent Labour, part of it is the same nervousness that Miliband himself must have felt. How will the voters react? How will the media react to this obvious repudiation of New Labour, even when it should be apparent to everyone just how the party needs to move on from that era? Some will undoubtedly continue to persist in the delusion that it was the tiny movement from ultra-Blairism under Brown which resulted in the party losing, even when it was obvious he would have led the party to a defeat potentially even worse than Brown did. Most of all though it's the feeling that Ed simply cannot lead the party to victory, regardless of what he does. It's true, as Jenni Russell writes, that David Miliband could not have given the speech which his brother did today. It also remains apparent that Ed is still the best possible leader of the five contenders. It's simply that he, like the other four, is simply not the clean break with the past which the party desperately needed. It's difficult to be the optimists when there is still so much to be disillusioned, concerned and worried about.

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9/28/2010 11:03:00 pm | |

Monday, September 27, 2010 

Ed Miliband and the doomers.

For my sins, I support Arsenal. When I can't get a stream going I also, for my sins, tend to go to Arseblog and watch the arses (comments) go by (and even occasionally contribute, although not under this name, potential stalkers). Whenever we either aren't winning, or, rare as it is, are losing, the "doomers" turn up. The players are useless, Wenger's a moron who needs to be sacked, our season's over because we're losing our first game of the season, Fabregas is really going to leave this time because the rest of the team are hopeless lazy wasters, and so it goes. Should we then come back on terms, or win, the opposite is the case. If we actually end up losing, the amount of doomers multiplies exponentially. Such is football.

Such also is politics. For the Blairites and some David Miliband supporters, his brother's victory leaves the party doomed to defeat at the next election. MPs and the party members themselves rejected Ed, even if only by slight margins and due to the vagaries of the incredibly odd system of AV which Labour's electoral college uses. Instead it was the unions, who overwhelmingly supported Ed, who swung it for him. Already those most disgruntled at the result have been murmuring of changing the system for next time, or, as the intention must be, for in roughly 5 years time. The tabloids will moniker him "Red Ed" and bring up his union "bully boy" backers constantly, each week David Cameron will remind him of how his own colleagues on the green benches behind him didn't vote for him as they squirm uncomfortably, and the public, even as they suffer the cuts being inflicted by the coalition, will fear how the leader will be in the pocket of the far worse strikers and wreckers.

Some of this is, admittedly, my own immediate analysis. Winning thanks to the union section of the electoral college was hardly ideal, and it will cast a pall for a while over his leadership, but it's hardly going to lose Labour the next election on its own. The right-wing press, not just the tabloids, have already set out to make the "Red Ed" shortening a permanent one. That it is already tedious and tiresome, as well as ridiculous, will mean it will soon disappear. After all, if there's one thing the public hates, it's being told how they're supposed to view someone when they haven't even had a chance to begin to make their own mind up. Sure, the media influences how they make up their mind, and it will have an impact, but this isn't even beginning to approach the level of sniping and demonisation that went on in the 80s right up until the 92 election. If anything, it's simply pathetic: really Daily Mail, Ed hasn't condemned the "strike threat"? The fiend! He backs "higher taxes and wants to curb top pay"? Well, haven't they blown long and hard about the second part, except of course when it comes to Mr Dacre's yearly pay cheque? They actually seem far more concerned about how his son's a bastard and the father's name isn't on the birth certificate, which as usual tells you everything about the immoral Daily Mail's priorities.

At the same time, it's also difficult to see anyone who's really optimistic at this turn of events, despite what Dave and Laurie might think. Instead they're just accepting of it, and are waiting to see what comes next. All these claims that Ed ran the best, most inspiring and hopeful campaign are hogwash. He probably wasn't even the most competent. The choice essentially was between the unelectable in any form (Abbott), the Brown continuity candidate, even if he has a good line in oppositionism (Balls), the unrecognisable with no chance (Burnham), Blair without the charm (D Miliband) and the best of a bad lot and that's about it (E Miliband). Labour has spent the time after the election leading up to this, mostly doing nothing constructive, and the hope was that this result would leave it energised to take on the Tories, providing the kind of opposition which the coalition marriage of convenience desperately needs. If anything, the life seems to have been sucked out of it even more than after the election.

This was always going to be the problem when two personalities had so dominated the party over the last sixteen years, leaving it without anyone who could unite the two factions, and bereft also of anyone without allegiance who could move the party on from the New Labour era. All that's effectively happened, sadly, is that the soap opera has moved on from the TB-GBs which at times descended almost into a British equivalent of Kremlinology to now the sibling rivalry, with the shock twist of the upstart younger brother triumphing against the favourite. What's D Miliband going to do now? Is he going to petulantly throw in the towel and go off into the wilderness of academia and wait for Ed to fail? Or is he going to compliment his brother by becoming shadow chancellor, taking the battle to the wicked persecutor Osborne?

