apologies for continued outages

Hello punters,

very pleased to see a stream of articles by Van Patten on here because I have had Zero Time (to quote Tonto's Expanding Head Band) to do any posts longer than a couple of sentences the last fortnight or so. Which is a shame, because momentous things are going on in British politics, which I would like to comment on... but it will have to wait until Thursday or Friday this coming week, at least.

In the meantime... enjoy the Murdoch bonfire.

There is no F**king coke......

Or so says the character Dean Keaton in the Bryan Singer film ,'the Usual Suspects' played by Gabriel Byrne. Whenever I see someone from UK uncut on the TV, I feel like saying:

'There are - NO f***ing cuts'

As the excellent Christopher Booker points out:
in fact public expenditure has risen, continues to rise and this despite it having increased by more than 100% since 1997. Nevertheless, as Giroscoper suggests, David Cameron is facing an uphill struggle in convincing the electorate that his government is heading for anything other than being ignominiously turned out of office, despite the almost laughably inept Labour leader, Microblair II's attempts to alienate floating middle class voters by accompanying recent rioting protesters attacking BHS and Santander stores in Central London.

Perhaps the key to understanding why this is to reflect on the profound changes which have taken place in society and in electoral terms since 1997. For starters, since then nearly 1.2 million people have come into the country from across the globe, a policy deliberately encouraged by the previous administration for the express purpose of 'engineering a multicultural society' and 'rubbing the Right's nose in diversity', at least according to Speech Writer Andrew Neather. As a rule, immigrants are more likely to vote for Labour (although there are exceptions - the Ugandan Asians who fled Idi Amin in the 1970's tended to have seen real socialism in action, and didn't much like it)

Secondly, the constituencies were redrawn to give Labour a significant electoral advantage. Both Wales and Scotland, despite diminishing populations retained their representations, and as a rule smaller Northern constituencies were retained and the South East's got much bigger.

Thirdly, the public sector expanded by over a million people, providing Labour with a client state from which to draw support and which would also reward Loyal Labour supporters with salaries and pensions out of the reach of many working in the non-financial part of the private sector.

Postal voting was also made simpler, and with it resultant fraud has increased significantly. Two enormous scams were uncovered in the West Midlands. the judge commenting said that the practises were what might be 'expected in a banana republic'

All in all, it amounted to a significant uphill struggle for Cameron. The BBC (funded by a stipend from every TV watching household in the country) poured out incessant vitriol against the Conservatives and their supporters practically daily from May 2nd 1997. Even the Tories heavy defeats in 1997 and 2001 did little to stop the scorn. Of course hard left controlled state educators also clung to a narrowly left wing view of the world and woe betide anyone who challenged it. (I speak here from personal experience) In short, a number of commentators wondered if the Conservatives could ever win again. That Cameron managed to achieve the results he did last time round deserves some credit. Had David Davis won the race for the Leadership back in 2005 (and I backed him) it remains questionable if they would have been able to achieve even 307 seats.

Yet, as Giroscoper posits, the coalition seems to have hit the buffers, and is under fire both from the Left, and the right of the Tory party. What then, can he do?

1/ I'd abandon the attempts to reform the voting system to AV. Whilst as a UKIP supporter, the AV system would arguably benefit my party the most, what we need to look at is Franchise reform. Arguably not really tackled in over 65 years, what we need to look at is a way of ensuring that the left is never able to again build a coalition of government paid supporters to engineer a permanantly left wing regime again. Thus, we need to go back to potentially plural votes for those in the Private sector. They create the wealth, and thus should not be able to have an admittedly brilliantly created coalition of state supplicants deprive them of it. There would of course be exceptions for front line workers, but for the most part this would go a long way to stifling Labour's base.

2/ Cameron needs to take a harder line with the EU, and in this regard would have enormous support. It is telling that the next Treaty is unlikely to have even a single country put it to a referendum. Ireland having been told in no uncertain terms that for the next Treaty, the EC cannot risk having to rerun yet another referendum. UKIP seems certain to top the poll at the 2014 Euro elections, especially in the wake of UK funding for bailouts in Greece, and, as seems likely Portugal

3/ Cameron needs to address, as a matter of some urgency, the continuing anomalies of the 'West Lothian' question whereby, Scotland (and to a lesser degree Wales) continue to act as de facto independent states whilst continuing to provide nearly 40% of Labour manpower within the Commons. Recent revelations that Per Capita income in The north of Scoltand was below Slovenia and in West Wales, below Tianjin, arguably due to more than 60% of employment/income in both areas being dependent on the state makes this and Point 1/ even more pressing. In short, we have to consider whether the UK, and in particular the South West and South East of the country can continue to keep funding the less productive regions.

4/ Stop attempting to curry favour with the likes of Polly Toynbee, Gary Younge or other attendees of 'Compass' (sadly not the catering company - thos people I might cultivate!) conferences. These people despise the Conservative (nearly always renamed Tory in their writings) Party and everything it stands for. you aren't going to get them reconciled with your viewpoint, so your best bet is to ignore them, and if they go on the rampage, clamp down hard. It worked for Lady Thatcher in the 1980's.

P.S This post was originally written in April of this year, and as part of a 'house clearing exercise concomitant with sorting out my new abode on the other side of the Atlantic, I decided given the amount of original text already in the post it probably merited publication. A slightly more nuanced post on postulating why the apparent disjunction between, on the one hand 'savage cuts in public expenditure' and an ever increasing overall bill for public expenditure will await completion of my 'backlog' of posts

Requiem for a Heavyweight.....

Final part of the trilogy on the Republican challengers for 2012. This is almost a 'wishful thinking' post, as all of these personalities might, by some reckoning have a strong chance of defeating Obama given the continuing economic woes in the US. Originally about four candidates, the latest from the Huffington Post has forced a fifth name into the reckoning, not least because the other four have declared (in one case categorically) that they are definitely not in the running.

The candidate who has not ruled himself out at some point over the last 18 months is Rick Perry, current Governor of Texas, (successor to George W Bush in the role) although it should be emphasised that he is not even at the stage of an exploratory committee as yet, so would have some major catching up to do were he to run. Perry's politics fit very much into the Southern Republican mould - he is strongly religious, and an advocate of smaller government. He is on record as mentioning he might look to repeal the 16th amendment to the Constitution. This enables the Government to raise Income taxes without distributing the proceeds evenly amongst the states. As is pretty much mandatory within Texan politics, Perry favours Capital punishment, and is on the record as challenging the legitmacy of 'anthropogenic Global Warming'. So far, so relatively predictable, but unlike his predecessor in the role as Texas gubernator, Perry lacked the familial connections, and is thus somewhat more intellectual than W (admittedly hardly the most pre-eminent of minds to hold the US' highest office) I don't think Perry would win in an election against Obama but he would be a more credible candidate than many that have thrown their hat in the ring. Texas alone carries now 38 electoral college votes (an increase of four to reflect population trends since 2008), second only to California and Perry, although not the candidate of choice for the Tea Party and some of the Christian right, is likely to be more popular with that base than say, Romney or Huntsman. He would certainly prompt the Democrats to sharpen their activity up, if nothing else.

A candidate who should be familiar to veterans of cuts protests and anti war marches (amongst other fellow travellers) is 'Jeb' Bushbrother of the former president and former governor of Florida. Could we see a third Bush in the White House. Leftists of all hues will be aghast at the prospect and surely, it would be pointed out that the somewhat chequered record of his brother would count as an insurmountable problem for him. Fortunately for those anti war veterans who considered the 43rd President a less desirable visitor to the UK than Nicolae Ceaucescu and Robert Mugabe the elder Bush has closed the door on the possibility of a 2012 run. Jeb's politics do differ somewhat from the Younger 'W''s and for many in the Us political scene he would pose far more of a challenge than him in terms of an opponent. He was the first Republican ever to win re-election to ther governorship of Florida, and his standing amongst Cuban exiles is likely to play well in other states with quite high Hispanic populations. Undoubtedly, the Left would rail against the coming of another Bush but I think even his detractors would argue he posed a serious threat to a second term.

Less well known to UK readers will be Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who has led the opposition to the Debt cutting plans of Obama in the House of Representatives, and trailed the 'Republican alternative' to Obama's plans, 'the Path to prosperity'. As with Jeb Bush, Ryan has ruled himself out of the running for 2012, but he has the advantage of relative youth (only 41) and being the 'Public face' of the opposition to Obama within the legislature. His position on social issues is relatively unmapped, although his Catholic faith might not play well with some of the 'Tea Party' fringe. The proposals he co-authored drew heavy flak from Liberal economists, foremost amongst them, Giroscoper's sage, Paul Krugman, as being uncosted and unworkable. Nevertheless, Ryan's Northern roots in what is a relatively Liberal state (Wisconsin) might have given him a more general appeal than the hotch potch of candidates who have declared.


The fourth candidate, and arguably one who would be second most dangerous to Obama is Chris Christie, current governor of New Jersey. Described as looking like Tony Soprano from the HBO series, Christie's success in winning the 'Garden state' has Democratic strategists worrying that his message is arguably the one most likely to resonate with the widest voter pool. Christie is of part Irish, part italian ancestry which should make him formidable in the Eastern states which are traditional locks for the Democrats. His governorship has been marked by cuts to Public spending and a refusal to raise state taxes. Nevertheless, unlike some of the more extreme candidates, Christie is relatively speaking, socially Liberal, and thus would make a dangerous opponent for Obama. Nevertheless, at this time, he has ruled himself out of the running.

