Thursday 17 September 2015

How do you talk about it?

How do you react to terrifying events without sounding shrill, crazy, over-the-top? How do you express fear without being dismissed? How do you make the people you are scared for, and of, understand?

Refugees are flooding into Europe, and the response has been such that I worry about using the word ‘flooding’. My Prime Minister described them as "swarms of migrants", a newspaper columnist compared them to cockroaches. So maybe ‘flooding’ is too emotive, too likely to be used to paint refugees as a destructive event to be resisted.

Let me try again.

Thousands of people, fearing for their lives in countries racked by bitter civil wars exacerbated by western powers, have fled from persecution, bombed out homes, and the deaths of loved ones. They have made their way, often in desperately unsafe ways, towards the countries that have persisted in telling them that their way of life is better, safer, more moral.

And we are meeting them with razor wire and internment camps.

A central European country, run by a party who wants to end liberal democracy, is blocking people from entering that country, and so the EU, in defiance of international law. But it's too easy to point at Hungary as being the problem - they have closed their border, yes, but so has Austria, and even Germany has reintroduced border checks theoretically abolished within the EU.

Meanwhile, the home affairs ministers of EU countries met in a crisis summit earlier this week, and failed to agree on sharing the pressure of refugees around the EU. Instead, countries opposed to taking refugees proposed major 'processing centres' in Italy and Greece. These would assess asylum claims, and remove anyone whose claim was found to be lacking.

Farcically, they even considered what to do when returning a refugee to their own country wasn't feasible (though no explanation of how it could be both that a refugee wasn't 'genuine' and that returning them home was infeasible was given). In that case, they would be transported to purpose built camps, outside the European Union - and thus away from EU citizen's view.

Watch this video for how Hungary is treating refugees in one of their camps - flinging food at a mob of refugees penned in by fences. There are also reports of refugees being tricked onto trains they are told are going to Germany - only to be stopped near migrant camps Hungary has set up.

Today, Hungarian police fired water cannon and tear gas into a crowd on their border with Serbia - fired into Serbia - to prevent refugees crossing. Men, woman, and children who have fled from bombs and bullets have been met with razor wire and tear gas. Serbia has protested, but appears to have been ignored.

Europe is building razor wire fences and detention camps. We're saying we're full. We're saying we're Christian, and need to defend that.

I read an article today, one of those 'long reads' that has become so fashionable. There was a section in it that went like this:

[H]umans are able to portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present. Under enough stress, or with enough skill, politicians can effect [...] conflations [...]: between nature and politics, between ecosystem and household, between need and desire. A global problem that seems otherwise insoluble can be blamed upon a specific group of human beings.

I encourage you to read it all - it talks about how defence of living standards can come to be seen as defence of life; how the destruction of states, the creation of stateless people, can lead to atrocities against them; and about how easily we can all fall into that trap.

The article is called “Hitler’s world may not be so far away“. I didn't tell you that before, because I was worried I'd sound shrill, or crazy, or over-the-top. That my fear would be dismissed. That you wouldn't understand.

Tuesday 15 September 2015

North and South - What Jeremy Does Next Pt2

So, the great, glorious day has finally come - and gone. An avowed socialist has become the leader of the Labour Party, elected on the largest democratic mandate any leader has ever had.

Now what?

Corbyn faces significant challenges, including political opponents inside and outside Labour, building an electoral coalition, and getting a fair hearing from our media. None of these are going to go away just because he won, or by the use of a good hashtag. They need to be faced and addressed. In this brief series of posts, I'll give my own ideas on how we do this. Here I look at dealing with Labour's political opposition.

Labour faces two major opponents to a Labour Government: the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party. In England, Labour gained seats in 2015, whereas in Wales, we lost ground slightly. Broadly, Labour suffered from the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, while the Conservatives capitalised.

In Scotland, however, the SNP gained votes all over. An anti-politics (or rather, anti-Westminster politics) and anti-unionist mood combined with a party espousing left-of-centre policies to give a near clean sweep for the SNP.

Much discussion took place in the leadership election about attracting converts from the ranks of Tory voters, with relatively little discussion on how to do so with SNP voters. I believe this was a mistake, and a symptom of the lack of fresh thinking in what was the Labour mainstream - essentially, they felt they knew how to fight Tories, so were happy to talk about that, but had no idea how to fight anyone else.

Tories first. We can't rely on appeals to morality, justice or fairness over welfare cuts, public service cuts, and so on. People are worried over their own finances, and the persistently weak state of the economy. Even if sympathetic to the plight of others less fortunate than them, they also need to have confidence they can keep their own body and soul together.

That's why we need to take the initiative on the economic argument. We have run away from it for two elections now, preferring to capitulate completely to the Conservative framing of both the financial crisis and the appropriate response. The hope seemed to be that if we owned up to something we didn't do, people would forgive us, and we could move on. Well, it turns out they didn't, and actually we do have to have that hard conversation about the real causes and problems. No, it isn't going to be easy - complicated economic arguments will just turn people off. But we have to try - the alternative has failed dreadfully for us.

So, for example, make the case for quantitative easing and investment - make the point that the size of the economy is a measure of money flowing through it. It gets bigger when you spend the tenner in your pocket to buy groceries, because the grocer uses it to buy stock from the wholesaler, and the wholesaler pays his suppliers, and his suppliers pay their staff, and their staff put it into a bank, and the bank lends it to a business for an investment in new machinery, and the machinery manufacturer pays it to you for your wages, and you then go and buy groceries... Getting that money flowing is vital, and at the moment, banks aren't lending, and that flow just stops. So we will invest in infrastructure ourselves - and that money will flow out into the economy, instead of getting stuck in banks. The economy grows, we have a proper recovery, and as profits go up, tax take increases, and we pay down the deficit.

Make it snappier, though.

My point is that we used to have the courage and belief to make these arguments - don't give up just because it doesn't fit into a 5 second sound bite.

It may also be useful to highlight the constantly shifting goalposts of Osborne - his dates for deficit reduction keep moving back, and he ends up borrowing more and more. It would be worth testing to see if this attack actually has legs - that Osborne borrows to keep the lights on, whereas we'd borrow to build a power station, or words to that effect.

Then we have the SNP. I think for this group of voters a softer line is needed - while the push for economic competence will make inroads here, I think we have to accept there is also a big cultural move going on here. The rise in support for independence was, I believe, greatly helped by a feeling of despair among Scottish voters who lean to the left that there was no chance of getting a truly leftwing government in the UK. It is for that reason we need to highlight the strong leftwing policies of Corbyn - against welfare cuts, for example.

