What is the Compass strategy?
Neal Lawson and John Harris have a very bad article in the New Statesman called ‘No Turning Back’. The political strategy behind it appears to be that Labour should team up with the Liberal Democrats and leftie lobby groups (and draw comfort and inspiration from such diverse sources as the “Red Tories” and the Countryside Alliance) in order to change society in profound and yet not very comprehensible ways.
As Paul says, this approach is about constructing “the 21st century sanctuary that is the centre-left think tank world and the accompanying blogosphere, a place where the chattering socialist classes can all feel safe and comfortable while the storm of dangereous, savage, rightwing policy implementation rages outside.” I also agree with Hopi’s point that at the moment our priority “needs to be what we’re doing to help people who need a helping hand, not how we’re going to punish those who deserve a slap.”
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Is American journalism failing?
People who watch US news or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart will know that one of those minor feuds between celebrities – in this case, between Stewart and Jim Cramer, a hedge fund manager turned journalist, of CNBC’s Mad Money – has been brewing over The Daily Show’s repeated attacks on the low quality of reporting by the financial network, CNBC.
It came to a head on Jon Stewart’s show in one of the most compelling pieces of television I’ve seen in a long time. You need to watch this. Now. (3 parts)
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Taxpayers Alliance exposed!
Are the Taxpayers’ Alliance a politically motivated, right-wing conservative group? Anybody applying the duck test knows the answer. But not the Taxpayers’ Alliance themselves.
It is “outrageous” to claim they are on the right, or that they prefer any political party, their campaign manager Susie Squire spluttered on LBC Radio, when host Nick Ferrarri described them as across “the party political divide” from Labour, and when Chuka Umunna challenged Squire’s claim that “we don’t have a party preference”.
Given their insistence on non-partisan independence, logically, how outraged the Taxpayers Alliance to find themselves traduced by their inclusion in Tim Montgomerie’s post, intended to dramatically illustrate the “growth of Britain’s conservative movement“, with two very pretty PowerPoint slides showing a sparse lack of activity in 1997 and a crowded market of ideas in 2009.
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Moving on from the miners’ strike
It’s about midday on a glum, sunless Saturday. On Cheapside, there’s the usual obstacle course of street traders, buskers and charity fundraisers: a BNP stand stocked with parka-clad pampleteers and studied scowls, a bunch of trade unionists pushing anti-fascist leaflets into the palms of passers-by, and a group of pan pipe players whistling – of all things – the tune to My Heart Will Go On.
Turn left onto Mayday Green, and among the pound shops, charity shops and pasty-picking pigeons, there’s a boarded-up store front carrying a proud advertisement from the council: Barnsley is Changing.
In a sense, they’re absolutely right.
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Labour needs to create a new electorate
This Times opinion poll shows the abject failure of New Labour. It shows that only 26% of public sector workers support the government. Which means that the billions of pounds the government has thrown at them has not won it much support.
This matters. It is not just the case that electorates choose governments. Governments also choose electorates, by building or facilitating the growth of client groups – people who believe that their self-interest lies in voting for the government, or failing that, people who are grateful for what government has given them.
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Fred Goodwin should be stripped of his knighthood
Good luck to Martin Salter, who has tabled a motion calling for the forfeiture committee to meet to consider stripping Not-Sir Fred Goodwin of his knighthood. Salter says this to Paul Waugh of the Standard.
Sir Fred Goodwin is a symbol of corporate greed and the honours system is there to reward service not selfishness. There’s clearly a powerful case for his refusal to hand back his knightood to be considered by the Forfeiture Committee in order to preserve the integrity of the honours system.
About which I have only one complaint.
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LC briefing: editor’s note
Last year Hazel Blears MP (in)famously said most blogs did little to ‘add value’ to our political culture. If by ‘value’, Blears did not mean bloggers doing research into government initiatives and occasionally exposing them for the gimmicks they are, then she probably won’t be pleased with our briefing either.
Today, coincidentally, David Hencke asks if James Purnell is the worst social security minister ever: I’d say he is in contention for the worst Labour minister ever given how empty his initiatives at the DWP have been. His plans to trial lie detectors to tackle benefit fraud will eventually be exposed as one of those vacuous stunts.
