Saturday, September 12, 2015 

Life becoming a landslide.

Harriet Harman, worst interim leader of any organisation since Roger Biscuitbarrel managed in the space of 3 months to destroy his father's vodka empire, mainly by spending £2bn on a gigantic frozen alcohol castle as a marketing ploy?   Yeah, pretty much.

Also, I can finally label myself with a percentage.  I am the 4.5%.  Feel me.

Good luck Jeremy.  We're all going to need it.

P.S. All those saying kind things about Liz Kendall now (and I don't mean Corbyn).  Where were you before?

P.P.S. "I, Nicola Sturgeon, welcome Jeremy Corbyn so long as he agrees entirely with SNP policy on everything.  If he doesn't, then obviously the Labour party is just as bad as it has always been and the only possible alternative to the Tories is independence, which will truly help England just as much as it will Scotland."

P.P.P.S. As Tom Clark says, humility from everyone ought to be the immediate response to Corbyn's crushing victory.  The best possible way for Corbyn himself to contribute to that, as it's already apparent that the same people with much in the way of responsibility for the scale of the win have no intention of being so, would be to appoint someone as shadow chancellor who is not from within his circle.  Considering quite how many are already saying they're going to the backbenches that might be getting more difficult by the minute, but John McDonnell cannot credibly be George Osborne's opposite.

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9/12/2015 12:24:00 pm | |

Thursday, September 10, 2015 

The road to Jeremy redux.

Flying Rodent has, as so often, expressed it best.  If back in 2006, say around the time that Tony Blair was ignoring widespread calls to help push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, insistent as he was that the IDF be allowed to further "degrade" a wide swathe of Lebanon, someone had said that 9 years later Jeremy Corbyn would be Labour party leader, you would have laughed.  Then laughed some more.  Then after distracting this obviously confused individual by pointing in the opposite direction, you would have ran away as quickly as your legs could carry you.  The Labour party, led by a serial rebel utterly opposed to liberal interventionism and pretty much everything else New Labour had done?  If it wasn't so outlandishly unrealistic as to be almost unimaginable, your first thought would surely be along the lines of what on earth did Labour as a whole do to reach such a position.

Jeremy Corbyn hasn't won yet.  He might not win.  Who knows, perhaps all the reported missing ballots are part of a last ditch conspiracy at the upper echelons of the party to try to swing it in the direction of the "electable" as opposed to the completely "unelectable".  I wouldn't be totally shocked if, despite everything, Andy Burnham manages to grab the leadership on the basis of second or third preferences.

That senior figures seem to be attempting to come to terms with a Corbyn leadership does nonetheless suggest they too expect Corbyn to be declared the winner on Saturday morning.  They presumably have some sort of inkling from both the ballots sent in weeks ago and from the online voting system of how the race has shaken out, and acceptance rather than anger now appears to be the emotion setting in.  Everyone must accept the result and the mandate given to the new leader, said Liz Kendall today, all but admitting her failure to make headway in the contest.

Trying to put yourself back in the mindset of 2006 as a whole is difficult.  I'm sure my 2006 self would have some harsh words for its 2015 version: join the Labour party, even as a registered member?  And worse yet, to end up putting Kendall, the most Blairite candidate of the four as first choice, despite not agreeing with half of what she says?  Never mind what's happened for Corbyn to be the likely winner, what happened to you?

I changed.  I changed because the political surroundings have changed.  Labour, meanwhile, has for the most part stood still.  Ed Miliband did his best, but he wasn't the right man at the right time.  If Miliband served a purpose, it was to paper over the cracks that were there if only more people had wanted to see them.  He was just left enough to keep most Labour sympathisers on board, but wasn't right enough to properly enthuse those within the party who were embittered, rightly or wrongly, by first Blair in their eyes being "forced" out, and then Ed's victory over David.  Liz Kendall in her speech said there wasn't a proper debate in the 2010 leadership contest because of the Ed-David rivalry, and wasn't afterwards because of wanting to be loyal to the new leader.  This is only half true: plenty of those on the right of the party, some overtly, others more stealthily, made clear their antipathy towards Ed and his style repeatedly.  There was a "crisis" nearly every summer.  The party didn't get rid of Ed, because Labour tends not to get rid of its leaders, but it was obvious that some inside it weren't pulling their weight.  Looking back now it's difficult to see how Labour could possibly have won the election, yet if some of those senior figures had made more of an effort, it might not have been such a crushing one.  The Tories could have been denied their majority for a start.

Liz Kendall has been good enough to admit, if a little grudgingly, that she was perhaps a little too "blunt" in the aftermath of the election in her diagnosis of why the party lost.  Nearer the reality is that some on her wing of the party regarded the defeat as a relief, because it proved them right.  Ed Miliband was a loser, his policies were neither one thing nor the other, Labour can only win by triangulating.  Anyone thinking otherwise is an idiot.  They could be, perhaps are, right.  You don't however deal with your upset and bitterly disappointed supporters' depression by crowing about how right you are after such a defeat, by continuing to lecture them on their foolishness, and agreeing wholesale with the analysis of the victorious opponents.  That was the first mistake.

The second was, as now pretty much everyone accepts, the welfare vote.  Refusing to oppose a bill that as the IFS has just confirmed again will mean those currently eligible for tax credits and other benefits will lose on average £750 a year was suicidal.  Forget Osborne's trap, imaginary or not, these are working people having money taken from them to, according to preference, pay to close the deficit caused by the necessity of bailing out the banks, or to allow those with estates worth up to £1 million pass them on entirely tax free.  If Labour will not defend the very people it was brought into existence to represent, then those people will find someone who will.  With no one else on offer, they decided on Jeremy Corbyn.

In truth these were only the catalysts for what's happened over the past two months.  As discussed previously, as long as a political party continues to win and appeal to a big enough slice of the electorate, it can do almost as it feels.  Tony Blair proved that, as have the Tories.  What you can't do is create a fissure as large as the Iraq war did, continue to rub your supporters' nose in it by doing the opposite of their first instincts, such as with academies, NHS privatisation, civil liberties and so on, and then still lose.  To do so once can be forgiven; when it happens again, and the same people carry on with their self-serving, fatuous missives on how right they are and how wrong everyone else has been, you're inviting a rebellion.