The best possible thing that could happen would be David deciding to leave politics entirely. That would frame it as a family tragedy, but would mean that Ed could get at least get on with the job, without having to put up with every slight detail of their relationship as ministers being scrutinised. It would also allow the new talent to rise to the top, if it can be described as that, and it's always worth remembering the advice of the sage Jarvis Cocker, who observed that shit floats. Labour desperately needs new blood, new ideas, a whole new generation.

For even while the "doomers" are almost always wrong, they do occasionally get things right in spite of themselves. Much of Labour's thinking (as well as that of bloggers and commentators) has been predicated on the public overwhelmingly rejecting the spending cuts and the damage that they inflict, or even if they don't, they will object to the economic impact they will undeniably have. What though if they don't? What if they decide that they rather like the coalition's reforms and if everything goes as the IMF predicts, they end up with some pleasing tax cuts come the end of the parliament? Labour is depending on everything going wrong, rather than anything going right, and there are no signs of them beginning to offer anything approaching an alternative. The Conservatives prior to the credit crunch were at least looking in different areas, and it emboldened them further, even if they hadn't and still haven't fully fleshed out the "Big Society" and other ideas.

Labour shouldn't be just planning on winning in 2015; it should be in contingency thinking about what should happen should it not win until 2020. When asked by an American I chat to (don't ask) about Ed Miliband, I rather patronisingly (for the American, not Ed) compared him potentially with John Kerry in 04; the Democrats believed that they could put up anyone and they would beat Bush. Kerry was a fine congressman and deserved to win, but didn't win over the American public. Labour isn't in quite such a deluded situation, but it isn't that far off. Ed Miliband could more than conceivably win in 5 years time, if he doesn't just move on from New Labour as he has rightly signalled but actively creates something which is more than just the sum of its parts. It has to be a party which is once again in tune with both the working and middle classes, a party which offers a genuinely bright future and a vision of a Britain which isn't just treading water but actively progressing. New Labour indulged and endorsed neo-liberalism until it became a conservative party in all but name, while at the same time having the worst tendencies of the authoritarian left. Ed Miliband seems to have understood that, but as yet has not articulated properly how he intends to change things. At the same time he needs to recognise that things might not go his way, and that the next generation needs to be groomed should he fail. If he does so he will have prepared his party far better for the future than the competing egos of Blair and Brown ever did.

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9/27/2010 11:59:00 pm | |

Saturday, September 25, 2010 

Worst possible way to win.

Having already been branded "Red Ed" by the tabloids and the Blairites (however laughably), for the younger Miliband to win the Labour leadership on essentially the votes of the unions is not exactly the most auspicious of starts. Least worst option as he was and still is, he's going to be reminded of his debt to the unions, both by his opponents and by the likes of Unite until he wins the support of the public themselves.

(Incidentally, the number of spoilt union ballots was huge, as the breakdown shows. More in Unite spoilt their votes than plumped for Ed Balls and Andy Burnham combined. Whether those are protests or not understanding the voting system is open to question.)

Hardly any better is his winning statement as being distributed by the party:

"Today a new generation has stepped forward to change our party. We are united in our mission to transform Labour so that, once again, we stand up for the hardworking majority who play by the rules and want a less divided and more prosperous Britain. I know we have a lot of work to do. The journey starts today.

It really doesn't get much more Blairite than that. Those of us seeking someone who is prepared to put the case for the indolent minority who sometimes err on the wrong side of the law must go on searching.

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9/25/2010 05:48:00 pm | |

Wednesday, September 22, 2010 

New Labour's dead cat bounce.

At long last, the seemingly unending Labour leadership contest has gasped its last, with only the ballots left to count. Congratulations must go to all five candidates: it must take a truly superhuman effort to keep repeating yourself over and over again daily for such an extended period of time and not find yourself going slowly but surely insane (Whoops, I seem to have just inadvertently insulted myself and all bloggers). Expectations at the outset were low, both for the standard of debate and for the potential for full, painstaking examination of why the party lost, and those expectations were more than exceeded. The party has essentially just spent the last three months travelling the country conducting a navel-gazing exercise that hasn't even begun to scratch the surface of how and why it lost, and in Ed Balls has someone who is just as myopic to the changing of the political tide as any of the deeply deluded Blairites. When it's Andy Burnham dropping truth bombs, trying desperately to make Balls realise that some cuts are going to have to be necessary and would have been made by Labour had it remained in power, even if not this year, you know the party's in a bad way.

In fact, Burnham has been the surprise candidate in that he's at least tried to think differently even if still within the Blairite prism: his "aspirational socialism" might be risible intellectually and in practice, yet using the "s" word in the current climate when Vince Cable gets derided for daring to make even the slightest critique of capitalism takes a certain amount of bottle. Embarrassing by contrast has been Diane Abbott, who's ran an invisible campaign and seemingly treated the entire thing as a joke. We have to make an allowance for how it takes money to do anything political these days and she's had almost none pledged in her direction, but that's no excuse for not even seeming to put an ounce of her heart in it. It has to be remembered that John McDonnell stood down in favour of her, who just might have managed to drag the debate leftwards and make the party's apparatus think about those who have been systematically abandoned and marginalised by New Labour. Instead Abbott's acted as the party's false conscience, sitting in yet contributing nothing. When Abbott is the face of the Labour left, that section of the party shouldn't be surprised when it finds itself derided and ridiculed.