First a bit of background.
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What now that capitalism has failed?
Here’s an interesting example of intertextuality; Martin Wolf opens a lengthy think-piece on the future of capitalism with this striking five word assertion: ‘Another ideological God has failed’.
The reference, of course, is to the well-known 1949 book ‘The God that failed’, in which six famous former Communists offer readers a heart-to-heart on the reasons for their break with Stalinism. The title designedly underlines the quasi-theological character that conversion to liberalism had for the intellectuals involved.
Can Wolf – one of the leading contemporary representatives of the pro-market and pro-globalisation political right – really be postulating a directly comparable loss of faith?
No turning back for Britain
The leaders of all three main parties want us to turn back as soon as possible to the failed ideas of the pre-crash. We think this would be a huge mistake; with this in mind Neal Lawson and John Harris have written a major essay (for the New Statesman) to kick start a national debate about our country’s future: Polly Toynbee wrote about this over the weekend and now we want visitors of Liberal Conspiracy to join this important discussion.
New times demand new politics.
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Against ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ on teenage pregnancy
We’ll begin, as is the vogue when writing about this topic, with some of those tiresome anedotes which somehow prove the observations which follow.
Back when I was still lugging crates of cheap pop around a newsagents in Meadowhall, I worked with a girl named Claire*. Claire was sexually active well before the age of consent, was pregnant by the age of sixteen and had only a handful of GCSEs to her name. So far, so ‘Shameless ‘. Except, as soon as her maternity leave was up, Claire returned to work whatever hours she could manage whilst still looking after her newborn. Some two years after giving birth, she enrolled on a part-time hairdressing course, which she squeezed-in between her paid work and all the hours where she simply had to be a mum. She finally qualified last year and, last I heard, was working in a hair salon with dreams of one day opening her own.
Defending Gordon Brown on the economy
Gordon Brown says he has “has nothing to apologise for” about the recession. You know, I think he has a point.
For one thing, the UK economy, so far, is not doing especially badly. Yes, the 1.5% fall in UK GDP in Q4 was worse than that suffered by France or Canada, but its less than that suffered by the US (1.6%), Italy (1.8%), Germany (2.1%), or Japan (3.3%). By G7 standards, then, we’re doing OK. Only a silly little Englander can believe this is an unusually British recession. What’s more, it’s not obvious what exactly Brown is to blame for. The allegations don’t stack up.
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On liberty: laughter and forgetting
1) Traditional civil liberties have been eroded in recent years.
2) Amongst those concerned about the erosion of civil liberties are quite a few posh people.
3) Therefore, civil liberties are an issue only of concern to the elites and not ‘ordinary people’.
I would have thought the failure to apply elementary logical thinking in this formulation was pretty obvious – yet this is exactly this sort of argument I’m reading on what seems like a daily basis in the blogosphere.
Or it just feels like it. I’m getting a bit fed up with it, to be honest. Apart from anything else, it’s a little selective, isn’t it? The decidedly plummy tones of the New Atheists don’t seem to prompt the same dismissal. Only toffs are concerned about things like the extension in police powers and not ‘ordinary working class people’?
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Woolas: the Minister for Invertebrates
Phil Woolas yesterday responded to the recent Daily Mail article in which the paper suggested that British-born descendants of relatively recent immigrants shouldn’t be classified as British, an article that Sunder delightfully skewered only a week or so ago.
Woolas’ full statement can be usefully summarised as ‘nothing to do with me, guv‘ followed by a stream of complaints which amount to the suggestion that the Office of National Statistics is actively politicking on the issue of migration, hence the claim that the statistical data is released on the 24 Feb, on which the Mail’s story appears to have been based, was accompanied by a nine page press release which ‘highlighted the 1 in 9 figure as the main finding’.
Woolas’ unusually strong assertions, set my ‘there’s-something-not-quite-right bump’ itching, for no better reason than the fact that I simply cannot recall a single instance in which the ONS have ever come within a country mile of behaving in the manner that Woolas claims – and when a politician starts claiming that an independent civil service agency is acting in manner that’s completely out of character then I, for one, start looking around for signs of small furry mammals of the genus ‘Rattus‘.