Far too late it seems that Liz Kendall and some of the others on the right of the party have partially realised their mistakes.  In her speech she contradicts herself repeatedly, can't quite bring herself to admit that if not she personally then some of her biggest supporters only made things worse, but there's the recognition that for all the complaining of how she was caricatured (unfairly) as a Tory, there are good, decent reasons why many of those who have voted Corbyn believe Labour has abandoned its principles.  If Corbyn wins, the victory needs to be respected, the people who have joined the party must be engaged with and listened to, the debate started by the campaign must continue, and the fight must now be taken to the Tories.

The problem with that is if as expected Corbyn becomes leader, the fight against him by the Tories and the press will begin in earnest.  Thought you'd already seen every piece of dirt that could possibly be used against him?  Don't believe it for a second.  Every prime minister's questions will include reference to Jez's friends in Hamas and Hezbollah, how he wants to nationalise Marks and Spencer, hand our nuclear weapons straight over to Putin, and reanimate the corpse of Bob Crow.  This will only be amplified by just how many within Labour and on the left have denounced Corbyn as a Marxist loon, more pally with Islamists and tyrants than our actual allies.  Kendall and others call for the result to be respected, almost for Corbyn to be supported, and then say they couldn't possibly serve under him.  When Corbyn has rebelled hundreds of times he perhaps can't expect loyalty in return, and yet what chance does he have if the other leadership contenders, think of them what you like, refuse to do the bare minimum?

Deep down, I think we all know that Corbyn cannot possibly win an election.  Everything that was against Ed is against Jeremy doubly so.  Then again, no one and I really do mean no one said he could win, let alone would win.  No one knows anything.  As Janan Ganesh wrote in the FT yesterday, George Osborne might be a strategist, but he has yet to prove he can lead.  Against Osborne, the odds change.  No one knows what's going to happen next week, let alone in 5 years.  Corbyn cannot possibly be as divisive a leader as he has been a candidate; he will reach out across the party, and will appeal in a way that the other three candidates could not.  Nothing is set in stone.

Moreover, this rupture had to happen for the good of the Labour party.  The debates that Kendall talked about in her speech need to take place, and they would not have done if either Burnham or Cooper had walked to victory as expected.  One side, either the left or the right, had to recognise it had things wrong.  I would have rather that Kendall had accepted earlier in the campaign what she has now and adjusted her message accordingly, giving her more of a chance, as I still maintain she is the most electable of all the candidates.  Corbyn will nevertheless do, as he will have much the same effect.  Labour has to decide what it is for in a rapidly changing world, where work seems ever more insecure for ever more people, but also where empathy, solidarity and support for collective policies seems to erode with each passing year.  The challenge is not to return to the failures of the past, whether they be the ones of Labour in the 80s, 90s or 2000s, but to bring forward a politics that maintains the party's values in the face of opposition from all sides.  Whoever is appointed on Saturday, I can't say I envy them.

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9/10/2015 10:25:00 pm | |

Monday, August 24, 2015 

The interminable adventures of a Labour supporter, pt. 1.

There are many ways to spend a weekend.  I doubt most people's idea of a good time would be going to see the former frontrunner in the Labour leadership election try his best to persuade other legendarily boring gits to vote for him, but this apparently is my life now as an official Labour supporter™.  Or at least it will be until some bright spark connects my real name to this blog, where I have previously said to vote for parties other than Labour, something considered enough to bar you from being a member or supporter, even if you campaigned for the party or said to vote for them this year.  With new friends, eh?

Anyway, just a few points:

1. I estimate between 150 to 200 turned up to see Andy Burnham speak and then take questions, certainly more than I expected.  Jeremy Corbyn has been filling far bigger places than where we were, getting numbers in the region of 800-1200, but Burnham himself seem pleased with the turnout.  Considering where I live is at the best of times devoid of anything approaching culture (the coming attraction at the local theatre is Shrek The Musical) and completely apolitical, I don't think it was bad going.  I've been to stand-up gigs where the numbers could be counted on a single pair of hands, if that's a comparable metric.  (Yes, yes it is).

2. The only person to mention Jeremy Corbyn was... Andy Burnham.  To the point where it almost seemed as though he was the man who couldn't be named.

3. The most intriguing thing Burnham said by far was that if he'd resigned from the shadow cabinet over the welfare bill, he expects he'd probably still be the frontrunner.  And indeed, he's almost certainly right to think so.  He didn't however because he's never broken the Labour whip, loyalty to the party being far more important than taking personal advantage.  Unity is strength, he repeated, a number of times.  Apart from being just a word away from one of the key slogans of Ingsoc from 1984, it seemed on a number of levels to be a truly odd line to take and regard as a plus point.  There's nothing wrong with resigning over a point of principle, especially when the politics behind the line being pushed are so utterly wrongheaded.  Moreover, if Burnham had resigned and gained accolades for doing so, much of the ridiculously damaging in-fighting that has since been conducted over the rise of Corbyn would have been avoided.  It seemed like a false line, precisely what the rival campaigns of Cooper and Kendall have accused him repeatedly of adopting.

4.  Regardless, Burnham was more impressive than I expected him to be.  Yes, he's obviously had a lot of practice in delivering his short speech and in answering questions put to him, but he did so with admirable fluency, taking three questions at a time and answering them in turn, without resorting to cliches, platitudes or padding out his responses.  His only real annoying tick was in referring to Cameron and pals more than once as "the Bullingdon boys", which apart from being increasingly old and a bit rich from a Cambridge graduate, hasn't really posed said "Bullingdon boys" much trouble with the voters, has it?  Should he come through on second preferences, I'm less concerned than before that he will just be Ed Miliband Mk2.

5.  I wasn't though in the slightest bit convinced.  On the surface, there's much to like about Burnham: his manifesto is the most detailed apart from Corbyn's, has a good line in creating a National Health and Care Service, funded through a care levy, and behind Kendall would be the candidate the Tories most fear.  He seems to be a Thoroughly Good Bloke, certainly less weird or geeky than that loser MIliband, something we're informed voters respect greatly, despite also much liking politicians who are complete dicks. 

