Cracking Allegory, Gromit!

One of the Tory attack lines on Ed Miliband is that he's a geek, or a nerd (as though these debased terms were somehow insulting). He looks a bit funny they say, so obviously is incapable of understanding the PSBR or negotiating trade deals. It's got to the point where EM makes self-deprecating jokes about looking like Wallace of & Gromit fame.

Victor Quartermain

I like him, and the reference. I'm far more leftwing than Miliband, but he seems like a decent and humane man with a set of principles that have endured throughout his political career. As for Wallace: he's a decent and humane man with a set of principles and a dog which have endured throughout etc. etc. And let's not forget that in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the violent bullying of a gun-toting, arrogant aristocrat goads Wallace's transformation into a powerful, angry beast who lays waste to all around him before living happily ever after. Having lied to and treated with contempt the locals, Victor is driven out of public life.



I wonder if there's a political fable relating to the current election campaign available in that somehow?

Dear Tristram

I'm sorry to harp on about this. I'd rather post something about the books I'm reading or the music to which I'm listening - but Tristram Hunt's betrayal of his colleagues and political friends is really bugging me. Here's the letter I sent him and Ed Miliband. I encourage you to do the same. Their email addresses are ed.miliband.mp@parliament.uk and tristramhunt@parliament.uk

Dear Ed and Tristram,

I am a Labour Party member and a university lecturer, after four degrees (BA, MA, PhD and PGCE), ten years of extra debt and many years of hourly-paid casual work. At 38, I have only been employed full-time and with pension rights for 6 years. In that time, my pension has been cut, my pension contributions increased and my retirement date extended far into the future. My salary has not increased in real terms since I secured this job, though my workload, class sizes and management expectations all have.   

I look at my students and see bright, eager people, many of whom would like to become the next generation of intellectual leaders and educators like you once were Tristram. But every year, weighed down by £50,000 of debt, they’re forced to take ‘socially useless’ jobs in for example banking rather than follow their hearts and give back to society. While the senior management of many universities demand corporate levels of pay ‘to attract talent’, academic pay is declining and it’s hard to attract a new generation when conditions are declining.  

This is why I was so utterly disappointed to see a Shadow Minister for Education crossing a picket line to deliver a course - ironically - on Marx. I am not naive enough to expect a Labour politician to support an industrial dispute any more, but I would have thought that Tristram would have had the good manners to simply reschedule the session or use another entrance. Given the caution and sophistication of your political activity, I can only conclude that publicly crossing a picket line of one’s colleagues is a deliberate political act designed to deliver some kind of message to the political right.  

Despite being an expert on Marxist theory, Mr Hunt has clearly failed to learn the Labour virtues of solidarity and empathy. I would like to stress to you how disappointed I am by yesterday’s action. Even though I’m on the Board of Governors of my university, I was on the UCU picket line and worked hard to explain to my students that withdrawing our labour is both deeply unpleasant and our only remaining option in the pay dispute. How can I talk to them about the joys of social democratic unity in an individualistic neoliberal society when my own party’s leaders are so willing to betray their former colleagues and political allies? 

I’m not asking either of you to support our strike (though I wish you could), but I would like you to contemplate whether crossing a picket line is what you got into Labour politics for.
Yours,
Plashing Vole

PS: Here's the automated email reply from Tristram:

However, as I am sure you will understand, my immediate priorities will be my parliamentary duties as Shadow Secretary of State for Education and to my constituents in Stoke-on-Trent Central.

Yes, it really looked like it as he strolled across a picket line to deliver a class in London.

Red Ed v Red Mist

I watched the last half of Kick-Ass last night. I just did, OK?

An uncanny likeness occurred to me, between likeable, unlikely and nervous hero 'Red Ed' Miliband and gawky costumed crusader Red Mist.

I should point out that Red Mist wins in the end once he joins forces with a determined young woman named Hit Girl. I have every confidence that Ed Miliband will similarly triumph in the end, having enrolled the support of more radical elements in his party and beyond. He, too, should Kick more Ass.

(I've met Ed, and liked him very much. Here are the photos I took of him. Grant Shapps: stop stealing them).

