The 2015 General Election.

I covered the election cycle for Souciant. My first article focused on Ed Miliband and what he represents for the centre-left and for the Labour Party.

The early signs of the Miliband leadership were not promising. He shirked from making promises early on, apparently to avoid commitments he couldn’t fulfil, probably to avert any infighting. Labour veterans will remember, with no nostalgia, the splits in the 1980s, which ruptured the party’s electoral chances, consigning it to the wilderness for the best part of two decades. So long as the party remains united, it can back neoliberal policies. 

In this regard, sectarianism has its virtues over unity. As Leo Panitch has emphasised, it might be necessary to divide ranks, and prompt a full-blown confrontation, in order to rescue the official social democratic party from its own rightward drift. Contestation can lead to progressive outcomes, but plenty of people prefer to play the safe game holding onto a scintilla of hope. The last battle for the life and soul of the Labour Party was fought in the 1980s. 

The post-war Labour Party has consistently sought to buttress the system and avoid the redistribution of wealth and power. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the plan was to secure ever-rising living standards through adjustments to income and jobs policy, as well as an inflationary monetary approach, to make the pie appear bigger for everyone. Then in the 1990s New Labour promised it could do this by further compromise and, ultimately, by heaping greater debt onto people. 

Likewise, Miliband promises to tweak the system just enough to placate the incorrigible masses. He tries to make the right noises about taxes, health care, jobs and housing, but ultimately falls short. We’re told he’s the official left candidate, and yet he talks about ‘responsible’ capitalism. The days of Bevan and Attlee are long gone. These may be the end times for the centre-left.

I wrote these words for an article, the Death of the Centre-Left, published on March 31. For the election I looked at almost every major party, with the exceptions of Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems, with particular attention paid to the Green Party, Labour, UKIP and the Conservatives. Here's my take on the 2015 election:
The Anti-Cameron - On the significance of the SNP as an alternative to the Whitehall consensus and what it means for those of us on the left-of-centre.
The New Ted Heath - A historical look at Cameron's Conservative Party and how it reached this peculiarly modern manifestation of right-wing politics.
These Greens Are Different - A critical, yet sympathetic, look at the Green Party, their social programme and what has gone wrong for them on the campaign trail.
White Identity Politics - A comparison of UKIP and the DUP in historical terms of colonial and racial oppression, specifically how the oppression of the Irish helped to constitute the white identity to which UKIP now appeals.
Small was Beautiful - A look at the strangely reactionary history of the Green Party, how they came to be and why they are left-wing today.
Dead Labour - Again, a critical look at Labour and precisely the history of its infighting and how it produced the current political impasse.
Early 90s Flashback - Looking back to the 'surprise' victory of 1992 in terms of the Conservative majority won and secured by David Cameron. What lessons can we draw from this?

Why UKIP needs defectors.

I’ve already articulated my view that the ‘successes’ of UKIP have been overstated by the press. Perhaps this is out of boredom with the mediocrity of conventional politics and not out of a closeted sympathy with right-wing populism. Time will tell, I suppose.

The results of new research support my claim. It seems that the UK Independence Party will struggle come election time to capitalise on the small gains it has achieved. I say ‘small gains’ because it still controls no councils and none of its candidates have won a seat in Parliament. Many of you will be shocked to read this because Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell now represent UKIP in Parliament. But it’s still the case because these men defected. The rank and file of UKIP remains outside Westminster and in Brussels.

You might wonder why we shouldn’t take Reckless and Carswell seriously? Well, it’s a lot easier for establishment candidates to jump ship than for outsiders to break into the mainstream. It wasn’t so long ago that Roger Helmer lost his bid for a seat in the House of Commons. The truth is that they need more defectors. As my fellow blogger Josh Catto put it on Facebook:

I think of all post-war defections that led to by-elections, only Bruce Douglas-Mann lost his seat. But his case is instructive. He defected from the SDP to Labour, called a by-election for 1982 in Mitcham and Morden (my own constituency), and lost to the Tories in the middle of the Falklands. Otherwise, it is a pretty fail safe strategy.