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Council staff vote to strike against Tories
I report here and here, and here, on the bitter fight that Hammersmith and Fulham residents and staff are having with the Hammersmith and Fulham Tory council over staff and service cuts.
Things seem finally to have reached boiling point: at a union AGM last week, Hammersmith and Fulham Unison members voted unanimously to ballot for strike action to support contact centre workers who are threatened with compulsory redundancy. I have a report on the contact centre story here.
A few thoughts:
Much has been made by Tory commentators of Hammersmith and Fulham’s genius for reducing council tax – but that’s only one half of the picture.
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Osborne: prosecute financial crimes
Today George Osborne called for reform of the way in which financial crime is tackled in the UK and a new commitment to prosecuting City criminals, as part of a wider review in to the regulation of the City.
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How do we deal with poverty?
Over at CentreRight, Jill Kirby eviscerates the ’shamelessly cheerful’ Harriet Harman for attending the launch of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s report into poverty, inequality & government policy.
She interprets the report like so:
As we stare into the pit of a plunging labour market, there is not much for the Government to be proud of. While she wages war on Mandy, staking out her place as the true champion of equality, Hattie would do well to apologise – on behalf of all her colleagues and especially her erstwhile friend and mentor Gordon Brown – for the wasted years, the wasted billions and the wasted opportunities. Opportunites to create a pro-work, pro-family welfare system with reduced dependency and genuine (not grade-inflated) educational opportunities for all. It’s no good telling us you cared, or asking us to let you try more of the same. You had your chance (and our money) and you blew it. You might at least say sorry.
There’s a little too much tubthumping here for this to be a fair analysis.
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Does this banking mess undermine free markets?
Alastair Darling’s announcement of a £600 billion guarantee to RBS and Lloyds raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps, because we’ve gotten used to the idea of big bank bailouts since the economy is in such dire straits, there isn’t strong opposition to the idea.
It’s no different in the US, where they’re trying to figure out what to do with Citigroup, which is perilously close to collapse.
But all this raises some very difficult questions for people who believe in free-markets.
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Claimants’ Charter
In the Second Reading debate of the Welfare Reform Bill, the Secretary of State James Purnell indicated that he would be prepared to look at the idea of a ‘Claimants’ Charter’, setting out the rights that those claiming state benefits and accessing employment services can expect.
Citizens Advice, the Disability Alliance, Child Poverty Action Group and Gingerbread have put together a draft Claimants’ Charter. I’m posting it for discussion as it is a draft and they welcome comments on it, but also request that if you agree with it, please contact your MP and ask them to support its inclusion into any future legislation on welfare reform (regardless of what you or they think about the rest of the Welfare Reform Bill).
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Was the financial crisis predicted?
No one could have predicted the current economic crisis with any accuracy or authority. The whole thing has surprised the finest minds in mathematical modeling and finance-as-physics.
Writing in the Financial Times John Kay has helpfully explained that when we consider markets ‘we may be able to say a lot about their general properties while being unable to make specific predictions’. That’s because markets are so dynamic and non-linear and all. You know, that thing with the butterfly and the hurricane.
It’s all very well to carp now, and complain about the excesses of the last decade or three, but it’s better, more mature, more sophisticated, to recognise that what’s done is done, shrug, and move on. After all there is work to be done, and there are belts to be tightened. Someone has to pay for these bailouts.
The trouble is that this is all bullshit.
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What do Gordon Brown and Nadine Dorries have in common?
So, Gordon Brown has taken heed of my rants and launched an Obama style website to focus on jobs – Real Help Now, launched today. More seriously, while this is a positive step, it would help if we also had a serious and thought-out stimulus plan. And I cannot reiterate enough that the messages from this government on the economy have been rubbish. They should stop talking about banks and focus only on two messages: creating jobs, and exposing the fact that the Tories have no plan. Right now,
Saying that, the website is awfully cluttered; aren’t there any good design bods at the government?
And guess who else has been taking tips from Obama? Yes, Nadine Dorries MP, who has written an ecstatic article for her local paper telling us how she marshalled her troops online, Obama style, and stopped the government from building housing!! So now you can not only blame her for jumping on the bandwagon, but also the for the lack of housing across the UK.
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» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civil cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
» Is this the end for the socialist left?
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