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Archive for 2012

After that result, the Republicans will go even more batsh*t insane

07/11/2012, 08:00:18 AM

by Nikhil Dyundi

There is an old adage that oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them. Clearly, there is a lot of truth in this; after all, it is only the government that can actually do things. The administration has the record to be judged.

But let us be in no doubt about what happened yesterday: yes president Obama won, but more than anything else, the Republicans lost. They lost, not only the presidency but failed to retake the senate in a year when both should have been a lock.

They achieved this improbable feat because of one simple fact: their base is batshit insane.

As a result, no vaguely competitive candidate stepped forward for the presidential nomination, leaving them with the weakest representative in decades. Electable, centrist senate incumbents and prospective candidates were brushed aside to make way for a variety of fruitloops who couldn’t stop talking about rape.

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Last week’s commons defeat will force the government to address its EU strategy void

06/11/2012, 07:00:19 AM

by Mark Stockwell

The Labour leadership has no doubt spent much of the past week slapping each other heartily on the back. Bliss is it to defeat the government on the floor of the house; to do so by outflanking them on the EU budget is very heaven.

They should enjoy this tactical victory while they can. They were aided by a lackadaisical Conservative whipping operation, and abetted by a worryingly large group of chronic malcontents on the Tory backbenches. Labour will have to work harder in the long term to persuade voters that Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander’s new-found Eurosceptic fervour would not evaporate the moment the ministerial Eurostar pulled out of St Pancras international.

Clearly, though, it is the government which faces the more pressing strategic issues.

David Cameron’s political instinct (not necessarily the same as his personal inclination) is to try as far as possible to avoid talking about Europe for fear of the “toxic” effect on the Conservative brand. This is understandable. Cameron and George Osborne cut their political teeth in the Maastricht era and that thoroughly miserable experience can’t have failed to be formative.

(I suspect this also partly explains why Labour’s own coterie of former special advisers had so little hesitation in siding with the Tory rebels. There is something of Pavlov’s dog in the way in which both sides have behaved.)

One of the benefits of coalition from Cameron’s point of view was, as Andrew Lilico has suggested at ConservativeHome, that this evasion could be sustained by a block of Lib Dem votes, acting as a counter-weight to backbench rebellions from the Tory right. Wednesday’s vote has shown that this cannot be relied on.

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Obama must be more ambitious if he wins a second term tomorrow

05/11/2012, 04:30:36 PM

by Jonathan Todd

“Obama is forty-seven years old”, noted Russell Baker prior to the 2008 presidential election. “McCain is seventy-two, old enough to be Obama’s father … In classical mythology the son must kill the father to allow for the earth’s renewal.”

Has Obama’s vanquishing of McCain really brought the renewal that it might have done?

Yes, he arrived in office in the midst of the biggest economic calamity since the Great Depression. But, unlike FDR, he has not reformed Wall Street, often seeming keener to pacify than challenge financial interests.

Yes, Obama became president with America’s moral capital debased. But Guantanamo bay remains open. And his escalating use of drone attacks threatens to recruit violent anti-Americans as effectively as Guantanamo bay. His failure to meaningfully support those who oppose the Assad regime in Syria also seems to be increasingly driving them towards extremism.

Yes, China’s rise is about decisions taken over the past 30 years in Beijing, not anything done in DC or on Wall Street. But the tone and content of Obama’s attacks on Romney has hardly encouraged America to look outward to the great opportunities that are opening up as a consequence of Chinese communists doing capitalism better than American capitalists. Nor has any substantive reform of global institutions been secured to make them more democratic, inclusive and credible in a world where economic and political power shifts ever more south and east.

Yes, the American political system is designed to necessitate compromise and Obama was confronted by a Republican party determined to not compromise. But it took him an age to accept this. And he still struggles to adapt to it. He thinks, for example, that his re-election will sufficiently wipe the slate clean that the fiscal cliff will be averted via a deal somewhere close to the Simpson-Bowles plan. It is unclear, though, why Republicans who have not voted for any tax increases since 1990 will suddenly do so.

