Obama wants to 'recalibrate''special relationship'

Now that's 'change we can believe in'.

Deeper than personality

As ever, it seems that Jon Cruddas has cogent points to make. More than can be said for the rest of the Independent...

Just a start...

If you had to have a stitch up, this one wouldn't be too bad. But there are warnings here.

Watch out for the Charles Clarke tendency. I don't think anyone would want to turn this into election-losing backstabbing, but I fear, given the narratives, that this could be a result. Keep an eye out, Compass.

Then there's also a need to remember that the left accessions sketched out here remain exactly that. There's nothing wrong with selling in principle, but there's a lot wrong with not getting the right price.

Charles Clarke's recipe for division

Let it not be said that the Labour left is by definition disloyal.

Come on people. This government, like any other, has shortcomings. But the biggest enemy by far is the Conservative Party. Now is the time for a change of direction and definition, not a leadership challenge.

Elections and Labour's crisis: finding solutions

Thought I'd feed on from this and this.

I'll start off from a bit of Mike Ion's well penned analysis:

"Since becoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his team of advisers have been seeking to trade on a reputation for economic competence. The problem with this strategy is that history also shows that centre-left governments invariably have to do more than this. Labour governments need to persuade people that there is a task for government, that collective endeavour really is a strength as well as being a virtue. For this reason alone the best prospects of future success for Labour lie not in defending the status quo of what is still a highly unequal Britain, rather it is in legislating to help rid our nation of some ugly realities such as child poverty, endemic inequalities in both health and education and in clearly articulating why these areas warrant state action."

This is spot on. The big problem for me is that the solution mike proposes is an ambiguous one, which centres around what 'reform' is to mean. Take tuition fees. Mike advocates 'reform' to avoid the Tories implementing 'charges' and creating social injustice. With this one 'reform' (I prefer 'deform'), we have created both. We must be careful, not because we are opposed to 'change', but because progressives should be opposed to going backwards.

Many 'reforms', particularly those made by the previous incarnation of this government, have been predicted and later shown in evidence to have effects both for and against Mike's mini-charter of social-democratic aims. We need to make sure, if we're reforming, that we don't just follow an orthodox and dogmatically neoliberal programme of privatise and divide. I think the 4th point Chris Dillow made the other day bears relevance. We need 'reform' not centred on attacking the so called 'vested interests' of our own movement in the health service, as this has negative effects, in terms of improving services, equalising opportunity through outcomes, and indeed the unity of Labour's own political struggle (which is now dependent on trade union funding - a position which, given recent history, I believe to be a necessary stage).

The vested interests to target are managerial strata and central control. What we need is responsive reforms. Top down privatisations of provision are pretty irrelevant to this aim. What we really need is to step back from political interference in delivery, and keep what we do politically to handing down power from managers to staff and patients. Basically, an approach which is decentralising and co-operative.

A separate point on working attitudes to reform through 'choice': how come I want a choice in services, but when it comes to jobs, I get 'education', then forced to take one that the civil servants want me to take? The 'ideologically neutral' makes so many plainly ideological assumptions, usually in an counter-progressive direction.

Further rightward gestures (I shall not stoop to using the 'spin-phrase' centred around 'lurching') will not improve our position. Our campaigning movement was significantly haemorrhaged before this latest lack of confidence, the last we need is more of the same. For the same reason, campaigns like the one we have just run are to be avoided.

The second point in favour of this is that our own promised voters seem to be tactical voting against us. Commentators of the right are wrong to say that they are drifting towards the tories because they have rightist ideas which outweigh the popularity of ours.

There are several arguments towards this point. Firstly, they don't actually have any set ideas, right wing or not. Secondly, gimmicks they have (on occasion) proposed, Labour have been intent on nicking. Thirdly, they have been attacking us from the left on immigration and tax (though their policies on both are probably to the right - but hardly anyone knows what the policies actually are, so it must be the campaigning that's effective).

Attacking us from the left, against a setting where Labour voters are, largely correctly, convinced that the party doesn't want them, has given the Tories an air of acceptability to working people who have not yet felt the force of their policies, and the accompanying social collapse.

