Articles with the Tag labour

Time For All Good Socialists To Come To The Aid of the Party

Cameron, liberalism, Socialism, UK politics
Published on

Cleggameron melty waxy thing - can you tell which one it is?

Now that the neoliberal Cleggameron melty waxy thing is in power – whether it’s for 5 years or 5 minutes – a strong principled opposition is required, and we’ll hardly get that from the Labour party as currently constituted.

I posted this after Labour’s disastrous results in the 2008 local elections and I think my suggestion – that socialists take over Labour from the ground up – still holds true.

Go Cry Emo Party
May 3rd, 2008

Is there any way for Labour to regain any shred of credibility as a working class party, after the complete and utter fuckup they’ve made of things? Because if not, Labour is a dead party.

Well, possibly. First, if socialists rejoin the party en masse and use their heft to stack constituency and regional committees – a return to entryism, but in the open. Then if they get rid of Brown and an entire discredited generation of leadership, elect a new, visibly English (as opposed to Scots) and working class populist leader,

My money is still on Alan Johnson as leader. Johnson’s man-in-the-street qualities will serve Labour better in the media, a foil to the plummy Establishment Etonians who seem destined to have power (as so much else) dropped in their laps as an unearned benefit of the electorate’s reflexive disgust with the current government. The Tories have little in the way of actual policies – they are as frozen in the headlights of current world conditions as are all the other parties, and that they’ve done so well so far has been because of a mixture of expert media management and New Labour’s own exhausted disarray.

Politics in the next two years, if economic forecasts are accurate, is likely to become ever more class-based as those that have seek to hang on to what they’ve got and the less well-off, taxed beyond endurance, become more and more angry at the rich and those who enable them.

If the Labour party is to survive the left will have to rejoin the party en masse and force a generational putsch of Blairite/ Brownites. Co-opt the party to rescue the brand, in marketing terms; what other left organisation has the same brand presence? Why try to launch an alternative to Labour when the party is ripe for the plucking? There is a crying need for a party that’ll fight class war and which has an actual working class person leading it, rather than the closeted public schoolboys, incompetent Scots party droids, failed suburban solicitors and legacy Labour pubescents we’ve been subjected to so far.

But Emo Labour hasn’t got the gumption for root and branch reform to judge from the lame reaction by Brown and other Labour types on the news this morning. The only chance that Labour just might survive as an electoral force is if the real left get off their self-involved arses and take over a party that’s weak and ripe for the plucking, purge the Blairites and Brownites and force MPs to push through electoral reform pronto.

Hey, it could happen. I’m not holding my breath though. When push comes to shove most leftists would much rather wring their hands and talk theory on blogs than actually get out and do anything. But if Labour is about to be unelectable for yet another generation, the least the actual left can do is try and make it an opposition to reckon with.

Alan Johnson is saying he will not stand as party leader and that his money’s on David Milliband. Don’t lose me a fiver, Alan – and more to the point, if you enable Pitt the very much younger to lead the party, it’s absolutely positively no longer a party of the left and deserves to stay in the political wilderness for ever.

BBC Political Editors – Making It Up As They Go Along

Dutch politics, Gordon Brown, Manufacturing consent, Media, Tories, UK politics
Published on

UPDATE: Brown is currently announcing he’s going to see the Queen to resign and to recommend that she ask the leader of the opposition, ie Cameron, to form a government. But still, my post makes some valid points, not least that Nick Robinson should be sacked.

It ain’t over till the Queen lady sings…

The BBC are now performing a complete volte face and promoting a Lib Dem/Conservative coalition to the skies.

This is because, according to their ‘sources’, namely Charles ‘safety elephant’ Clarke, greedy backbench philanderer David Blunkett, that walking piece of unpleasantry John Reid and Bambi-eyed Andy Burnham (who must’ve been inhaling too much of his Maybelline mascara), that any Lib/Lab pact is dead.

The politicoliterati are still trying to turn this negotiating period into a two party adversarial contest (I blame Nick Robinson) – but that’s not what forming a coalition is about.

Take the Dutch model:

In the UK a party’s manifesto is its manifesto for government. In the Netherlands manifestoes exist to be melted during post-election negotiations, and fused together.

The process takes time. To do it in a week would be completely impossible in Holland. It cannot be done in days – or rather it can, but then Dutch people would strongly suspect that the job had not been done properly, and that the deal had not been well thought-out.

It’s understandable that the British newspapers are eager for a resolution, but it’s not correct that the UK is without leadership.

There is a caretaker government. The chancellor of the exchequer can continue to take part in discussions of the global economic crisis. Day-to-day decisions will continue to be made.

It’s absolutely normal, from a Dutch perspective, for parties to drive a hard bargain to get as many of their policies as possible into the programme of the new coalition government.

Dutch coalitions usually last for years… though one in 2002 fell after 87 days.

