Jonathan Todd « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Todd’

Hope lies with the (eastern) proles

15/12/2011, 07:59:14 AM

by Jonathan Todd

In the summer between the Arab Spring and the European Autumn, my wife and I were naturally delighted about the birth of our first child, Stanley, which helped push the world’s population over 7 billion.

It is autumn in Europe because, notwithstanding the UK’s estrangement under David Cameron, the comparisons between the euro and the titanic continue to hold water. And they will continue to unless the euro is fundamentally reformed.

Cameron has swallowed the City of London’s line on a financial transactions tax. This tax would not be the end of the universe. Indeed, it could contribute towards a rebalancing of the UK economy. However, the move towards this tax seems driven by a determination to punish “Anglo-Saxon capitalism” for the euro’s failings, rather than correct the structural flaws within the currency union, which remain largely in place.

In spite of the persistence of repression in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, spring continues in the Arab world, as democratic flowerings have begun that seem to have an irresistible force. These flowerings were never going to be quick and painless, but the drawn-out process of moving from the left to the right of Ian Bremmer’s J Curve.

Stanley is named after his great-grandfather, who remains as optimistic about America as he did when he emigrated there from Poland over 70 years ago. Hope carried him across the Atlantic. Now hope moves eastwards. Hope powered the Arab Spring, the protests in Russia and the rise of the BRICs. In the decade since the term BRIC was invented these countries have contributed seven UKs (2001 vintage) to the global economy.

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Socialism is the language of priorities

07/12/2011, 10:06:30 AM

by Jonathan Todd

I had no idea that policy network was going to publish “into the black Labour” at the end of last week. Its stress upon fiscal credibility, however, chimed with one of the themes of my piece for Labour Uncut earlier last week. My other theme was the economic incompetence of the government, which Cormac Hollingworth argues was not shown in “into the black Labour” and needs to be demonstrated for Labour to return to government.

I see no contradiction between demonstrating both the government’s economic incompetence and Labour’s fiscal credibility. In fact, the whole point of my piece last week was that both are essential. There is every chance that the government’s incompetence will come to be more widely accepted by a frustrated public. However, we delude ourselves if we presume that this will be enough to return us to government. We will not win by default. We need to make a positive case for Labour that includes lessons learnt from the last general election.

“Into the black Labour” is right to see fiscal credibility as central to this positive case. To make this case, Labour needs to follow through on the policy changes that increased fiscal credibility requires and to repeatedly stress these changes in the way we present ourselves.

We need to change and be seen to have changed, such that by being this change we personify the answers to Britain’s problems. And Britain faces no bigger problem than finding the resources to pay for public services. Yet, as “into the black Labour” recognises, “it is precisely the vagueness of Labour’s position over its short to medium term plans for the deficit that confirms the voters’ worst suspicions about the party’s lack of commitment to addressing the fiscal crisis”.

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Osborne has dug his hole; Balls shouldn’t dig one too

29/11/2011, 08:00:26 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“What he is now doing is the equivalent of ripping out the foundations of the house just as the hurricane is about to hit”.

Ed Balls said this of the government’s economic strategy in August 2010. It is curious, then, that last week David Cameron told the CBI that controlling Britain’s debt was “proving harder than anyone envisaged”. That’s anyone besides Balls and an increasing number of others convinced by him.

The day after Cameron’s CBI speech The Financial Times reported that it now looks impossible that George Osborne will be able to fulfil the boast made in the March 2011 budget that the structural deficit will be eliminated by 2014/15. Indeed, The Financial Times went on, achieving that goal in 2015/16 also appears unlikely.

To acknowledge that the structural deficit can’t be closed this parliament, John Redwood concedes, “is a defining moment … This, after all, was said to be the (government’s) fundamental point”.

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The Euro: no more agonising stages

22/11/2011, 09:58:27 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“If your action must be drastic, do it in one fell swoop, not in agonising stages”.

