Grassroots « Labour Uncut

Sunday review on Tuesday: Pragmatic Radicalism’s defence “top of the policies”

27/03/2012, 05:48:12 PM

by Amanda Ramsay

Affecting party policy should be more about ideas and innovation than shabby promises to open-up the Downing street policy unit for £250,000. This is what Pragmatic Radicalism offers Labour members and last night it hosted the first event of Labour’s defence policy review with Labour Friends of the Forces.

Chairing was shadow secretary of state for defence, Jim Murphy MP, with speakers having just two minutes to present ideas as complex as the reform of NATO and UN Security Council to the complete overhaul of the territorial army. Two minutes of questions from the floor for each person was then followed by a vote at the end.

Security and resilience issues in a globalised and highly networked world were tackled by the winner, Dan Fox, UCL honorary research associate at the Institute for Security & Resilience Studies, with “cyber reserves: strength through expertise.”

Fox, a serving JNCO in the Territorial Army, outlined the need to have a dedicated cyber Reserve supported by cyber apprenticeships, co-ordinated by the ministry of defence and with greater collaboration between FE colleges and ICT practitioners. Fox presented the common sense but intriguing notion of “white hatting” hackers, to turn their expertise and skills to do good.

Speaking to Labour Uncut last night, Fox said: “No party has a monopoly on caring about and promoting the best policies for our armed forces. Pragmatic Radicalism’s defence ‘top of the policies’ evening showed that we in Labour have the ideas, experience and commitment to ensure our national security, and support our servicemen and women.”

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George Osborne’s ugly society

25/03/2012, 08:30:04 AM

by Helen Godwin Tiege

The news is full of the budget, and it seems George Osborne is getting himself into a pickle after breaking the “don’t mess the with pensioners” rule. Even the Daily Mail has turned on the Tories, along with almost every other newspaper.

We have also heard how great this budget is for business, with the scrapping of the 50p tax rate and further reduction in corporation tax. The CEO of Glaxo, Sir Andrew Whitty, was quite happy for the chancellor to claim their announcement today, that they will create over 1000 new roles, was a result of new measures announced in the budget, as well as the Labour-led changes to patenting laws.

We heard from several “business-leaders” who felt that the scrapping of the 50p rate would mean that Britain was once again “open for business”. And this is all great news, only a twisted cynic would want to see the economy fail or go into stagnation after what has been a troubling and difficult 4 years. If these measure really will bring investment and job creation to Britain then I would not want to oppose them.

However, I cannot see how such changes which ultimately benefit individuals can be introduced at a time when there is still rising unemployment, a very real threat of a “lost generation” and millions of people around the country about to face their darkest times as a result of local authority cuts that come into effect from April.

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After this budget, the Lib Dems are all over the place

21/03/2012, 02:49:31 PM

by Amanda Ramsay

The focus today has been on George Osborne. Understandably so. But one of the stories in the days to come will be how this budget has exacerbated the cracks that were already spreading through the Liberal Democrats and the instability this will bring to the government.

Like them or loathe them, the Conservatives have made their position known. As NEC candidate Peter Wheeler puts it: “Tories make it clear what their priorities are – Tax cuts for the rich and pay cuts for the north.”

But they are burdened by a partner who lacks their self-assurance and discipline.

Long-suffering Tories, already struggling with David Cameron’s leadership, are tiring of having to put-up with on-the-hoof Liberal Democrat solo policy announcements such as Vince Cable’s off-piste mooting of a mansion tax that was never going to happen.

This may have been political point scoring on Cable’s part, but even whispers of such a tax will have wrought terror in Tory heartlands, particularly in London where such talk could cost Boris Johnson’s political life.

It’s part of a pattern of ill-disciplined behaviour that has increasingly dismayed Tory MPs. For example, there was the failure to support their own leadership line from Nick Clegg over the health bill, not to mention February’s leaked letter from Vince Cable, when the business secretary told the prime minister and the deputy prime minister that the government lacks a “compelling vision” for Britain.

For restive Tory backbenchers and political advisers, all of this will have steeled Tory determination to make this their budget.

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Labour’s identity problems go much deeper than all women shortlists

13/03/2012, 12:20:04 PM

by Ben Cobley

In Life and Fate, his epic novel of family, Stalingrad and totalitarianism, the Soviet-era journalist Vasily Grossman wrote:

“Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone’s right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities.”

Grossman maybe stretches his point a little too far. Nevertheless his polemic makes a powerful and important point: that groups can become forces of oppression, not just against other groups but against individuality and humanity itself.

