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.

Fascism in the UK - All Labour's Fault?

I am now represented in the European Parliament by Nick Griffin. That's not a good feeling. But like it or not, the BNP now has as many MEPs for the North West as the Liberal Democrats. Over in Yorkshire, the former leader of the National Front was elected, giving the BNP the same number of MEPs in that region as Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

The various talking heads have said how awful this is, how the BNP will claim this gives them and their views legitimacy. And, well, the BNP will claim that. And, well, they'll be right.

You see, that's the point of democracy. Sometimes it throws up results you don't like. But that doesn't make them illegitimate - much as I may dislike it, the BNP put themselves up for election, and of those that voted, enough of them agreed with them for them to win seats.

But the key phrase there is "of those that voted". And that was a depressingly low number - in places. Overall turnout was 34.3% - down by 3.9% from 2004's 38.2%. But those figures mask the variation across the country.

In fact, in some areas turnout was up, though only marginally. The East of England, the South West, and the South East all went up by about 1%. But these aren't regions the BNP managed to do well in. The regions the BNP did well in have been traditionally associated with Labour. Obviously the proportional nature of this electoral system changes that a bit, but the ability of the BNP to claim seats must be seen, primarily, as a failure of not all parties, but of one - the Labour Party.

Let's look at the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber regions. In the North West, turnout went from 40.9% to 31.7% - a fall of 9.2%. In Y&H, turnout went from 42.6% to 32.3% - a fall of 10.3%. Put it this way: about a quarter of the people who voted last time didn't bother this time. That's pretty awful.

It gets worse for Labour. In hard numbers, about 470,000 fewer people voted in the North West - and Labour lost about 240,000 votes. In Y&H, about 363,000 fewer people voted - and Labour lost 183,000 votes. Half of the people who didn't vote had been Labour voters. In terms of their share of the vote, Labour lost 7% and 7.5% respectively - about a quarter of their share.

(Remember, even with a falling turnout, the share of the vote would stay the same, all else being equal. A declining share of the vote means, in this case, and in my opinion, that former Labour voters are overwhelmingly more likely not to have voted than those of other parties.)

These figures illustrate a catastrophic collapse of the Labour vote in these areas. In comparison, the Tory vote stayed relatively stable - in fact, their share of the vote increased by only 1.5% in the North West, and dropped by 0.2% in Yorkshire and the Humber. This wasn't a flight to the Tories - they stayed pretty much the same.

A very fair point to make is that the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber were all postal votes last time round. The other two regions that were all-postal last time were the North East and the East Midlands. This time, their turnout dropped as well. In fact, the North East's turnout dropped by more than Yorkshire and the Humber - it went from 40.8% to 30.4% - a fall of 10.4%. The East Midlands, however, had a more modest drop - from 43.4% to 37.1%, a fall of 6.3%.

But I think clinging to the hope the drop in Labour's vote is due mainly to the change from an all-postal ballot is wishful thinking. For a start, the drop in turnout was significantly larger in the areas Labour had previously been stronger - the East Midlands saw a much smaller drop. But, much more significantly, it ignores Wales.

Wales didn't have an all-postal ballot last time. But they saw the biggest percentage drop in turnout this time round - from 41.4% to 30.4%, a massive 11%. About 239,000 fewer people voted - and about 159,000 fewer people voted Labour. The Labour share of the vote went from 32.5%, the second highest of any region in the UK, to 20.3%, the fifth. And, for the first time since the Labour Party became a national party, Labour were beaten in Wales. And beaten by the Tories.

This wasn't a change from an all-postal ballot depressing turnout. No, this was the Labour vote not turning up. There could be many reasons for this. Anyone who has read my past few posts will know I think policy is a main one. Others will point to the expenses scandal hitting Labour harder than the other parties.

I think it's that we have reached a tipping point. And I don't know if Labour can recover from it.

More than 5 years ago, I gave a speech at the final hustings to become the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for a safe Labour constituency - my home. And because I cared about my home, and because I was worried about the path the Labour Party was on, I gave an honest assessment of where I thought we had been going wrong - ignoring our grass roots, not pursuing policies that would create a fairer society, introducing privitisation into health and education, and so on.

And I told my fellow party members that I wasn't worried about Labour winning in that constituency at the next election. But I was increasingly worried about the election after that, and the one after that. Because I felt the central Party had made a decision that they could safely ignore their heartlands, because they had nowhere else to go, no-one else to vote for.

And, you know what? They are right. The heartlands don't have anywhere else to go. But these European results show that they don't have to go anywhere to cause problems for Labour. They don't have to go to another party. They don't have anywhere to go. So they just stay at home.

(Incidentally, the other place strongly associated with Labour is Scotland. They, however, had a strong opposition to Labour that wasn't the Tories - the SNP. Turnout fell by only 2.4%. Labour lost about 81,000 votes. Coincidentally, the SNP gained about 89,500 votes. In Scotland, former Labour voters do have somewhere else to go.)

Now, I know that European elections are different from general elections. People vote differently, they protest, or they just don't care. But this election, the Labour heartlands have learnt an important lesson - they don't have to vote Labour. They can just... not vote.

That's why the BNP won seats - the Labour vote collapsed. In Yorkshire and the Humber, Labour needed only another 10,270 votes to have stopped the BNP getting a seat. In the North West, Labour would have needed another 60,000 or so - but their vote had fallen by about 240,000. (UKIP would have needed only another 2,449 votes, or the Greens would have needed 4,962.)

No, the election of the BNP isn't a failure of all parties. It's not a failure of the political system. It's not even a sign that the country is becoming racist. It's a sign that the Labour Party is failing, that the Labour Party cannot energise its core vote, that the Labour Party vote is collapsing.