What he lacks is that ruthlessness Ed did occasionally show; the point I felt like making, but didn't, both because it was more of a statement than a question and although this blog hides it, I'm far more shy and retiring than you might imagine, was that if he had resigned over the welfare vote and hadn't joined in with the others in the aftermath of the election in the accepting everything the Tories, Blairites and right-wing press said about why Labour lost, he might already have it in the bag.  He answered a question about conviction from someone who was clearly leaning towards Corbyn by saying that we should look at his role in the Hillsborough inquiry as to how he will challenge vested interests and the right people.  This would mean more if it hadn't taken the 20th anniversary memorial at Anfield to spark his determination; the passing of time meant there was little real opposition to taking another look, the Sun having repeatedly tried by that point to apologise, if the police and state were yet to.

Labour needs, deserves better than someone who only acts once the time is right, who only moves once others have done so.  Burnham seems the compromise, and despite the party needing to come to a compromise once the leader is elected, doing so over the leader isn't the answer.  That said, I would now like to see Liz Kendall speak and answer questions in person, although she seems to have abandoned the pretence of doing much other than TV and radio appearances and calling individual members, for obvious reasons.

6.  The only entryist in evidence was a Tory councillor who for reasons known only to himself decided to gatecrash the event and prove he had an even more pathetic existence than the rest of us.  His question, when he could have easily made everyone uncomfortable by asking about the deficit or Corbyn, was to ask Burnham why Tony Blair lied over Iraq.  Yes, really.

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8/24/2015 09:25:00 pm | |

Tuesday, August 18, 2015 

"Self-improvement is masturbation. Now, self-destruction?"

(Yeah, I can quote Fight Club as well.  Oh, and incidentally Liz Kendall's campaign did get round to emailing me today.) 

Of all the ill-judged and misguided interventions in the Labour leadership contest, David Miliband's is without question the most tone deaf.  He name checks both Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt, two of the figures who have most helped push party members towards Corbyn with their intemperate outbursts, repeats the nonsense that Labour lost because his brother retreated from the true Blairite way,  and then advises that Britain could become an effective one party Conservative state.  Well yes, it certainly could if whoever becomes leader follows the D Miliband path of reform, reform, reform.  It's either reform or Conservatism, folks, it's simple as that.

Except of course it isn't.  To portray Jeremy Corbyn's platform as pure nostalgia, the failed policies of the past, a wholehearted return to the 80s is a caricature and no more comforting for it.  Whether you like the idea or not, the Corbyn proposal for people's quantitative easing offers an alternative to austerity that none of the other candidates have come close to matching.  Miliband responds to the retaliatory accusations that the other three merely want to reheat what worked in the 90s by claiming nothing could be further the truth, only to produce a list of policies, or rather "ideas" almost indistinguishable from the ones that became increasingly less popular in each successive election.  Only the references to secular stagnation and a low-carbon European energy future mask what is an incredibly familiar programme, complete with the same old euphemisms.  What else is the reference to "combat humanitarian catastrophe where it occurs" other than a call for more liberal interventionism?  Miliband is clearly referring to Syria, rather forgetting that it was our invoking of the responsibility to protect in Libya that has had just a big an impact on the numbers seeking asylum as anything else.

If there's one message that each of the successive figures from the past have wanted to drill into the newly signed up supporters, affiliates and members, it's that Labour has to be a party of government, not protest.  And yet the irony is that Jeremy Corbyn has been by the far the most leader-like of all the candidates.  He's declined to respond in kind to all the various insults both he and his supporters have received, has repeatedly set out in detail exactly what his policies would entail, in complete difference to the other three, and when confronted with the accusations of being acquainted with antisemites has given straight answers, if not at the first time of asking.

The contrast with Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who have spent the past day fighting like two tomcats in a sack could not be more stark.  Cooper, having seemingly let all the various transfers of allegiance from the those on the right of the party go to her head, demanded that Burnham withdraw both because he clearly can't be trusted to properly oppose Corbyn and only she can possibly win.  Considering Cooper's strategy from the outset was to say almost nothing in the slightest bit challenging and in the end triumph on the basis of second preference votes, her extremely late in the day conversion to attacking Corbyn head on is just a little rich.  Besides, regardless of Burnham's similar lack of anything remotely approaching conviction, the next leader will need to work not just with the various factions within the party but also with those who have been enthused by Corbyn.  To regard him and those who've supported him as beyond the pale completely, as Cooper and Liz Kendall apparently do just isn't going to work.  Corbyn probably won't want a shadow cabinet position, but there's no reason why he couldn't play a similar role to the one say Jon Cruddas does currently.  He certainly couldn't do any worse, as the latest batch of risible research commissioned by Cruddas shows.  Prospectors, pioneers and settlers, fuck me sideways.

As the man formerly known as Anton Vowl tweeted, if we didn't know it before, there are an awful lot of arseholes in the Labour party.  Arseholes with remarkably thin skins, it should be added.  Some of the same people who have gone around shouting about Marxists, Hezbollah and Hamas lovers, or simply called anyone thinking of voting for Corbyn idiots or in need of a heart transplant are it turns out really quite hurt when they're called Tories by anonymous people on the internet.  Liz Kendall took to moaning about this at the weekend, and repeated her message today.  To be fair, Kendall has not herself been one of those going around insulting people, even if those who are or at least were supporting her were in the vanguard of doing so.  Calling those on the right of the party Tories is not helpful, but nor is it as Kendall claims, an "enormous strategic mistake".  An enormous strategic mistake is to carry on acting like spoilt children, spitting out dummies when things don't go your way.  For Yvette Cooper's campaign to repeatedly play the sexist card when Burnham's has as far as we know simply been stating the facts as we know them, that she can't win, is exceptionally low politics.