What is less normal is to have a party, like the Liberal Democrats in this case, in a position of so much power that it can make the difference between stable government and chaos. That is because, in the Dutch political system, there are always several coalition possibilities.

There is also less likelihood of a party holding simultaneous negotiations with the two biggest parties – so less scope for allegations of double-crossing.

This whole mess is a ridiculous media-driven one and it’s been talked up by the likes of Nick Robinson in order to fit his own preferred preconceived narrative.

This isn’t democracy, it’s government by media and the rumour mill, and in no way does it reflect the will of the voters.

If this latest rumour turns out to be true, the LibDems will, unsurprisingly, implode in acrimony and worst of all we’ll have a Tory government. The only upside is there’ll be another election along soon when it all falls apart as it’s bound to.

The downside is it’ll again be run under FPTP, and once again the voters will be robbed.

Repost: The Man Who Would Be King PM Labour Leader

Parenting, UK elections, UK politics
Published on

This could be our next PM (or not, as it turned out not long after I posted this – P):

The Prime Minister Of Primrose Hill

Who is David Miliband? Why all this hoohah?

do not want

Once you get over the resemblance of The Right Honourable David Wright Miliband MP to Star Trek’s Commander Data he would on the face of it appear to have all the necessary qualities to be a model New Labour leader, not least because of the blood he has on his hands; he voted very strongly for the Iraq war and he voted strongly against investigating the Iraq war, despite his later protestations of ambivalence.

He comes from a legacy Labour family. He (and his brother, also in the Labour government) has never had a real job – Daddy the connected historian’s friends saw to that, despite his own avowed Marxism. Some are more equal than others, as was demonstrated by young Dave’s place at Corpus Christi (despite his mediocre A levels) and his fortuitous Kennedy scholarship.

Miliband went straight from Oxford into a thinktank, to becoming a well paid special adviser, to being parachuted into Parliament via a rotten borough safe seat. You see? Perfect. He’s our very own real life Pitt The Very Very Younger.

But this Minister of The Crown, responsible for foreign policy, didn’t even know until corrected by a civil servant that the government whose interests he represents abroad had given a knighthood to Sir Robert Mugabe. See for yourself on BBC’s Question Time:

(Mind you, former Tory minister Douglas Hurd hardly comes off much better, but he is ancient).

Want more? To show how unqualified Miliband is, when he got the job he had to ask the public for advice he’s so bereft of knowledge and ideas.

Today we learn that despite Miliband’s myriad public assurances, the UK has been proved complicit in the dissapearance and torture of people to Diego Garcia. He was duped, he says:

Miliband ‘duped by US’ on rendition

24 minutes ago

David Miliband is facing fresh claims that the US imprisoned terror suspects on British territory.

Campaigners said the Foreign Secretary allowed himself to be “duped by the US on a colossal scale” following new claims of interrogation on Diego Garcia, a UK-controlled island in the Indian Ocean.

A former senior American official told Time magazine that in 2002 and possibly 2003, the US imprisoned and interrogated at least one terrorist suspect on the island.

Mr Miliband has repeatedly denied claims the US has detained terror suspects on British territory.

But the anonymous source, described as a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings, told Time a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said “high-value prisoners” had been held and questioned on the island.

The official also claimed the US may have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia’s territorial waters.

Duped my ass. He’s the foreign secretary – how could he not know?

There are other, lesser but still telling details – his use of an inheritance loophole to reduce the tax on his father’s estate is one, he and his wife’s controversial adoption of babies from the US is another:

And yet, somewhere here lie a few questions that may deserve to be raised. As Foreign Secretary, for instance, was it right for Mr Miliband to place his private life ahead of his public role in such a high-profile visitation? Would he have delayed the transatlantic trip by just a couple of days had the guest been the head of a less translucently repugnant regime than Saudi Arabia’s? Was he, in other words, using Jacob’s arrival as an excuse to avoid greasing the wheels of arms trading of a kind he might once, in the mythic New Labour era of “ethical foreign policy”, have openly described as stomach-turningly hypocritical?

If so, Mr Miliband sets himself a challenging precedent. Every time one of the world’s unlovelier tyrants pops along, he will have to arrange another adoption. Admittedly this is easier in the US, where babies can be picked up by citizens almost as easily as an automatic rifle from WalMart. Even so, should Assad of Syria reprise his 2002 jaunt, Mr Miliband will need to return to the States to add Abraham (I just love his commitment to the tripartite Jewish patriarchy; those shared values with the Saudis yet again!) to Isaac and Jacob.

He’s “very flattered” to be a gay icon. His blog, mainly devoted to the glories of you guessed it, David Miliband, costs the taxpayers 40K a year. That’s about 50p per visitor. (For contrast this blog’s costs are pretty much nil.)