Morning has thoroughly broken

Crawled into work late today, thanks to staying in the office until 8.45 last night. Though I should admit that 45 minutes of that was usefully employed watching Saturday's Doctor Who - very satisfying. I'm glad Rory's dead, by the way. Acting requires more than the ability to look left, then right, quite quickly.

So, on to today's tasks. I'm about to see another final year dissertation student. I have no idea what she wants to write about, and fervently hope she does. Yesterday's wants to do a piece on Milton, CS Lewis and Pullman: familiar but should yield something decent. I've also acquired three MA dissertation supervisions. One is looking at classical music in popular culture, which could be very interesting. Another is writing about satirical versions of the interwar country house novel, which is exciting, and a third has just sent me a huge list of approaches to the later work of JG Ballard - so quite a variety.

Also on the agenda today - further research for my Welsh travel paper - the clock's ticking. More lecture-writing, and hopefully a swim. I'll also keep an eye on Ed Miliband's speech. I'll tell you a secret: I voted for Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership election. I wanted to vote for John McDonnell because he's a socialist, but he didn't get enough nominations to be on the ballot paper. I saw David Miliband as mini-Blair: he's got blood on his hands through his time in the Cabinet, and his subsequent life which involves him making principled speeches to political groups while taking fees from a range of repressive governments confirms me in my opinion that he's just another apparatchik of real-politik and neoliberal business as usual. Electable, perhaps, but what's the point of that if the result is continued injustice, political cowardice and intellectual limitation.

I don't see Ed Miliband as some kind of leftwing hero either, but I do think he's fundamentally decent, understands what the challenging issues are, and generally tends towards the right thing. I've met him too. He's a bit goofy but he's refreshingly uninterested in being slick. It's not caring about stuff like that which will make him immune to the ridicule. I'm actually looking forward to a geeky Prime Minister. Those who set themselves up as globe-trotting Maximum Leaders find themselves invading places just to maintain the image of decisiveness and masculinity. It might not suit the news agenda, but I'd quite like a PM who'll openly say that issues are complicated, need thought and might not lead to clear outcomes. Government's difficult and complex: distrust those who would reduce it to simple choices. If you haven't noticed, this is the Age of the Geek: Dawkins, Goldacre, Cox and Co.

No doubt Ed will tack with the wind from the Daily Mail and the pollsters when the time comes. He'll disappoint - of course. But I still think I voted the right way.

Is Ed Dead?

The newspapers, Newsnight and Today programmes have spent the usually newsless first weeks of January telling us all that Ed Miliband is a dead Labour leader walking, supported by dubious comparisons with Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael Foot. He's suddenly gone from being a public fratricide to a spineless jelly.

But is it true? It's certainly the case that if all the media outlets spend their time telling readers that you're useless, the public will think so, and Labour sure isn't getting equal access to the airwaves: I saw a Newsnight discussion the other night featuring a Tory MP, and Lib Dem MP and a businessman - hardly impartial programming.

I'm not a natural Labour supporter, because I'm a socialist, but I joined the party for two reasons: firstly because I believe that socialism requires a mass membership party rather than secretive 'vanguard' organisations which don't actually make any kind of impact or even stand for elections (the argument that elections are a democratic sham is fascinating but I'll save that for another day), and secondly to vote for John McDonnell when he tried to stand against Gordon Brown but failed to get enough nominations from fellow MPs.

I voted for Ed Miliband in the leadership election, as the least worst option. He was a genuinely good minister for the environment, and he wasn't a war criminal, unlike his brother David, who personally authorised the kidnapping of various individuals and their transport to friendly countries which could be relied upon to torture them. Ed Balls and Andy Burnham are right-wingers whose Blunkett-like position is that anything done by a Labour politician must automatically be according to Labour principles: this is how New Labour prosecuted illegal wars, arranged torture, deregulated the financial markets, tripled tuition fees (you don't think the Tories thought that up by themselves, did you?) and the whole host of reactionary policies they introduced. Diane Abbott's funny but not serious and a hypocrite. Which left Ed. I thought he spoke human quite well, had a clear view of where New Labour had gone wrong, he should have inherited some good ideas from his illustrious father, and he wasn't entirely tainted with New Labour arrogance. My friend Ben voted for David on the basis that he was more natural and personable, and therefore more electable. I can see his point, but to me, David apart from his war crimes (which I mean seriously, not like someone waving a 'Bliar' placard), he represented the managerialist machine politics of a post-ideological age even more than Ed, who at least showed signs of challenging the Blairite paradigm.