The fear from the beginning was that it would be personalities rather than policies which would be the main topic of debate and so it has proved. Admittedly, when the two main candidates are brothers it's always likely that the media, already about as interested in the leadership contest as it has been with the floods in Pakistan, was going to focus on that to the detriment of everything else; the problem has been that it's been their camps which have been playing it up more than anyone else. Their relationship might well have turned poisonous if we're to believe Neil Kinnock, and the interventions by Blair and Mandelson have hardly helped, yet still the entire fixation on it has been dispiriting.

What then, if despite all the speculation surrounding his brother and second preference votes, it does turn out to be David Miliband who becomes Labour leader on Saturday? Having been anointed as the only apparent successor to Blair and Brown, it would be a vote for a continuation of the New Labour project, even in its current decrepit state. Moreover, it would be an endorsement of all that Miliband stood for while he was a cabinet minister, and especially his record as foreign secretary. While much has been made during the campaign of how the elder Miliband continues to support the Iraq war in the obfuscatory Blairite fashion of having made the right decision at the time while Ed apparently opposed it, that ought to be the least of concerns. Far more significant is how he didn't just frustrate the attempts by Binyam Mohamed to find out the contents of the "seven paragraphs", which detailed that MI5 were fully aware of how he was being mistreated by the Americans and their proxies, he authorised Jonathan Sumption to criticise the legal opinion of Lord Neuberger for getting far too close to the truth.

Some of Miliband's actions in blocking the Binyam Mohamed case may have been down to protecting our relationship with the US, supposedly in danger due to our breaching of the "control" principle, whereby another country does not reveal intelligence shared with it without authorisation. The same cannot be said for Miliband's apparent authorisation of intelligence-gathering operations in countries with atrocious human rights records, as revealed by the Guardian today. For Miliband to have apparently returned to the Foreign Office to revisit his decisions is an indication of how serious he himself considers the allegations. It's one thing to defend the actions of your predecessors and the intelligence services they were responsible for at the time; it's something else to potentially give the OK for MI6 to seek access to information obtained via torture.

At the outset of the leadership contest it was clear that Ed Miliband was the best realistic option for leader, as in the potential to actually win, and absolutely nothing has changed since then. None of the candidates has shown a real willingness to take the few things that New Labour achieved and build upon them by revitalising the party's relationship both with its members and the public at large, and none has yet demonstrated anything even resembling a real alternative to the cuts agenda as articulated by the coalition. Ed has done the bare minimum required to deserve to lead the party, as Labour itself so often did when it was in power. Whichever brother triumphs, 2015 remains a year which the party and indeed the country should fear rather than look forward to.

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9/22/2010 11:14:00 pm | |

Tuesday, August 31, 2010 

The Labour leadership and the dead hand of the Blairites.

The voting papers in the Labour leadership contest are being sent out. In an unfortunate coincidence, the not especially heavy tome from Tony Blair, modestly titled A Journey, is also being distributed around the country as copies go on sale tomorrow. While it's tempting to suggest that it'll probably take less time to read Blair's memoir than it will for some in Labour's electoral college to make their decision as to who should follow in his footsteps, it's also an unwelcome further reminder as to how Blair's shadow still hangs heavy over the party.

For while it's almost as if Gordon Brown never existed, so quickly has he vanished from the public sphere, almost airbrushed out of last three years of history with only Labour as an entity itself being in governance rather than led by the man who so coveted the job, Blair still looms large, as does his extended entourage. While Brown has wisely stayed out of the leadership debate, even if it's easy to suspect he would probably be backing his supposed protege Ed Balls, the few remaining Blairite true believers have been making it all but clear whom they favour. Even Blair himself is apparently concerned with how Ed, rather than David Miliband could potentially undo all their hard work in creating the electoral juggernaut which was New Labour, leading the party as Mandelson put it into an "electoral cul-de-sac".

This is, if it really needed stating, utter nonsense. It is however instructive on at least two separate levels. Firstly, it shows the insecurity of the remaining Blairite clique. Whether they really believe they're potentially helping Miliband senior by implying that Ed would be an electoral liability or not is unclear, but it is an indication of how worried they are that anyone other than the person who doesn't even want their endorsement could well win the leadership. Moreover, to use a really obscure analogy, it's a perfect illustration of how unprepared they are to let their grip on the party go. For those who've seen the original Dawn of the Dead, the Blairite takeover of the Labour party was akin to how Peter and friends took control of the mall. In their eyes, they cleaned it out and made it viable, only now to see their creation potentially threatened just as the looters do the mall in the film. In reality, the mall itself, or the party has corrupted them and their values, blinding them to the realisation that they have become the thing which they themselves previously hated. Instead of letting the looters do what they're going to do and move on, the Blairites in this context are Stephen, who's prepared to fight against the overwhelming odds because "[we] took it - it's ours", only to die as a result.