It's also indicative of the hole the "mainstream" of the party has dug itself into.  Their hope was to have a simple, straightforward contest where all the candidates agreed with the Tory and right-wing media consensus on why Labour lost, elect whoever emerged on top and go from there.  This fell apart not with Corbyn's entry into the contest, but when Harriet Harman declared the party would not oppose the government's welfare bill.  Everything that has happened since has its root in that unbelievably damaging capitulation, an act of self-harm from a party leadership that claims it has to be in power in order to protect the vulnerable.

Any doubts about Corbyn, and they are many and myriad, have been overlooked both because of those making them, whether they be the Decents that ignore the realities of the Middle East and cheer lead for Israel regardless of how it acts and who have been making the same hysterical arguments for years,  the ex-party figures that have simply lost any influence they once had, or down to how the other three candidates are just so woefully lacking in every regard.  Rather than accept they might have made any mistakes, their reaction has been to turn on each other, to the point where it looks as though regardless of who wins, the first task will be to rebuild trust and relationships that should never have broken down in the first place.  Rather than welcome new members the major response has been to treat them with suspicion if not outright contempt.  Rather than work with whoever the new leader is, many have said they will refuse to serve under one person or another, while others are plotting practically in the open.

The reason the Conservatives as a party have barely bothered to comment on the woe of their rival is they don't need to.  Labour's self-destruction these past few weeks has been completely unnecessary and all the more damaging for it.  Nothing makes a party look less electable or serious than the recriminations that probably haven't as much as started yet.  Absolutely nothing I've seen or heard, regardless of all the entreaties and pleas has made me alter my view that the party needs either Jeremy Corbyn or Liz Kendall to win, if only so that all the bad blood can be purged in one go, however it is that turns out.  If it means a split in the party, frankly so be it.  The quicker the left gets itself organised the better.  This didn't have to happen, but now that it has it might as well come to a conclusive end.  Voting for either Cooper or Burnham is only going to prolong the agony.

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8/18/2015 11:15:00 pm | |

Monday, August 17, 2015 

Oh and dear.

Since paying my £3 last Monday and signing up as a Labour supporter, I've had emails from, in order, Jeremy Corbyn's campaign, Stella Creasy's campaign (with the topic "The first rule of Campaign Fight(Back) Club is..." and then the body doesn't enlighten me further.  Don't talk about Campaign Fight(Back) Club? Do talk about Campaign Fight(Back) Club?  Don't always try and be down with the kids by referencing 90s novels and films?), Andy Burnham's campaign, Tom Watson's campaign, Stella Creasy's campaign again, and finally, Yvette Cooper's campaign.  Spot the odd one out.

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8/17/2015 09:19:00 pm | |

Thursday, August 13, 2015 

The road to Jeremy.

"There is something fascinating about watching a party wrestle with its soul."  So goes Tony Blair's explanation as to why Jeremy Corbyn's campaign has "sparked interest".  What Blair really thinks is far clearer: this isn't just people rubbernecking, who don't want to look at an accident but can't find the willpower not to, but the actions of those whose first instinct is to reach for their smartphone and "join in".  To Blair and the still true believing Blairites, Corbyn doesn't so much as offer creative destruction, but just destruction: everything they achieved is under threat.  To them, the reason Labour lost the last two elections is because Gordon and Ed abandoned their "values", didn't remain that "radical centre".  Everything else that's happened since Blair stepped down is irrelevant.

As has already been pointed out approximately 392 million times, the lack of self-awareness is quite extraordinary.  It doesn't seem to occur to Blair that perhaps, just perhaps, the decisions he took while leader might have something to do with Labour's predicament now.  For argument's sake, let's dispense with the Iraq war, the way you can only push a party around for so long by arguing the only way to win is through triangulation, with the constant taking on of your own backbenchers, and accept the Blair argument that while not perfect, he left the party in a good shape.

The fact is he didn't.  The TB-GBs, the infighting, the broken promises, they left a party that while never united in its history, and has as the left is wont to do, often accused its leaders of selling out, substantially weakened.  Moreover, Blair and Brown had dominated the party for so long that once the pair themselves were out of the way, it left the crop of leadership candidates we saw in 2010 to pick up the pieces.  The Blairites had always thought themselves far more talented than they were in actuality, as could not be more evidenced by Hazel Blears and John Reid to name but the two most egregious examples.  Not that Brown's acolytes were much better on the whole, but give me Ed Balls over almost any of the now vastly diminished gang of Blair groupies any day.  Brown's election or rather ascension was swiftly followed by the spitting out of the dummy by such leading lights as James Purnell, now of course of the BBC.  Fact was that Labour was doomed by the crash, anyway; how different things might have been had Brown had the courage to call that early election, and ignore the polls suggesting he would only scrape back in.

This process was then repeated following Ed Miliband's election.  It was David's birthright!  Ed stabbed him in the back!  Ed's a hopeless loser!  And who knows, maybe, just maybe a David Miliband-led party would have performed slightly better.  Rather than wait for a second opportunity though, or hell, even stop sulking and do his darnedest to help his brother out, Dave fucked off to New York, and with him went the Blairites' last realistic hope.  Leaving who?  Chuka Umunna, who couldn't so much as handle the slightest amount of press intrusion that Ed dealt with and fought back against from the start?  Liz Kendall, who bless her is trying but hasn't worked out you can't just deliver insults and lectures and expect a depressed yet still hopeful party will snap back into line?  Rachel Reeves, who makes Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson look interesting, and in any case has now hitched her wagon to the Burnham train?  Speaking of whom, isn't it indicative that excluding Corbyn, the two other candidates either ran previously and came second from last, or are the partner of someone also rejected?  Isn't that perhaps an insight into just why someone as unelectable, as backwards, as old school as Corbyn has reached the parts they haven't?

No, it's not their fault.  At the very heart of the modern Labour party is a contradiction: it claims to be the people's party, to represent those from all walks of life, and yet when those very same people decide they would like to vote for the next leader, the reaction is one of horror and paranoia.  It surely ought to occur that only a tiny number of the 121,000 who have registered as supporters can be Trots or Tories, and that for a party that lost so badly to have signed up that number in such a short space of time, not to include those who've done so through their union, is something really quite special.  To end up with an electorate of over 600,000 gives the lie to the idea that mass party membership isn't possible in the 21st century.  It ought to be embraced, celebrated.  The number will without doubt fall back significantly, but it still means that a huge number of people in this country are looking to the Labour party, not to any other organisation, grouplet or flash in the pan activist group to lead the opposition to the Conservatives.