So Carswell and Reckless are called opportunistic by their opponents for doing it. But that's the job of politicians not in your party - to oppose what you do. They would get far more flack if they hadn't stood down for re-election. But they're also looking at the SDP example. Douglas-Mann probably would have won if it hadn't been during the Falklands. And standing down for re-election allows them to have a bit more of a base for the general election. Certainly it gives them time to prepare and re-jig their database and phone banks etc.

But already Ashcroft polling shows Reckless would probably just miss out on keeping Rochester. Carswell will probably hang on to Clacton. Maybe Farage in Thanet, and I can see them picking up Grimsby from Labour. Perhaps Rotherham as well. I will also be very interested to see if Carswell takes over after 2015. If so, expect to see him target Lib Dem libertarians like Laws and Browne.

The feat of securing a seat for an outsider candidate was achieved in 2010 when Caroline Lucas won Brighton for the Green Party. The Greens are growing rapidly, procuring many supporters from the long-suffering ranks of the Labour Party. The EU elections demonstrated that there is serious disaffection out there. The Conservatives and Lib Dems lost 10% between themselves, while the BNP lost 7% of its vote. UKIP boosted its vote by 10%, while the Greens came in at 8%. What we need is left-wing populism.     

Nick Clegg has Only Himself to Blame.

Some of you may have tuned in to the LBC debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage on the European union. This spectacle was hosted by reactionary lard-arse Nick Ferrari. It was everything one would expect. Nothing outside of the oscillation between mainstream liberalism and nationalism came up and this debate can largely be understood as a sign of the rightward trend of British politics over the last four decades. Liberal internationalism and conservative nationalism feed into one another, their relationship is dialectical, both oppositional and complimentary, and ultimately, they spiral into the same downward trajectory. It's no coincidence that the Liberal Democrats signed up for the Coalition with a party torn over Europe and he now finds himself poised against UKIP. For the Conservatives, Nick Clegg is the canary in the mineshaft and little more.

It must have been a disparaging experience for Liberal Nick. No longer a sponge sucking up all those disenchanted votes Nick Clegg stood as the establishment figure with his old place usurped by Nigel Farage of all people. Of course, the underdog status of UKIP is a falsehood. Nigel Farage railed against the bankrupt establishment, which Clegg now embodies so thoroughly, all the while UKIP stands in necessary relation to the status quo. He was probably expecting reason to triumph over reaction. He littered his phraseology with references to 'dogma' and appealed to common-sense. Bad moves by definition in this kind of debate. I don't know how he could have expected it to have gone his way. Without any grounding to maneouvre on economic and domestic policy (where he is wedded to Conservative policy-makers) the only issue of contention was going to immigration. That is hardly a threat to the Conservative Party. And of course UKIP has no interest in combating neoliberalism.

Outside of conventional politics the demagogue sets himself and poses as raising the real questions, the dangerous questions, to which the Establishment then reacts to preserve itself. As with Romania we find that the UKIP lot are playing this game again. The real issue that the people in countries like Romania and Bulgaria are fleeing from social conditions produced by neoliberal globalisation cannot be raised. Should we repair the damage? Now that's a dangerous question! It would only mean that the level of immigration would be based on the free movement of people, rather than on economic desperation. The Lib Dems can't make such a point because they've accepted the neoliberal model prescribed by Brussels, Whitehall, and Washington; while the only criticism UKIP may wage is that this hasn't gone far enough in tearing through all forms of state-ownership. This is why a key issue was never mentioned, namely the EU-US free trade deal currently being implemented by stealth.

The Liberal Democrats emerged from the consolidation of gains for a third party after the founding of the Social Democratic Party from the right-wing MPs who abandoned Labour. The loss of 10% of their MPs helped to secure Labour's defeat and a victory for Thatcher in 1983. So you can see how far the Party has come since helping to divide up the voters for Thatcherism thirty years ago. They have now graduated to joining those forces they helped deliver Britain to in the 1980s. This is the stinking filth of the body of liberalism: inaction, hot-air, and endless compromise. It's clear the trilateral consensus are not only complacent in the face of the nationalist reaction to the rapid internationalising trend of capitalism. We see this quite well demonstrated in Ukraine where a coalition of neoliberals, conservatives, ultra-nationalists, and oligarchs, have seized power only to wrench the country into the orbit of the European Union and open it up to the IMF prescription for an economic miracle.