But as well as showcasing ourselves, we must go on the attack. The SNP have been in power in the Scottish Parliament for many years now, but have made little progress in areas they say are their priority. Remember, they have tax-raising powers, so if they truly believe a service is worth protecting, why haven't they taken advantage of them? Or is it that they like complaining, but don't really believe in implementing solutions?

Polling in Scotland shows, I believe, that support for the SNP is soft. Yes, the headline figures are horrifying - 62% plan to vote SNP in the constituency ballot, and 54% in the regional. But if you look past that, only 25% think they've done a good job on the economy, 34% on the NHS, 30% on education, and 23% on crime and justice. These are not the figures of a party running rampant - they are the figures of a party with weak opposition. We now have the chance to change that.

In this regard, the hysterical comments by the Labour old guard during the leadership campaign and afterwards will be a help - they help define a clear difference between the Labour Party that many Scots turned their back on, and who we are now. This is turn gives us the opportunity to gain a new hearing - and we must make use of it. Attack the SNP's record in government, and promote, for example, Labour's position on PFI in the NHS, on mental health funding, on social care, and on the National Education Service. Crime and justice looks like an area advances can be made also.

Crucially, Labour UK need to take the Scottish Parliament more seriously. For too long, Scotland was taken for granted, and Scottish Labour weren't given the intellectual freedom or the resources to fight the battle in front of them - the SNP. It's not enough to call them "Tartan Tories" and think the same old attacks against the Tories will work against the SNP - that is not how they are perceived. Nationally, we need to be more comfortable with allowing Scottish Labour to not only use a different emphasis on policies, but also to develop their own, more suited to devolved matters in Scotland.

Finally, we have the minor parties - Greens, UKIP, Liberal Democrats. Throughout the leadership campaign, there were persistent stories of Green Party members or voters becoming Labour registered supporters to get a vote. I don't think they were nefariously trying to influence the election, I think they were happy to have a candidate they supported in Labour. I suspect the Green surge will fall dramatically, to Labour's benefit. This is not to say we can afford to be complacent, but the policies Corbyn is espousing are likely to attract them naturally.

The Liberal Democrats are discredited in traditional Labour seats, and many others, due to their coalition with the Conservatives. Unfortunately, this means we can't rely on them to take seats away from the Conservatives. On the other hand, it is unlikely there will be a significant exodus from the right of the Labour Party to their banner. (Now there's a hostage to fortune if you ever saw one...)

UKIP is more interesting. I think they have taken advantage of a general mood against politicians and politics, but that this isn't the whole of the story. Insecurity over work, family finances, access to public services, and so on, has been manipulated by UKIP (and, to an extent, the Tories) into blame directed at immigration. By reducing the insecurity many of these voters feel - policies supporting welfare, tax credits, stopping cuts in public services, etc. - Labour can attract back many of these voters. Even just demonstrating Labour is a mass movement party that listens to its members is likely to assist in this.

Of course, the big caveat around UKIP is the EU referendum. A vote for out may mean UKIP falls apart, its purpose achieved, or it may morph into a partnership with the Conservatives, or try to reconstitute itself as a generalised protest party against the modern world. A vote for in may, just as with the SNP in Scotland, reinvigorate it as an expression of cultural connection. I don't know, and I wouldn't like to guess.

The (hopeful, but no doubt ill-informed and naive) advice in this post basically boils down to: have the courage to promote leftwing policies. Focus not on outrage over the suffering of the poorest (though it must be mentioned) but on the better economic performance investment in the country will bring. Wheel out friendly economists to agree - there are lots of economists who do. (Whether they are friendly or not, I don't know...)

And, ultimately, attack the record of incumbents. I was amazed that the Tories are still viewed as competent, given the sheer incompetence of some of their ministers in the last government. I don't mean in their policies - my disagreeing with them is not a sign of incompetence. I mean in terms of how poorly they manage their departments, or deliver their policies. The poster boy for this is, of course, Iain Duncan Smith.

For too long, we allowed ourselves to stay on the defensive. The moments Ed Miliband went on the attack - over Murdoch, over the hatchet job of his father, on Syria - he was successful, and popular. Defence doesn't defeat a government - we need to attack.

Sunday 13 September 2015

Observer Observation

Minor, I know, but I rather suspect esteemed members of the media may need to double-check some of their usual phrases and descriptors. Going through the Observer's comment on Corbyn's election, I noticed the sentence "Labour’s mainstream must learn from the Corbyn campaign". With nearly 60% of the party supporting him, Corbyn's campaign is the mainstream. I assume, however, that the Observer is actually referring to the people who lost. New term needed, clearly. Centre fringe, perhaps?

Securing Corbyn - What Jeremy Does Next Pt 1

So, the great, glorious day has finally come - and gone. An avowed socialist has become the leader of the Labour Party, elected on the largest democratic mandate any leader has ever had.

Now what?

Corbyn faces significant challenges, including political opponents inside and outside Labour, building an electoral coalition, and getting a fair hearing from our media. None of these are going to go away just because he won, or by the use of a good hashtag. They need to be faced and addressed - and for some the need is urgent. The Conservatives are desperate to frame the wider electorate's perception of Corbyn now, and we don't have a lot of time to counter them.

Urgent one first, then: countering the immediate Tory push.

The aim is clear: firstly, to ensure that the Labour Party as a whole is associated with the attacks, rather than just Corbyn, and secondly, to smear quickly and irreversibly. While this tactic has provoked ridicule and revulsion from many, we have to remember the echo chamber effect online - just because we see lots of people mocking this line, it doesn't mean other groups aren't seeing it approvingly. Basically, we can't ignore it.

The most serious charge here is, clearly, that Labour is a threat to national security. (The economic security argument is one I genuinely believe the Tories don't want to have, and they are hoping the national security charge will distract attention from it, so I'll come on to that later.)

I think we need to go after this attack head on. We do this by shifting the attack from theoretical situations to actually existing ones. So, right now, instead of getting bogged down in a discussion on our nuclear deterrent, focus on the situation in Syria. Ask what Cameron actually wants to do about this festering wound in the Middle East, and propose our solution - one of international action against arms sales to all sides in the conflict, and steps to cut off the supply of money to violent groups.

While Cameron may want to posture as a hard man by pushing for bombing, it will be worth reminding the electorate that two years ago he sought parliamentary approval to bomb Assad's forces, and now he appears to want approval to bomb forces attacking Assad's forces. Is there anyone in Syria he doesn't want to bomb? Does he have a plan to find a solution to the chaotic and often barbaric situation on the ground, or is he just interested in pictures of explosions on the evening news?