In this context, if the impression exists (and it does, for a multiplicity of reasons) that Labour doesn't care about 'working folk', 'people like us' and people whose 'Dad used to vote Labour', they're thinking... 'well, at least the conservatives haven't given me a pay cut yet', or 'I'm glad someone is prepared to talk for me'.

The Tories have created a more powerful working class bloc than ours by simply talking for workers, given that we have acted for them supremely cautiously, and often acted directly against them (hence 10p tax) to please anti-Labour middle England.

Protip for party strategists; when you have a crushing majority of seat, try to concentrate on keeping all of the voters in them happy, not expending your vote even higher up the social pyramid. You end up with overstretch.

So on the progress approach, while some are sticking their fingers in their ears, others are taking a semi-positive approach. I'm not sure any of them recognise the degree of radicalism required to deal with the level of direness we have encountered.

What do others have to say?

As one would expect, the Compass approach is one with which I largely agree. I can't really think of anything beyond it.

John McDonnell, Emperor of the Proles (John's folks - seriously, I do actually like him, but he's an easy target) has not spoken out yet. Doubtless a revision of the 1983 manifesto commitments will provide an electorally popular solution.

Actually, looking at our current polls, he may not be too far off...

It's a shame that I've left it to the very end of the post to talk about it, but I think that there are a couple of issues vastly more important than the orientation-related ones I have just discussed. This blog is not just supposed to be about those aspects of renewal.

Firstly, I'm worried that this defeat will detract attention from our defeat in local government.

Because of our national aggravation of constituencies heavily populated by our core vote, Labour is in a worse position than it was before the 'new' tag came about. The Tories once again largely won this with a left wing campaign against Labour on post offices and tax, leaving many Labour members in elected positions in the embarrassing situation of being social-democrats campaigning for a social-democratic aim in keeping local services open! This becomes more embarrassing when you consider the amount of MPs who ran precisely this campaign during the local election period, before voting for closures.

The loss of councillors in the North East and London in particular is a scandal. Luckily Manchester still stands, and might well be the GLC of the next government.

Councillors are our campaigning base. It is they who have time to take off during the day, while still being fit of mind and body. It is they who know the ins and outs of local politics. It is they who are the most experienced winning campaigners.

Yet time and again I have met councillors who are determined that their ward is 'safe'. At the fag end of new Labour, now ward is 'safe'. You're a full time politician, do some bloody leaflets like those of us who have full time jobs! Get out and make contact.

Even more often, we find councillors who never turn up to anything apart from council business. Barring disability, this is effectively a wrecking exercise.

We need to find a way of enforcing the discipline of councillors within local authorities. Strong discipline exists already in a political sense. We need to get them campaigning.

As a second issue, we urgently need to reform our youth movement to make it attractive to both 'normal people', and those who are interested in politics, with political views. At the moment, I would say that it is attractive to neither. It was right in the 1980s to 'close up' our youth organisations. But we have gone way too far, much to our own detriment.

At the moment its activist levels are small, though these 'cells' are extremely effective. Nonetheless, what we need is lots of extremely effective young campaigners.

Due to the 'closed' nature of these institutions, those in high positions within them often see their role as one guarding them from Trotskyist infiltration.

Another protip. Trotskyists don't want to join the Labour Party. And even if they did, there's only about two of them outside the extremely anti-Labour SWP.

I would argue that those in positions of responsibility within Young Labour, Labour Students, and surrounding them in Victoria Street, should not gauge their success on a combination of how 'under control' the youth movement remains, and how much campaigning it gets done. They should go instead for how fast the can grow it, and how active they can make it. People like Richard Angel, Steph Peacock, Wes Streeting and Kenny Young do an absolutely cracking job of campaigning for the party, and work tirelessly. I would argue that a bit more assistance should be given to them by the party (the outcome would be a worthwhile investment), and that the exec should also concentrate on building something big.

I was recently reading a book by Robin Cook. In part of it he talks about a visit to France, where he attends a music festival held by the youth section of the Parti Socialiste.

It was, allegedly, massive. Imagine if we put time into kindling that kind of interest? If, from a few hundred, we could grow a thousand? Remember that these people are effectively full-time campaigners.