Obama misapplied the exhortation of Rahm Emmanuel: Never let a serious crisis go to waste. There are at least two crises that Obama has failed to fully exploit.

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The Guardian bottles Leveson

05/11/2012, 07:00:16 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Pity the Guardian. Such good work in bringing hacking into the light and making the case for a full independent inquiry: more than any other newspaper, the Guardian helped reveal the full scale of malfeasance across the press.

Nick Davies and Amelia Hill won scoop of the year at this year’s press awards for their story on the hacking of the Dowlers and the paper has been rightly lauded for its dogged and fearless work.

Now, having shown the world why change is needed, days before Lord Leveson delivers his proposals to reform the way the media is regulated, the Guardian has bottled it.

On Friday, the paper ran a long, meticulously parsed editorial giving their position on regulation. Amid the nuanced 1,130 word meander, there is one salient sentence,

“We do believe in a contract system – not the use of statute – to secure participation.”

It’s easy to become lost in the minutiae of regulatory reform, and the Guardian editorial certainly does an excellent job of getting tangled in the weeds, but there really is only one simple question that needs answering: will media regulation remain voluntary, as it is now, or will all newspapers be covered?

Regardless of the various carrots and sticks that maybe proposed in a new regulatory model, without the sanction of law, it is all still voluntary. If a newspaper proprietor does not want to participate, they don’t have to, and that is that.

This is the Guardian’s position.

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Time for radical reform of the railways

02/11/2012, 05:07:00 PM

by Amanda Ramsay

The department for transport’s fiasco over the west coast mainline has cost the public purse a staggering amount: £40 million for the delays in negotiations with a startling £100 million estimated as the compensation bill. And all of this before the costs of re-running new bidding processes are taken into account!

The knock-on effect of this incompetence has held-up local and intercity rail services, to and from Bristol and in and around the city. On top of the delay and job insecurity for staff at First Great Western, the costs are hideous at a time of cuts that are threatening vital services in communities across the land.

More than ever, we need a publicly owned and integrated railway.

Public opinion is behind bringing rail back into public ownership, hardly surprising when it is estimated that £1.2billion pounds of taxpayers’ money could be saved every year by re-integrating the railways, simplifying the system for passengers and management alike. Over time this saving could be the equivalent of an across the board cut in fares of 18%.

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We all owe the state for the lives we lead and tax is how we pay our fair share

02/11/2012, 02:00:03 PM

by Dan McCurry

I’ve completely changed my mind, thanks to Peter Watt. I used to agree with Peter’s position, that taxation is a necessary evil, not a automatic right of the state. Then I read his piece, on tax, Labour must remember: “it’s not our money stupid, it’s theirs”, and I’ve since reversed my position completely.

This is part of a wider debate about whether the state creates private business, that began with a gaffe from Obama. “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

It was a gaffe, but the rest of the quote made sense of what he meant. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that.”

The debate re-emerged in this country during the party conference season. Miliband had described a Tory tax-cut with the visual image of David Cameron writing out £40k cheques to his mates. At the Tory conference Cameron responded, “When people earn money, it’s their money. Not the government’s money: their money. Then, the government takes some of it away in tax”.

Previously I was very much in agreement with David Cameron on this one, but reading Peter’s article got me thinking. If it were the case that the state acts as a hindrance to wealth creation, then why do millions of enterprising and ambitious young people, from the developing world, risk their lives to enter the western world every year? Surely if our top heavy state was standing in the way of business, why don’t they stay in their own country and make their fortune there?

As Obama pointed out, we have an infrastructure allowing fast and smooth transportation, as well as an advanced rule of law. We have an educated and healthy population who are available both as workers and as consumers. The state provides conditions that allow enterprise to flourish.