Fozzy Bear, anyone?

I still largely think that: I had a chance to attend a meeting (that's where I took these photos) he hosted and he was reasonable and thoughtful, which is partly why the media have turned against him: these qualities do not a thundering headline make.

However, I'm rapidly becoming disillusioned. Yesterday's Today programme interview was pitiful: Ed floundered partly because John Humphrys is a monotoned hectoring git, but mostly because he hasn't developed any substance beyond 'let's try to be calm and nice'.

He is, I think, entirely trapped by the British media, something all Labour politicians have to contend with, and it's not his fault. Surrounded by hostile rightwing newspapers who act solely as the mouthpieces of the Tories and their business allies, he's desperate to appeal to them. However, rather than accepting the right's discourse, he should be challenging it. For instance, he wheeled out the usual rightwing crap about armies of idle benefit scroungers without referring to the 2.5m who are unemployed: they can't all be lazy bastards, and called for 'fundamental change', yet totally failed to enunciate what he meant. It's just an empty phrase which means entirely the opposite. He wants to vaguely tinker with fiscal regulation to win some easy headlines about 'fat cats', but has nothing to say about the bond markets, derivatives trading, banking structures or any of the big issues about capitalism. He can't talk bold without being bold. I have literally no idea what his definition of 'fundamental' means, though the term to me implies structural change.

Personally, I think that there's a critical mass of voters who are fed up with being held to ransom by the City, and would welcome some German-style industrial dirigisme to make the City work for the real economy. They'd like to see some banks nationalised and others closed, and they'd like to see a tax system which rewards citizens, not massive mobile corporations which benefit from tax-funded systems (roads, schools, policing, healthcare) but doesn't want to contribute. They'd like a state transport system which actually works, and a government which is more interested in citizens' lives than posturing on the world stage as though the UK is in any way important. They want all schools to be good and controlled by elected local representatives, not by unaccountable sects and corporations. They want an NHS that works, not one that's sold off on the premise that 'choice' is a benefit. Ordinary people - i.e. not lefty ideologues like me - are angry and ripe for a leftwing, populist campaign.

I don't think these are particularly radical: they're easy wins for Ed Miliband. The problem is that he's being held captive by fear of his natural enemies. Can he break out of this spiral of mediocrity? I think he has the personal and political skills to do so - but I'm not sure that he wants to, and recognising you have a problem is the first step towards solving it. It's time he took charge of the debate - as he did over News International - and made the running himself, rather than triangulating with the discourse of the right.

The best of a bad bunch turns out to be very bad indeed

Ed Milliband's robotic and reactionary response to questions about our strike in defence of our pensions has been widely mocked on the internet.

Here's the best version yet:

Take me to your leader

I slipped off to meet Ed Miliband today, down at the football ground. It didn't take much to get in, though a worried Labour Party official did rather tactlessly tell me that they wanted 'real people' rather than Labour members, to avoid media accusations that the event was staged.

They got it half right: there were lots of 'ordinary' people there, though the rows of people providing Miliband's backdrop for the TV cameras were carefully selected to provide a multicultural, all-ages, sympathetic representation. I have to say that the event didn't come across as completely staged. There were plenty of local Labour people, and a vast number of pushy young men in cheap suits umbilically attached to their BlackBerries, but the questions were decent and honest: you could tell it was The Dark Place because everyone over 40 was convinced that we've got the crime levels of 1970s New York and that prisons are indistinguishable from high-end health farms.

What did impress me about Ed M. was that he speaks human very fluently, perhaps even as a first language. Of course he's highly-trained in not causing offence and sounding sympathetic even when he isn't, but I was convinced. Partly because he didn't play the usual political games. Apart from one reference to treating bankers who rip off the state the same as benefit cheats, he refrained from pressing hot buttons or descending into soundbites. I kept my hand up but couldn't get a question in.

I am - as everyone should be - far to the left of Ed, but I was convinced that he's a decent, thoughtful man who has perhaps learned the lessons of Labour's rise and fall to some extent. Whether that's enough to win an election, I'm not sure.