Meanwhile here in Britain we find UKIP is looking to force the Conservatives further and further to the right as it condemns the EU. Clegg doesn't deserve our pity for his pathetic belief that if he just said the right words the audience would dutifully nod their heads for him. He was asking for the kicking he got.

The Perils of Tax Populism.

 Cutting Both Ways.
 

 The cause of raining in corporate tax swindlers was once the monopoly of UK Uncut in its Vodafone protestations. Now it has been coopted by the political class, firstly by that shirker Ed Miliband and then by George Osbourne that dangerous radical who went to St. Paul's. Unfortunately, for Ed Miliband the language of ‘responsible’ capitalism is hardly anything radical and can be, demonstrably, filched by the less than scrupulous Tories. There was a time when talk of ‘responsible’ capitalism would have been a compromise too far for the Establishment Left. Even Andrew Neil thought it proper to point this out to Rowenna Davis. It looks like triangulation from the Right. Tax reform will be a bit of prog bait for the Coalition to wag at us (along with gay marriage) at the next election. Of course, the oik at the Treasury is just a poseur when it comes to serious tax reform.

 We can debate what this tells us about the Chancellor and the way his mind works. For quite some time the question was whether Osbourne knew what he was doing. There was no theory and the oik had no formal education in economics. The whole aim of deficit reduction seemed to revolve around the prospect of re-election in 2015, incidentally the Coalition are failing by their measures in that department. It is possible that the Coalition have pushed the austerity measures to the limit and have decided to slow down just in time for the General Election. So we find it is either a case of idiocy or wanton cynicism. If the Treasury are going to patch together a minor tax reform then it is more about appearances than content. This would mean that the Chancellor, or at least his advisors, are aware of the problem of tax evasion and avoidance. It is plausibly about the coming electoral battle. The Conservatives are painfully aware that they have not won a majority in over 20 years.

 Miliband has made his move, a bet on mansion tax. For a long time it looked like Ed Miliband was struggling to find the formula. The New Labour token of the ‘hard-working majority’ to the Blue Labour waffle about a ‘squeezed middle’. Well, first it was Blue Labour, then there was this brief gust about ‘predistribution’, and then, finally, settling on One Nation Labour pilfered from the One Nation Conservatism of Disraeli. Each instance can be seen as another attempt at triangulation. All the while Ed hasn’t promised us anything concrete, on the meritorious grounds that he doesn’t want to lie to us. And who could disagree with that? Just picture it, the Labour slogan at the next election: Don’t Expect Much! The success of Blairism was its lies, the Prime Minister was a conman and many of us wanted to be conned. That’s why so many liberals lapped up the drivel about WMD. Now little Ed has to appear to have found the formula even if he hasn’t.

 The trouble with the current Miliband (surely, the better of the two) is that he remains a creature of the End of History proclaimed by Fukuyama. The fall of the Berlin Wall and triumph of liberal capitalism signaled the end of the old politics of class. We had finally gotten past all of that. The new mission would be the Third Way, not even social democracy, more like a neoliberalism with a human face. Much like soft pornography this ‘soft-core’ capitalism promises everything except the penetration shots. Endless economic Progress without the harsh social costs. This is why Miliband still seems to be stuck in the spirit of the 1990s. Most of his leadership has been characterised by meandering around labels and the need for a new triangulation. First you nick planks from the opposing platform with the hope of bagging the votes and money that will follow it. Then you test the water to tune the policies perfectly to the ears of the votes you have yet to win.

 

 All of this falls back on the assumption that the traditional working-class base can be relied upon to turn out and cast an automatic vote for Labour MPs. All the while the liberal commentariat are kept on board with the lesser evil allure of the platform. Notice that when the Bradford byelection disrupted the natural order you had liberal journalists lining up to slime George Galloway. Sadly, it seems more likely that Labour could lose its seats to the populism of right-wing demagogues from parties like UKIP. No wonder Miliband bungled efforts to pander to anti-immigrant sentiment in the days when he was still testing the water. After so many botched attempts at populist appeals Miliband has chosen redistribution over predistribution. When in doubt turn leftwards. It reminds one of when Gordon Brown tried to squeeze back into those tight socialist trousers of yesteryear and started to bark at the market ‘fundamentalism’ he had bought and sold for over a decade.