I firmly believe that the public is still against military adventures overseas, particularly with no clear exit strategy. A strong alternative plan, pushed by Labour, will mean that if the Tories continue pushing the national security line, they will simply end up looking like warmongers who refuse to try a peaceful solution - not a good look.

Economic security, and the security of YOUR FAMILY (insert hysterical scream here) then. Like I said, I don't think the Tories really want to have this argument. The fleeting glimpses of what is behind this appear to be that, shock horror, Corbyn thinks taxes should be increased. Well, so do the electorate - there is broad public support for a 50p tax rate above £150,000. Corporation tax is already lower than the US - hardly the home of tax and spend.

And, frankly, people don't feel economically secure now. The Tories have been walking a tightrope of raising fears of imminent financial disaster if they don't slash public services, while at the same time asking for credit for saving the economy. Talking up financial disaster means hard questions for them about what the hell they have been doing for the past five years, and why it hasn't worked. And that gives an opening for the anti-austerity alternative to be promoted.

Not surprisingly, I think this position can actually win people over. It won't be easy, and we need to develop clear and simple narratives instead of slightly tortuous economic arguments, but we shouldn't be afraid of it - after all, the apparent success of the austerity argument has come about because there was no-one disagreeing, except on matters of degree.

If they go on to talk about People's Quantitative Easing, ask if they think the £375bn given to banks was also a mistake, or is QE just a bad idea when it goes to building infrastructure assets like roads and bridges we can all use, instead of banker's pockets? It may be crude, but it is effective.

So, rebuttal of the initial Tory attack line: Put forward our plan to deal with the Syrian situation, and attack the Tories bombing plans - with ridicule if necessary. I think this on its own is enough to deter this whole Tory 'security' attack line, but if they continue with the economic security argument, argue for higher taxes on the wealthy and businesses to support vital services like the NHS, and make the Tories defend cutting taxes for the rich. Finally, QE that improves the country, instead of the bank's balance sheets.

(And if they start screaming about uncertainty over Trident, just remind them Michael Fallon refused to say Tory MPs would vote for Trident in the event of a Labour minority government - he was willing to play political games with something he now says is so vital even uncertainty is a threat to national security.)

The other challenges... will have to wait for my next few posts.

SNP show true colours

Amongst the predictable hysterical Tory attacks and toys-out-of-pram screaming from New Labour grandees, it was interesting to see the SNP trying to get a few hits in on Corbyn.

Given the SNP's positioning in the independence referendum as the only chance Scotland had to get anti-austerity, anti-Trident, and equality politics, it was interesting to see Nicola Sturgeon using the election of Corbyn as Labour's alternative Prime Minister, someone who espouses all of those policies, as... uh, another reason for independence.

It demonstrates, again, that the SNP is not really interested in any of those policies - they are interested in Scottish Nationalism. The clue is in their name. They will grasp on to any policy which is currently popular to try to advance their anti-British case, but make no mistakes as to their commitment to those policies. After all, one of their key post-independence offers was to massively reduce corporation tax. Hardly progressive.

I would like to think a reinvigorated Labour under Corbyn would be joined by the SNP MPs in Westminster to block the worst excesses of this Conservative government, and would certainly call on the SNP to do so. Reining in this rabidly ideological Tory party is in the best interests of the British people - including the Scots. But make no mistake, the SNP will do what is best for their true cause - the breakup of the UK.

The SNP's first instinct after the general election was to position themselves as the 'real' opposition to this government, as a way of showing Scotland would be better off on her own. But now they will have to face the possibility of working with an anti-austerity Labour to actually win votes - to block bad bills, or even to pass good amendments. And if they did that, it would show the UK Parliament really does work for, and represent, Scotland, as part of the UK. And the SNP may make the calculation that that isn't in their best interests, and the interests of Scottish people can go hang.

Saturday 12 September 2015

Touchy-feely

My last few posts have been about the technical and professional political arguments against Corbyn, for want of a better way of phrasing it. These have either been attempts at rebuttal, or setting out an alternative view of issues around electability, and so forth.

But, of course, politics isn't really about the technical or professional side - they are just tools to be used. After all, while there may be a few thousand professional politicians in the country, a general election is about asking the millions of people who don't live in that world to cast a vote.

And that is what I'd like to address in this post. It is policy light - I've already posted about the main policy reason I voted for Corbyn - and instead looks at the softer side, the image, perception, and, for want of a better term, the mood music around Corbyn throughout this campaign.

Let's get the obvious bit out of the way: hope. Corbyn's campaign has been about hope. In the early days, it was the unrealistic hope of the Labour left, volunteering for the campaign while everyone was writing Jeremy off, not really believing ourselves that we would achieve anything more than a mild ripple in the contest.

But then something curious happened - the gentle patronising of the other candidates didn't work. Usually, that would crush the hope in all but the die-hards, but instead other people started to listen. The mocking reports of Corbyn's throwback policies, like progressive taxation, and abolishing tuition fees, weren't doing what was expected - people were actually starting to agree with them, instead of calling them naive. (OK, OK, sometimes they did both, but they didn't give up straight away.)

Corbyn expressed the idea that we could build a better society, together. While the other candidates also tried to say this, they were too technocratic, hedged their remarks, demanded we accept small steps, tiny victories. They were facing someone calling for decent homes, better jobs, fairer taxes, an end to cuts. Simple themes, touching the concerns of many who didn't feel they were benefiting from economic recovery, but that Labour hadn't been offering them a better alternative to the Conservatives.

(Favourite snippet from IPPR research on the election? Of those who felt they had not, and would not, benefit from economic recovery, less than half voted Labour. "Rather than a failure to win over the support of relatively affluent, more 'aspirational' middle-class voters, the Achilles' heel of Labour's campaign appears to have been a failure to convince those who were sceptical about the Conservatives' economic record that Labour offered an attractive alternative." - John 'Exit Poll' Curtice.)

We all hope for a good job, and a decent home. But what I think the other candidates, and the PLP as a group, failed to grasp is how out of reach those things have come to seem for very many people - not just young people, but people my age. Anecdotally, the majority of my friends do not feel secure in their jobs. I know people who work at places that seem to go through a reorganisation every year - and make sure their staff know everyone's position is on the line. Owning a home feels out of reach for very many, certainly without support from parents, and buying with a partner. Instead, they live with family, or in precarious rented accommodation, while working at jobs that feel like they could disappear tomorrow.