It's not perfect by any means at entirely accurately reflecting the current battle within Labour, but it comes fairly close. Blair, Mandelson and Alastair Campbell feel as if they still own the party, such was their role in its initial success, and now when the party needs so desperately to move beyond the New Labour era they're unprepared to let even the slightest implied insult to their reign go without being answered. The reason why the current posturing from them against Ed is so ridiculous is also multi-faceted. Not just because New Labour so conspicuously failed just a few months ago to do what it was set-up to do, which was to win elections, but because the real differences between the two Miliband brothers are so slight. It's true that David stands for the continuation of much of what New Labour started - the public sector and welfare reforms, the centre-right, triangulating Blairite stance on foreign policy, civil liberties, crime etc - yet Ed's policies as stated are only slightly to the left of his elder brother's. He supports a living wage and a graduate tax, yet on much else they share all but the same platform. If anything, it's been Ed who with the exception of Diane Abbott has contributed the least amount of new intellectual thinking to the debate - David at least delivered a speech last night aimed at putting together a counter-argument to the Tories' already none too cogent "Big Society" gambit. Ed Balls and Andy Burnham meanwhile have both been putting forward alternative policies and arguments for what the party should be doing, whether it be Balls' proposal to build 100,000 new houses using the gap between the projected borrowing figures (not one incidentally I would support) or Burnham's creditable attempt to define "aspirational socialism", which deserves praise simply for being willing to use the long rejected "s" word.

In fact, perhaps the really odd thing is that the Blairites aren't backing Burnham. His ideas are by far the most radical while being in line with their thinking on the public sector. Like them, he doesn't see voting reform as a priority, and his support for the setting up of a national care service with a tax of 10% on all estates after death is one that deserves serious scrutiny. It's only perhaps with his apparent disdain for the "elites", whether affected or otherwise, and his espousal of the living wage that he falls down. What's more, he's also the most aesthetically similar to Blair, even if perhaps he doesn't have anywhere near to the same level of charisma. David Miliband, while the continuity Blairite candidate, knowing as he does where the bodies are buried, instead remains this wonkish, more than slightly nerdy character, hardly the most naturally gifted of potential leaders. Burnham is far more in the Blair mould in that respect.

Clearly, the leadership campaign has gone on for far too long, resulting in the candidates endlessly repeating themselves, and it will still be nearly a month before we know the result. While it's had little impact outside the party, as leadership contests as a whole rarely do, it has certainly energised critical thinking inside it, best epitomised by a couple of excellent posts on where the party's been and where it should go by Luke Akehurst, an ultra-Blairite now backing Ed Miliband for the leadership. His latest entry on the limits of triangulation is especially thoughtful and an indication of how those within the party are willing to learn from the mistakes of the past. This is also pertinent to the continuing interventions from Mandelson and friends, none of whom seem to be willing to recognise why Labour lost the election. It certainly wasn't because the party was too left-wing, as they seem to be implying is where Ed will move the party should he win and therefore make it unelectable. It was instead because it was collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, with Brown both unwilling and unable to move the party beyond the Blair years, instead introducing and keeping with his own triangulation strategy. It was because it produced a tired manifesto, with almost no new ideas, and no optimistic vision of what Britain would look like in 5 years' time. It was because it had gotten too comfortable in power, had become dismissive of people's concerns, regardless of whether it was on immigration or civil liberties, while David Cameron gave hints of a brighter future even if in the short term he would be delivering austerity.

The real lesson of the election should be that there are and were millions of voters crying out for a real alternative - one which they flirted with in the shape of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, yet decided at the last minute either wasn't realistic or couldn't be elected due to the system itself. The challenge for the new Labour leader is to try to be that alternative, redefining the party, winning over lost and new potential supporters, whilst also retaining the party's traditional base. The problem is that none of them look even close to being on the level of a Nick Clegg, and that's without the millstone of Blairite support/contempt being attached to their neck.

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8/31/2010 09:09:00 pm | |

Wednesday, June 09, 2010 

Postponing the inevitable.

It seems that I should make rash predictions more often: after expelling nigh on 1,800 words centred on neither of the "left" candidates getting the required nominations to run for the Labour leadership, Diane Abbott duly did scrape together the 33 required, although only after it seems a number of former ministers felt they had to support her to ensure that they themselves weren't heavily criticised for all but silencing the entire left of the party.

Diane nonetheless wouldn't have got on the ballot if it hadn't been for John McDonnell stepping down, something which, as usual, he doesn't seem to be getting enough credit for. If anything, it was Abbott who should have stood down having 11 nominations at the beginning of the morning to McDonnell's 16, just one of the things which Dave Semple is quite rightly bitter about, but McDonnell perceived, almost certainly rightly, that Abbott's support wouldn't then back him.