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On the frontline for Obama: fear and campaigning in Las Vegas

02/11/2012, 07:00:26 AM

by Fran O’Leary

The first thing that struck me when I walked into the Obama office on East Charleston Boulevard was the friendliness, warmth and inclusiveness, amid the frenetic campaign activity. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what generates this buzz, but it’s there in each smile and each wave as grassroots activists congratulate each other on the numbers of doors they’ve knocked on.

It’s there as people trade campaign stories from the streets and volunteers share pizza. It’s there as activists and their kids sign their names, and write positive messages of support, on the paper that covers the entrance wall.

In stark contrast to Vegas’ lavish casinos, where every element of the experience – from scented air conditioning to security – is tightly controlled, there is a real sense that this place belongs to the grassroots. Everyone here has an important role to play.

The people in this neighbourhood – Clark county state senate district 8 – face a serious threat if Obama loses the election. This battle is theirs and the stakes are high. Unemployment stands at around 12% in Clark county as a whole, which is Democrat leaning overall, and the median income in Las Vegas is around $39k.

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Hezza’s one man stand needs stronger sense of place

01/11/2012, 05:38:40 PM

by Ed Cox

It is always good to see a lone ranger riding into town, kicking wide the swing doors of the last chance saloon and calling on the assembled laggards to put their hands up high in the air. This is exactly what Lord Heseltine has done with No Stone Unturned – “one man’s vision” for national economic growth.

Amidst its 233 pages and 89 recommendations there is much to cheer about. The simple challenge that the country needs more than a plan for austerity is a welcome start. The strong emphasis on “reversing more than a century of centralisation” not simply with localist rhetoric and piecemeal initiative but though a £49 billion “single pot” for growth is a step-change in the debate that should make all political parties gulp. And there are many other very sensible recommendations on procurement, local business support and schools which have not made the headlines but could make a significant difference at the local level.

What is striking though for such a gun-slinging, private sector champion is the report’s preoccupation with structure. No stone unturned could equally read “no deckchair unmoved” as the detailed schema in the report’s annex set out in fine detail. Heseltine’s plans for a fundamental reorganisation of central government bodies and local structures are to allow for greater private sector involvement and a greater focus on growth. The emphasis on functional economic areas makes good sense and with it the bolstering of Local Enterprise Partnerships and Combined Authorities – something that Labour would do well to back at the earliest opportunity and put to bed any notion of reinventing RDAs.

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Labour history uncut: the Hardie boys

01/11/2012, 03:00:45 PM

Continuing our series on the history of the Labour party, Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal look at the runners and riders who founded the Labour representation committee (LRC) in 1900. First up, the Independent Labour party.

Before the Labour party there was the Independent Labour party.

In January 1893, 120 delegates met in Laycocks temperance hotel, Bradford (now new Guiseppe’s restaurant “Nice home made food in a relaxed atmosphere”, TripAdvisor) to found the Independent Labour party.

The socialist intent of this group was evident from the start. It’s aim was to “to secure the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. The Bradford Observer recorded that “The number of socialists among them was apparent from the large proportion of wideawakes (stand up collars).”

A fact which raises the intriguing notion that Saturday mornings on ITV in the 1980s were part of a cunning socialist indoctrination programme for children. Sadly, records do not show if there was a Comrade Mallett at this first meeting of the Wide Awake Club.

A Bradford mural celebrating the ILP depicting their twin passions of workers solidarity and plate-spinning

The inaugural meeting was lit up by the left’s glitterati such as James Keir Hardie, Tom Mann and George Bernard Shaw.

ILP Founder Tom Mann could impale two capitalists at once on his deadly moustache

Hardie had been elected MP for West Ham South a year earlier thanks to combining a broad message that appealed to radicals, trades unions and the local Irish community alike, effective organisation and, perhaps most significantly, his Liberal opponent conveniently dying just before the election.

Rather than turning up to Parliament, as all new MPs have through the ages, with shiny shoes and slicked-down hair, Hardie did things differently. He rocked up riding a wagonette, accompanied by a trumpeter playing La Marseillaise, rather alarming the older generation of Tories who assumed that Napoleon was on the march again.

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