Corbyn spoke to this group. He argued against zero-hour contracts. He argued for a massive house-building programme. He argued for fairness and justice at work for all. He argued for a world where money wasn't the winning argument, and lack of it wasn't a ticket to failure.

Yes, he inspired hope. But I think he has also inspired a new awareness, a more open-minded viewing of society. He has made it possible for a lot of people to hear, for the first time, someone arguing that the world doesn't have to be like this, that the structure of society isn't immutable, but can be changed.

And Corbyn has had an effect I think we won't fully appreciate until later. He has been attacked pretty relentlessly, once it became clear he wasn't failing as scripted. Newspapers on the right and the left have attacked him for being a dinosaur, for being unrealistic, for being a disaster for the Labour party. Members of the Labour establishment have denounced him. The BBC has run a hatchet job on him.

But he's still been popular. As John Harris put it in one of his videos from a Corbyn event, the interesting thing was that the room was packed with people who, despite all the establishment (for want of a better term) attacks on him, had still turned up. It was packed with people who weren't doing what they were told.

The usual tools to limit the debate, to decide on the acceptable boundaries of thought, aren't working at the moment. If this lack of faith in the main media vehicles continues, we could be set for interesting times. Will it continue outside of the, uh, 'excitement' of a leadership election? I really don't know. But it will be interesting to find out.

Finally, he's been explicit about something I think more politicians needs to be: morality. He has argued, for example, that for a country as rich as ours to have people reliant on food banks is immoral. Too often this kind of argument gets bogged down in numbers, and costs, and equivocations. Sometimes, however, things are just wrong.

That means you have to work against them. Yes, that means donating to food banks, but it doesn't mean claiming the growth in their numbers is a good thing. It means working not only to relieve the symptoms of hunger, but to root out the causes.

Look, I get that not everyone is going to agree with my moral judgement. I get that others could make strong moral arguments for the other side. That's fine - but we need to have that argument. Instead we let people get away with shrugging their shoulders at the sad inevitability of people starving in Britain - but it isn't inevitable. It is the result of choices people have made, and we need to start making people justify them. Politics is, amongst other things, a moral argument, but we often seem scared of framing it in those terms.

So. Hope, awareness, (very civil) disobedience, and morality. Those are the effects I think Corbyn brought to this campaign, and I think we're better for it, regardless of the final result tomorr... uh, later today.

Yeah, I'm kind of nervous about it. I'm going to go and try to get some sleep.

Monday 24 August 2015

How The Leopard Got His Spots - And Why We Need To Change Them

A lot of the argument against Corbyn has been with regard to his electability. It is presented as a choice: principles, or power. I'd argue not only that this is a false choice, but that the side arguing against Corbyn will lead Labour to irrelevance, not power.

The political strategy of New Labour was a product of the British electoral system. It made sense to, essentially, take a large number of Commons seats for granted, and focus the party's policies on the small number of swing voters in a small number of seats. This strategy paid dividends, and enabled Labour to win with percentages of the vote in 2001 and 2005 that were smaller than that achieved by the Conservatives in 1979, 1983, 1987, and 1992.

The problem is, however, that this strategy relied on the assumption that you could take a large number of seats for granted - that the Labour voters in those seats would keep voting Labour, as they had nowhere else to go. As long as that assumption held, the strategy could continue.

That assumption no longer holds. Enough of those voters to make a difference found somewhere to go, be that the SNP in Scotland, UKIP in areas of the north, or simply staying at home instead.

To get a majority in 2020 Labour need to win about 100 seats. This seems to leave Labour in a bind - the policies to win current Conservative voters in England are likely to alienate former Labour voters in Scotland, and current Labour voters in the north of England. Currently, three of the leadership contenders seem to be reacting to this by simply ignoring Scotland - meaning it is likely Labour would need a double digit poll lead over the Conservatives to win enough seats in England. This doesn't appear credible.

The answer is to realise that Conservative voters are not the only source of more votes.

From 1945 to 1997, every general election had a turnout of over 70% (71%, actually). After 1997, no general election has. The impact of this is generally overlooked, with commentators instead focussing on the decline in the vote share of the two parties of government - a common narrative is that the electorate is splintering, and voters are turning to smaller alternative parties. The problem is, that narrative isn't true.

Figure 1 shows the reality. What I have done here is show share not of votes cast, but of the total electorate - I have included non-voters. (Yes, you're reading a blogpost with graphs in it. I am profoundly apologetic about this, but pictures help.) The green line is the sum of Conservative and Labour electorate shares, the orange line is the sum of Liberals and others, while the black line is the share of the electorate that did not vote.

If voters were turning away from the main two parties, the share of the electorate voting for others should increase - other than a rise from a very low share in 1970, the 'others' share of the electorate remains relatively stable. Instead, we see non-voters increase dramatically in 2001, and remain high. If this was due to voters for all parties being less likely to vote, then we'd expect to see a decline both in the electorate share of the main two parties and the other parties, but we don't.

The conclusion is clear - voters are walking away from the two main parties. The strategy of focussing on a small number of seats, and a small number of voters, has led to them both being unable to reach out beyond that small group.

Put it another way - since 2001, the biggest share of the electorate hasn't gone to a party, it has gone to non-voters. A party that can actually reach out to this group, and gain their votes, at least gains the possibility of a dramatic change.

Share of total electorate for parties and non-voters

Figure 2 shows the rise of non-voting, and the decline of both Labour and the Conservatives. It is, perhaps, instructive to note that even the landslide of 2001, when the Labour Party gained 62.5% of seats in parliament, was only won with 24.2% of the electorate - slightly less than the Conservatives received in 2015.

Of course, one reaction to all of this information could be "So what?". After all, if the point is to get to power, what does it matter if turnout falls, so long as you still get the biggest slice of the people who actually vote?

I'd argue that it is in fact harder to do that - convince Conservatives to switch to Labour - than it is to convince non-voters to vote. This decline in voting for the main parties hasn't just affected Labour - the Conservatives had their collapse in 1997, just one election before Labour, and haven't really recovered. (21.9% of total electorate in 97, 24.4% in 2015.) This means, just as Labour is left appealing to their die-hard core vote, so are the Conservatives - and those are precisely the people least likely to switch from one to the other. It seems far more likely that they will switch to not voting (as figure 1 suggests) or, at best, to an alternative party.

