via the Evening Standard
Monthly Archives: February 2013
Labour needs more ‘big policy’, so here are some ideas
by Renie Anjeh
Two weeks ago, Ed Miliband made a speech in Bedford – a must-win seat for Labour – announcing new policies such as a cap on interest rates but most importantly reintroduction of the 10p tax rate funded by a mansion tax. It not only showed whose side Labour is on, but also exposed some truths about the Tories.
It’s no coincidence that Boris Johnson and George Osborne were competing on who can attack the mansion the most vociferously – the Tory leadership race is already kicking off!
Labour needs more ‘big policy moments’ so that people know where Labour stands. Here are some suggestions:
- Free universal childcare for all pre-school children, funded by scrapping higher-rate pension tax relief.
- A million new homes by 2020, funded by pooling the budgets for housebuilding and housing benefit, using that prioritise housebuilding over subsiding rents.
- A cap on energy prices and a windfall tax on the ‘Big Six’ energy companies, used to fund a home-insulation programme.
- An independent Office for Immigration Management, which will advise on policy, report on immigration, launch inquiries and give ‘traffic-light’ signals on immigration.
- A reduction in the cap on tuition fees from £9,000 down to £5,000, funded by ending child benefit for over 16s.
- A National Care Service funded by increasing the age where people stop paying National Insurance from 60 to 70 and replacing inheritance tax with a ‘lifetime gifts’ tax.
- A Jobs Guarantee so that those unemployed for over year would get a ‘living wage’ job for six months, which would funded ending the tax-free lump sum pension entitlement.
- 400 local banks, alongside a new British Investment Bank, which will be created by using 1% of the bank bailout fund.
- A National Salary Insurance scheme so that those who have worked longer get more in their benefits.
- A tax allowance of £25,000 for first-time buyers for homes worth up to £250,000 funded by a new ‘net wealth’ tax.
Let’s just hope Jon Cruddas is reading today.
Green Party write social justice into Constitution
The Green Party of England and Wales this weekend enacted what they describe as ‘clause IV moment in reverse’, as delegates at its 40th Spring Conference in Nottingham voted for a left-turn in the constitution.
The statement of core values, which previously focused only on environmental principles, was amended to include a commitment to social justice and a “transformation of society for the benefit of the many not the few”, on the day that the party celebrated being 40-years old.
A substantial majority – 71% – of conference delegates voted in support of the change, which condemns the dominant economic “system based on inequality and exploitation” and calls for “a world based on cooperation and democracy”.
Student member Josiah Mortimer proposed the motion, saying in his speech “The past few years have shown that the Greens are the real party of social justice– this motion is therefore fundamental in enshrining that shift into the party’s core.”
He added: “At a time when Labour are failing to stand up to the coalition’s austerity policies, it is essential the Greens make our position clear – that we are on the side of ordinary people and the planet.”
Party leader Natalie Bennett said: “The Green Party has for many years been the chief champion of social justice in British politics. Our elected representatives and campaigners have led the way in living wage campaigns, in protecting essential public services and speaking up for benefit recipients, asylum-seekers and refugees and the disabled, in the face of demonisation. This change reflects the existing nature of the party.”
At the same conference, Bennett called for an end to poverty wages, child poverty and pensioners being unable to heat their homes in her keynote speech.
It’s unfair to criticise Oxbridge for ‘bias’ against ethnic minorities
Every few months, newspapers decide to have a pop at Oxford and Cambridge for institutionally discriminating against a particular section of society that isn’t white, male and public school educated.
This time it’s the turn of the Guardian to criticise Oxford University, presenting statistics obtained under a freedom on information request that reveal that white applicants are up to twice as likely to get a place as applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Having been to Cambridge, I can say anecdotally that ethnic minority students certainly were under-represented there too. My brown face was duly splashed on the front cover of the college prospectus presumably to present a façade of a diversity that didn’t really exist.
But the statistics presented by the Guardian are misleading in that while they suggest correlation, they fall far short of proving the kind of causation asserted by the article.
Oxbridge is being unfairly criticised for discriminating against minority students in the same way it is often unfairly criticised for discriminating against working class students.
The real problem lies much further down the line, with the schooling system and with wider society.
Every now and again stories will emerge about a straight-A student complaining that Oxford or Cambridge didn’t offer them a place. The trouble is, almost everyone applying to Oxbridge is a straight-A student, so much of the final selection comes down to performance at an often gruelling interview.
Public school students tend to be prepped far in advance for these interviews. They know what to expect, what to read around, how to act and most importantly how to project a confidence that will come across well in an educational environment based on supervisions and tutorials which favour the bold.
Students at many state schools, particularly ones in deprived areas that are less likely to attract teachers who were educated at Oxbridge themselves and know the system, cannot provide the same level of silver spoon-fed service.