And yet to Blair and indeed the other three candidates this feat apparently equals annihilation.  It would of course be wrong to extrapolate from the mass sign up that the country at large is crying out for an alternative; if it were, more would have voted for Ed.  It hardly though suggests Labour is anywhere near finished, unless that is Labour itself it is out of pure spite.  The situation reminds of fans of a band that stop liking their previously favourite group once it hits the mainstream, regardless of whether or not they adapted themselves to do so.  When Labour had the 400,000 or so members it did at the height of Blairism, that was great, fantastic.  When they sign up to vote Corbyn, although that again is to surmise, the sky is about to fall.

As is no doubt clear by my fluttering of eyelashes in the direction of Kendall, I'm not Corbyn's biggest fan.  There's nothing spectacularly wrong with any of his policies, but then neither is there anything spectacularly right with them, or rather there's no reason why they should be priorities.  I quite like the idea of renationalising the railways by taking them back into state control as the current franchises expire, but when like it or not money is so tight should it be a leading pledge?  The same goes for abolishing tuition fees, which again is a wonderful, progressive policy, just one that perplexes me by how it continues to be proposed when we know just how screwed any party will be that fails to live up to the promise.  Compare them though with what's on offer from the other three, with only Kendall offering substantially anything different, and nearly always for the worse, and it's little wonder why a left-wing party has decided that if it's going to lose, it might as well lose by being genuinely left-wing.  Why carry on waltzing into George Osborne's bear traps if it won't alter the end result?

This is to fall into the belief that Corbyn is completely unelectable, admittedly.  A lot can happen in 5 years, and Blair's line in his article that the public would turn on the party for its self-indulgence is nonsense.  A Corbyn led Labour party would be many things, but not providing active opposition is hardly something it could be accused of.  The obsession with being a party of government at all times, when Labour cannot be a party of government unless the Tories lose their slight majority for 5 years is completely bizarre.  There is not the slightest recognition that Labour's victory in 2005 with 35% of the vote was no more sustainable than Tories' win with 36% this time will be.  Ed Miliband won more votes in England than Blair did in 2005, it should be pointed out.

The last roll of the dice it seems is to Yvette Cooper.  Liz Kendall is too far behind, Andy Burnham can't be trusted as far as he can be thrown, so it falls to the candidate that has said the least, has the least personality and hoped to swing it on the basis of 2nd choice votes from Corbyn supporters to carry the banner of the sensible.  Considering just how boring David Cameron is, in some ways Cooper would certainly be a worthy competitor: if that's what the British public likes most about their leaders at this point in history, then carry on.  According to the Graun though the next leader must take on "the desiccated condition of the Labour establishment", the same Labour establishment that Cooper has finally embraced with her attack on Corbyn.  I can't help but think that either Burnham or Kendall would be more capable of that task, of "harnessing young people's passion", and am frankly bemused by the sudden upswing in support for someone who has always seemed up to now an also-ran, achieving high office without ever having done anything to distinguish themselves.  Which might just have something to do with it.

In any case, you suspect it's all been left too late.  Rather than try and engage Corbyn supporters as soon as it became clear he was making headway, the approach has been to either insult him or them, or hope that by sort of agreeing with him while also sort of not that everyone would see how radical and sensible they were at the same time.  As ought to have been lesson from the Lib Dem collapse, from the nigh on 4 million votes for UKIP, it doesn't work like that anymore.  Nor are they going to take of notice of those who claim that political parochialism is a result of the crash, rather than the foreign policy disasters supported by the same people who keep on saying no you can't, and who then go on to quote the Hamas charter as to why Jeremy Corbyn while not personally an anti-semite, does stand in close proximity to them.  A Corbyn leadership might not last long, it probably won't trouble the Tories in the slightest, but Labour had better started getting used to the idea sharpish.  Hell, it could even look at precisely how it got here, take some responsibility, and make the best of it.

Yeah, right.

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8/13/2015 10:41:00 pm | |

Monday, August 10, 2015 

Dear Liz Kendall...

You'll be pleased to know I've just signed up as a supporter of the Labour party, with the intention of voting for you as my first choice for leader.  Most likely however I will be putting Jeremy Corbyn as second choice.  Why would anyone do such a thing when the mutual antagonisms between your wing of the Labour party, dismissively and ever more irrelevantly labelled the Blairite faction, and that of Corbyn, equally derisively labelled the hard left, have broken out into the open as never before during the contest thus far?

First off, we both know that this has been an especially nasty and vituperative campaign.  It reminds more than anything of the Scottish independence debate, when both sides often appeared to be trying their best to scaremonger and appeal to the basest instincts of their supporters.  Some of it has been down to the collective trauma the party and its supporters went through on May the 7th, having been convinced that power of some sort, whether in a minority or a coalition, seemed likely.  The anger, finger pointing, sulking and exchanging of insults has been without doubt part of the process of getting over that crushing disappointment.  You can relate as you've said in a couple of interviews just how despondent you were after the 1992 defeat.

It's also partially though a result of just how lacking the candidates on offer are, and I'm afraid to say I'm including you when I say that.  The latest Private Eye features the spoof headline "WHY JEREMY CORBYN IS WINNING THE LABOUR LEADERSHIP -- IN FULL" with a photo of yourself, Andy and Yvette below, and that's about the most accurate and succinct summary of why we are where we are that you'll find.  No, it isn't fair, but then nor has much of the poison spread if not by your supporters then by those who are most favourable towards you as leader.  Labour party members are not idiots, morons or anything else for at this stage plumping for Jeremy to be the next leader, nor are threats from donors or party grandees to do the "right thing" or else in any way helpful.  The contest does not need to be stopped, nor is the surge for Corbyn down to supporters of other parties, either on the left or on the right signing up.  It's because a party that has just gone through the shock of losing a second election on the trot when it seemed on the verge of something needs to be comforted just as much as it does lectured.  You so far have delivered almost entirely lectures, and also don't seem to be listening to what party members are saying, including when you went along with Harriet Harman's absurd and damaging line on abstaining on the welfare bill vote, and at the various hustings.