In fact, we have an example of what a difference an increase in turnout can make - albeit when combined with other factors. The turnout in Scotland for the 2010 general election was 63.8%, and Labour won 41 seats, the LibDems 11, and the SNP only 6. The turnout in 2015 in Scotland went up to 71.1% (the low end of the pre-2001 national turnouts), and the SNP took 56 seats, with Labour, the LibDems, and the Conservatives sharing the other three between them.

Yes, other factors were most definitely involved, but take, for example, Gordon constituency. This was held in 2010 by the Liberal Democrats, with 17,575 votes, a majority of 6,748, on a 66.4% turnout. In 2015, the absolute number of LibDem votes went *up*, to 19,030 - but the SNP took the seat with 27,717 votes, a majority of 8,687 on a turnout of 73.3%.

Conversely, we can also see what not addressing this fall in turnout means. A frequent line that comes up in anti-Corbyn arguments is that he risks a rerun of the 1983 general election, a terrible showing for Labour. (It could be argued this was more due to the right of Labour breaking off to form another party, but that is a debate for another time.) If we look at share of the total electorate, we see this truly was an awful drubbing for Labour - only 20.1% of the electorate voted Labour. But it turns out we've already had a rerun of 1983 - 20.1% is what Labour got in 2015. Which was, in fact, an improvement over the 18.9% in 2010. Two of the current leadership contenders were in the cabinet or shadow cabinet for those elections.

The old strategy doesn't work. Trying to rehash it for another run in 2020 isn't going to work. Labour needs a different strategy, one based on reaching out to non-voters - and you can't do that by offering a subtly different version of what the other parties are offering. Those policies are what has turned people off from the two main parties.

Ultimately, you can't do it by listening to what (you think) voters are telling you - because the very people who we need to attract aren't voting. Instead, you need to look at the campaigns and organisations that are attracting members - and at the moment, they are to the left of Labour.

(Data sources: Political Science Resources UK General Election data, and Wikipedia for Scottish turnout and Gordon constituency results.)

The Pushmi-pullyu, and other fantastic beasts

Putting aside specific policies for the moment, the argument of the centrists (or moderates, or Blairites, or sensible ones, or right of the party, or whatever particular phrase you want) to those on the left (or hard left, or Bennites, or Trotskyists, or morons, or whatever particular phrase you want) has been that if they want to see any part of their principles enacted by a government, they have to stop campaigning for what they actually believe in, and start campaigning for a position close to "the centre ground", where the bulk of voters are.

An addition to this argument, perhaps to sweeten the pill, is that once a centre-left party has got into government, it can start to shift the centre ground leftwards. The LabourList article of Luke Akehurst's I looked at last time gives this argument:

"My vision for the country I’d like to live in is I know, somewhat to the left of most voters, but I hope not so far to their left that they couldn’t gradually be persuaded of it through incremental evidence of successful governments"

This is what I call the push argument - that you get into power, and then start pushing the centre ground to the left by implementing policies just slightly to the left of centre.

An alternative view is held by some on the left. This is that it isn't right to compromise on any of the positions, not (or, perhaps, not just) because of a moral belief against compromising, but because they believe by doing so, they can get more of their policies implemented more quickly. Their argument is that by arguing forcefully for their policies, they can begin to move the centre ground towards them.

This is what I call the pull argument - that power is at the end of the process, not the start, but that throughout you will be pulling the centre ground to the left by causing whoever is in power to compromise their position, and implement more leftwing policies to prevent the draining of their voters away.

It can be seen that, in an ideal world, these positions can be complementary - the crazy idealists provide a tension towards the left, while the sensible pragmatists get into power and implement slightly leftish policies to try to reduce this tension.

(Naturally, a similar argument would be taking place on the right, so the centre is under tension from both sides.)

In fact, this process can be seen most clearly in countries which use proportional representation - with the added benefit of the crazy idealists and sensible pragmatists having relatively open negotiations on the policies to be implemented if they are forming a government.

However, we don't have PR, as you may have noticed. Thus we have the Labour Party, a very broad church, which includes people from both the push and the pull positions. For a long period, the push side has been ascendant, arguably since the purge of Militant.

(For the avoidance of doubt, no, I'm not saying Militant were the pull side. They were genuine entryists.)

However, up until the election of Blair, the usual push and pull tension carried on. Blair seemed like a continuation of the same, but instead of the usual way of reducing tension (that of making some compromises) he took a different path - he started to reorganise the party to remove the ability of the pull side to create any tension.

Hence the steady removal of democratic methods of holding the leadership to account, the hobbling of routes for the grassroots to direct policy, the change of national conference to a rally, and so on. In this way, tension couldn't grow from the pull side, as they had no way of being able to push their point of view - the democratic structures were removed.

So what happened? Membership fell. New parties were started, but failed. A purge without a purge happened - as the pull position came to see they could not influence the party, they naturally began to leave, thinking "why pay to be a member of a democratic socialist party which doesn't seem to want to be socialist or democratic?"

This isn't to say these people disappeared. Instead, activists of the pull position ended up finding other structures to work within. This could be: a single issue campaign, such as UK Uncut; a broader opposition to austerity, such as the People's Assembly; trade unions; smaller left parties, such as Left Unity or the Greens; or even a very focussed party, such as the National Health Action party.

While these groups did have some effect (the issue of tax avoidance was forced on to the mainstream political agenda by UK Uncut, for example) they were all hamstrung by their separation from the party political process, and by the British electoral system. So, for example, the People's Assembly could have huge meetings, but there was no-one for them to vote for that could implement their agenda. The National Health Action party could raise awareness, but people don't vote on just that one issue.

In other words, the pull position left, so there was no tension on the push position to bring them to the, uh, left. This would seem to be good for them - they could concentrate on winning votes in the centre.

Except...

Without the tension from the left, the push position could go further right, reducing the difference between them and the main opposition. After all, getting into power was the important thing - without it, no policies could be implemented. But the centre wasn't, and isn't, fixed. And the pull side on the right still existed, bringing their push side further to the right.

So the push side on the left keeps edging to the right, and the push side on the right keeps going to the right, and we end up with a Labour leadership who won't defend tax credits, who won't vote against making poor people poorer.

The leadership election, particularly following the changes made by Miliband, is one of the few democratic ways remaining for views different to the current leadership (and central party structure) to be expressed. The easy extension of the franchise to registered supporters was originally supported by the push side as they made the mistake of thinking that the people they crafted policies to attract were the same sort of people who would sign up, or join a political party.

They won't make the same mistake again. This is the opportunity for the pull side to actually exert some pressure, some balance. Even if the only thing Corbyn does is help rebuild the democratic structures of the party, he will have left a party better able to make genuine positive changes in the country.