I was lucky in that the head of Sixth Form at my state comprehensive had been to Cambridge and could give me a punishingly realistic mock interview, as could my Oxford educated father. I suspect that’s not the norm.
It’s a sad fact that public schools are predominantly the preserve of the middle classes. It’s also a sad fact that ethnic minority students are more likely to be from poorer backgrounds with parents less able to pay for them to attend public schools.
State school attendance at Oxbridge remains poor. Last year, state school attendance at Cambridge hit a 30-year high at 63.3%. But considering only 12% of all students attend public schools, it shows that those who have been privately educated remain disproportionately represented there.
The statistics are a negative reflection not on Oxbridge, but on wider society. Oxford and Cambridge can do all they like to encourage more students from ethnic minority, working class and state school backgrounds to apply, but unless inequalities much lower down the chain in the education system and in society are tackled, the problem is not going to go away.
Osborne’s Zones only create 5% of jobs projected
The Financial Times ran an extraordinary story yesterday.
You’ll recall that in 2011 George Osborne said that the government would bring in ‘Enterprise Zones’ to create jobs in the British economy.
Of course, many of us on the left pointed out repeatedly that this was a barmy idea and there was no evidence EZs actually worked.
So what’s happened so far?
The FT reports that:
The 24 zones were announced in 2011 by the chancellor with the promise that they would create 30,000 new jobs by the end of the parliament and aid Britain’s economic recovery.
That’s actually not a lot of jobs, given they were billed as Britain’s saviour back in 2011.
So what has actually happened?
But nearly a year after they were set up, only 1,700 jobs have been created and some of the new zones – in Harlow, Sheffield and Sandwich – have barely any tenants.
The FT story (registration req’d) details how Conservative ministers have started to blame each other for poor performance.
It’s difficult to imagine a more incompetent Chancellor in the history of this country.
Has Labour committed to renewing Trident? No
The Independent today had a big ‘exclusive’ story titled: ‘Labour to join Tories in backing a £25bn deal to renew Trident fleet‘.
The story was unsurprisingly picked up by many across the left and criticised from within the party and outside.
But the actual contents of the story didn’t seem to match the headline, so I made a few calls.
A source from the the shadow defence team told me that the headline was essentially jumping the gun: no final decision had been made.
Ed Miliband has already said in the past that he wanted Britain to retain an independent nuclear deterrent for now. The Labour leader also believes that disarmament of nuclear weapons should be multilateral and not unilateral.
Labour say the decision on whether to renew Trident will be based on three factors: capability of such a deterrent, whether it is cost-effective and save money on the current Trident bill, and thirdly – allow the UK to downgrade our current stockpile and warheads deployed.
The Labour spokesperson said Labour’s decision will also be based on the work that Des Browne is doing on the matter.
So why the Independent article? It seems to have been prompted by Lord West raising concerns about the alternatives to Trident.
How seriously that intervention should be taken is up for debate.
But I was told in no uncertain terms that a decision had not been made on like-for-like renewal of Trident.
So when will a decision be made? That depends on when the Trident alternatives review is published (which should be this spring, and could be as late as September).
It also depends on what the review says. If it says there aren’t many viable and cost-effective alternatives then Labour may be backed into a corner.
If, however, the review offers a range of alternatives and sufficient level of detail on how they could work, there would be more momentum to opt for an alternative.
How the internet (and other factors) propelled a comedian to the front of Italian politics
by Tom Gill
Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement is now Italy’s largest party, only overtaken in terms of seats in parliament by the alliances formed by the main, established parties – Pier Luigi Bersani’s Democrats and Silvio Berlusconi’s PDL party.
So how did Grillo, a former comedian and Italy’s number 1 blogger, come from nothing – no power locally nor nationally two years ago – to win in elections 24-25 February over 100 seats in Italy’s lower house?
Here’s the answer in five points
1 He’s built a massive following on the web, with his blog taking the number one spot in the country and about 1 million followers on Facebook and Twitter. This hegemony in social media, one that mirror’s Berlusconi’s rise using TV 20 years ago, has allowed him to send out his message unmediated and without real challenge (the fear of which may be in part behind his shunning of Italy’s traditional mass media). It’s also allowed him to reach younger voters, and the previously politically unengaged (one survey found half of his supporters didn’t identify with any political party).
2 His genius at attracting and entertaining large crowds, with half a million turning up to a rally in Rome days before the vote. This originates from his previous career as a touring stand up act, which he’s successfully applied to his political campaigning. Grillo has also shown himself a spectacular self-publicist, swimming across the Strait of Medina ahead of a stunning victory in Sicily in autumn 2012. In short, applying that mix virtual with real world campaigning that has overturn regimes in the Arab world
3 Grillo has gained popularity by attacking the throughly corrupt political class, now never more sleaze-ridden after 20 years of Berlusconi and the Bribesville scandals that precipitated the media magnate to enter politics. Seen as a complete outsider, Grillo fielded against the usual crop of ageing career politicians an army of complete unknowns – twenty- something housewives, students, graphic designers, IT engineers and jobless factory workers. Furthermore, in a country where political instability means parties habitually resort to backroom coalition deals, jettisoning campaign pledges in the process. Grillo’s refusal to play this game has given him an air of honesty and transparency badly lacking among his rivals.