This happens when they becomes ends in themselves, when they take on a life of their own and become self-sustaining. In Grossman’s Soviet Union this is what happened to the Communist identity – once it became a pre-requisite for career advancement and entry to nomenklatura, it lost its idealistic elements and became a malign force.

On 2^nd March, Uncut published an article of mine about contemporary liberal-left identity politics, in which I questioned the continuing existence of All Women Shortlists (AWS) and other forms of positive discrimination in Labour Party processes. The article provoked a (generally) considered response on LabourList from Luke Akehurst of the NEC, plus plenty of other lively responses on comment threads and elsewhere.

The background to what I was arguing in the piece was summed up in this sentence: “Institutionalising separate identities as we do is a road to nowhere and nothingness.”

So what does this really mean? After all, when we talk about identity problems we normally mean lack of identity: for example that Ed Miliband lacks identity, or that the Labour Party could do with more identity.

My own interpretation is that identity itself is often the problem.

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This government is driven by venal self-interest

12/03/2012, 04:03:25 PM

by Amanda Ramsay

It’s a very strange time in parliament at the moment. Having changed the legislative calendar, with the Queen’s Speech now in May rather than the traditional November, parliament has run-out of business. The Commons is becalmed while the battles over health, welfare and legal aid being fought-out in the Lords.

With welfare reform cuts about to hit home and housing benefit caps forcing displacement and homelessness, the character of the laws due royal assent over the next few weeks show an old school Tory, right-wing, ideological intent to take government back to laissez-faire sink-or-swim economics; where the state sits back and does the very bare minimum to assist its citizens in trouble.

Whilst Labour souls worry about the Tory-led government’s woeful destruction of aspiration and hope, it is difficult to detect any noticeable or natural empathy from the likes of independently wealthy Cameron and Clegg and the many other millionaires in the cabinet.

Those with private wealth don’t usually know the fear of facing homelessness or joblessness. They can pay for private health insurance and secure their futures through top-class public schooling; can afford private care if disabled, frail or ill and enjoy their own pensions and investments, so have no need for the welfare state. As Tory grandee Alan Clarke once memorably explained, they live off the interest on the interest. Put simply, they can cut with impunity because they don’t feel the pain.

No clearer is this ambivalence evident than with the Health and Social Care Bill. The ramifications of allowing foundation hospitals to use up to 49% of their resources for private, non-NHS work, may not worry certain individuals that can afford US-style private health care insurance, however, NHS waiting lists will surely soar while paving the way for a two-tier health care system.

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Why the government is PIG ignorant on economics

06/03/2012, 02:12:07 PM

by Stuart Rodger

The world is transfixed by the Greek Tragedy unfolding before our eyes. It is increasingly clear for those on the left that what is being foisted upon the Greek people by the IMF, EU, and ECB as we speak is nothing less than a form of economic ‘shock therapy’: the labour markets must be ‘liberalised’, large public assets are to be sold off (at rock bottom prices), and banks are to be re-capitalised but maintain their “managerial independence”.

The Golden Dawn – Greece’s equivalent of the BNP – is on the verge of winning representation. In a recent Newsnight report, one unemployed, professional Greek citizen spoke of “civil war”. The place where democracy was born is turning out to be the place where democracy goes to die.

But far from being an irrelevant calamity at the other end of Europe, the economic crisis unfolding may have some important lessons for us – David Cameron et al, after all, routinely bring up the examples of Portugal, Ireland, and Greece as warning signals for what could happen to Britain should it not cut its way out of its deficit, with the price of debt spiralling up and growth stalling.

But a cursory reading of the news made me wonder if austerity is in fact exacerbating their problems, and is in fact the root cause of their problems in the first place.

So I decided to dig into the statistics to see if my theory was true. So, is David Cameron’s government PIG-ignorant? (see what I did there?). The following fiscal and growth statistics are all from the Eurostat and World Bank websites respectively, unless otherwise stated (measures of inflation have also been taken from the World Bank).

P is for Portugal. This country is important because it has been held up by David Cameron as his response to the Labour Party’s proposals to halve the deficit over the course of this parliament, rather than try to eliminate it entirely.

What policy did they follow? Initially, they increased spending moderately and the result was a moderate recovery. But in May 2011 they announced cuts to public spending and then, six months later, Portugal was reduced to “junk” status, with Eurostat estimating moderate contraction in 2011.