You can either view these last gasps from such notable socialists as Chris Bryant, Denis MacShane, Jack Straw and Phil Woolas as noble attempts to allow the left the say, even as they have vehemently disagreed with it in the past and even attempted to crush it, or as a simple way to show that the parliamentary Labour party is representative and a wide church after all, despite all the naysaying. And we shouldn't completely dismiss Abbott as the token candidate. As Don Paskins argues convincingly, it's more likely that Andy Burnham will come last than Abbott will, and it's even possible she could come ahead of Ed Balls, neither of whom have anywhere near the appeal or mass support of the two Milibands, nor are they likely to gain much support from the trade unions. It will also ensure that this will not completely be a leadership election based around the politics and policies of the centre-right, as Diane will inevitably pull the debate leftwards.

None of this will however make up for the fact that yet again a genuine socialist voice with real grassroots support has been completely excluded from the wider leadership debate. It's almost as if the party hierarchy is frightened of even the mention of the "s" word, let alone someone representing those values. As welcome as Diane Abbott's inclusion on the ballot is, and how she will definitely energise it far beyond how it would have been if it was the four white Oxbridge educated middle aged males, there's no getting away from the fact that she's become a media luvvie who is now on the left of the soft left rather than in the ever dwindling socialist grouping. We needed a true left voice with the nous and real courage to take on and attack those only interested in the status quo, as was evidenced by the tensions at the hustings on Monday when McDonnell and the elder Miliband clashed.

We may well have been saved from a debate along the terms of that outlined by John Denham in a speech to the Fabians last night, which was an even harsher and even more deluded take on why Labour lost the election - namely, that through not turning the welfare state into a social insurance scheme Labour lost the support of the comfortably well-off, the "aspirational" voters who were outraged by the inequities of the benefits system, of those beneath them getting something for nothing, of the eastern Europeans claiming tiny amounts of child benefit as is required under EU regulations, when obviously it should be them the state should be helping. Labour is often accused by the right-wing press of envy politics, yet Denham seems to be suggesting that the party should take up the class war waged by the Mail and Telegraph in favour of the middle classes. Equally though, we shouldn't pretend this won't be the ultimate result. The best realistic result we can hope for is Ed Miliband to triumph rather than his brother. All the party has done is postpone the inevitable.

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6/09/2010 10:44:00 pm | |

Tuesday, June 08, 2010 

New Labour is dead. Long live New Labour.

The nominations for the Labour leadership close at 12:30 tomorrow. At the moment, neither Diane Abbot or John McDonnell is even close to gaining enough support from their parliamentary colleagues to stand; whether one or the other decides to acknowledge defeat before then, giving the opportunity for their nominees to swap to the other is uncertain. Even if they do, it's still up in the air whether or not they'll garner the 33 required, as they'll still need another six even if every single nominee changes sides. It's worth remembering that in 2007 Michael Meacher's supporters didn't decamp en masse once he stood down, leaving McDonnell 16 short of the number he needed, with Gordon Brown therefore elected unopposed, in what everyone now acknowledges was little short of a disaster.

To make a rash prediction, my gut feeling is that the same will happen this time, and with Andy Burnham only two nominations from the amount he needs, it seems all but certain that while we will have a contest, it will be a contest based on personalities foremost and policies a very distant second, with the winner almost equally certainly sharing a surname with another candidate. Not, it should be acknowledged, is this much different from what's happened in Labour leadership elections since the fateful 1980 vote which resulted in Michael Foot becoming leader of the opposition. Every contest since then has either been a foregone conclusion, with one candidate winning an overwhelming majority, or has involved a battle of egos rather than beliefs. The key difference is that the Labour party itself then had far more of an influence over policy than it does now, with conferences that mattered rather than being merely either a rubber-stamping session or an opportunity to express a grievance which was then completely ignored by the leadership.

In one sense, the party clearly has no one else to blame than itself for this state of affairs. Despite everything, the parliamentary party is still a relatively wide church: you have the Socialist Campaign Group on the left, the softer left Compass grouping, which if it had wanted to could clearly have stood a candidate whom would have found it much easier to get the nominations required, either a Jon Cruddas or even though he's outside it John Denham; the centrists such as Ed Miliband and maybe Ed Balls if you were pushing it, then the centre-right "Progress" style grouping which encompasses both David Miliband and Andy Burnham. If they had really meant what they'd said, they could have easily decided to tactically vote for someone so that it wasn't just the centre and centre-right of the party yet again monopolising opinion and then making clear that any dissension was back to the 1980s Militant-style bolshiness that simply won't wash in 2010.

The elder Miliband, despite initial murmurings about how much he wanted a wide selection of possible candidates has since shown his clear Blaritie centralising tendencies in his contempt yesterday for John McDonnell at a hustings, while none of the other three have put their words into action. In any case, the debate which has so energised the four likely to be on the ballot has not been about why Labour lost the election and attempting to understand the reasons why the party received 2 million less votes than the Conservatives; the reasons why have already been set in stone. It wasn't seemingly the recession itself, Gordon Brown, the general feeling that it was time for a change, or the stewardship of the economy, let alone Iraq or anything as crass as civil libertarian concerns, but rather immigration first and foremost and which all four have been determined to talk about as much as possible now the election's over, along with anti-social behaviour and the welfare state. Ed Balls went so far at the weekend to criticise his former master and indeed the person that he personally advised on immigration, while also penning a mea culpa that Labour was wrong to impose no controls on the A8 eastern European accession states, which led to the huge flow of migrant workers, arguing in addition that the European Union needs to drop its open borders policy when it comes to unskilled labour.