This was Isaiah Berlin’s interpretation of one of Machiavelli’s maxims. The Euro crisis unfolds in stages; each more agonising than the last.

A couple of weeks ago rapid and drastic action may have created a firewall between Greece and the rest of the Eurozone. Shock and awe of 2008 proportions did not come. The markets remain ahead of the politicians.

Henry Kissinger still wouldn’t know who to call if he wanted to call Europe. If he did get through he’d say: “Why don’t you fix your biggest economic crisis since the 1930s”? (more…)

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Alone in Sirte

24/10/2011, 12:35:01 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Human rights, by definition, are held by all humans. In spite of Lockerbie, Yvonne Fletcher’s murder and his tyrannical 42-year misrule of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was human. He, therefore, deserved a fair trial in a Libyan court or in The Hague. That he would certainly have been found guilty before such a court does not detract from the belittlement, both of those denied and those who deny, inherent in denying fundamental human rights.

Justice can never come from the mob; only vengeance. No matter how understandable the desire for vengeance, it is not justice. It is wonderful that Libya now has a chance for freedom, so long prevented by Gaddafi. The West should respond with a carrots and sticks offer of support as transformative as that offered to Eastern Europe by the EU after the fall of communism. But it would be a more fitting and solid foundation for this epoch had it begun with an act of justice, not with what seemed more like the fall of Mussolini than the Nuremburg trials.

No one is quibbling in Libya now, I know. Still, to have the despotic brought to heal by institutions of justice seems, in the longer run, likely to be a more cathartic basis for the oppressed to recover than to visit violence with violence. This catharsis is rooted in showing that order now comes from the rule of law, not from crude strength or even a golden gun. History teaches us that violence tends only to beget more violence. (more…)

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Justice is a living thing: not something set out in a book

19/10/2011, 07:49:19 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor, recently called the Mormonism of Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, “a cult”. In contrast, Jeffress endorsed Rick Perry, one of Romney’s rivals, as a “real Christian”.

Similarly, fears about a Catholic president were traded upon during John F. Kennedy’s White House run. As religion is a private matter, he retaliated; his religion would have no bearing on his presidential conduct. The philosopher Michael Sandel argues that Kennedy’s response was more than tactical.

“It reflected a public philosophy that would come to full expression during the 1960s and 70s – a philosophy that held that government should be neutral on moral and religious questions, so that each individual could be free to choose his or her own conception of the good life”.

This neutrality was central to John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Forty years on from its publication this remains one of the dominant texts in Anglo-American liberal philosophy. Tony Crosland conceded, shortly before his death in 1977, that the notion of equality advocated by Rawls was the same as that advanced in The Future of Socialism.

The first series of The Hour (a BBC attempt to go HBO about a BBC news show) opened a window on an ancient world. This series was set in the same year, 1956, as The Future of Socialism was published. Yet this book remains an integral part of any Labour thinker’s bookshelf. Given this centrality and the claimed agreement between Crosland and Rawls, it is curious that the communitarian critique of Rawls, led by Sandel, has made minimal impact on Labour thinking. (more…)

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Common sense socialism

12/10/2011, 09:19:56 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“We are signposts of the modern kind, electronic ones flashing on the motorway, changing as the traffic or weather changes. And the people interpreting the conditions, deciding what to write on the signs, should be guided above all by common sense, by the axioms and attitudes of the people in the cars”.

Siôn Simon’s variation on Tony Benn’s dictum that there are signposts and weathervanes in politics is worth keeping in mind as the Tory-led government crawls from crisis to crisis.

While Bennites are signposts of a certain kind, “old, wooden affairs, pointing in the wrong direction, to a way through the woods so overgrown that it can scarcely be seen”, the modern Labour signpost is an altogether more interactive and adaptable affair. This ceaseless revisionism applies to both means, switching from wooden to electronic signage, as technology allows, and the contemporary meaning of our ends. (more…)

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The political consequences of Mr Osborne’s economics

05/10/2011, 07:00:10 AM

by Jonathan Todd

George Osborne’s exhausted economic strategy will undercut his political strategy. Nothing in his speech on Monday changes this.