 The Labour Party has yet to change much with the better Miliband at the helm. Like Brown and, indeed, Blair, Ed Miliband buys the fundamental lie that the primary goal of any government, whether short-term or long-term, ought to be deficit reduction above all else. Tax reform is certainly compatible, if not more effective, to that end given the deficit is more to do with revenue than expenditure. It could well be the common ground fought over at the next election. If the Coalition are serious about deficit reduction they will be much more interested in taxation. Up to now cuts have been a useful means to the continued transformation of the welfare state and public services. If the goals of tax justice can be coopted then it may be time to reposition ourselves and make more radical demands. It is not enough to simply try to preserve the remnants of social democracy.

This article was later posted on the Third Estate on March 3rd 2013.

Nick Clegg didn't say 'Sorry'.

The much maligned Liberal Democrat leader opened his video address with the words 'I would like to take this opportunity to put a few things straight...' He's chosen to apologise at this time as it has become impossible to ignore the ratings pit that the Liberals are currently living in. Now the only mission left is to try and slither out of this sorry hole. Clegg goes on, oh how he goes on, 'We made a promise before the election, that we would vote against any rise in fees under any circumstances - but that was a mistake. It was a pledge made with the best of intentions. But we shouldn't have made a pledge that we weren't absolutely sure we could deliver. I shouldn't have committed to a policy that was so expensive when there was no money around.' He then throws in a dash of realpolitik 'Not least when the most likely way we'd end up in government was in coalition with Labour or the Conservatives, who are both committed to put fees up.'

Here's comes the magic 'There's no easy way to say this,' brace yourself for it, 'we made a pledge, we didn't stick to it and for that I am sorry.' It's not clear what exactly Clegg is apologising for here, but then he adds 'When you've made a mistake you should apologise.' Clegg is emphatic 'I will never again make a pledge, unless as a party we are absolutely clear about how we can keep it. I accept that won't be enough for everyone, but I owe it to you to be up front about it.' Notice politicians never do anything wrong, at worst they're just 'mistaken'. It's always an 'accident' when it sends approval ratings into a downward spiral. Clegg knows full well what he means when he says 'And I don't believe it should cast a shadow everything else that the Liberal Democrats are achieving in government. When we're wrong we hold our hands up, but when we're right we hold our heads up too.' So it was right to rise tuition fees even though there is no economic reason for fees.

It's been widely recognised among serious economists - even by Thatcherite Samuel Brittan - that the cuts are totally unnecessary. The current rate of government debt amounts to 65% of GDP, while it was over 180% of GDP when the NHS was established. Not only are these cuts unnecessary, they have actually increased the rate of borrowing rather than decreased it. The UK government has committed itself to a high level of unemployment for years to come, but it would actually be a better way to reduce deficits if we cut unemployment to raise tax-revenue. Yet Clegg claims that the Lib Dems are 'fighting' to rebuild the economy, while it has been driven into a double-dip recession and there's no end in sight. He also claims spuriously that the Lib Dems are 'defending' the vulnerable. Contrarily, we find Jeremy Hunt talks about opening up health-care to be rinsed of £20 billion by private companies and there's even talk of £8 billion cuts to the NHS on the horizon.

Furthermore, the UK government has slashed benefits for the disabled by £4 billion and has contracted Atos to throw as many disabled people off of the dole line as they can. The Daily Mirror has reported that 32 people died a week last year after being deemed 'fit to work' in this way. The government has actually imposed quotas on job centres to knock three people a week off of benefits and people claiming JSA can live in fear of losing their stipend of £60 a week for six months at most. As part of workfare claimants were bussed in to steward the Jubilee unpaid and without accommodation. So much for 'fairness' in present-day Britain. It's the basic assumption of widespread social democratic values that the state should guarantee a safety-net at least for the vulnerable. It's Nick Clegg who has led the Liberal Democrats to betray this liberal principle in his willingness to be escorted over to the right by austerity junkies David Cameron and George Osborne.