The candidate who is described is the Republican 'Luke Skywalker' and arguably on ethnic grounds poses the greatest challenge is Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Winning his seat in 2010 by a margin of 19 points, Rubio is hailed as the 'counter- Obama' although he has stated categorically that he will not run in 2012. Rubio is only 40 years old and his Hispanic roots would go a long way to mobilising support in what is the fastest growing constituency in the United states. One issue with those who perhaps get a little 'over excited' at the prospect of a Rubio presidential run, is that unlike 'African - Americans', Hispanic voters do not tend to vote 'en bloc' (Obama carried 95% of the Black vote in 2008) As a relatively recent entrant to the Senate, his political positions are evolving although he is socially Conservative. Nevertheless, were he able to unite the Hispanic vote along the same lines as Obama managed in 2008 with the Black vote, then he would most likely take 124 electoral College votes (California @ 55, Texas @ 38 and New York @ 31) which would, given the innate conservatism of many of the smaller states, make the winning post for the Democrats an insurmountable obstacle.

You committed the crime, you gotta do your time

One day very soon, I will get round to talking about phone hacking... just to say, for the moment, that the last 7 days of media coverage have been have been the most uplifting I can remember for probably a decade and a half.

But in the meantime, I have to say something about Paul White aka Lord Hanningfield, who has, fortunately, been sentenced to 9 months in prison for fiddling his expenses. The Essex Chronicle reports that Hanningfield is 'suicidal' and says "the only thing I can do is plunge a knife into my dog and then myself".

To which the response has to be: why kill a perfectly good dog?

We also learn from this Daily Mail piece that Hanningfield is still claiming £11,500 expenses allowance despite being in prison. He's entitled to do that until his appeal is heard later this month - but is it any wonder that people think the Tories are a gang of cheap, greedy killers when people like this guy are at the heart of the local Essex party? Funny how White wasn't suicidal when he was claiming for overnight accommodation during late-night House of Lords sittings he never attended....

Hanningfield was originally a pig farmer and presumably that's where he got addicted to walking through shit.

And death shall have no dominion.....

Have just watched the superb documentary Senna, it's probably time to cogitate on how a premature passing away gives undue weight to the legacy of someone whose death is somewhat unexpected. Not only prompted by two old schoolfriends who had seen the film in the less than salubrious environs of Basildon, I felt it essential to watch this film, and I was intrigued by what I saw.

For those of you unfamiliar with my fascination, I must confess to a degree of annoyance with George Monbiot, , the main North Korean agent/'Global warming' sympathiser in the Guardian who has called for Formula 1 to be banned on what appear to be increasingly spurious environmental grounds, thus denying enjoyment to the tens of thousands who attend the sport over the globe, and the millions of followers on Television. However, the misanthropy/inadequacy or communist bent of the bulk of the environmentalist movement is not really the purpose of the post. The film comprises an amalgam of 'live' footage and contemporary interviews both with Ayrton Senna himself, and his principal rival of the late 1980s/early 1990s, Alain Prost , alongside others. As a mere Schoolboy in those far off days of 1986 to 1994, the film brought back many memories for me, and for that reason alone, I would presume anyone with even a vague interest in Formula 1 is likely to have seen it already. If not, I would recommend it unhesitatingly.

It would be very wrong to suggest that the film is without flaws, however, and these flaws are symptomatic of a wider tendency for society in General to perhaps magnify the virtues, whilst diminshing (or indeed ignoring altogether) the faults of people who have died prematurely or in tragic circumstances. To put the film into context, Formula 1 in the period 1970 to 1986 was an inherently dangerous Sport. 14 drivers lost their lives but prior to the fateful weekend in San Marino in May 1994, the last fatality had been Italian driver Elio de Angelis , killed during a testing session in France in 1986, primarily due to a scandalous absence of any safety marshals, an oversight rectified all too late for the talented veteran. Despite several major incidents in the succeeding seasons (two stick in my mind, Austrian Gerhard Berger in 1989 and Irishman Martin Donnelly at Jerez in the following season, which is mentioned in the film) until 1994 Formula 1 had been fatality free. Part of my interest in the sport during the years 1988 to 1994 was also the profusion of what can only be described as slightly shambolic teams at the back of the grid - such doyens of mediocrity and ineptitude as Rial, Zakspeed, Onyx, AGS, Osella/Fondmetal, Eurobrun, Coloni and both Giroscoper's and my all time favourites, Life (all showcased at the excellent F1 rejects site )which made qualification for the grid a somewhat more arduous process than is the case in the much reduced current Formula 1 field.

From that perspective, I had a keen interest in the period showcased in the film, and can recall quite vividly many of the races focused on and the titanic battles between Senna, most definitely portrayed as the film's protagonist and the more cerebral Prost, who is made to appear as the moustachioed (or in this case curly-haired) villain. Whilst there is an element of truth to this portrayal, the film take various liberties with the truth. The first error is to deliver the assertion that Prost's nickname 'The Professor' is because he would settle for fifth place if that was all that was required, in contrast to Senna, who would continue to race to win even if he had the Championship in the bag. This is a near travesty of the truth. Prost, an exceptional driver who held the record for race wins for the better part of a decade, was given the name due to his focusing on car set-up, enabling him to overcome people who were arguably a faster car-driver combination through judicious reduction in tyre wear or skilful driving. The film then focuses on the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix a race stopped 32 laps in due to heavy rainfall and dangerous conditions with Senna actually overtaking Prost just after the race had been 'red flagged' to indicate its cessation. This is then spun to imply that Prost 'could not handle the rain'. It conveniently ignores the fact that Prost, in Formula 1 for four seasons prior to Senna's arrival, had seen three good friends,Gilles Villeneuve ,, Patrick Depailler , and Didier Pironi killed or seriously injured, and as a result was understandably keen not to suffer the same fate.

I'll return to the treatment of Prost and could probably have lived with the near-libelling of one driver, but the film really annoyed me when it considered the 1992 and 1993 Formula 1 seasons, as well as the races prior to the fateful Imola Grand Prix in 1994. The 1992 season in which the Williams of Briton Nigel Mansell reigned supreme, is presented as being 'stolen' from Senna by electronic chicanery, and Williams having such a superior car that Senna could not touch it, in spite of being the best driver. This is the kind of false prospectus that in some less Liberal states could land the perpetrator a custodial sentence. Both Mansell, (the '92 champion) and Prost were exceptional drivers, as anyone who watched the sport would testify, and I would argue only hideous bad luck at Canada prevented Mansell from challenging in '91 when an admittedly brilliant Senna won his third title. Then, when considering 1994, the season of Senna's death, the film skates over the fact that Michael Schumacher had won convincingly in the first two rounds, attributing it once more to technical chicanery, and implying that the Benetton team of that season had somehow cheated by retaining some of the electronic aids from the previous season.

This diatribe may dissuade people from watching this film,which is not the intention - but as the book 'Senna versus Prost' by Malcolm Folley points out (and I would also recommend it), Prost is still around to account for his actions at the time, whilst premature death lends a halo to Senna that the Director of the biopic, Asif Kapadia seems unable to examine more critically. In his defence, the untimely death of someone does lend their achievements a gloss that prevents at time their achievements being forensically looked at. I was going to illustrate with three contemporary Labour Party figures - John Smith, Mo Mowlam and Robin Cook, but the point is brought home by arguably the most famous assassination victim of all time , John F Kennedy, and the First president of the Irish Free State, Michael Collins. Kennedy was instrumental in setting up increased American commitment to Vietnam, and his dubious connections with criminal elements would surely have led him to the same unfortunate defea0t in 1968 that his far more worthy Successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson suffered. Collins was a bloody, violent enemy of democracy, arguably only redeemed by the fact that his Republican enemies were if anything even more extreme. Nevertheless, their reputations remain enhanced by their premature passing. Let's hope nothing happens to Ed Miliband in the immediate future!

Public sector unions: Strikes vs negotiation vs revolution

I was out on the picket line in Chelmsford with the "Big Society Breakfast" yesterday, and I hope that direct action enables the wider anti-cuts movement to build more bridges with the trade unions. The ConDem government is clearly looking to use the economic crisis as an excuse for slashing public sector pay and remuneration while their financial backers - a small group of very rich and powerful people - take a larger and larger share of the national cake. Clearly, in these circumstances it would be criminal not to support the strikers.

However, I do wonder whether the public sector unions are in danger of falling into a trap set by the government, which wants to use the strike action to turn public opinion against the strikers - as happened often in the 1980s (with strikes by teachers, for example).

The problem for the unions in the short run is that it is very hard to see the government backing down on this issue - they have bet the complete reputation of the government on this insane deficit reduction strategy which they can't U-turn on without looking like a complete bunch of fools. So, they will most likely pursue their current economic policy - which includes vicious cuts in public sector pay and conditions - no matter what. That means that, short of a change of government - either through the ballot box or through some kind of revolution - attempts to change the govt's policy through industrial action are unlikely to work.