This is not to say that some of the actions of Corbyn supporters haven't been self-defeating or stupid.  When someone like Alex Andreou comes up with the formulation that Labour only grew from 1983 and only declined from 1997, and apparently lacks the self-awareness to realise that's how politics worked until the last election, or when a union leader rants about the "Blairite virus", without acknowledging that "virus", like it or not, won three elections, it's difficult not to respond in kind.  My point though is that your campaign equally seems to be saying it's all or nothing - that nothing can be done without that power, that protest of the kind Jeremy has engaged in throughout his time as an MP has little to no role in gaining power.  I agree with you that the longer Labour is out of power the greater the risk the Tories will dismantle the achievements that previous Labour governments have introduced.  At the same time however an opposition must oppose, it must campaign, it must protest - and, what's more, it must reach out to those of like minds who are outside the Labour party to help, even if that means reaching deals whereby Labour does not stand in seats like say, Brighton Pavilion.

You and I both know politics is currently in flux.  The Conservatives have just won an election and yet are so uncertain of their position they're using the language of the far-right against migrants.  The world is changing faster than anyone can properly keep up with or understand, and it leads otherwise sensible people to talk nonsense.  It's no wonder the certainties provided by Jeremy or the SNP seems so attractive.  It's why populism has made such a comeback, seems to offer answers when in fact it offers none, either for left or right.  When voters are wrong, they need to be told so.  When political parties are wrong, they need to understand why.

What ought to be fairly certain by now is why Labour lost.  Although he reaches entirely the wrong conclusions and is a busted flush in any case, Alastair Campbell's analysis is fairly sound.  It was not because of any great love for the Conservatives, and certainly not evidence of support for austerity, regardless of what polls with laughably leading questions suggest.  I suspect and hope you know this.  Labour lost because Ed Miliband failed to connect with enough voters; because the party failed to convince on the economy; and then and only then did other factors, including the scare tactics over the never going to happen Labour-SNP pact come into play.  Ed Miliband failed to become prime minister in the main not because he misread the mood of the nation -- Britain in my view has been and likely always will be a small c conservative country -- it was down to how his arguments either weren't listened to, weren't convincing, or not so much as articulated, especially in the face of a media that was unutterably biased against him from the very beginning.

One of the most attractive things, perhaps the most attractive about your campaign has been the fact the media clearly will listen to you.  They might say extremely unkind things about you, demonstrate just how sexist they remain, and your telling a Mail reporter to "fuck off" for asking personal questions deserves to have received more applause than it did, but they will listen.  To win, Labour has to be listened to without at the same time being dismissed or attacked.  Maybe if you become leader usual service will resume, or rather certainly will as 2020 approaches.  Nonetheless, this is an opportunity that shouldn't be wasted.  And yet, for supposedly being this heir to Blair, or at least to what he was prior to when power went to his head utterly, your campaign has been low key, technocratic and fiddling at the edges.  Your five causes, somewhat unfairly mocked on social media for their vagueness, are more fleshed out once you go behind the banner, but still don't satisfy.  Extending the remit of the low pay commission is not going to worry anyone, let alone set the hustings alight.  You want to end inequality from birth, and yet make no mention whatsoever of how the Tories are set to abolish Labour's child poverty targets.  Is this because you support the removal of child tax credits, which have done so much to help?  If so, what's your alternative?

If you're wondering at this point why then I'm supporting you, it's simple.  I believe you are the most electable candidate of the four on offer.  Like you, I want Labour to win in 2020.  I was, like you were in 1992, devastated by the loss in May.  For the first time I felt the Labour party was not just the least worst of all the options, but genuinely on my side.  Moreover, if there is someone needed to tell the Labour party hard truths, and once the campaign is over there will be, I think you're the best person to do so.  Labour cannot be all things to all people and win.  It cannot fall into the fallacy of believing that the reason all those people who were previously Lib Dem voters or toyed with voting UKIP went back to the Tories was because Labour failed to oppose austerity enough.  To have a chance of winning, the party has to get the 18-34 vote out, and again I think once Corbyn mania passes you'll have the best chance of doing so.  The fact you're not married and don't have children ought to be a plus, not a negative.  That you know how to have fun, admit you smoked cannabis when as you put it, were having fun at college, and have a life outside politics are all things that should count in your favour at a time when grey, career politicians are so disliked.

Liz, Labour is a coalition or it is nothing.  You've said you were Labour by choice, not born into it.  That isn't a bad thing, but some were born into it.  Antagonising them hasn't worked.  To win requires first of all damn hard work, but also the support of those who believe in protest.  Without protest Labour would not have come into existence; without protest it would not exist as it is now.  It's why Jeremy will be my second choice, even if I don't believe for a second he could win in 2020 or even last as leader till then.  It's also why I fear that you will come last.

Yours,
         septicisle.

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8/10/2015 10:07:00 pm | |

Monday, July 27, 2015 

Too sensible by half.

Something politicians often fail to understand, as is being demonstrated all too well by the Labour leadership election, is that the public doesn't expect them to be serious all the time all of the time.  Indeed, as demonstrated by Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson to name but two, not always being serious can often work spectacularly in their favour.  It probably won't lead to Downing Street, all things considered, but you might as well have some fun failing to get there.  It's certainly better than being permanently on message, permanently miserable as a result, and still failing.

When a member of the House of Lords is then caught in flagrante, snorting cocaine off the breast of a lady whose services he has procured for the evening, someone they have never heard of from an institution they don't care about, the immediate reaction is not to descend into bilious outrage, but to laugh.  And for damn good reason: regardless of what you think about drugs, prostitution, politicians, privacy, newspaper hypocrisy and all the rest, to see an old fart wearing a red bra and being wonderfully indiscreet, not realising he has been absolutely gloriously stitched up by the women he's paid a miserly £200 to essentially own for a couple of hours is hilarious.  Of course, the justification for exposing him isn't just that he's breaking the law while being in a position to alter said laws, it's also that he brings shame on parliament as a whole by acting in such a fashion, but most people aren't bothered in the slightest by such considerations.  The assumption, like it or not, is the majority if not all politicians are hypocrites and adulterers and moochers, and someone being confirmed as such in fact does relatively little to alter perceptions.  Acting like a maiden aunt after the fact is pointless: those disgusted were disgusted and disgusting anyway.