Even if we accept that immigration was, as Dave Osler says, the number one issue on the doorstep, it still didn't lose Labour the election on its own. If this was the case then the party would have almost certainly lost Rochdale after the Gillian Duffy incident and many other of the seats which it held onto. As has been pointed out so astutely by Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford, concern about immigration wasn't borne of hatred of foreigners or about the country being full to bursting, but instead because Labour failed to acknowledge the problems which go hand in hand with it, by ignoring the dismal state which social housing was in, by failing to make the minimum wage a living wage, and by letting agency workers undercut those at the bottom by not regularising them, failing as it did to implement the EU agency workers directive, something even Ed Balls now admits was a mistake.

Coupled with these failures were related ones, such as not explaining in simple terms where, as Mrs Duffy put it, all these eastern Europeans were coming from. There was not some grand conspiracy to open the borders and turn Britain into a multicultural paradise where immigration powered economic growth at the expense of the working class, but rather the far more benign mistake of assuming the the other EU countries would open their borders immediately as well, which with the exceptions of Ireland and Spain they didn't. This failure of explanation went along with the refusal to defend the decision. Lastly, the government failed to respond and defend itself against the repeated onslaughts from the tabloids on both immigration and the asylum system, so often packed with falsehoods and distortions; indeed, on numerous occasions it either colluded with them or agreed, regardless of the facts, further encouraging them while leading the readers to believe the absolute worst even if they didn't recognise the picture painted on their own patch. It decided that it couldn't beat them, so it joined them, with the appointment of the ghastly political thug Phil Woolas as immigration minister, whose only regret was that he didn't push the "points system" hard enough.

Through the emphasis on immigration it's all too clear where the leadership debate, or rather lack of it is going to head. Some of this is reflected in Neal Lawson's comment piece for the Guardian tomorrow, although it has to be remembered that Lawson, even if he's since moved somewhat to the left, was just as much a part of New Labour from the beginning as all four of the candidates were. He's right that Labour has lost its purpose, but it lost that long ago; where he's wrong is that the party has not yet hit bottom. We have to separate the party from the leadership, for the crucial reason that despite everything, Labour won councils and increased its number of local government seats last month, something pitifully under-reported. There is still life in the party, just as there always has been; it's the leadership and its refusal to integrate itself into local communities, which was the difference between winning in places like Birmingham Edgbaston and Tooting and losing in broadly similar seats. He says Labour didn't become the nasty party, but that it did become lumbering and arrogant; I beg to differ. It did become nasty, not because it had to, but because it wanted to and because New Labour knew nothing other than triangulation and reacting to headlines. Even now it doesn't know how to react to the new political landscape, where a new government is actually attempting to be something other than rigidly authoritarian, even if it no longer defends ID cards. As Diane Abbott despaired, how did it ever in the first place move to the right of the Conservatives on civil liberties? For the simple reason that it felt it it had to do, because the Sun said so, and because it's fell into the belief that only the chattering middle classes care about such things, not those C2s more concerned with the loutish teenagers hanging around on street corners than their damned right to do so.

More than anything, the real reason to despair at these four men and the contest which awaits is because as could have predicted, even with the Liberal Democrats in tow, the government is already moving to start the slashing and burning in the public sector as soon as is feasibly possible. David Cameron's speech yesterday was what we're going to have to get used to now, Labour being blamed for everything with no regard for what the Conservatives would have done differently had they been in the same position, the public sector being the enemy rather than the private sector which caused the crisis, the "economically inactive" being lined up to take the pain while the originators of the crisis continue to be amazed at how they're getting away all but scot free, first bailed out and then being readied to restart the cycle, while lip service is paid to "rebalancing" the economy, as if Cameron had even the first idea about strengthening manufacturing, when those jobs have sadly gone for good. To be fair, Liam Byrne and Alistair Darling's responses yesterday and today have been reasonably good, but we need the potential leaders of the party to be raising their voices and signalling their opposition to ideologically inclined cuts. We've heard nothing about the cuts, but plenty about irrelevancies.

The reality is that the party itself and its leadership, as well as some of the parliamentary party, are all but completely different entities. If neither McDonnell or Abbott get the required nominees, then they must finally realise that if the MPs won't allow their voices to be heard, it's not because they have nothing to say or offer, but because the elected representatives are actively ignoring the views of the activists that get them elected. As Diane Abbott has again so accurately put it, for a party that is so diverse to be ultimately represented by one of four individuals from the "narrowest gene pool in history" is a joke that simply isn't funny any more. New Labour crushed dissent and centralised itself to such an absurd degree because it felt it had to in order to get itself elected again. As the 97 and 01 results showed, it would have won if its leader had been the clichéd donkey or monkey pinned with a red rosette. Despite this, because it had become so wedded to control freakery and spin it believed had brought it to power, it never let go, and the ultimate conclusion is the four candidates before us today.