Therefore my conclusion on the strikes is that they are justified but strategically naive. With strike action unlikely to force a better deal by itself, what other options are open to the trade union movement to secure a better deal for public sector workers (and indeed, in the longer run, also for private sector workers?) There seem to be two options.

One is for union leaders to do a behind-the-scenes deal with Ed Miliband - who, despite not backing today's strikes, is surely still the most instinctively union-friendly leader Labour has had probably since Neil Kinnock, at least. The deal could essentially be an update of Labour's 1970s social contract policy - for a future Labour govt to make alterations to pensions, terms and conditions, and industrial relations legislation after the next election the ConDem settlement after the next election which are more favourable to public sector workers.

At the same time, the next Labour government should legislate for better working conditions for workers in the private sector - who have been hit much harder than the public sector workforce by the neoliberal assault on workplace rights and the virtual eradication of decent pensions from the private sector over the last 25 years. It's the decline in private sector pensions that allows the govt to present an attack on public sector pensions as "restoring fairness" when in fact the fair thing to do would be to ensure that private sector workers had access to decent pensions rather than an ever larger share of profits going to top earners and shareholders.

That's the reformist option. The second option is revolutionary - and would have seemed ludicrous 5 years ago, but now seems increasingly plausible and perhaps inevitable. A revolutionary approach involves the unions organising on the ground while waiting for the ConDem economic policies to fail spectacularly (as they probably will), with the negative impact of the cuts on growth producing a debt spiral which may well drag the UK into the same deflationary vortex which has enveloped Ireland and Greece over the last few years. The sheer volume and frequency of demonstrations in Greece makes it look to me as if they are now very close to a revolutionary situation, and this article by Matina Stevis in the Guardian concurs with my assessment. (as does, reading between the lines, Paul Mason.) If a crisis like this were to develop in the UK - a real possibility in the next few years - trade unions need to seize the opportunity to overthrow the current economic system and replace it with one that puts workers' interests first.

These two options - working for progressive political reform through the ballot box via the Labour party, and working for revolution should the conditions arise - are in theory completely opposed to one another, but pragmatically I'd argue they're two sides of the same coin. A priori it's impossible to know whether conditions in the UK will deteriorate to the point where the current economic system breaks down. And realistically, I don't think public sector unions can force that to happen. However, it's quite possible that it WILL happen, without much further need for intervention on their part. And so they need to be ready. Meanwhile, in case it doesn't happen, they also need to be pushing for reforms through the current system so as to avoid being left high and dry if the revolutionary moment passes.

Some might call this strategy "hedging their bets". I call it insurance against most (though not all) eventualities.

Dammit - Ed got there before me!

I've had the idea of a post on why Labour's system of shadow cabinet elections are a bad idea for some time now. The 2010 elections threw up mainly the members of the previous Labour cabinet who hadn't ruled themselves out or left parliament, plus a few complete no-marks. There were very few Ed Miliband backers in there and very little for him to work with, talent wise. A few of the top names have done OK - Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham. Most of the rest have been irrelevant or invisible. Meanwhile, there has been no mechanism for Ed to bring promising new MPs from the 2010 intake - e.g. Rachel Reeves, Chuka Umanna, Stella Creasy, Lisa Nandy etc. into the front line.
So the system is crying out for a change; and I was going to post at some point about this. When I got around to it. (?!)

But I don't have to make that post now, because Ed has announced that he wants to drop the system anyway. And Amen to that. There seems to have been a huge amount of support for this across the PLP, with two different groups coalescing around Ed. Neo-Blairites like it because they are in favour of centralised control anyway - that's why they dug Iraq etc. - and Ed's backers like it because it gives ED more control.

The main dissenters are hard left MPs like John McDonnell, who are arguing against the move on the grounds that it will reduce accountability. And if the Labour leader was just a parachuted-in appointment who couldn't be gotten rid of, I'd agree with John. But the leader is open to challenge. If Labour MPs, party members and affiliates don't like what Ed is doing, he can be replaced. THAT's real democracy. All the current system is managing to achieve is to minimise the chances of Labour winning the next election by lumbering Ed with a shadow cabinet team many of whom didn't vote for him and don't get on with him. That's in nobody's interests, really (except for the couple of people who think David Miliband could walk in at any moment and save the day).

This move shows that Ed is a skilled tactical politician - and if the PLP agrees to dropping shadow cabinet elections (as I think it will), we can expect a much stronger shadow cabinet team, very soon. Nice work, Ed.

Free time killed the Internet star

Have been worryingly absent from the airwaves for ten days which given my voluntarily unemployed status really isn't an excuse. I can only say that anyone with editor access (which is only two people!) will be able to see a whole posse of posts lined up but in progress. I hope to return with possibly six or seven entries for your delectation then. In the meantime, keep it real!

My own advice for Ed Miliband

Today's Observer interviews 9 "left-leaning thinkers" asking them each the same set of questions about what Ed Miliband should be doing as Labour leader. I found 8 of the 9 useful; even Robert Philpot of Progress (an organisation I am no great fan of, although to their credit they backed Yes2AV) manages to impart a certain wisdom to proceedings. The one person whose advice appeared to be completely worthless was Kitty Ussher of Demos, who appears to think that all that's needed is to copy Tony Blair, circa 1995, despite the fact that most of the collapse in Labour's vote total between 1997 and 2010 occurred on Blair's watch, and Brown ran in 2010 essentially on a continuation of the Blair agenda.

Anyway, I thought it would be good fun to offer my own take on the Observer questions in the hope that Ed might come across it at some stage. So here is my advice to Ed:

What is your verdict on Ed Miliband's leadership so far?
In terms of putting the mechanics in place to build a policy platform for 2015 (policy review, "Refounding Labour" consultation", etc.), pretty good. In terms of articulating a clear forward vision, we've had flashes of it (his initial leader speech at Labour Party conference in September 2010, his speech to Resolution Foundation on the "squeezed middle", etc.) but he needs to do a lot more of that to give "new generation Labour" more definition as a work in progress. Marks out of 10: 7.

What "big idea" in terms of policy/strategy do you think Labour should pursue in opposition?
Reforming the economy to provide a comprehensive alternative to neoliberal capitalism. In the first instance that needs fundamental reform of the financial system and corporate governance, much greater equality, and much more democracy across the economy. Quite simply, Labour needs to an updated version of its 1974 manifesto commmitment - "a fundamental shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of ordinary people (the "squeezed middle and bottom") and their families. And in many ways, a fundamental repudiation of New Labour.

Who should Labour be appealing to to win the next election? (Disaffected Lib Dems, soft Tory vote, the core vote?)
All these and more; "people who've never voted because they think all the parties are full of crap" would be another category. At the end of the day, rather than saying "we need this policy for group A and this for group B" it's much better to say "these are the policies we believe in and we think are best for the country, now how do we convince group A of this, group B of this", and so on? In other words do not try to assemble a ragbag of incoherent policies on the basis of a series of focus groups but try for something holistic and coherent (which can then be contrasted with the incoherence of the ConDem coalition).

What would be your top tip for Ed Miliband to give steel to his leadership?
Externally, start hitting Cameron a lot harder. I've seen speeches at places like the Compass conference by Ed where he's really set the room on fire and he needs to start doing that at PMQs. Angry, but razor-sharp.
Internally, you need to put the Blairites on a tight leash. This is meant to be a "spin-free" shadow cabinet. That means that leakers - if they are in the cabinet - are fair game to be sacked.

What slogan would you suggest for Labour?
I thought Maurice Glasman's suggestion - "Ed Gets It" - was pretty good.

Ed Miliband and the "bastards" who want Labour to lose next time round

Now some of you kids out there may remember John Major... for the benefit of anyone under 30, Major was a Tory PM, sort of ran the country for several years in the 1990s, struggling with a small parliamentary majority against Eurosceptic backbench rebels, a growing reputation for sleaze and incompetence, and continual threats of a leadership challenge which led him to resign his own party leadership in the summer of 1995, securing a thumping re-election win against John "Mr Spock" Redwood.

At one famous meeting in 1993 Major referred to three of his Eurosceptic cabinet colleagues as "bastards". They were never officially named but they were probably Michael Howard, Peter Lilley and Michael Portillo (then in his hard right phase).

Now, the "bastards" were not enough of a hindrance to Major to ensure that he lost the 1997 election, because the economic disaster of Black Wednesday (even though it was actually the start of a period of rapid growth for the UK economy) did that by itself. Even if there had been no "bastards", the Tories would have lost - pretty heavily - in 1997. What the "bastards" probably managed to do was turn a heavy defeat into a rout, making it impossible for the Tories to come back in 2001 and even in 2005.

But the Major era already feels like ancient history - so why bring it up now? Because there are "bastards" somewhere in the Blairite hard right of the Labour party and one or more of those bastards is gunning for Ed Miliband (and also Ed Balls). The spate of leaks in both the Telegraph (which we fully expect this kind of behaviour from) and the Guardian (for which it is a most unwelcome recent development) is strong evidence for some kind of anti-Eds plot.

In a recent post I was very uncomplimentary about Labour's hard right - some might call them the LINOs (Labour In Name Only) or the FOTC (Friends of the ConDems), among other names - in a recent post when I accused them of living in 1996. In fact, that is probably too modern - they're living in 1993. For them, Ed Miliband is John Major, they think he's crap, and they want to take him down.