I would argue that a little political dissent, especially when Labourite in orientation, is an extremely positive thing, which helps us adapt to circumstances. At the very least, it would absolutely be a price worth paying. Labour Students takes contra-government lines where it deems them appropriate. Why not be proud to campaign on such policies within the party, on the conference floor? Plenty of moderates do, eventually winning compromises or victory. Principle into action, pluralism included.

At the very least, such vibrancy and pluralism is a price absolutely worth paying. It would be payed back time and again in leaflets and voter ID, working towards a Labour Government. That should be the deal... young people work for them, they listen to the young people, and acknowledge their pluralism. Let's have a festival.

The last bit of campaigning stuff I want to talk about is the online campaign.

Iain Dale and Paul 'Guido' Staines are plugged into CCHQ. I bet they're getting news releases all the time. As the tories are trying to keep a 'nice' face on, I reckon there have to be people in there researching negative stories from them. Surely there aren't that many right-wing infiltrators in parliament who simply have Guido's number?

Conversely, Labour won't trust bloggers. It won't provide them with platforms, funding, sources, anything, largely, in my view probably because it can't control their output. It instead sets up strings of parallel 'Labourtube' type sites, which fail precisely because they appear to be controlled, coupled with the fact that the people working on them get moved around, and enthusiasm is lost.

Once again, we are not Trotskyist plotters. We all want to work for the election of Labour candidates. At some point Labour will have to wake up to the new millennium.

Asides from that, what other basically bankrupt organisation would turn down free campaigning and media influence of the calibre Labour bloggers can produce?

At the same time, we're getting bogged down. We have Bloggers4Labour... it costs Andrew loads to run, the feeds break down, loads of the links need updating. He appeals for help, but no-one really has the spare time to do so.

There is LabourHome, Labour Outlook and Labour Matters. Plus of course, Liberal Conspiracy. All excellent, but they really need linking together, somehow, with the possible exception of LC.

On this particular matter, I think a closed door meeting is in order. For now, I shall satisfy myself with advocating the campaign of Mark McDonald for treasurer. it's time to once again show the potential of autonomous new media campaigning.

For those of you who disagree with anything I've said, fair play. These are really just some initial thoughts about... well, everything. It's really just intended to feed yours.

Over and out.

UPDATE: Neil Harding plays it safe.

More Tory criminality exposed

Continuing with the last post, this 'ere is also a cracker.

Crewe Tories in trouble

Dear Crewe and Nantwich residents: the conservatives know how you intend to vote. So they've helpfully told the media. As far as I'm aware, this is completely illegal, and could get them in a lot of trouble...

In the meantime, votes for the Tories are no longer secret votes. Which is a great way to pay you back for your time and effort. More on this outrage here.
UPDATE: An offshore call-centre, eh? No activists then?
UPDATE: Do they have enough promises to win? Unlikely, I'd say...

Against a 'leader' for the Labour left

The excellent Weekly Worker carries a feature detailing goings on at the recent Labour Briefing conference, where discussion took place on the recasting of the magazine as the journal of the LRC. It is heartening, in my view, that comrades of the hard left, genuine trots included, are happy to work jointly with Compass, and indeed resolved to keep the name as it is. The LRC is an organisation of which I have criticisms, and shall remain outside. That said, I have no desire to take up any hostility towards it (but I could say the same about Progress, to a large extent). Suffice it to say that the LRC, like Progress, does not represent my views, priorities and modes of behaviour, and similarly that membership of it is not a necessity for democratic socialists in a similar way that membership of the Labour Party is.

One point in the CPGB did rile me. I find it difficult to understand why they claim that John McDonnell is unanimously recognised as the 'leader' of the Labour Left. I find it ridiculous, firstly, that the CPGB of all organisations should advocate the counter-materialist policy of personality cults, major or minor. Would they advocate such an approach for their own party?

If McDonnell is an 'undisputed leader' of the Labour Left, then we have a bad starting situation in the first place. The left must be collegiate if it to avoid split, defeat or ideological stagnation.