Those of us on the left thought we could support the Liberal Democrats as an alternative to a party which had abandoned so many of its principles; now we're effectively disenfranchised, unless Labour changes its ways. It shows every sign of doing the exact opposite. The tragedy is not just one of representation, but also for any real alternative to the current consensus. New Labour is dead. Long live New Labour.

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6/08/2010 11:20:00 pm | |

Saturday, May 22, 2010 

The Labour leadership contest: This is Yesterday.

I know you don't want to, but take a good, hard look at the four main Labour leadership candidates. Go on, force yourself. Like it or not, one of these fine upstanding gentlemen is going to become the focal point of opposition to the shotgun marriage of the Conservative and Liberal Democrats. OK, you can turn away now. Dispiriting, isn't it, to say the least? I'm reminded of both high and slightly lower culture: of Ozymandias by Shelley, looking on their works and despairing, but also of the last ever episode of Blackadder, where Melchett visits the western front and comments on the nature of the troops he will soon be sending to their deaths, to which Blackadder responds with "Yes sir - shortly to become fine bodies of men".

For all the platitudes, especially from the two Milibands, about wanting the widest possible field of candidates, this line-up is the logical endgame of New Labour, the equivalent of a policy akin to Stalin's socialism in one country. Having suffocated all dissent, centralised the party to a ridiculous extent, micro-managed the selections process to parachute in favoured, endlessly loyal apparatchiks and luvvies, these four are the perfect representation of the New Labour project, while also being the finest imaginable illustration of just how the party can no longer even begin to pretend to be representative of the country at large. It's also indicative of just how limited politics in this country has become, another of the ultimate successes of the Blair era: don't like the fact that all three of the party leaders will be male 40-somethings from the white, upper middle classes? Tough.

Just like the Conservatives toiled and struggled to escape from the shadow of Margaret Thatcher, so now will Labour desperately flail in a bid to remove themselves from the legacies of both Blair and Brown. In fact, this process was already started somewhat during the deputy leadership contest back in 2007, when Hazel Blears resorted to claiming that there was no longer any distinction between Blairites and Brownites, there was just Labour. As risible as it was then, it has something approaching a smidgen of truth now: the last three years showed just how few real differences there were between two, but then that also just shows their triumph; having all but completely recreated the party in their own image. As much as David Miliband wants to leave behind the Blairite and Brownite labels, thinking only of "Next Labour", if you remove their adherences and preferences to the two separate leaders then there are even fewer ways of explaining the differences between David, the two Eds and Andy.

In any case, if you want to show that the party has moved on, then you have to come up with policies that are genuinely different and show that you've learned from your defeat. The task facing Labour is nowhere near as unforgiving as the one the Tories woke up to on the 2nd of May 1997, and that itself seems to be shaping the party's incredibly limited post-election thinking. So wedded has the party become to the triangulation strategy it pursued without mercy or hesitation in those 13 years of power that it still believes it only failed at the ballot box because it wasn't right-wing enough on immigration, "anti-social behaviour" and on those omnipresent welfare malingerers. They've adopted the excellent class-based analysis of Jon Cruddas without endorsing his solutions of giving protection to agency workers, introducing a living rather than a minimum wage and a full social housing programme. Instead they still to seem to think the only reason the public didn't appreciate their policies was because they didn't explain them well enough, as Andy Burnham, Ed Balls and ghastly Phil Woolas have all claimed. There's an element of truth in this, but far more damaging was the failure to even begin to challenge the repeated lies and misinformation which was bellowed from the tabloids on an almost daily basis on the subject. Coupled with the decision to not even begin to defend the scale of immigration, which the public will always give credit for even if they don't agree with you, it allowed a whole series of myths to develop which will be all but impossible to shift.

One of the biggest insights into just how warped the party's thinking has become is provided by the continuing obsession with middle class benefits, as elucidated by the supposed left-leaning Ed Miliband and also by Burnham. Rather than being concerned with those losing their jobs, who could presumably be depended upon to vote Labour regardless, they instead worry about the falling disposable income of those in work, embittered that those "who weren't doing the right thing" were being "rewarded" while they had to cut back ever so slightly. Rather than dismiss this as an unreasonable grievance during a recession when everyone's spending power diminishes, the party always seems to believe that the state should do more, regardless of the cost. Labour has become caught in its own trap: why vote for a party that has moved so far to the right on so many policies when you can instead plump for the real thing in the shape of the Tories?