But I don't think that is all he will do. I think he will actually provide a better electoral position for Labour than his opponents, and that is what my next post is about.

Tuesday 18 August 2015

How the pendulum got his swing, and other stories

Well, I thought about writing this response the first time I read Luke Akehurst's post We've already tried Jeremy Corbyn's alternative electoral strategy and it didn't work, but decided I far preferred reading in the sun. However, a friend has pointed at his post as evidence for why not to vote for Corbyn, and so, here goes:

Akehurst's post is bunk.

I originally typed "whole post" but I was being unfair - I do agree that the distribution of political views is, probably, a normal distribution, with the occasional bit of distortion from specific policies.

Then it goes wrong. The second of his self-evident truths is arguable, but we'll skip over that, and look at what he tagged on to the end of that assertion - that a party is chosen for government by being 'sensibly' centrist, that being what the electorate want. While a nice Just So story, it is just as easy to tell a different one - that the electorate wants a centrist government, but only on average, over time, and this is achieved by voting for a party to one side of the centre, and then, after a period of time which may consist of multiple elections, the mood of the electorate shifts, and they decide they want a party on the other side of the centre to balance things out. Call it "How The Pendulum Got His Swing".

The important things to note about that story are: a) it explains the swinging of power between Labour and the Conservatives, and also suggests why the avowedly centrist party, the Liberal Democrats (and predecessors) haven't been in power (on their own) for quite some time - they don't provide enough of a balance to whichever party was in power before them, and b) I just made it up - I told a plausible(-ish) story to fit the observed facts, just like the story Akehurst presents as a self-evident truth.

There is also slightly more evidence for my fairytale than there is for Akehurst's - and it comes from the survey he cites.

To bolster his argument that Corbyn, Livingstone and (as far as I can tell) Miliband were too far left, he points at the political spectrum polling done by YouGov. Voters in 2015 put themselves, on average, at -7.1 on a political spectrum - i.e. just left of centre. But, horror of horrors, Labour (before the election) was seen as at -36.4, with Miliband, the closet Trot, at -40.1! No wonder Labour lost! Clearly the Conservatives were seen as more centrist!

Er, no. The same poll put David Cameron at 45.8 - further from the apparent centre than Ed Miliband. The Conservative Party was seen as even more right wing, at 50.7. When you take into account the average GB voter put themselves at -7.1, David Cameron was 52.9 points to their right, while Ed Miliband was 33.0 points to their left. Or, in other words, Miliband and Labour were, according to that survey, closer both to the average GB voter, and to the absolute centre.

What can we learn from this? People lie to pollsters. People are happier to say they are leftwing than to say they are rightwing. And, maybe, just maybe, we learn that simple divisions of left and right aren't a fantastic way of looking at the spectrum of political views, or how people will vote. (No matter how nice your Just So story is.)

But that was just the preamble, the poorly argued assertions that came before the main, monster, assertion: that a Jeremy Corbyn general election campaign in 2020 would be similar to the Ken Livingstone London Mayoral election campaign in 2008.

Edit: Sharp eyed readers will have noticed I start talking about the 2008 mayoral election, when the linked article is talking about the 2012 election. This is because I am an idiot. I'll leave the original blurb here, but struck through, and you'll see another edit after it where I try to correct my error! Edit ends.

First things first: we don't know what a Corbyn campaign would look like. The assertion that it would have the same strategy as the Livingstone campaign in 2008 is just that - an assertion, not a fact. But, even accepting the broad premise for the sake of argument, there are other issues.

Secondly, turnout. I'll be coming back to turnout in a later post, but for the moment, just this - turnout was 45.33%. Goodish for a local government election, appalling for a general election. In essence, we can expect more people to vote in a general election, and, broadly, that tends to favour Labour. (But only broadly.)

Thirdly, Livingstone was the incumbent. Yes, he had a lot of publicity for the previous few years - but he was up against someone who wasn't short of a bit of publicity himself. In which case, you get someone who has to defend a record, against someone who can promise everything for the future.

Finally, and importantly, you may recall some pretty major events around 2008. We were in the middle of a bit of a financial brouhaha. You may remember it. It was in all the papers.

The Labour Party's poll rating tanked. The poll published just before the election for national voting intentions put Labour at 26%, while the Conservatives were on 40%. While it may be nice to think that the electorate in London would have calmly put aside the slow motion collapse of the global financial system, the panicky headlines, and the opportunistic finger-pointing of the Conservatives, and instead focussed only on bus fares and rubbish dumps, it seems rather disingenuous to claim the spreading disaster didn't figure at least slightly. In which case, with a result (on first preference votes) of 37%, Livingstone, as a proxy representative for a government he was not part of, outperformed expectations.

Edit: The 2012 mayoral election was fought in different circumstances to the 2008 one. The financial crisis was still rumbling on (as, indeed, it still does today) and Labour had not challenged the narrative that they were to blame. Ken Livingstone was no longer the incumbent, losing both the advantages and disadvantages this gave in 2008, but was, now, someone who had been previously defeated in an election for this position - yesterday's man, if you like. In addition, London was gearing up for the 2012 Olympics, an event causing some excitement, and which Boris Johnson had been able to personally associate himself with (while still being able to hold himself blameless for the levies on council tax payers to help pay for it).

Significantly, the coalition was now in power, and this had a clear effect on the Liberal Democrat vote - it more than halved between 2008 and 2012 in percentage terms. Turnout was also very low, at only 38.1%. All of these factors had some effect. It is, however, worth noting that Livingstone did in fact increase the share of the vote Labour received, suggesting the impact of the campaign strategy was, in fact, positive. End edit.

All of which is to say that each election is unique. Can some lessons be learned? Of course. But can definite conclusions about a possible election five years in the future be drawn from a different type of election seven years in the past, completely divorced from the circumstances it was held in? No, of course not.

If your fear is that a Corbyn general election campaign would just be a repeat of a Livingstone mayoral campaign, rest assured that isn't the case. The differences are far, far greater than the similarities.

And, if I haven't managed to convince you of that, consider this: Livingstone won the first two.

Friday 31 July 2015

Politicians are all the same - except the ones that aren't

We've all heard, whether on the doorstep, on tv, or online, that politicians are all the same. It's not a bad shorthand, to be honest - general elections became about winning over a few thousand swing voters in a small number of constituencies, and naturally the two main parties began to adopt similar styles to try to attract them.