The second point is that the Labour Let is already split (though thankfully not as badly as the trotskyist sects). Evidently there is the major cleavage left behind by the splitting of the previously Bevanite Tribune Group. This broadly divides the 'soft' and 'hard' lefts, and was ironically the founding of Briefing. Then within these subgroups exist various different strands. Within the Briefing-supported Campaign Group there exist different strands. They may not vote too differnetly, but different they are.

Some see themselves as the left of the Bevanites or a new generation of a non-Bennite left. think Alan Simpson, for example. Others span the gap between the LRC and Compass (think Ian Gibson, Michael Meacher). Soe claim a marxist inspiration, and are probably those who best represent the legacy of Bennism (I think the McDonnell / LRC contingent fits here). Aside from Katy Clark, Jeremy Corbyn and perhaps Diane Abbott (who is in any event closer to the right of the CG, as the public left of Socialist Action), I find it difficult to see who else makes up this part of the Campaign Group, i.e. that which may act (though I would regard this as insulting) in a manor which treats McDonnell as their 'leader'.

If McDonnell is the undisputed leader of the Labour Left, we are talking about a very small left indeed. He doesn't even represent the whole of the campaign group (let alone 'lead'). And the campaign group itself is hardly a social force in the reckoning (note that I do not argue that Compass is, by contrast, such a thing itself).

Then we have the whole other wing of the left, that revolutionary socialists ignore with aplomb (largely in my mind due to its commitment to electoral ism and imperviousness to contextually arbitrary transitional demands - feel free to contest this point).

This is the 'soft left'. Within this vein there are three immediately identifiable components, but as I shall explain, Compass complicates things.

Firstly, we have 'Tribune'. Tribune has a wide variety of writers, but in terms of editorial line is trade-union focussed, and often difficult to separate from the 'hard' left. The reason for this is that it concentrates unremittingly on questions regarding New Labour, rather than the left itself. It should be admitted by all on the left that we are defined more, these days at least, by our shared critiques of blairism rather than our (still notable) differences. Tribune is also the apparatchiks friend, ans is serious about tactics in a way that the hard left is objectively simply not.

There are also elements of the 'hard left', such as Meacher, involved in the soft. There are also dissafected old right-wingers, such as Kilfoyle and Hattersley, even people like Frank Dobson. Occasionally you will find cheesed off former blairites, of which Neal and Gavin from Compass are themselves examples.

I see nothing wrong with any of this. From whence a person comes is of minimal concern to me, the evidence I wish to take into account when making my judgements is coalesced around where people are going.

Then there is Compass, of which I am a member, and have discussed many times.

Compass is a bit different. It functions as an umbrella group to give outside organisations such as London Citizens and Liberty a say in Labour. Like other factions, it also seeks to provide a way in for trade unions.

The reason Compass produces a different effect is that it lays open the ability to incorporate and prioritise contradicting policy demands, on the basis that either of them is better than the status quo. In this sense, open debate provides ammunition for struggles to be raised; adaptability rather than dogma becomes key in policy making. Where contradictions are absolute, compromise becomes a unifying force to be seriously considered, rather than written off as a cop out, or sell out.

In this sense, Compass has policies, but blurry boundaries in terms of left and right. I think that assessing the ground it covers is far more important than assessing where the exact boundaries are. After all, were they set in stone, and debate a foregone conclusion, Compass would become unattractive to new ideas and voices. This would produce the opposite effect of what we want to see.

This is not a left, say the CPGB; but at the same time, they say that they are happy to work with us (as, I note, do the Stop the War Coalition).

Compass, in my view, is a moderate and sensible left within itself, which also stretches over other left elements, expressed as tribunites and campaign groupers.

Let us return to leaders.

yes, the point at which the Labour Left was most successful was when it was united behind a leader.

I'm talking about Nye Bevan, not Michael Foot.

Many times I have been engaged in conversations with comrades ruing the gap his presence still leaves. I used to say that, had we another Bevan, the left would be vastly more ascendant, and, unlike Foot, probably in power.

Now I disagree. The important thing about Bevan was not his eloquence, command and charisma, though they admittedly existed.