Which brings us back to said leadership contest, I'm afraid.  As evidenced by Tristram Hunt's article for the Torygraph at the weekend, the Blairite tendency's solution to everything is to be serious and sensible at all times.  One of a friend's most withering criticisms of someone we knew at school, one that has always stayed with me, was this person was too sensible by half.  They went through life not so much living it as doing what was expected of them at every turn.  This person is no doubt more successful than either of us, and we couldn't give a rat's cock.  Perhaps that just confirms we're both idiots.  Or, it might be there's more to life and also to politics than permanently doing what the serious people recommend you do, especially when it ought to have become self-evident that carrying on in such a fashion has not resulted in the benefits you were told it would.

Jeremy Corbyn's lead in nominations from constituency parties is not then because Ed Miliband, on whom everything and anything is being blamed, brought in a load of leftards convinced that if he won he'd immediately create a socialist utopia.  It's because they look at Corbyn, then they look at Burnham, Cooper and Kendall, and realise that if that's the best the supposed sensible, moderate, election winning centre of the party can come up with, they can keep them.  The reason that Diane Abbott got only 20 nominations from constituency parties 5 years ago and came dead last is because the alternatives were far, far more attractive.  The Blairites never forgave Ed for being just that little bit to the left of his brother and appealing to the heart as well as the head, and spent the rest of the parliament simmering with bitter resentment, convinced they were right and everyone else was wrong.  The defeat in their minds proved they were 100% right.

For them to be confronted now with Corbyn apparently in the lead, destined to win, only increases their rage and their determination to carry on, unwilling to consider if they might be wrong or if another approach is needed.  Not all of this is out of sheer bloodymindedness: the Graun for instance is not running all the anti-Corbyn pieces it has because it's a den of Blairites.  If it was it wouldn't have so strongly supported Ed.  When new recruit Matthew d'Anconservative writes saying he doesn't think a Corbyn win would be the disaster everyone thinks and would move the Tories back towards the centre, clearly there is mischief afoot.  For Corbyn to win the leadership and then the election in 2020 is A Very British Coup territory.

The odd thing is Labour knows full well the Burnham, Cooper, Kendall platform looks awful.  This hasn't led to the soul searching it should have done, Hunt's call for a "summer of hard truths" being about only what the serious and sensible people in the party declare to be "hard truths", but rather a simple increase in the factions insulting each other.  It doesn't matter that Burnham appears to suffer from the same problem as the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, that Cooper has even less personality than a wet sock and Kendall's strategy of telling anyone minded to vote for her they are idiots results only in the same back with bells on ("Fuck Kendall" is about the most effusive endorsement she has received thus far), the problem is everyone else, not them.

Like Atul Hatwal, I don't think Corbyn will win the leadership.  This won't however be a result of the serious and sensible people realising they've screwed up spectacularly and that they can't go on treating the party's membership like dirt, while regarding the electorate as always being right however contradictory their urges.  They've gone so far down that route now it would be far too jarring to do an about turn.  It will be because the idiots and morons at the grassroots will do the rethinking instead.  Sadly, this almost certainly means that the serious and sensible people will conclude they were right and everyone else was wrong.  Even worse, it means the party will be saddled with either Burnham or Cooper.  Plus ça change.

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7/27/2015 11:59:00 pm | |

Thursday, July 23, 2015 

"It's not difficult, Manuel. This is not a proposition from Wittgenstein."

"It should not have been complicated to oppose the bill."  No, it shouldn't.  Absolutely nothing about Labour's meltdown this week has been complicated.  Jeremy Corbyn, who said those words about the welfare act, is not complicated.  Nor is his appeal.  He's a left-winger daring to say left-wing things to a left-wing party.

Remarkably, this has been enough to expose Labour for what it has become.  Mary Creagh on Newsnight last night said it was "nostalgic, narcissistic" that a few MPs donated their nominations to Corbyn to get him on the ballot in the interests of a wider debate.  Chuka Umunna says some are acting like "petulant children" for even considering supporting Corbyn.  John McTernan said the MPs who got Corbyn on the ballot are morons.  Tony Blair says anyone whose heart leads them to support Corbyn should get a heart transplant.

A left of centre party that finds itself this discombobulated, this angry, this self-righteous about a socialist deigning to broaden its leadership contest is in danger of digging its own grave.  It seems absolutely nothing has been learned from the party's all but demise in Scotland.  There an upstart party that is on most measures to the right of Labour stole its clothes, struck a left-wing pose and swept the board.  Rather than consider why the country came so close to voting for independence or understand that not distancing itself from the Tories had been an incredible error, the response was to do the equivalent of say no you can't, and vote in a right-winger as the new party leader.

You can't go on saying no you can't and keep expecting everyone to demur.  Labour's membership has been told no you can't for over 20 years now.  In 2007 it didn't even get a choice.  In 2010 it wouldn't have made the slightest difference if the vote had swung David rather than Ed Miliband's way.  The end result would have almost certainly been the same.  Maybe there would still be a Tory-Lib Dem coalition or a Tory minority government rather than a small Tory majority, but Labour would not have won.  In 2015, a membership once again told by the Very Serious People at the top of the party that they are idiots, morons, children for even thinking of taking the party back to the 80s by making a left-winger the leader are saying fuck you, yes we can.

The lack of self-awareness, the lack of self-doubt, the lack of the slightest consideration of whether they might be in the wrong rather than it being everyone else is staggering.  I could understand it more if rather than just abusing Corbyn, repeating the back to the 80s non-argument and insulting all and sundry who think Labour should be better than this (hah), the rest of the leadership candidates were making a distinctive case for themselves.  I could respect the ridicule if at the same time they were admitting the party needs to think long and hard about where it has gone wrong, to listen and learn from both the grassroots and voters in general, to realise that the only way to recover from this position is to have as wide-ranging a debate as possible.  Instead, what's happened has proved John Harris exactly right: a week after the defeat he wrote that he doubted the Labour elite had "the wit or the humility" to accept it needed to do precisely that.