But that isn't the whole story. Remember Clegg-mania? Before the coalition, the Liberal Democrats had the freedom to be different. No-one, not even they, believed they were going to be in government any time soon (a hung parliament was considered a remote possibility) and so they didn't have to chase that few thousand voters - they could just be themselves instead, and it won them seats.

And then there's UKIP. They have traded extensively, and effectively, on not being like the rest. They're the authentic voice of the people, the only ones not in the Westminster bubble, not a part of the establishment, and so on. Most of these claims are absolute rubbish, but they are perceived as true, which is just as important.

Labour and the Tories, however, are seen as being pretty much the same. It's an understandable position - when one party announces they will follow the same spending plans as the other (as Labour did before 1997, and the Conservatives did in 2007), it's clear there is at least some similarity there. When you add the more recent capitulation in the argument about the causes of the government deficit and debt by Labour, leaving both sides apparently agreeing on the cause, and the solution, only differing on the details (pace, timing, marginal differences in scale of the cuts) it looks like they are more alike than not.

Don't get me wrong, I think an Ed Miliband led government would have been better for the country than this David Cameron led one, but it is easy to see how the vast majority of the electorate, who have only a passing interest in politics at election time (or no interest at all, given the number of non-voters) could think there isn't much difference.

The thing is, this is a product of the tactic of chasing the few thousand swing voters, and I no longer think that tactic is valid, certainly not for Labour. Targeting a few thousand swing voters in England is not going to win back the hundreds of thousands of voters we need in Scotland. Sounding like the Tories is not going to win back the disaffected "none of the above" voters in the north of England, many of whom voted UKIP. And if we can't keep hold of, or win back, those voters, the votes of a few thousand swing voters in the Midlands and South of England are irrelevant.

The thousands of swing voters tactic only works when the two parties are close in terms of seats. The brutal truth is that, having tried that tactic again last time, we are now over one hundred seats behind the conservatives. That doesn't call for a tactic designed to shift ten or twenty seats - it calls for a step change. It calls, in fact, for an attempt to fundamentally shift the parameters of the debate, much as the SNP managed in Scotland, much as UKIP are starting to do across England.

We're in a time of flux, and we need to win votes across the entire UK - in Scotland, to regain what we have lost, in northern England and Wales, to keep what we have, and in the Midlands and the South of England, to get back to power. The way to win those votes? By showing that we're different from the Tories. By showing that we don't think people should be criminalised for being poor, punished for being on benefits, or sanctioned for being sick. By showing that we do believe in investing in our young people, in our infrastructure, and in our country. By showing that when it comes down to choosing between the rich or them, we're on their side.

In short, by being Labour, by emphasising our differences rather than diminishing them, and, yes, by making the case for our positions, even when the electorate (currently) disagrees.

Wednesday 29 July 2015

Not so funny after all...

Remember #ToriesForCorbyn? A little bit of schadenfreude, we were told, the Tories enjoying the spectacle of a Labour Party leading themselves into the wilderness, disappearing off into the desolate lands of socialism. Apparently Tory entryists were going to sign up as Labour supporters, just so they could lumber us with a dead-weight as a leader.

It doesn't look like it is working out that way.

A new group of Tories have arrived, the unoriginally named #ToriesAgainstCorbyn - because they think a Labour Party led by Corbyn could be a threat to them.

Oh, they still argue there is almost no chance of Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, only to then go on and so how terrible it would be for the UK if any of a strange variety of circumstances meant he was (though, of course, every set of circumstances includes Corbyn winning a general election, which we are told is impossible...). And even if he doesn't become Prime Minister, they still argue it would be bad for the Tories. The guy who started it, Oliver Cooper, writes in The Telegraph:

In short, Labour being Labour, they’ll still have the same platform, no matter how bizarre their leader’s views. The only difference is Corbyn’s views will be more left-wing, so will shift the entire political debate to the left. Long-term, so long as Labour and the Conservatives remain the two major parties in the UK, the only way to make progress is to persuade Labour to accept our position. Our ideas don’t win just when our party does, but when the other party advocates our ideas, too.

The amazing thing about this is it directly attacks the implicit argument of the Anyone But Corbyn campaign, namely that Labour can only win from the centre ground, and that the centre ground is fixed. The Tories know it isn't - after all, they have been dragging the centre ground to the right for years, and, some would argue, so has New Labour. After all, the triangulation used by Labour over the past twenty years has sought to move the party to the existing centre ground, and force the Tories right. It's almost as if it worked too well...

Corbyn has already caused the two other main candidates to shift leftwards, even if it only amounts to a change of rhetoric. Burnham has started advocating noisily for increased taxes for his National Care Service, for graduate taxes, and for not being scared of the Tory press.

Political positions are relative. On the one hand, this can be depressing - the Labour Party, as the main leftwing party in the country, choosing to abstain on welfare cuts, for example. But on the other hand, it is inspiring - we can move the centre of debate leftwards.

Don't get me wrong, it won't be easy. But by presenting clear policies which people support, and explaining them in terms which challenge the current (for want of a better word) neo-liberal consensus, the Labour Party can begin to move the centre ground leftwards again.

Corbyn is already doing this - for example, a focus on investment in education, on the grounds of not only productivity and individual economic success, but because a well educated population is a common good, something we all benefit from. You can include public ownership of railways, Royal Mail, utilities - on the grounds that we all already subsidise them massively through our taxes, so why don't we get the benefits as well?

The arguments are there to be made. The centre ground is always mobile. We need to remember this - and realise that the Tories are worried about these ideas getting a wider airing than they have been.

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Investment too low, says cranky lefty

You may recall that in my last post I briefly mentioned the low productivity in the UK, and how it is thought to be at least partly due to low investment. Just to prove it's not just me saying this, here's the Bank of England's chief economist saying something similar - business investment has been too low for many years, and it is bad for the UK economy.

From the article:

[Andy Haldane] welcomed the Government's productivity plan to boost UK growth, but noted that increasing investment was a major part of that policy and argued that an examination of UK company law may be needed.

While the UK and US systems give a prime position to shareholders in the governance of companies, other models are available. Mr Haldane noted that other systems of corporate law give greater weight to other stakeholders - such as employees and customers - than the UK system.

In the short term, and throughout the financial crisis, it has simply been cheaper for businesses to hire more low paid staff than it has been to invest in machinery to improve the productivity of existing staff. On the one hand, yay! employment! On the other hand, boo! low wages!

The UK can't continue to compete on the basis of low wages - not only is it simply not going to work in a global economy, with millions of Chinese workers, or, closer to home, Eastern European competitors, but it is also, well, not a good thing. It will increase inequality as more and more low paid jobs are created, often the only replacement for middle income jobs which are being cannibalised. We need to invest to bring back middle income, skilled work - but the short termism in UK business is a problem.