But how? What is the mechanism? As Dan Hodges - surely a supporter of the plot, though unlikely to have the clout to orchestrate it - has pointed out, a new Labour leadership contest this side of the next general election is most unlikely. Even if the present parliament makes it to 2015 (which I'd only give 50-50 odds at best on), the Labour party does not really have the funds to spend millions of pounds on another 4-month contest. Also there is no obvious right-wing alternative candidate for leader apart from David Miliband, who I just can't see launching himself into a rematch against his brother.

But if there is no appetite for a contest, then there is only one way of changing the leader before the next general election: Ed Miliband would have to be persuaded to do an Iain Duncan Smith and step down in the party interest. It's worth thinking very carefully about how bad Ed's performance would have to be, and how bad the party's situation would have to be, for this to be seen as the best thing for him to do.

Based on 9 months in the job, I'd say Ed's performance is OK - neither brilliant, nor crap. I don't watch Prime Minister's Questions very often because it's dull repetitive knockabout, but based on collating all the evidence from media accounts and bloggers and allowing for bias, Ed seems to be pretty much even stevens against Cameron at the moment. I think he needs to point out that Cameron is a serial liar and that ConDem policy is in total disarray on several key fronts, but once he can start to land big hits like that, he'll be coming off best pretty much every week.

Ed hasn't managed to build on his September 2010 Labour conference speech to articulate a vision of "New Generation" Labour as much as he should have done - but he has got the policy review process going, and that's sensible and important. F*** knows why he put Liam Byrne in charge of it, but there you go. Ed has also managed to put the "squeezed middle" in the centre stage of public debate. Both Eds need to be much more visible in pointing out the failures of ConDem economic and social policies, and in articulating a clear alternative strategy, but the potential is there.

For Ed to be persuaded to resign, the Labour Party's situation would have to be hopeless with him at the helm and moreover, Ed would have to feel it's hopeless. The former scenario seems most unlikely, the latter pretty much impossible. Currently, Labour is regularly 5 to 8 points in front of the Tories on YouGov polling. The May local elections were not spectacularly good but nor were they a disaster for Labour (except in Scotland). Quite simply things are Not Bad Enough for a "Stand Down Ed" bandwagon to roll. And even if the situation did deteriorate somehow, from what we know of him so far, Ed is a tenacious cookie - as was his mentor Gordon Brown - and having secured this job, there's no reason to suppose he'd just walk away from it if the going got tough.

Now, unless the "bastards" are deluded they must know all of the above. So therefore, I conclude that their objective is not to force a leadership change before the next general election, but instead to destabilise Ed's leadership and the Labour party with the ultimate aim of replacing him AFTER the next election. For Ed to be replaced, Labour would certainly have to lose the next general election. From which, in turn, I conclude that the "bastards" are deliberately trying to make Labour lose the next election so that they can say "I told you so" and they can take over the Labour party.

As political strategies go, this is about as underhand, counter-productive and downright vicious as you can get. But it's also utterly predictable. No-one said politics was a nice business, and Ed showed he could handle this kind of crap - and dish it out in return - during the Labour leadership campaign.

It's tempting to call for Ed to round on his critics - perhaps with a "back me or sack me" appeal along the lines of what Major did in 1995 - but I think that would be extremely counterproductive at this stage because the plot really is not that strong, whatever the Sunday papers think. Far better to ride it out and stick to the main game plan, while also doing more to articulate that "Vision Thing" that so many of us want to see. 2012 will get easier for Ed IMHO because the economy will probably be in dire straits, Ken will most likely beat Boris for London Mayor in 2012 (a huge psychological boost - I'll post on the electoral logistics of this separately), and also there will be fresh shadow cabinet elections in autumn 2012 where a lot of the Blairite "dead wood" is likely to drop out in favour of fresher - and mostly more Ed-friendly - faces. In retrospect, 2011 will no doubt turn out to have been the high water mark of the anti-Ed rumblings. I think we have to suffer a few months more of the "bastards", but so what? They have a few high-level media contacts and leaked papers but not much else, and their bark is a lot worse than their bite. To paraphrase Blade Runner: "they're not police, they're little people".

That milk'll get cold on you...but it's getting warmer now

About a month ago, I profiled the current contenders for the Republican nomination - fast forward four weeks and the picture has changed somewhat with Donald Trump'swithdrawal and the subsequent pullouts of Mike Huckabee and Mitch Daniels have narrowed the field somewhat - not helped by the fact that for all their flaws, both Daniels and Huckabee might have had a respectable chance of putting up a reasonable show!

The rest of the post will concentrate on those other candidates not mentioned in the original post who have or are rumoured to be on the verge of putting themselves forward. A subsequent post later in the week will consider the four potential candidates who could really give the Democrats a scare were they to declare themselves.

A definite 'Mos Eisley' addition to the field were he to announce his candidacy is Roy Moore. No prizes for guessing that Moore doesn't hail from either the West or East coast of the States. His most famous moment in the public eye came back in 2003 when he was removed from his office as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to abide by a US district court instructing that he remove a granite monument to the Ten Commandments which had he had placed in the Alabama Supreme Court building. Extremely popular with the 'religious right', he would be expected to surpass the defeat of Walter Mondale if selected for the nomination.

Slightly more credible for moderate opinion is John Huntsman Jr. He served the Obama administration for 2 years as its ambassador to the PR China. Hunstman was a former governor of the Mormon state of Utah, arguably one of the most socially conservative in the entire Union. Nevertheless, his positions on Climate change and support of the economic stimulus plan suggested by the President make him one of the few candidates likely to have some appeal to moderate voters. however, as with a number of other runners, the likely upshot of his relative moderation is to make him UNACCEPTABLE to the extremes of the Republican base. He is also said to lack charisma and a degree of name recognition with ordinary Americans.

A somewhat unexpected runner entered the campaign in the form of former Pizza magnate Herman Cain. Perhaps the most interesting things about him are that he has never held elected office (which in an era when the US, just as much as the UK has been brought to its knees by 'professional' politicians is arguably not necessarily such a bad thing) and that he, like Obama is black. In terms of political positions, he is the usual pro-Israel, anti abortion and anti big government which seems to be the currency of many Republican candidates. His selection for the nomination seems unlikely.

Another candidate who has formally declared is former New Mexico Gary Johnson Johnson does have the commendable policy of legalising Marijuana across the board, and unlike many Social conservative commentators, from his former position in Santa Fe he would have had first hand experience of the violence accompanying the increasingly lucrative Mexican drug trade. His argument is that legalisation would undercut this trade and reduce violence levels. He is a costcutter proud of vetoing 750 bills to fulfill a campaign pledge not to raise taxes. I can see the drug policy being what the focus attaches to, however!


Two other candidates who may be familiar to readers are John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the UN under the previous administration of George W Bush. A fierce conservative, and indeed one of the leading 'Neocons' under Bush, Bolton was critical of supranational organisations such as the UN itself, the ICC and EU. whilst likely to endear him to many Americans, his links with the Bush regime are likely to prove highly problematic were he to enter the fray. He does attack the Obama administration , unusually, primarily on foreign, rather than domestic policy grounds.

George Pataki was the governor (as opposed to Rudy Giulani , who was the Mayor of New York City) of New York State during the September 11th attacks. A critic of the Quantitative easing policy of Obama, and fiscal conservative, Pataki's resume is relatively light on what he would do differently beyond reducing expenditur across the board (another cutter!) There is also a significant gap on social policy. It's relatively tricky in New York to appeal to the entire state given its racial diversity on a 'Tea Party' ticket, so these may be more moderate than some other candidates.

Another very much in the mould of Ron Paul would be Buddy Roemer , a former governor of Louisiana,and four term congressman, also representing that state. He last held office in 1992 before being voted out. His cornerstone appears to be to limit campaign donations to $100 per contribution - an element of self-interest surely not withstanding.

Thus, the crowded field of 17 candidates has now dwindled to 14 - to summarise:

OUT: Huckabee, Trump, Daniels
CONSIDERING: Palin, Bachmann, Pataki, Bolton, Roemer, Moore, Huntsman
IN: Romney, Gingrich, Paul, Santorum, Pawlenty, Cain, Johnson.

Thus seven candidates have thus far declared - of these the favourite were noone else to stand would surely be Mitt Romney - I doubt Obama's supporters will be overly concerned. The third part of this trilogy will look at four candidates who could seriously worry Obama - but look to be holding their powder dry for 2016.

A bit of June Christmas cheer for Private business!

One of my correspondents has sent me arguably the best news since the start of the coalition government. It is reported by the BBC that the EHRC is going on strike . This is arguably proof that the coalition strategy is working. Let's hope many more of such agencies follow their example. The only noticeable impact of this collection of ne'er do wells, many of whom had significant and documented links with the USSR and its satellites has been to load up costs on the people that in the long run pay their wages. In the absence of the Soviets, Islamic extremists like Iran have picked up the slack in terms of funding their , in many cases fairly lavish lifestyles. Seriously, this piece has made my day. Osborne should say: 'Frankly, a permanent strike would be absolutely fine' - this strike is a catastrophe for the 'anti cuts lobby'. At a stroke it will reveal how much fat can be taken out of the system with absolutely no impact on the ordinary citizen. The only issue would seem to be whether Champagne producers can cope with the demand from every single private sector organisation that has had the misfortune to encounter this body! As the Pointer Sisters famously said - 'I'm so excited'!I'm also reminded of a quote from the now sadly departed 'X Files':

'You shouldn't play poker when you aren't holding any cards!'