This is not a man with an overdeveloped sense of modesty. Miliband is New Labour made flesh – well-off, overentitled, underqualified, utterly blind to his own hypocrisy. He’s another who’s convinced himself that his personal ambition is actually zeal for the public good and not just a lust for power for it’s own sake.

But now this glorified work-experience boy, not content with having been promoted way, way above his level of competence, has got the gall to think he can walk into No.10 as PM, as if the imposition of the unelected and useless Gordon Brown wasn’t bad enough already.

The reading public’s uniformly derisive reaction to this notion can be seen in the comments to his flag-planting article in the Guardian this week; the nation, or at least the Guardian reading bits, are as one on Miliband. A representative sample:

alisdaircameron

Jul 29 08, 9:53pm

Davey-wavey, you’re wrong (again).

New Labour doesn’t need to make its case afresh, or present its policies in a new light, with new packaging and sales pitch.

The public actually know your case and your policies perfectly and only too well, and utterly dislike them and your whole apparatus and outlook which fatally combine arrogance, incompetence, authoritarianism and a failure to grasp what goes on in ordinary, real people’s lives.

We’ve listened to your case ad nauseam and understand it, better than you do, and can see it for the tommy-rot it is. Have you listened? No, and no number of rigged ‘consultations’ will change this, as you are all too convinced of your rightness to realise what a catastrophic course you have plotted.

None of your party apparatchiks have done real work, but simply continued your student politics into a career, inflicting your shallow glibs idea experiments on the populace to disastrous effect, and all you can say is 2We are right, the experiment will work this time. It must, because we’re so clver”.

I’m sorry, “the project” has failed, and as it’s run its course it destroyed a once-noble party and completely betrayed all the masses who wanted something other than rehashed Thatcherism. You’ve screwed centre and centre-left politics in the UK for decades.

Go NOW, and thank your lucky stars that there aren’t (yet) baying mobs to string you up from lamp posts.

Quite.

There’s only one thing the nation has to say to Miliband – DO NOT WANT.

Gordo To Go

Gordon Brown, UK elections, UK politics, Video
Published on

The price for Clegg’s cooperation; the voluntary dethronement of Gordon Brown.

Dethroned

Gordon Brown says he is to step down and that a new leadership election is to be called by the Labour party.

5.06pm: Here are the main points.

• Gordon Brown is going to resign. He wants to stand down as Labour leader before the next Labour conference in the autumn. But he intends to remain as prime minister until then (if he can).

• Nick Clegg has formally opened talks with Labour. Brown said that Clegg rang him recently (presumably after the Lib Dem meeting) to say he would like to have formal talks with a Labour team.

• Brown is proposing a “progressive” government, comprising Labour, the Lib Dems, and presumably the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Alliance. Electoral reform would be a priority.

5.04pm: Brown says he will “facilitate” the discussions with the Lib Dems.

5.03pm: Brown says he has “no desire” to stay in his position longer than is needed. He would be willing to stay in office until the a new government is formed. But the election was a judgment on him. He is going to ask Labour to organise a leadership election, so that a new leader can be in place by the time of the conference. He will play no part in that contest.

5.02pm: He says he has had conversations with people like the head of the IMF about the eurozone crisis.

So we’ll have yet another unelected PM. Cheers then, Cleggy.

It had better not be a Milliband. (My money’s on Alan Johnson, but you knew that.)

Mind you the whole thing makes Cameron look like the over-confident, entitled tosser he is, and that can’t be a bad thing.

Clegg’s Quandary

Pointlesss centrism, UK elections, UK politics
Published on

What a pretty little pickle Nick Clegg’s found himself in. If he goes with the Tories he gets;

  • Vague promises of voting ‘reform’ from Cameron that’ll evaporate once waxy-melty face Dave’s bespoke brogues are over the threshold of No.10;

whereupon Clegg’ll be;

  • used as a scapegoat by the Conservatives, the media and the public alike and blamed for allowing the Tories’ savage public service/spending cuts and the resulting social unrest,

after which, he’ll be

  • Discarded like a Cameroonian wank-stained tissue,

all whilst having earned;

  • The eternal hatred of a substantial portion of his party

and

  • the lasting contempt of anyone who voted for him

If he goes with Labour (but only if he can somehow get the numbers to work out) Clegg gets:

  • all of the above, with knobs on and extra added vitriol, because he enabled the continuance of this busted flush of a government and allowed a psychotic PM to stay in power, despite Gordon Brown’s having been soundly rejected by the voters when put to the electoral test;

plus

  • The danger of being lobotomized by a flying Nokia

and

  • the prospect of Peter Mandelson ruling his life

So far as I can see Clegg’s best (for certain values of ‘best’) option would be to refuse an alliance with either, let the Tories try and form a minority government, and start campaigning like hell for the next election when it all falls apart.

Which it undoubtedly will.