How you tackle it is up for debate, of course, but it seems inevitable that to do so successfully you have to intervene into businesses in some way, whether through increased taxation to pay for training and investment via the state, increased regulation to compel some investment by business, or a more wholesale change in the legal structure of business. None of these is likely to be popular with those who are currently making money out of this system, even if it will ultimately make business more profitable in the long run.

Friday 24 July 2015

Jeremy Corbyn? My heart's not in it

"A vote for Corbyn is a retreat to our comfort zone." "Electing Jeremy as leader would be suicidal." "The problem is that members are voting with their heart, not their head."

None of that is true. I'm voting for Corbyn, and it isn't because of an outbreak of sentimentality. It isn't because of the strong moral case he is putting forward. It isn't misplaced nostalgia for an age I wasn't even alive in.

No, I'm voting for Corbyn with my head, not my heart. I'm voting for Corbyn because the economics is with him. That's not what you'll hear from, well, pretty much anyone. The story goes that he's an unreconstructed throwback, demanding horny-handed sons of toil take over ownership of non-existent shipyards, or some such. In fact, his main message is one that is simple, and that pretty much all of us can agree with: austerity isn't working.

This is self-evidently true. Just look around you. But let's look at some of the figures:

The surprising thing is that none of this should be a surprise. In fact, these effects of austerity could have been, and in fact were, predicted. Why? Because it is standard, textbook economics.

The economist J M Keynes realised back in the 1930s that to get economies out of recessions quickly it was necessary for someone to step in to boost demand. The only body capable of doing this was, and is, the state - the government can borrow money to invest, and by doing so help stimulate the economy, shortening the recession, and making it less deep. Following that, you get a strong, growing economy - fewer people end up needing the support of the state, so the benefits bill goes down, and businesses make more profits, so tax revenues increase. You can use this influx of money to pay back the debts you incurred getting the economy going again.

The idea of needing greater demand isn't disputed - even the austerity advocates believe this. But their argument was that a business wasn't going to invest now because of fear of taxes in five years time. They proposed cutting spending, to shrink the deficit and, ultimately, pay down government debt, and that this virtuous behaviour would somehow convince businesses to spend, spend, spend now, content that taxes would be low in the future.

The Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman called this belief in the "confidence fairy" who would make everything better.

The truth is that Keynesianism has been a staggering success for the majority of the last seventy years. It isn't perfect, but for getting economies out of difficulties, it is unmatched. The astounding shame of the Labour Party is that they have been unwilling to argue for the most successful economic theory, on the grounds of wanting to appear economically credible.

To re-use an old phrase - I'm not interested in ideology, I'm interested in what works. Keynesianism works. Investment by government in a weak economy works.

That's why I am supporting the only candidate offering a strong economic position, one based on investment to generate growth, one based on fostering strong and sustainable growth through tried and tested methods, one based on economic experience, not wishful thinking.

That's why I'm supporting the economically credible candidate, Jeremy Corbyn - with my head, not my heart.

Thursday 23 July 2015

Democratic Socialism

There has been a (to me) surprising and disappointing aspect of the rather frothing reaction of the Anyone But Corbyn campaign to the YouGov poll on Tuesday night. John McTernan, in a Newsnight snap reaction, said that the MPs who had made sure Jeremy Corbyn got on the ballot were "morons". Mary Creagh, in her New Statesman article, decries the idea of having a left-winger in the contest in the interests of a debate.

There are other examples, and the link is that they share one idea: that MPs should have made sure that the 43% of the party who are supporting Corbyn didn't have the option. In other words, they think democracy is fine, so long as the choices offered are limited.

This is astounding - Labour describes itself as a "democratic socialist" party. There are no doubt arguments about how far "socialist" can stretch if it covers both Dennis Skinner and Chuka Umunna, but surely there can be no argument that not allowing members to have a choice would have been profoundly undemocratic?

Clearly I have a dog in this fight - I support Corbyn, and want him to win. But that doesn't mean I think Liz Kendall shouldn't have been allowed on the ballot because I think she's too far to the right, and her policies will lose us significant amounts of votes and seats. She, and her supporters, have a right to put their arguments forwards, and try to convince other members.

The truth is this: we're all Labour. We all want the Tories out of government, and us in. We all want to make the lives of ordinary men, women, and children in this country better. After the election, regardless of the result, we'll all need to work together. We need to start remembering that, and try to bring a bit more civility to the contest.

English Fairness

Originally written 22nd September 2014.

We have heard a lot about fairness from the Conservatives over the last few days. They say it is unfair that Scots MPs get to vote on English matters. They say it is unfair that some MPs get to have a say on things which won't affect their constituents, but will affect others. They say that change has to come, and the change that is needed is English votes for English laws. They say this is the only way to make sure the English are treated fairly.

I want us to be treated fairly. I want us to have the same powers and rights as the Scots, as the Welsh, as the Northern Irish.

The Scottish Parliament was set up after a referendum in 1997 when the Scottish people were asked if they wanted this. The Welsh Assembly was set up after a referendum in 1997 when the Welsh people were asked if they wanted this. The Northern Ireland Assembly was set up after a referendum in 1998 when the people of Northern Ireland were asked to approve the Good Friday Agreement that set it up.

In each case, the people under it were asked if they wanted it. It was an expression (rare and contradictory in a constitutional monarchy) that power was derived from the consent of the people. It was an admission that how those people are ruled is their choice to make.

But somehow the English aren't even being asked if they want a referendum. They aren't being asked if they want an English Parliament. The government is simply telling us how we will be ruled, and telling us this is fair.

In Scotland: the people decided. In Wales: the people decided. In Northern Ireland: the people decided. In England: David Cameron and William Hague decide? Is that fair? Is that right? Is that making sure the English aren't treated worse than the other nations?

Demand fairness. Demand the choice. Deciding how we are governed is our right, not theirs.

Mind the dust

Don't mind me, just clearing up a bit, airing the place out. It's been six long years since I posted anything here, but I'm going to put a couple of things up here - something I wrote about the Scottish referendum, just for historical interest to myself, and some musings about the current Labour leadership election.

I don't think it will all be staying here - I'll probably move it to a new host, and probably get a new name, as I see an earnest young chap has taken the leftwardho.co.uk domain name - it's not as if he could have expected this thing to rise like a zombie... Anyway, I'm probably talking to myself anyway, so enjoy a few bits and bobs over the next couple of months.