The important thing was having a worked out, tactically aware movement behind him in the party. Little did he know it, but he was fighting Gramsci's war of position.

Labour First, the primary pro-leadership faction within the party, a secretive and exclusive group (though 'the real grassroots', I hear) are aware of this struggle, and adept to it. They have been for decades. Their fingers bring a bitter taste to many pies.

In my view, the opinions expressed at the Briefing conference by Richard Price acknowledge the urgency with which the left must take up similar tactics and analyses. In my view, that means that the whole labour left needs to work its way free of fragmentation, and this fragmentation is best expressed by 'leaderism' and the desire to concentrate our work in intra-left groups. What we need is effective shared umbrellas under which all on the left can unite.

The aim of Compass was to provide this, but whether it can incorporate tensions on both left and right to accomplish such a task is, to my mind, a great test.

In any event, it is good to see some colleagues to the left of most of us working towards this shared position. What we need primarily is a single politically competent movement, not walled off theories, Cruddas/McDonnell personality cults, and and 'leaders'. If we are to have a vision we wish to achieve, it must be one in which the whole left can share.

Then maybe you'll get your nominations!

PS: humorously sectarian point. The biggest difference between soft and hard lefts is expressed by the design of this logo, allegedly of the 2000's:



How can you achieve hegemony with that? :op

PPS: On 'groups outside Labour': If you're a revolutionary, stay there, and I'll work with you, where we agree. March separately, strike together and all that...

If you're not into the overthrow of the parliament to which Labour is committed, come on in and get chatting.

No to Monbiot

Though the mysterious Don Paskini is, like myself, a man of the left, he correctly chucks the Moonbat back into his reductive hole. Hopefully he will encounter fellow misguided dogmatist, Alan Milburn, while he's down there.

Labour's most right-wing campaign ever?

SU come from a lot more of a left tack than me, but it makes no difference when Labour is attacking the tories from the right to win working-class votes. Why won't the party listen to us?

No to Milburn

I hope this isn't true. I suspect that it is.

Alan, just a quick note: 'the centre' isn't 'progressive', and neither is the right.

Vote Clegg, get Cameron

Here's the evidence.

Every vote for John Leech at the next election is a vote for a Tory government. A government that will pound the people of Manchester into the ground.

George Eaton on toffs

Further to my earlier posts, George makes similar points.

More accusations of Labour racism from the Tories

A few days ago I wrote about this, and I once again reiterate the point that I find the origination of these allegations unbelievable. That said, I am extremely worried that they have currency. A couple of comments from both Labour and the tories quoted in this article have some weight. First there is the idea that Labour is worried about shedding its core support; this itself says something about the new Labour coalition and its demise. The idea that one only has to where a top hat and all is right is a pernicious one, which leads us into a situation whereby strategists somewhere hope for us to rebuild our class coalition around reactionary issues. In effect, the assumption is that we need to apply different policies to 'foreigners' than we apply to 'indigenous' people, because this will help build us an electoral coalition built from what these strategists see as two reactionary blocks; white workers and middle class people.

In fact, neither group is anywhere near as racially discriminatory as the policy advocated.

Not only is this highly opportunistic, but I agree with the tories that it casts both middling and poor as racists, which they are not.

We're Labour, for god's sake. Let's have some faith in people!

Further, what the hell are the people who thought of this strategy thinking about? We're being attacked for racism in the national press!

Side note: I had hoped to get up to crew today or tomorrow, but as it happens, I remain extremely hung over, and have a driving lesson tomorrow. But if this is what our message is, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who can't be arsed. I'm still up for it. Just. There's nowt worse than being a 'critical supporter'...

The Labour Party, class and power

"...At the time I thought the important thing was to gain power and then it was ‘game on’ in trying to change things. It wasn’t about seeing power as an end in itself. But I began to think that the New Labour project was simply morphing into an exercise in power retention - seen as an end in itself. I really began to fall out with the New Labour project after I became MP for Dagenham. There was a contradiction between the language used by the government and the empirical reality on the ground."

-Jon Cruddas describes his time as a blairite, in this excellent Soundings interview.
UPDATE: Roy Hattersley gets everything that I've ever thought into one article.