4 Amid a string of largely forgettable Left leaders that have come and gone, politics has never been more personalised. Many find Grillo’s style aggressive, sometimes offensive, but his darkly comic personalized attacks – the best of which has to be to dismiss the former PM as Rigor Montis – get him headlines.
5. If Grillo owes at least some of his strident rhetorical style to the populist right, he stole much of his political clothes from the Left, just as the latter abandoned them to raid Mario Monti’s neo liberal wardrobe. Centre-left Democrat leader Bersani’s key campaign pledge was to stick to the former ‘technocrat’ premier’s EU-backed austerity and ‘reform’ programme.
Grillo was able to pose as the champion of the little man, and, since the onset of the Eurozone crisis, Italy’s much crushed sense of national pride. Among manifesto pledges were promises to revisit all international treaties including NATO membership and the most notably the Euro, with a referendum; a ‘citizen’s wage’ for the unemployed; support for small and medium sized businesses and a strengthened say for small shareholders; a ban on share options and a cap on executive salaries; and reversing cuts to health and education.
What now?
The ‘markets’ are all jittery about renewed political instability in Italy. Bersani’s centre-left coalition, while enjoying a majority in the House, has not won control of the Senate, and cannot do so even with the support of Monti.
So there’s pressure from some quarters internationally for a grand coalition between Bersani and Berlusconi to continue the same policies that since the 2008 crisis have caused a downward spiral of economic decline, rising unemployment and plummeting living standards, even if (under Monti) they tempered the dreaded ‘spreads’ have eased. And it would be an inherently unstable.
Fortunately it seems Bersani is instead looking to some kind of rapprochement with Grillo. There’s more in a deal with Grillo for the Democrats than for the Five Star Movement. Without one elections will likely be coming round again soon and this time it could be the comedian-blogger’s movement that is projected into government.
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Tom Gill is a London-based writer who blogs at www.revolting-europe.com on European affairs from a radical left perspective.
Heavily invested in sacred cows
This neat piece from Steve Benen reminded me of this longer, but wonderful piece from Jonathan Chait in 2005 on epistemic closure and the remarkable lack of interest, from the right, in evidence-based government.
The New Republic piece is full of quoteable moments, and well worth reading in full, including this on the non-equivalence of the parties;
Part of this difference reflects the cultural predilections of the last two presidents–Bush is the instinctive anti-intellectual who likes to go with his gut, and Clinton is the former Rhodes scholar who relished academic debates. But it also reflects the natural tendencies of conservatism and liberalism.
Clearly, after the 112th Congress and the theatrics of the 2012 Republican primary, Chait’s theme has been much explored since. The rise of the Murdoch-influenced ‘conservative’ press, and its influence on creating an extraordinarily lucrative rage market for Limbaugh, Beck and company; the disturbing elevation of Paul Ryan and his numberless economics; Sarah Palin; and the radicalising effect of two cycles of TEA-Party politics in the House and in State Houses across the country have all washed the GOP further from their old moorings on the shores of reality. Here’s J. Bernstein in 2011:
No, the difference between the parties is how well party dogma is aligned with reality. [..] Republicans are required to be sceptical of evolution, to deny climate change, pretend missile defense works, and otherwise ignore real-world evidence. [...] a lot of GOP policy positions [are] “conservative” in the sense of being aligned with what Rush or Beck says, but not in the sense of being aligned with ideological conservatism.
Which got me thinking about the UK. There are certainly ideological factions in parliament. British government has clearly been divorced from any great emphasis on evidential policy for some time. But in the same way that the GOP has become an echo-chamber of dog-whistles and plutocratic catechisms, rather than becoming an ideologically conservative policy actor, the UK scene is ignoring evidence not so much for reasons of ideology as for reasons of faith and habit.
One cannot overestimate the power of habit in British politics; which is mostly a Sir. Humphrey-ish artefact of the professional civil service. It is amplified in the echo chambers of the tabloid press. The Sun, the Mail and their ilk exist, like Limbaugh and the departed Breitbart, to serve a market in fear and rage. Several, in fact; for example, the under-educated working class rage is mostly in the Sun, the educated middle-class rage is mostly in the Mail. Humans are habit-forming and change resistant, older humans are more so, and thus change can be easily presented in a manner which will induce fear and rage in a lucrative and electorally effective demographic.