This is in fact to be unfair to Liz Kendall.  She and Corbyn both have a position.  She would make the best leader out of the four, and almost certainly feels compelled by the vacuum on offer from both Burnham and Cooper to play further to the right than she really is.  She too though won't take Corbyn on directly, won't argue her case on her terms, and instead mouths the "disaster" mantra.

It really is as simple as this: if you can't convince the party's own membership that you have a better chance of winning than a socialist stuck in a time warp, as the Blairites are so insistent on portraying Corbyn as, how on earth do you expect to convince the wider electorate?  If you're this scared of debate, this averse to so much as accepting a socialist should be on the ballot on 2015, you should be asking yourself not just what you're doing in the Labour party, but doing in politics at all.  When Frank Field, Frank Field of all people, while still not accepting Corbyn has widened the debate by being on the ballot, says that he hopes one of the other candidates "has actually got both the physical courage and the intellectual clout to start that debate", you know the party is in trouble.  Kendall, and I hope it is Kendall despite everything, still has 7 weeks in which to actually do something other than carp and indulge in ad hominem attacks.  It might just be an idea to get started right away.

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7/23/2015 08:04:00 pm | |

Thursday, July 16, 2015 

Kendall or Corbyn, either will do.

All of us have at some point needed a friend to tell us to stop being stupid.  Tristram Hunt needs that friend right now.  Not so much to get him to stop his raving about Jeremy Corbyn being "politically and economically bankrupt", but his far more idiotic remarks about Labour in general.  Labour, according to Hunt, is "uneasy" about “the modern landscape of Englishness – of St George’s flags, music festivals, soap operas, Premier League football, shopping, gardening and baking”.  Now, quite apart from how this conflates Englishness with things that are self-evidently not definitively English by any stretch of the imagination, it's also complete tosh. Is it really Labour that's uneasy about all those things, not just perhaps St. George's flags, when the prime minister can't so much as remember what team it is he pretends to support?  Hunt's pal needs to take him to one side and whisper in his ear, "mate, you're talking bollocks, get a grip".

Labour's problems do nonetheless look far deeper than those facing the all but annihilated Liberal Democrats.  For them, the only possible way is up, and whether they had chosen Norman Lamb or Tim Farron it's difficult to see how things could possibly get worse.  Indeed, if the party once again discovers its radicalism, such as by building on the momentum started by Nick Clegg on the liberalisation of our utterly broken drug laws, as Lamb suggested during the campaign, it might just attract those like me.  Those who are frankly utterly bewildered by Labour and its inability to realise that if it's going to keep losing, it might as well lose better.

As such, I'm fairly indifferent as to whether either Liz Kendall or Jeremy Corbyn win the leadership contest, as long as it's one of the two.  I might even persuade myself to sign up as a supporter and do the incredibly daft thing of voting for Kendall as my first preference and Corbyn as my second, just to add to the contradictions.  My politics are fairly obviously far closer to Corbyn's than they are Kendall's, but what both promise is change.  Kendall is not the shy Tory or uber-Blairite of caricature; she's to the right of Ed Miliband certainly, and it would be silly to suggest she wouldn't move the party towards the Conservatives.  She would.  She would also though do much to energise the Labour party, whether it would be through pressurising her to not abandon every policy that was developed under Miliband, or by convincing those still clinging on to to the party more out of sentimentality than conviction that it's finally time to abandon ship.

Corbyn would do much the same.  Again, to see him as the caricatured bearded leftie is foolish: the Tories and the Telegraph can imagine all they like he would doom the party, but the idea he wouldn't be far more centrist as leader than remain the permanent rebel is risible.  A victory for Corbyn would result in pretty much the scenario outlined above, only inverted.  It would electrify the wider left, put the SNP's phony purity into a quandary, and rather than leave the Tories with even more room to move into on the centre, just as likely give them an even bigger false sense of security.  There's little the public enjoys less than a sense of unwarranted triumphalism, and who knows, they might even warm to Corbyn in the same way as Labour supporters have, down to how he says what he thinks.  A novel concept, I know.  Kendall also fits that trait to a certain extent: to go along with Harriet Harman's bungled gambit on not opposing parts of the budget after the response the acting leader got took courage.

Both, in short, would challenge Labour to look at itself and where it has gone wrong.  In that respect, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper are the continuity candidates.  You can, as I do, think the Labour manifesto was decent and worth defending as Burnham also does, and at the same time know full well the party must not fall into the one more heave mindset, waiting for the Tories to fuck it all up.  Harriet Harman was right in her motives, as the party must examine why it is has twice been rejected, but remarkably ill-judged in her execution.  Burnham's heart is in the right place, but he hasn't as yet demonstrated what he would do differently; if Ed Miliband wasn't the answer, why go with another safe option?  As for Yvette Cooper, I have absolutely no idea what she stands for.  If I don't, who does?

You can at least see where Tristram Hunt and all the other hysterics over Corbyn are coming from (Labour Uncut has been especially amusing over the past few weeks in this regard), even if many do carry the trait of having been radicals in their youth, and now somehow can't understand why anyone would find such a position attractive or worth a go.  Not many, or rather none of Corbyn's supporters will have gone on University Challenge and answered either Marx, Che Guevara or Trotsky to every question, as David Aaronovitch and his University of Manchester team did, for instance.

All the more reason that we put this nonsense to the test once and for all: let's have either Corbyn or Kendall as leader, let's see how well or how badly they do, and then see if it finally brings home to either the left or right of the party how right (or wrong) they are.  It won't of course, not least because I expect despite the mewling about Corbyn possibly being in the lead, Andy Burnham will in the end triumph and nothing will be solved.  If Labour supporters don't want their party to follow the same path as the Liberal Democrats, standing dead in the centre and getting knocked down as a result, they might want to think again before casting their vote.

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7/16/2015 09:59:00 pm | |

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