The Jason Voorhees of British Politics

For those unfamiliar with the character of Jason Voorhees, he is the primary Antagonist of the Friday 13th series of films. Anyone famiilar with these will know the drill. Voorhees appears and wreaks havoc, usual involving multiple homicides only to seem as though he has finally perished. Then the film usually leaves a degree of ambiguity as to his fate. The franchise's original 1979 instalment spawned an enormous 10 sequels, some of which are some of the most wretched examples of horror cinema ever seen, but still Jason survives. The reason for mentioning him is that with the elections for the London assembly and mayoralty in prospect next year, perhaps its time to focus on the man most like him in terms of his longevity and arguably his likely impact on the London scene, for he has once more been up to his usual tricks.

Former mayor of the GLC, and two term London Mayor before his surprise defeat in 2008, Ken Livingstone has compared his mayoral rival's chief of staff, Eddie Lister to the Recently indicted Serbian General Ratko Mladic . It's not the first time the man has made a tastelessly crass remark. Who can forget his comparison of Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold (of Jewish descent) with a Nazi Concentration Camp guard?

The Voorhees analogy, no doubt distasteful to Livingstone's acolytes as his comparison of Lister (who has courted controversy for potentially charging children for access to public playgrounds) to a man accused of the genocide of 8000 people is however apt. Whatever else I think of him, following his defeat at the hands of Kenneth Baker in 1986, he bounced back in 2000 to defeat two candidates (including a rival from his former party) to win the mayoralty and held the position for 8 years. I hoped his defeat by current incumbent, Boris Johnson in 2008 had finally driven a metaphorical stake through his political heart, but terrifyingly the man has returned to once again cast his dark shadow over the London scene. As Giroscoper points out, chillingly, the London elections are not, as I erroneously thought conducted on an electoral college basis (ie borough by borough), thus the multiple defeats he suffered in 2008 in the outer London boroughs could be overcome by him piling up enough of a majority amongst the so-called 'Rainbow coalition' (composed of around 11 boroughs with heavy concentrations of ethnic minorities, students and public sector employees) which delivered him two election triumphs. Admittedly many more verbal gaffes such as this one, and the poll lead he has might start to look slimmer, but it is perhaps a reflection on the chaos wrought in the nation's capital between 1997 and 2010, that such a being can have the slightest chance of achieving high office after decisive rejection in 2008.

Cutting the rug from under Sepp Blatter's feet

Been trying to take a break from politics the last couple of days... but of course all that happens when I do that is that I end up running into politics, just in a different form. Currently the Guardian headline is Sepp Blatter of FIFA doing a Jim Callaghan.

(Or at least, if you believe the popular mythology as put about by the Murdoch Press. Callaghan never actually said "Crisis? What Crisis?" - it was actually a Supertramp album title from 1975 (good album, thoroughly recommended, by the way). He flew back from some kind of economic summit in the Carribean in January 1979, appeared a bit clueless about the mounting industrial disruption at the time, and that was that. But I digress...)

Any interview with Sepp Blatter simply reinforces the guy's aloofness and his overwhelming feeling that he is untouchable. FIFA appears to be drowning in corruption allegations, and yet to quote one of my favourite Super Furry Animals songs, "The Man Don't Give A F***". David Conn of the Guardian sums the situation up succintly and accurately:

When repeating his overarching argument, that he regards Fifa as untouchable even by governments, accountable only to its own "family within", Blatter even came close to using the phrase "Crisis? What crisis?"

Asked if this is indeed a crisis for Fifa, with two executive committee members suspended and one, Jack Warner, threatening to unleash a "tsunami" against Fifa which began on Sunday night with allegations of impropriety against Blatter himself, the president said: "Crisis? What is a crisis? Football is not in a crisis. We are only in some difficulties, and the difficulties will be solved within the football family."

Blatter's smug arrogance is typical of tax exiles operating international organisations - Switzerland and Dubai tend to be the most favoured bases of operations for these kind of rackets. And he's right that - as football's governing body is currently constituted - he's untouchable. FIFA has deliberately set itself up as outside national jurisdiction.

BUT... the operative clause here is "as football's governing body is currently constituted." FIFA may have a monopoly on organising association football at the moment, but there's no innate reason why that should be the case. If national football associations decided to disaffiliate from FIFA and establish a new, non-corrupt international governing body, Sepp Blatter would pretty soon find himself out of a job.

At the end of the day it's the national governing bodies who have the power. Simple as that. All they have to do is use it.

To that end, I will be continuing my sometime campaign, launched last year, for an alternative governing body to FIFA... and this is very relevant to current political situations more generally, as I do feel revolution could sort out a lot of our problems right now. It was the solution in Egypt; it's the solution in Greece (and I'll be responding to Van Patten's interesting, but wrongheaded, post soon); it's the solution in the USA; and it's the solution here. And maybe - just maybe - it all starts with FIFA.


Blatter is the sporting equivalent of the bankers in the real economy. And like the bankers, he desperately needs to be taken down several pegs, or maybe just taken down, period/full stop.

A tale of two cities..

Football journalists (arguably on a par with politicians in my esteem) have been falling over themselves to heap praise on Barcelona for their performance and victory in the 'Champions League' final which took place whilst I had a very enjoyable wedding in France to attend on Saturday. No prizes for guessing whether I watched this 'classic encounter', the second final featuring these two teams in the last three years. However much I can admire (and I do admire them when wearing the Red and Gold of the European and World champions Spain)the skilss of Xavi and Iniesta and the talents of Lionel Messi, the entire experience leaves me (and I would guess most people who aren't fans of the 'Big four' clubs) pretty cold. Around 14 years ago I was introduced to a website by a then college friend of mine, who had printed out an article entitled 'The New Season' on a Watford fanzine then in its infancy which encapsulated in words far more passionate and germane than I could ever hope to achieve, just why the 'Champions League' is effectively a wholly fraudulent charade: It's worth quoting from directly:

I saw on the news last week that UEFA is to open up the European CHAMPIONS Cup to the runners-up of the eight most successful leagues in Europe. This is as a direct result of pressure from the likes of David Dein (Arsenal's vile vice-chairman).

Big deal, eh? Well, yes, actually. It's a very big deal indeed. Not only is this the final nail in the coffin for one of the world's most prestigious tournaments (the Champions League had pretty much finished it off already) since the actual premise of the thing (a competition between the champions of Europe) is now to be abandoned, it also represents the total capitulation of UEFA to the demands of the rich few.

UEFA is, in case it gets forgotten, supposed to represent the interests of all its members. Yeah, and I'm Elvis Presley. After the farce of Blackburn entering straight into the Champions League (apparently due to their outstanding record in European competition and not, for instance, the large amount of money being paid for coverage by British TV), we now have this abomination. A level playing field? Don't make me laugh...

As with almost all of the past ten finals (barring the one in 2004 where I was genuinely interested in what might happen) one of the participants should not have been on the field, as they were not the Champions of anything! Nevertheless, the situation since the article above, bemoaning the allowing of two teams from a country in, will as any football follower knows, has deteriorated still further with some countries getting four teams.

Which is an unedifying contrast with a belated tribute to the English football League's newest entrants, AFC Wimbledon who have within 9 years of their formation defeated the significantly larger and better supported Luton Town to make their way into the Football League. More than that single fixture, they have used a sense of powerful injustice at being (in the eyes of everyone it would seem bar the Football Association) the victims of what was effectively grand larceny to overcome the odds and bounce back. Their victory recalled that 1996 article well, and the sentiments once more would be appropriate today.

I hope every single English club in Europe gets utterly and totally bloody humiliated, just as I hope that Newcastle finish 10th in the Premiership (behind Wimbledon - who are complete heroes, for obvious reasons)

As with a number of Dons fans, I'm dreading to think that they might inject some life into the otherwise moribund 'Johnstone's Paint trophy' by pairing the new boys with this lot but that'll await the draw. In the meantime, I know which of the two matches mentioned above gives me more satisfaction, however ludicrous the hyperbole shown here , for example. COME ON YOU DONS!!!!!

I've seen Ed Miliband's vision of the future...and it's Greece

This post is somewhat late in arriving , so it does lose some of its impact. It was provoked by the ongoing issues with the Eurozones self confessed 'Achilles heel' , Greece, facing what is, by common consent, a very difficult adjustment, and this article in the Guardian



Obviously my erstwhile host here, Giroscoper has decided to retire from 'Cif' (not the detergent spray but the Guardian's forum) for the foreseeable future. However, the germane response from this poster, which seemed so apposite for the 'Anti cuts lobby' in the UK is worth quoting from at length.