Then we come to faith. Both major parties have significant and strident minority membership from the wing-nut end of socially conservative Christianity, but that’s not really one of the core articles of faith which have been so damaging. Both major parties also have a religious faith in the free market fundamentalism of the Great Moderation. Both have been captured by financial vested interests. Both have nailed their trousers to the mast on Austerian fantasies and will find it very difficult to climb down.
Both major parties are instinctively authoritarian, and with the triumph of the Orange Book faction of the Liberal Democrats, they’re not much better. Both major parties (since the New Labour course change) are reflexively, rather than in any real sense ideologically, right of centre. Once again, the Liberal Democrats aren’t much better. It should be noted that this matters relatively little as the Coalition may prove to have done more damage to the LibDems than 1983 did.
That British government is no longer moored to evidentiary standards of reality is visible in a number of very high profile incidents. The Dodgy Dossier, for one. The Nutt Sack affair. Public-Private Partnerships. ATOS. Faith schools. The entire Broken Britain narrative, which I have ranted about before. Ridiculous rhetoric on immigration. And in probably the most egregious example currently going, George Osborne’s economic policies.
Both major parties, and to a lesser extent the LibDems front bench, are heavily invested in sacred cows. That’s not a good way to run a country.
Labour pushes Democrats for a Robinhood Tax
I’m back from a 48-hour round trip to Washington DC with Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury Chris Leslie MP, and it was really interesting to see exactly the same debates about a Robin Hood Tax being had in the USA as we’ve had in the UK.
EU Tax Commissioner Algirdas Semeta spent longer in the US, making the case for the 11-country EU financial transactions tax in New York as well as Washington.
The two visits were designed to promote the EU transactions tax in the US, and inch both the US legislature and executive, and the UK, towards joining the EU’s initiative, so it’s good news that this week, Senator Harkin and Rep deFazio are re-introducing their “Wall Street Trading Tax” in Congress.
Their letter to other members of Congress seeking support for the tax quotes Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman and AFLCIO President Richard Trumka, but also former Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Sheil Bair and John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, a huge mutual fund company.
Signs of support for an FTT are growing – the H-street based Center for American Progress itself, very close to the Obama White House, has never been so forthright in support. Commissioner Semeta said that when he had been in New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had expressed his support for the tax, and Wall Street bankers had been interested more in the rate than opposing the principle of the tax.
Chris Leslie’s presence was designed to open up a dialogue between the Labour Party and Democrats about how to co-ordinate their work on the issue, to deal with concerns about tax competition between Wall Street and the City of London, although such competition is more apparent than real, given the possibility of designing FTTs to prevent avoidance by moving jurisdiction.
There will be more transatlantic discussion as a result of his visit.
Chris Leslie recorded this interview after the seminar at which he spoke:
He said: “I don’t see any evidence that there would be a negative effect on economic growth. In fact, quite the opposite. I think if you did have a global financial transactions tax where all of the global financial centers were involved and it was also set at a rate that is pretty modest, it wasn’t going to have a distorting negative consequence, then you could raise revenues that would actually help promote growth and invest in job creation. And I think ultimately that’s one of the main arguments in favour of a financial transactions tax.”
The Beer Duty Campaign – why you should not sign
This blog yields to no one in its advocacy of an occasional visit to the pub for a jar of decent quality beer. But a new campaign targeting beer duty will not be getting my signature, nor my endorsement.
The reason for this is straightforward: I also cast a sceptical eye over the dubiously crafted output of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), that astroturf lobby group which claims to represent this country’s taxpayers, and is behind the beer duty campaign.
But, as Full Fact has pointed out – and they’ve cast a sceptical eye over a previous Sun beer duty campaign – the evidence behind the claim that taxation levels are at fault for the number of pub closures is not persuasive, and far less conclusive.
If there was a connection, supermarkets would not have shelf upon shelf dedicated to the stuff (which they do).
What is rather more likely is that less folks are drinking beer, and especially the mass-produced brewery conditioned variety (ie canned, keg and nitro-keg). Sales of cask conditioned beer are either holding up or increasing slightly. The cheapest watering holes in Crewe are not necessarily the most popular. They’re not the best places to have a scoop, either.
What is worse, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has joined endorsed the campaign: perhaps its executive does not know where the TPA is coming from. Here I can be of assistance: they’re into abolishing the minimum wage, lowering the poverty line, abolishing the NHS and the BBC, trashing local bus services, and demonising the disabled, while wanting tax cuts for their rich backers.
Whereas having a pint or two down the pub is something undertaken by ordinary working people, many of whom will be in receipt of the minimum wage and tax credits, both of which the TPA is against. The overwhelming majority will use NHS services. They may watch a variety of broadcast media, but will watch and trust the BBC the most. And they are more likely to use public transport.
So they would be best advised leaving this campaign well alone.