The lesson from Portugal is that spending brought recovery, and cuts promptly killed it off, worsening their debt problems. Crucially – punishment by the bond-markets came post-austerity. By citing Portugal, Cameron cites an economic experiment which proves him wrong.

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How enterprise can empower young people to tackle youth unemployment

05/03/2012, 12:00:47 PM

by Lee Marsham

Youth unemployment is a national crisis that has been worsening steadily in the last few years and has increased to unprecedented levels in recent times.

With financial tightening well underway and no sign of it loosening any time soon, it is hard to see an obvious solution to the problem from within our current leaders in many of our sectors of work. Why?

Today we are faced with a generation of leaders who only know how to put programmes in place with government support and incentives, both of which are on shortening supply.

As of yet no one has adapted to the new austere times.

It seems that only young people themselves can solve youth unemployment. But in order to enable young people to achieve this, we need to capitalise on the business capacity that they can provide.

This can only be achieved through a radical reshaping of the current curriculum so it entrenches entrepreneurship into young people.

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All women shortlists are an insider’s charter

02/03/2012, 01:30:22 PM

by Ben Cobley

“White people love playing ‘divide & rule’ We should not play their game”, these words, tweeted by Diane Abbott, ignited a storm of accusations and denials of racism and opened a window into the complexities of identity politics.

While it is doubtful that many white people were properly offended by the tweet, it does expose Abbott’s assumption that black and white people should be divided, and that they have different (and opposing) interests.

The “divide and rule” agenda that Abbott talked about in fact applies more to her in this instance. She was clearly trying to draw a racial drawbridge between black and white people.

This is the sort of political philosophy that George W. Bush espoused when he said, “You are either with us or against us”; one group’s identity is defined opposite to the other – and if you do not share the dictates of your own group’s “leaders”, then you are letting your side down. Bim Adewunmi herself made a strong argument about this.

As it is highly unlikely Diane Abbott is a racist, how did she get into such a tangle?

Part of the answer surely lies in the way that certain curious, arcane attitudes are still widespread in liberal-left circles.

Abbott herself responded to the tweeting controversy by saying that she was talking about the politics of colonialism. But she clearly was not discussing history in her tweet, and that is where the colonialist worldview belongs – and where the anti-colonialist mentality will have to find a home sooner or later. It is hopelessly outdated in a country where the evidence of integration is all around us, not least in the many children and young adults of mixed race.

The unthinking identity politics of the liberal-left maintains and extends this anti-colonialist narrative though, by simplistically inverting the racist, sexist and ruling class ideologies of past times.

So it is that dark skin is favoured over light, female over male, while the possession of assets and money is deemed as something to be ashamed of.

This attitude is woven into Labour Party practices and procedures, especially when it comes to candidate selection.

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We need to stop talking to each other

04/02/2012, 12:00:32 PM

by Charlie Cadywould

David Miliband’s response to Roy Hattersley in New Statesman represents a problem that seems to be endemic to parties of the centre-left. As soon as they are voted out, parties of the centre-left have an identity crisis, and spend years discussing to whom precisely they are to try to appeal.

Hattersley tells us that Labour must go back to its roots, talking explicitly about social democratic values and the morality and efficacy of the central state. Miliband does not disagree on the importance of the central state from a policy perspective: he agrees that there are things that only government can do, and other things that only government can do fairly.

What he objects to is that narrative that Hattersley wants to construct. Miliband wants to talk about making government better, but he agrees that the state needs to do more, he just doesn’t want Labour to frame the argument in that way. Hattersley, no doubt, agrees with Miliband that government can be better, and that local government has an important role to play, but he would prefer Labour’s narrative to be unashamedly about morality and the central state. (more…)

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The nice party isn’t going to get into government

15/01/2012, 11:26:57 AM

by Dan McCurry

Ed Miliband has never attended the Cenotaph in his donkey jacket, nor has he screamed from a podium, “Yeeeaaaar alright”. But the difference is that those leaders existed at a time when Labour was ungovernable, or they made Labour governable, and it took everything out of them. Ed, on the other hand, was gifted a benign set of circumstances, but has led us into decline.

If there is a plot against him, then I’d hardly be the first to know. But if there is, it won’t happen until May. With the London elections such a knife edge business, no one wants to rock the boat. This means one of two things: either Ed has the chance of being the turnaround kid, or the Labour party (on the national stage) is in for a lame duck period.

Maybe it is too late for Ed Miliband. I’m not ruling out a bolt from the blue that will reignite his leadership, but I think luck tends to hang out with those who have chutzpah. And if Cameron can be admired for one thing only, he knows how to brazen it out.

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