My initial conclusion after the election was that at last Labour could have a real debate, both with itself and the country at large about where it had gone so wrong during its time in office. Instead, it seems to have already decided that rather than oppose the Con-Dem coalition from the left, it's far easier to do so from the right. The party was always going to defend its policies on crime and civil liberties, the latter of which the two opposition parties were always to the left of Labour on, yet the all the other noises being made so far have been in much the same vein. This was where Jon Cruddas could have made such a valuable impact had he decided to stand: he may have been a loyalist with a poor voting record, but he would have pushed the leadership debate leftwards without his candidacy being dismissed as irrelevant or doomed to inevitable failure. As refreshing as Diane Abbott's candidacy is, and important as her rebuttal of the consensus on how immigration lost Labour the election also was, she's now split the left vote just as Meacher and McDonnell did back in 07, making it less likely either herself or John will end up on the final ballot paper.

Labour lost on May the 6th because of a whole myriad of factors: Gordon Brown, the recession, the sheer amount of people wanting a change, and only then because of individual policies. To limit the inquiry to just the same, familiar number of issues which the party so often focused on is a sign of how it has yet to come to terms with the defeat, let alone with how it brought so much of it upon itself through its authoritarian stance on almost any dissent or difference of internal opinion. Only by being open with itself and with its supporters about all of this can it even begin to start the rebuilding work necessary. Not a single one of the four candidates with a chance has expressed anything even resembling such doubt; and as the Con-Dem coalition looks to be far more stable than anyone could ever have imagined it would be, the time the party could have to spend in the wilderness might be far longer than the five years or less which some first thought. The party desperately needs a realistic candidate without the baggage of being a Blair or Brown supporter; it doesn't look as if it's going to get one. Next Labour looks to be a very long way in the future.

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5/22/2010 02:36:00 pm | |

Friday, February 26, 2010 

Paragraph 168 and all that.

It's been a week of non-denial denials, as well as some especially flagrant lies in the shape of Gordon Brown's curious failure to remember unleashing "the forces of hell" against his chancellor after he made the mistake of being too honest with an interviewer. Kindly, they've saved the best until last, with the trifecta of prime minister, home secretary and foreign secretary all uniting in defending those poor, unable to answer back protectors of the realm in the security services:

"We totally reject any suggestion that the security services have a systemic problem in respecting human rights. We wholly reject too that they have any interest in suppressing or withholding information from ministers or the courts."


"It is the nature of the work of the intelligence services that they cannot defend themselves against many of the allegations that have been made. But I can - and I have every confidence that their work does not undermine the principles and values that are the best guarantee of our future security."


It's instructive that all three of these statements, in response to the full disclosure of paragraph 168 of the "seven paragraphs" ruling, only talk in the present tense. Is anyone actually suggesting that the security services now have a systemic problem in respecting human rights? It's been clear that both MI5 and 6 have somewhat changed their ways as a result of the allegations made against them involving both complicity in torture and rendition, helped along by the fact that to a certain extent the CIA has also moderated its behaviour. Alan Johnson's second sentence is worded equally carefully - while Lord Neuberger suggests that David Miliband was misled by MI5 when he issued the public interest immunity certificates put before the court, the main allegation made by Neuberger is that MI5 lied to the Intelligence and Security Committee when they told it in March 2005 that "they operated a culture that respected human rights and that coercive interrogation techniques were alien to the Services' general ethics, methodology and training" while they also "denied that [they] knew of any ill-treatment of detainees interviewed by them whilst detained by or on behalf of the [US] Government". The ISC contains no serving ministers, and no one has claimed that the security services have suppressed or withheld evidence from the courts.

Likewise, as asinine as Brown's claim is that the security services cannot defend themselves, somewhat contradicted by Jonathan Evans' moon-lighting as a Telegraph columnist, why shouldn't he have "every confidence" that their work doesn't undermine "the principles and values" that keep us safe? After all, the new guidelines under which MI5 and 6 are meant to work, which explicitly forbid any complicity in mistreatment have been in place now for some time, and there's been no indication as yet that they aren't being followed. We aren't talking about the here and now however, we're talking about what the security services did, which Brown, Miliband and Johnson strangely don't seem to want to discuss. It would be nice, for instance, for Miliband to comment on whether he was misled by MI5 as Neuberger suggests he was, something which he inexplicably declined to mention in an otherwise lengthy tête-a-tête with a BBC journalist.

The other defence of the security services, and with it the ISC, is that they weren't lying in 2005 when they told the committee the lines stated above as they didn't then apparently know about all the additional documents and information which were only found at a later date once the courts were involved. This is errant nonsense of the most obfuscatory kind. Two years later the ISC was told by Eliza Manningham-Buller (or Bullshitter, as only I call her), then head of MI5, that it was "regrettable that assurances regarding proper treatment of detainees were not sought from the Americans" in Binyam Mohamed's case, despite knowing full well, as the seven paragraphs show, that he was already being tortured before "Witness B" went to interview him. These documents were withheld for the very reason that they directly contradicted what MI5 had told and continued to tell the committee, right up until it was no longer legally possible to pretend otherwise. Miliband, Brown and Johnson are defending the indefensible, and they know it. The only question remains is whether ministers themselves were kept in the dark by the security services in a similar fashion until plausible deniability was no longer an option. The only way we'll find that out is through a judicial inquiry, something that both ministers and the security services will resist with every fibre of their being.

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2/26/2010 10:23:00 pm | |

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