He knows that political narratives need pasts, presents and futures. His past is of Labour “overspending” producing economic failure; his present is about tough Tory “medicine”; and in his rosy future “together we will move into the calmer, brighter seas beyond”.

This “medicine” seeks to close the deficit this parliament, which is intended to secure market confidence and create space for “fiscal conservatism” (cuts and tax rises) to be offset by “monetary activism” (rock bottom interest rates and quantitative easing, of which we may see more soon). “In a debt crisis”, these interest rates are, “the most powerful stimulus that exists”.

However, this “stimulus” hasn’t stopped breakdown in Osborne’s economic strategy threatening his political strategy.

First, interest on government debt may be low, but Osborne can’t claim all the credit for this. Expectation of more QE pushes yields downwards, as does the “worldwide bond bubble”.

Second, if low interest on government debt was a sufficient condition for growth, Japan wouldn’t have suffered a lost decade and UK growth wouldn’t have been so anaemic as to see falling tax revenues create fiscal holes for Osborne. He either needs to accept that he’s been too aggressive and the deficit cannot be closed this parliament or be more aggressive still and impose further cuts and tax increases this parliament to fill the fiscal holes.

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As George rises, so do economic questions for Labour

03/10/2011, 12:59:56 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Ed Miliband’s speech leaves him better defined. George Osborne will be hoping the same doesn’t happen to him today. Definition is the last thing he needs at the moment. His strategy is clear: cut long and hard. It is his plan b that is anything but clear. Many of Miliband’s economic themes also remain to be fully unpacked. Perhaps his most consequential line on the state’s size was:

“If this government fails to deal with the deficit in this parliament, we are determined to do so”.

“Deal with” in the next parliament might mean the elimination of the deficit, as this is the government’s objective for this parliament. I’ve mused on the present status of Labour’s commitment to halve the deficit in this parliament, as has Ed Balls. This interpretation potentially enforces more aggressive deficit closure in the next parliament under a Labour government than we are prepared to support in this.
This is one of various potential strategies for addressing Labour’s enduring perception of profligacy:

First, the past: apologise for “over spending” in government. More contrition for particularly egregious spending, such NHS IT procurement, might help. But, if adopted wholesale, this seems likely to play into the hands of George Osborne’s narrative that Labour “over spending” caused the problem that he is now “fixing”.

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Speed dating the great British public

28/09/2011, 08:41:30 AM

by Jonathan Todd

A political leaflet has the time it takes to pick it up at the doormat and dispose of it in the bin to make an impact. Speakers at the pragmatic radicalism fringe on Monday night had two minutes to make their cases for policies they’d like Labour to take forward. The party itself has half a week of more prominent headlines and news coverage to move beyond Tessa Jowell’s verdict that we’re not being listened to.

This fleeting opportunity for Labour amounts to a speed date with the British public – a chance to say who we are, what our interests are and what our idea of a good time is; a chance, if possible, to connect. The widely covered pictures of Ed Miliband travelling to conference with his wife and young children told us some of these things. He’s a family man. His idea of good time is spending time with his family. He “gets” family. It is a theme he developed in his speech yesterday.

He understands the concerns of families about rising energy bills, train fares and tuition fees. Of course, single people share these concerns. Ed is a family man, but this isn’t primarily about families. It’s about those who work hard but who struggle to get by and worry about their future and that of their friends, families and communities. The small people dwarfed by the big world.

The big world isn’t just formed by private companies whose prices only seem to go in one direction, but by the public bodies who, while taxing ever more, appear to care about the interests of anyone but people like them. If the small people messed up at work, they’d get the sack. They are sure of this. And it keeps them awake at night. They’d be no state subsidised bonuses for them, unlike the bankers. They wonder why they bother when plenty of people seem to live as they couldn’t afford on welfare payments.

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