"• I live in Greece and ...... I think Hara Kouki is an example of a generation that has grown up thinking that the "state" or their parents are going to give them everything so they don't need to do very much. They complain there are no jobs when they also support a system and a political ideology that prevents jobs from being created. Not to mention, one wonders what jobs many of this generation could actually do. Too many of the "young generation" (not that Hara is that young, she is 32 and presumably has been a "student" for most of her life and intends to be one for the several next few years) actually have very few skills to do a job properly, aside from "delivery" or working in shops. In order to create jobs Greece needs to allow its private sector to function properly but the protests in Athens yesterday were actually about preventing that. The unions and the left thus wanted to show the visiting troika that, No! they will accept no sale or lease of public assets (although there is no register of public assets so no one knows what they actually are in order to be able to utilise them) or privatisation of completely useless state "enterprises" that are totally unproductive and lose millions of euros a month. Despite the fact that such sales or leases or privatisation could bring in tens of billions of euros that Greece desperately needs right now. The purpose of yesterday's riots and Hara's "threat" that may one day be a "mass reaction here in Greece, one that may be violent" were to say: No! No reforms! Do not privatise, do not sell off unproductive state-owned industries! Do not reform the public service! Make no changes, we want things to carry on as they are! We want to protect our vested interests, especially the unions and the syndicates that have brought Greece to its knees.
And, Germany isn't doing better because of the crisis. Germany is doing better because it has a thriving private sector, has companies and citizens who actually make things instead of expect to be given things, and is highly innovative and willing to change and reform when that is needed. This is the opposite of Greece.

The EU doesn't give loans, and certainly not to governments to build houses. Unless you mean the bailout, but that's gone to keep the country from collapsing in return for the government implementing reform. Unfortunately, there has been very little reform, either because the government is being prevented from implementing it by the vested interests that organise the protests, or because the state infrastructure is so weak and civil servants so incompetent they are unable to put the reforms into practice. And, no the people have not been starving because the government has stolen all the "EU loans", whatever they may be. What has happened is that the EU has literally given billions and billions of euros to Greece over the past 30 years for all sorts of projects, large and small, and much of these billions have been misused and wasted, not by the politicians but by the projects they have gone to fund. The EU is definitely to blame for creating a sense of "the EU will give us the money to do this completely useless project so we don't actually have to be productive or effective or even have a necessary product". This has also helped to strangle the development of a mentality where people actually innovate and create and realise the need to work properly, to take some responsibility for themselves and not expect that the state (and their parents, in the case of the 20-30 and even 30plus generation) will sort everything out for them. Hopefully, such EU funding will be better thought out in future.
And...if you're worried that
all governments have destroyed everything the state owns then perhaps the state shouldn't own so much or be involved in such micro-details of daily life. But, I bet you'd be one of the first to go and shout in the streets if such state ownership and state control was challenged.

For Natalie Hanman, where did you find Hara? I note she's a student at Birkbeck, so perhaps you found her through your pal Costas Douzinas. You know, the one that supports that fossilised, backwards hard-leftist ideology that has helped to destroy Greece. (It's not just the hard-left, this kind of garbage ideology also permeates right-wing populism in Greece.) You keep thanking them for supposedly giving insight into what's going on in Greece, when what they're actually doing is giving a distorted picture that only represents about 5% of what's actually going on and misrepresents most of the rest."

Several other papers have written some rather saddening articles about what is happening in Greece. According to the headlines and leftist commentators austerity measures imposed by both the EU (which is an irony given its profligacy) and the IMF have caused a contraction in their economy of an estimated 7% over the past two years. Whilst there is a shade of truth in this, in that the Greeks are the first people paying a very high price for the EU to try and keep the train wreck and vanity project that is the euro going, it ignores the underlying issues afflicting Greece's (and indeed almost every Western European) economy.

As the excellent commentator here points out, the phenomenon known as 'crowding out' is endemic in the Greek economy. The retirement age is 'tiered' between 57 and 61 and a substantial state sector (accounting for around 40% of the workforce) has reasonably generous pensions vis a vis the cost of living. Furthermore, the trend for young people is to avoid going down the route of entrepeneurship and either accept employment within the Public sector or else join the extremes of both sides (and he rightly mentions the economic illiteracy of the Greek ultra nationalists as well as their leftist counterparts) and prootest against any change in the status quo.

What struck me about the Greek protests was the significant similarity between those and the TUC supported 'March for the alternative'which attracted such favourable attention in the Guardian ,Independent and BBC (funded by a £145.50 stipend on every TV watching household in the country) In both cases a large coterie of people, most of whom were advocates or direct beneficiaries of state largesse were marching in support of economic ideas that they, in their heart of hearts, know go against the grain of almost every economic commentator in the mainstream press, (barring the curious Paul Krugman of the New York Times, of whom more in a later post) advocating that the way to solve the economic woes affecting the country was to raise a budget which had already been increased by more than 200% over the past 13 years. As this Greek gentleman seems to realise, sooner or later a reckoning has to come. As several have pointed out,Britain is not Greece, but floundering under the weight of our accumulated debt, at the moment (and as Giroscoper points out I need to see the Labour Party policy review before passing full judgement) the Leader of the Oppositions policy seems to be to reject every area of the budget being cut save Defence. One of my common statements when commenting on the disastrous Labour governments from 1997 to 2010 was that the road to Harare or Pyongyang was shorter than one might expect, and as 'Red Two' and Voller' point out that kind of exaggeration does a significant disservice to people enduring hardships that most in the UK would find unimaginable at the hands of this man and his comrade in arms . However, having travelled to Athens , it's less than three hours, and unless the economy recovers, the figurative road there could be a great deal shorter than both the Leader of HM opposition, and to a degree , the current Prime Minister think.

At Last The 1996 Show: deconstructing Labour's hard right

It's now 8 months since Ed Miliband's knife-edge victory in the Labour leadership contest. I still can't quite believe he did it - and neither can the hard right of the Labour party. I define Labour's hard right as a strip of LINO (Labour In Name Only) hacks who, still unwilling to accept that their preferred candidate (Ed's older brother) lost, have taken it upon themselves to attempt to undermine Ed's leadership at every turn, with the eventual objective of replacing him with a clone of Tony Blair.

Note that we're not talking about the right wing of the Labour party here - which presumably comprises several tens of thousands of people, at least (given that most, though by no means all, of the right-wing votes in the Labour leadership contest went to David Miliband.) Many of the Labour right were unhappy with the leadership result - apparently the Progress (main right-wing Labour faction) "rally" at the party conference two days after the result was announced was more like a wake - but most of them have accepted it and are working with it. No, I'm talking about a small number of bloggers and journalists who are doing their best to whip up anti-Ed feelings and a sense of crisis so that he may be deposed at some point before the next election.

The most high profile print journalist in the hard right camp is Phil Collins - not the ex-Genesis singer/drummer and 1980s solo music criminal, but an ex-speech writer for Tony Blair of the same name. Which is a pity in many ways because the ex-Genesis Phil, for all his faults, is a far more likeable character and would probably have more insight on the future direction of the Labour party than ex-Blair Phil. He could hardly have less. I can't link to any of Phil Collins's Times pieces because they are behind a paywall. But you can get an approximation by reading any blogger or political commentator on the Telegraph website (Mary Riddell excepted). Now the Telegraph is of course a Tory paper. And that's why you can get an ersatz Phil Collins experience by reading the Telegraph - because Collins is a Tory as well! Which is of course WHY he was Tony Blair's speechwriter - because Blair was also a Tory. He started out in politics as a conservative and ended up as a Conservative.

If anyone disagrees with this assessment of Phil Collins, feel free to point me to something in his previous writings which contradicts it. I know that Collins now describes himself as a "liberal", not a conservative, but so does Nick Clegg, and we've seen what that means in practice - propping up a Tory government. Very appropriate. I find Collins more contemptible than even the Guardian's Julian Glover. Glover is one of the most odious columnists in British journalism, delighting in making poor people better off, smashing the state, and generally advocating a policy of making people's lives a misery by withdrawing essential public services from them so that they are "more free". But at least he doesn't make the pretence of supporting the Labour party while being viscerally opposed to all its policies. He's a bastard, but an honest bastard. Phil is a duplicitous bastard.

However, Mr Collins's efforts, funded by the Murdoch press as they are, are strict amateurism compared to the professional Ed Miliband sabotage operation being conducted by Dan Hodges of the New Statesman and Labour Uncut blogs.

Dan has emerged on the blogosphere over the last 12 months as Ed Miliband's leading self-appointed critic, with a simple modus operandi which involves cutting and repasting the same basic article with very minor cosmetic alterations and references to recent events, again and again and presumably being paid full whack for these minor alterations. The article template is always a desperate exercise in Blairite trolling, summarisable in a few bullet points, as follows:

• Ed is performing badly.
• An unnamed shadow cabinet member has recently told Dan that Ed will be finished unless his performance improves soon.
• The party is demoralised.
• (if there has been a recent election result) the results were awful. Labour was unable to capture any swing voters from the Tories.
• Ed needs to drop all this "progressive majority" bullshit, stop chasing ex-Liberal Democrat voters, and start courting Tory voters - preferably by adopting policy positions that are indistinguishable from the Tories.
• Tony Blair is pissed off with Ed trashing New Labour's record.
• Tony Blair is the blueprint for future Labour success.