It's a sign that the Labour government needs to start listening to what its party members and voters actually want them to do.

But because they didn't, because Labour failed, I am now represented in the European Parliament by Nick Griffin. For the next 5 years. Thanks a bunch.

Disconnection (Part 4)

This is the hardest post I've had to make in this series.

Over the past few days, I've been able to write almost as an observer, discussing what I think is going wrong, but without it really affecting me. Yes, I've managed to whip myself up into the odd bit of righteous anger, but that's about it.

This post is different though. This one is personal. This is about my own disconnect.

Two years ago, I wrote a lament for English socialism. In it, I told of my sorrow that what was left of socialism in the Labour Party couldn't even mount enough of a challenge to Gordon Brown to make him face an election rather than a coronation.

But I didn't leave the party. To do so would have been unthinkable. This is the Labour Party, for heaven's sake. This is the party of Keir Hardie, of Nye Bevan, of Tony Benn. They are owed my loyalty. They demand my loyalty.

And so I resigned myself to forever being disappointed in what the Labour Party did, of making steady compromises with myself to continue voting for them, telling myself that at least they weren't as bad as the Tories.

But things just got worse. After an impressive start, the Brown government started to fall apart, in style as much as substance - and this was before the banking collapse. Last year, I wrote a series of posts about the Brown government, including whether I could vote for Labour again, and what I thought was wrong with politics. And ultimately, I copped out on deciding whether I would vote for them again - but I clearly stated I could never vote for another party:

I am a tribal animal. It is a terrible flaw, but there you go. And my tribe is Labour. I am Labour. Always will be. The Liberal Democrats are inconsequential, the Tories beyond the pale. Neither could ever get my vote.

I was so sure of my commitment, of my connection to Labour, to my tribe. But...

I suppose deep down inside, I wanted to believe that some of the people at the top of the Labour Party were like me. They too had had to compromise remorselessly, steadily moving away from what they believed in their heart to something that would get them elected, elected so they could achieve at least some good.

But then came the financial crisis. When the Telegraph is calling for bank nationalisations, but the Labour government is resisting, you know something has gone very wrong with the world. To the surprise of nobody but me, it turns out it really wasn't a government of revolutionaries reluctantly turned bureaucrats. The lines they had been peddling about the superiority of the market, about its magical efficiency, about how it should be trusted, they really believed them.

The financial crisis shattered the last of my dearly held illusions about the Labour government. Once upon a time, I could believe in their financial competence, rather than them just being the beneficiaries of blind luck and bad decisions made in America. Once upon a time, I could believe that deep down inside, they believed in the same things as me. Once upon a time, I could believe they wanted to change the world.

But once upon a time ended.

And so my certainty that I was Labour through and through, tribal to the end, has been shaken. And, finally, slowly, it has collapsed.

It's so hard for me to express the pain this causes me. I suspect it is like a priest losing his faith - the one clear, definite, fixed point of his life has been destroyed, the one certainty he could cling to no matter what, the defining part of who he is is gone.

But it is worse than that. Because this collapse in my belief also means that now, finally, I can think about voting for someone else. It feels like I am betraying a dear friend, that I am cheating on a spouse, that I am lying to my parents.

The only thing I can point to, the only experience that this feels close to, is the empty, icy-cold feeling inside when your lover leaves you, when the person you had shaped your life around shrugs her shoulders and walks away. It sounds melodramatic, but the hollow devastation is all I can compare it to. But thinking I can vote for someone else means I am also betraying her, that I am the one in the wrong.

Betrayal is the only word I can use, the only one that seems to get over the shock and hurt I feel at where the party has gone, and the shame I feel myself for thinking of going elsewhere.

And I tell myself I shouldn't feel this way, that it may once have been the party of Hardie, Bevan and Benn, but that it isn't anymore. That the party moved away from me, not the other way round. I tell myself this, but it doesn't really help.

I'm grieving for the party as it used to be.

I'm not the first to feel like this. The Labour Party has been leaking members for years. Always I felt they were making a mistake, that sure, not everything was perfect, but that's what politics is all about. And then my father left the party. Secretly I believed he'd end up going back, that he couldn't possibly turn his back on the party.

But now I am seeing more people who have been committed to the party for a lifetime leaving, quietly, unobtrusively, sadly. I know of people who have been lifelong supporters and members, people who have been councillors for decades, people who have devoted a good portion of their lives to the party, simply slipping away.

These are not people who would make a fuss about it - they still have too much respect for what the party used to be to do that. But when we meet each other, then we can share our private grief. We can talk about what used to be, what we still believe, and what we wish would change.

And all this before the revelations on MPs expenses. That will drive people further away. Further away from all parties, but I can't help but feel that Labour will suffer most.

Because, regardless of the truth of the matter, many traditional Labour voters, people like me, would always have expected Tories to be out for themselves, out to get every penny out of us that they could. But not our MPs, not Labour people, surely? But their venality has been lain bare, the dramatic difference in lifestyle they demanded between how we live, and how they do. And they will suffer.

I feel sorry for the honest MPs out there, the ones who have only claimed what they must, those who claimed little. Those who didn't take advantage of the system, regardless of what the rules were. Because now they are tarred with the same brush. Already politicians were viewed as untrustworthy, and now they are viewed as greedy, venal, criminal. A plague on all their houses, primary and secondary.

And so, this is the final disconnect. A personal disconnect. One I have found very hard to write about. Because my party has betrayed me, in thoughts, in words, in deeds. And I have betrayed my party, in my mind if nowhere else yet.

I can't forgive the party. It remains to be seen if I can forgive myself.