Now, I'm not going to say that Ed Miliband's performance as Labour leader has been extraordinary, or brilliant. But it is good - and it's improving. For what it's worth (not much in my opinion,but some of us set great store by set-pieces), Ed regularly gives Cameron a verbal kicking at PMQs. His set-piece speeches are excellent, if a little light on specifics at the moment (more on that later). He's set a policy review process in motion that encompasses 23 policy areas and will run for the next 18 months - which at this stage in the parliament is eminently sensible. He's got good people in most of the top shadow cabinet positions (after some hiccups at the start). What else would people like Dan have Ed doing?

The answer, of course, is that this has nothing to do with Ed's performance in the job per se, and everything to do with the fact that the Labour hard right can't accept that their man lost. As it happens, I think David Miliband's pitch for the Labour leadership, while to the right of Ed's, was not a neo-Blairite hard right platform. For example he showed an interest in active industrial policy which was completely alien to the Labour hard right, who are still in thrall to neoliberalism and still don't quite believe the economic crisis happened. This explains why David attracted considerable support from the soft left of the Labour party as well as the right.

But at the end of the day, David Miliband should have been a shoo-in for Labour leader, and he blew it with poor campaigning. It wasn't all his fault; the unsolicited endorsement by Peter Mandelson was deeply damaging. But David had every opportunity to distance himself from Mandelson - and indeed Blair - but chose not to, and paid the price for keeping the wrong friends. By contrast, Ed fought a brilliant guerilla insurgency campaign - so brilliant, in fact, that even he couldn't believe he'd actually won the contest. To me, that says something positive about Ed's qualities as a campaigner - and something negative about David Miliband's qualities as a campaigner - that has been largely ignored, and shouldn't have been.

But to the neo-Blairite hard right, all this is evidence that Ed is, in some way, a usurper - Labour's Richard III figure, complete with hunchback and funny walk. And so they won't be happy until he's been deposed and presumably shuffled off to some trade union convalescent home at Eastbourne, or something.

Of course, it's not going to happen. For one thing, as Hodges himself has pointed out, the Labour hard right has no obvious challenger. With David Miliband showing no appetite for the rematch, Jimmy Purnell retired, and other neo-Blairites laughably insubstantial figures (e.g. Jim Murphy, Pat McFadden) there simply is no-one out there to carry the flame. And even if someone did emerge, Labour has no tradition of knifing leaders before elections, by contrast to the Tories, for whom it's bread and butter (Thatcher, IDS). If the Blairites couldn't get rid of Gordon Brown before an election they stand sweet F.A. chance of toppling Ed, no matter what his poll ratings are.

Also the Labour hard right has no policy suggestions whatsoever - NONE - beyond tame capitulation to the Tories. Thus we see that on Labour Uncut (which seems to be the leading internal Labour right blog), ex-party chairman Peter Watt has recently called for Labour to endorse the Tories' cuts strategy lock, stock and barrel. This would be intellectual suicide, instantly allowing George Osborne to claim that he was dictating the terms of the economic debate and making Ed Balls look like an imbecile. Given the mounting evidence that the cuts are exerting a huge toll on the British economy, it's also economically wrong-headed. The real reason Watt is suggesting this is that Tony Blair accepted Tory spending plans in 1996. He didn't need to do it (does ANYONE - even Michael Heseltine - believe that the Tories would have won in 1997 if not for Labour accepting Tory spending plans?), it was a disaster in terms of the performance of public services (the extra 2 years of vicious squeezing of spending from 1997 to 1999 paralysed the NHS and state education for several years and made it much harder for Labour to get any improvements in those services until fairly late into its second term, if that), but hey, Tony Blair did it so it must be the right thing to do, right?

The basic point here is that the Labour hard right is still living in 1996. Their thinking hasn't moved on in 15 years. I'm not saying that Ed Miliband, or the soft left (or indeed soft right) of the Labour party, have all the answers - because they patently haven't - but the possibility exists, however faint, that they will Get It. Whereas the only place that following the advice of people like Hodges, Collins and Watt will get Labour is belly laughs and a walloping from a resurgent - and thankful - Tory party at the next election. The Labour hard right are ersatz Tories, bad losers, cheap punks and imbeciles to a man/woman, and their best course of action would be to shut up shop, think about why the hell they are in the Labour party, and if they can't reconcile their membership with their fundamental conservatism, perhaps best to retreat to the massed ranks of the ConDem coalition - where this sort of bullshit is looked on a good deal more kindly.

Comment is crap... why I've cut the CiF

After a frantic period of almost totally inconsequential activity when I seemed to be posting comments on the Guardian's Comment is Free (CiF) site almost every day, I've now retired from such activity for the foreseeable future.

Why? Because it's a waste of time.

It's not that the CiF articles are especially bad. They are a true mixed bag, from brilliant to crap and every shade in between.

It's more that I get the impression that almost no-one who isn't either a troll or a counter-troll reads the comments - and hence, why bother commenting?

The comments on CiF split roughly 50%/40%/10% between:

Type 1: the "astroturfing" right wing trolls

These guys (if they are guys) make extreme comments of a liberatarian/fascist/homophobic/racist/sexist nature (sometimes all 5 at once, which is impressive in a frightening way). They do not engage with any alternative points of view except to reiterate their earlier points with more swearwords and venom. They use a variety of aliases but the posting style and phrasing is similar in most cases, which leads me to believe that the CiF right wing presence is a few people posting repeatedly under dozens of different names. This activity gives an impression of a grass roots movement where none really exists - hence the name "astroturfing". George Monbiot started to expose the astroturfing phenomenon in a very good article last December.

Type 2: the left wing countertrolls

These guys (again they mainly seem to be guys) have been emerging more and more over the last year or so, after a long period when CiF comments seemed to be one long loo-roll of right-wing bile. The counter-troll takes on the right-wing astroturf trolls head on, attempting to rebut their arguments. This isn't quite so easy as it seems as they often have no real argument to speak of in the first place and so the counter-troll is pretty much forced to descend to their level.

I speak from experience here - because I'm one of the counter-trolls. My contributions over the last six months have mainly been brain-dead endorsements of Ed Miliband, George Monbiot, Len McCluskey, Caroline Lucas, Yes to AV, the late Captain Beefheart, my friend Tom Clark who writes for the Guardian... pretty much anything except a rational argument. A good example is this piece by Ed Miliband "Yes to AV is yes to a fairer politics", where I actually managed to grab the much-coveted first comment slot with

YES YES YES... Ed tells it like it is. Vote yes people, for the biggest upset in electoral history... ignore the reactionaries, doom-mongers, naysayers, and CiF's "astroturfing" right wing trolls.

Great sentiments, but sadly little in the way of intelligent ideas. So far, 153 people have 'recommended' this inane comment. Did anyone take away anything of value from it - apart from the possible inference that I hang around on the CiF site refreshing every 30 seconds, waiting for new posts to come up? I don't think so. But such is the life of the counter-troll.

Type 3: genuinely interesting comments

These are the needles in a haystack that actually make it worth reading a CiF thread - intelligent pieces of analysis that don't just fall back on cheap political posturing (whether right or left) but make a point that somebody might not have heard before. But in your average CiF column such insights are few and far between. You get a few more like this on subjects that cut across conventional left-right boundaries, such as religious belief (although Andrew Brown, the editor of CiF Belief, is clueless at best, the comment thread on his posts is usually at least slightly interesting). But you also get even more vociferous nutters - both pro- and anti-religion - on any theological topics.

There is also a fourth type of comment - when the article writer visits the thread to comment on their own article. Some writers - George Monbiot for example, and also the wretched Julian Glover - are quite assiduous about this. Others are never to be seen... probably they've just given the whole experience up as a bad job. Which it pretty much is.

Comment is Free is not the only place on the web where blog comment has degenerated into a trollfest - most newspaper websites suffer from it to some extent. I've also occasionally posted on the Telegraph comment site, and that has a lot of right wingers - although due to the readership, it is more a case of boneheaded right-wing dogma interrupted by the occasional left-wing troll rather than the other way round. Surprisingly, I don't find the comment threads on the Telegraph any more unpleasant a read than the Guardian, really.

Political blogs are also handy hangouts for trolls. The leading centre-left blog sites - Sunny Hundal's Liberal Conspiracy, and Shamik Das's Left Foot Forward - are badly infested with them, for example. The Fabian's Next Left blog less so - partly because Next Left tends to get less trolls anyway, perhaps because the posting rate is a lot less per day. I've noticed that the more articles get posted on a blog, the more likely it is to get trolled. I very rarely read right wing blogs like Guido Fawkes or Conservative Home, but when I do, the comment threads there seem to resemble Mos Eisley spaceport on a very bad day... AVOID.

Some left bloggers have the patience to filter out the trolls manually - most obviously Richard Murphy at Tax Research UK. Richard used to get targeted by about half a dozen people who were just frankly a pain in the ass; once he blocked those people the readability of the thread and his overall traffic went up A LOT. But this kind of active filtering is time-consuming; Richard has had to turn off all comments twice in the last eighteen months because he couldn't cope with the sheer volume of shit coming his way if he was going to hold down any kind of day job at the same time. At the end of the day, that's why trolls rule the blogwaves; there are at least a few dozen trolls out there who seem to be doing it full time, and most blogs have only one moderator, doing it in their spare time.

As the web develops into its next phase it's quite possible that a move away from free-for-all comments and something a bit more like a round-table event - with a specific list of invitees for each post, or a meta-list of people cleared to comment on the site - is likely. This would be a shame in many ways as it would make the blogosphere less of a public good. But on the other hand trolls are a public bad, so maybe there's a tradeoff between openness and quality.

All I know for sure is that - for the moment at least - my CiF posting days are over. Hal Berstram's last CiF post occurred last Saturday, on a story about the ridiculously poorly attended "Rally Against Debt" - spoofed very effectively here. Good luck to the left-wingers on CiF - be they counter-trolls or otherwise - who continue to fight the good fight against astroturf, libertarianism and extremism. I just don't know if anyone is there to see your good work - and at the end of the day the marginal benefit from me continuing to write inane pro-Ed Milband propaganda is zero. So Goodbye To All That. You'll still be able to read Hal on Next Left, the Virtual Stoa, and maybe slagging off Dan Hodges on the New Statesman blog (some writers deserve to be trolled)... but not on CiF anymore. We live... and some of us learn.

J&B; Straight and a Corona.......

Worth taking a few minutes to look at the political situation across the Atlantic. Firstly let me explain a little behind the title of this post. For those unfamiliar with either the Bret Easton Ellis novel or the Mary Harron film American Psycho, the book is basically a very dark and at times quite violent satire on Reaganite America. The title of the leading contributors to this blog are both names based on characters from the film, but perhaps the relevance here is that the work's anti-hero, Patrick Bateman is obsessed with and a great admirer of the then property magnate, Donald Trump, perhaps better known now as the man who fronts the US version of the Apprentice.


What relevance has this to the political situation over there? Well, I was quite impressed with an article in today's Guardian which compared the Republican candidates' field for 2012 to the famous scene from Star Wars Episode IV in the Mos Eisley Cantina.
It says much for the paucity of options that currently Trump leads the field. So who are the men and women lining up for a shot at a President who prior to the recent killing of Bin Laden was not exactly lighting up the polls?

Donald Trump, the current front runner arguably needs no introduction: A property magnate, TV personality and billionaire 'self-made' man, he is perhaps the embodiment of 'the American Dream' or its nightmarish Reaganite manifestation anyhow. His sole 'qualification' for the presidency appears to be that he could run the country like a business but he has for me completely blotted his copybook(aside from some rather dubious activity during the 1980's) by what can only be considered an idiotic obsession with Obama's origins, taking pride in his 'forcing' the President to reveal his birth certificate. Say what you will about the Royal wedding, at least it would spare us President Trump as 'head of state'. His catchphrase (adopted by his UK apprentice counterpart Lord Sugar) is 'you're fired'. I think it safe to say in the unlikely event he did get the nomination, he'd be the one being fired.

Perhaps the candidate with even more global recognition than 'The Donald' is former VP candidate from 2008, Sarah Palin. Despite always being on the lookout for mentions of arguably the most influential Hard Leftist country, her lauding of the US' 'North Korean Allies' escaped my attention at the time, but whilst she undoubtedly has significant support from the 'Tea Party' side of the Republican Party this and a host of other gaffes (indeed some would argue her autobio 'Going Rogue' handily brought me as a Christmas present is one long gaffe) make her manna from heaven for any Democratic supporters.

Less familar but arguably even more of a wild card is the other female candidate, Minnesota congresswoman, Michele Bachmann. The kind of kook that gives conservatism a bad name, Bachmann's more sensible ideas include responding to Obama's floating the idea of a cap and trade policy to try and limit CO2 emmissions by telling Minnesotans to 'get armed and dangerous on this issue of an energy tax because we need to fight back'. Having never visited Minnesota but always had a soft spot for their American football team due to the kit(and them being one of my brother's favourite team's divisional rivals!) , I'm sure hoping she is somewhat unrepresentative of the state. Further political positions include support for Intelligent design and questioning the theory of evolution within state schools, opposing increases in the minimum wage and repeal of President Obama's healthcare Bill.

Another figure probably unfamiliar to UK readers is former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who feels motivated to run in 2012 because 'we need a new President of the United States' Well, whilst I'd probably agree with you on that Rick, the question is whether you are the man for the job - on that let's examine some of his beliefs. Arguably his most famous (or notorious) foray into the Public arena was when he stated:

"In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

Thus any homosexual readers may be please to know they're bracketed by this candidate with practitioners of bestiality and necrophilia. However, his lack of public recognition means I probably wouldn't cancel any vacation plans to the States post 2013 just yet.

Rounding out the more eccentric candidates is Ron Paul , the Texas Congressman who also put himself forward in 2008. However, Paul is arguably the best of the five mentioned to this point. (not that the competition is especially stiff admittedly)He adopts a strongly Libertarian policy, and indeed was a Libertarian Party candidate from the presidency against Bush Senior in 1988. A philosophical Conservative, Paul opposed the Iraq war in 2002, and adheres to a non-interventionist US policy which would involve withdrawal from bases in Japan,Germany and Korea. A Free Marketeer in the economic sense and a disciple of the Austro German school of Hayek/Von Mises, he would abolish Income Tax and introduce a National Sales Tax. He is 'Pro-Life' although he does state that decisions should be left to the individual States rather than at a National level. All in all, something of a mixed bag with a few genuinely hardline conservative positions mixed in with an economically Liberal philopsophy. He has a hardcore of committed supporters and is almost as likely to criticise his Republican colleagues as the Democrats.





The more 'mainstream' candidates are arguably an equally uninspiring pool, not as with Palin or Bachmann for their lunacy, more for their somewhat lack of charisma. Arguably the best known is Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and another failed contender from 2008. Excluding Trump he currently leads the race. However, whilst it would probably make very little difference in the UK, his Mormon faith makes it highly problematic for him to actually get the nomination and to be honest, his campaign in 2008 was so unmemorable precisly because of his lack of public recognition. On most issue he seems to be to the left of the Republican Party but when you look at statements from the likes of Bachmann and Palin, that's not really saying much.

Another figure who may be familiar to more seasoned observers of the US political scene, is Newt Gingrich. Formerly Speaker of the House of Representatives during the latter part of the Clinton presidency,Gingrich announced his intention to run for president yesterdayand looking at the exploratory committee's first steps I must admit I would hope that someone in the UK Conservative Party could carry out his strategy of 'replacing the Left'. However, I don't necessarily think his candidacy could succeed if he were in the race against Obama. Nevertheless, his positions on certain areas are somewhat more nuanced than some of the other more 'out there' candidates. On immigration, especially his proposals to instigate some form of guest worker programme place him to the left of the Republican. that said, on an issue like 'climate change' he remains somewhat sceptical on proposals to use fiscal means of limiting pollution. However, along with Romney he remains one of the early front runners for the nomination.

Another person whom people may recall from the 2008 Primaries is Mike Huckabee, one of Clinton's successors as governor of Arkansas. One of my groomsmen quite seriously said that if Huckabee succeeded in winning the presidency, he and his American wife and daughters would almost certainly be headed back across this side of the Atlantic. The man himself does appear regularly on the US Murdoch mouthpiece Fox News, and he does seem somewhat reluctant to give up that quite lucrative number.
However, worryingly for those on the Left(and many on the right), current poll ratings pre bin Laden would put Huckabee ahead of Obama and in the so called 'NASCAR belt' he has strong support. His positions are the standard extreme right of the Republican Party on issues such as abortion (opposed even in the case of rape and incest), foreign policy (a strong defence and 50% increase in military expenditure and homosexuality (against same sex marriages and civil unions)Unlike Palin, Huckabee appears to be somewhat less prone to rhetorical gaffes, but he does remind me at least somewhat of the unsuccessful 1964 candidate Barry Goldwater whose tagline:

'In your heart, you know he's right'

was met with the riposte by then President Johnson's team.

'In your guts , you know he's nuts'

A figure beloved of certain Washington columnists, but who would have almost zero recognition over here is Mitch Daniels, current governor of Indiana. another state arguably relatively unknown and unvisited by UK tourists(Unless you're a fan of the Colts or NBA Pacers, or motorracing's Indy 500), Daniels seems by Republican standards quite moderate, but arguably this would probably cost him support in some of the more eccentric states. He does seem to be relatively moderate by the standards of some of the candidates mentioned here. However, by his own admission, he would probably need to better understand the national policy issues he would need to tackle as President. As with some other substantial candidates who I'll consider later on, he also probably thinks Obama will be difficult to beat in 2012 and is biding his time for a run in 2016.

One man who although not formally in the Race yet is widely believed to be on the verge of declaring his candidacy for the Republican nomination is the former governor of another Northern state, Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. However, in current polls he doesn't get much beyond single figure polling and his general lack of charisma is probably best illustrated by his website , and attempt to build some kind of credibility with younger voters who overwhelmingly voted for Obama last time by using the name 'T-Paw' a ploy that looks eerily similar to William Hague's 'baseball cap' gaffe in 1999. I think for different reasons to Palin, Democratic supporters would be licking their lips in the unlikely event he were to win the nomination.

So, a pretty uninspiring bunch to be sure. The question is - who can the Repuplicans find that might fare better than these guys and girls? This post has already taken arguably too long, and a later post will consider the candidates who would IMHO have a very strong chance of beating Obama. Another may also consider in response to the excellent Mehdi Hasan article, which creature within the Mos Eisley Cantina scene corresponds to which candidate.