The other thing I learned is that he has a huge range of funny faces. Steve Bell thinks he has the eyes of a killer panda, whereas I thought he looked a little like Fozzy Bear.

My pictures are here, but here are the best ones. Click to enlarge.

I rather like this one - good lighting.

One for the Midlanders: TV's very own Patrick Burns

The Labour Party has posted film of the event here: interesting the way it's been edited for their purposes. 

Beg Ed In Da Area

Apparently Ed Miliband's visiting The Dark Place today, holding a meeting at the football ground from 12. I'm a bit annoyed the local party's communications are so poor that ordinary members like me didn't get told about it. I should be marking but might take an hour off and try to get in. You can follow it live here.

Lookalikes

Apparently, according to friends and complete strangers, I look like this chap:

But I also look like this one:

And this one:

Cameron contemplates the menu

Hmmm. OK, I have slightly goggly eyes and more than the usual complement of chins, but I still don't see the Miliband and Cameron resemblances. Still, I could develop a comedy routine based on all three characters…

Milibored

Good morning. What a fun-packed day it's going to be. OK, the rain is cold and miserable (though proper rain is my favourite weather), but teaching's going to be good: Shakespeare, followed by a three hour session on Ethics and Media.

Both classes are intellectually satisfying: the students are always good and engaged, and there's a lot more discussion than lecturing (don't tell the students, but the Ethics one is a very thinly disguised philosophy class).

I spent last night making (accidentally) enough pasta for several days, heavily laced with sherry and chilli, then slumped in front of the TV, shouting at the news. I'm just getting so bored with the Ed'n'Dave Show. The media have turned a political story (Labour Party elects new leader) into a Freudian or Cain and Abel melodrama. Who's up, who's down? Can David ever recover from the psychological blow? Will he retreat from front-line politics? I hate that phrase, by the way - front lines are where young men and women are blown to pieces, not comfortable jobs surrounded by flunkies.

As far as I'm concerned, if David Miliband thinks he's got something to offer the public but runs away because he lost to his brother, he didn't deserve to stand for election in the first place. Political office shouldn't be about ambition, or not primarily: it should be, in Kennedy's terms, what you can do for your country. DM needs to swallow his pride, realise that (despite his dubious role in the Iraq war) he has a real contribution to make to the party and the country, and get down to work. If he doesn't, he's nothing more than an egotistical dilettante.

A new dawn?

You may have noted that the Labour Party has a new leader, Mr. Edward Miliband. He's a bright guy, a little goofy, and desperate to bring on the dictatorship of the proletariat and start swinging the bodies of small businessmen from the lamp-posts.

Well, that's what Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and the Conservative press seem to think - they took to calling this affable career politician 'Red Ed', despite his impeccable New Labour (ugh) credentials, and despite their deep knowledge of Labour history. Foot wasn't red, Atlee wasn't red, there's never been a 'red' leader: all Labour Party bosses have been moderate to the point of chained to the middle ground (except for Blair, who was well to the right). The Communist Party in the 'Class Against Class' period (mid-1930s) used to describe the Labour Party as 'social fascist' because they wanted to direct the working class, rather than be directed by it: the label was slightly unfair then, but suited New Labour perfectly. The nation - despite huge positive achievements instituted by the Labour Party - came to feel excluded from politics, and under constant surveillance. It's time to start consulting a little more.

Ben supported David Miliband, on the reasonable grounds that David's electable in the eyes of the Great British Public. I wasn't keen on any of the candidates, but gave Ed my first preference simply because he sounded a little more thoughtful, and unlike his brother, didn't spend the past three years in the Foreign Office resisting court demands for clarity on his awareness of War on Terror torture. He'd have been OK as leader, but he's still young, and Ed might have a massive heart attack.

Sorry - I watched The Manchurian Candidate last night.

Is the worm turning?

I've always thought that the UK has been a puppet/client state of the US, since 1945. However, according to Seymour Hersh, David Miliband and the head of MI6 visited Syria without permission from the Americans. This really is a shocker. Reagan of course invaded the former British territory of Grenada without mentioning it to his friend Thatcher, but the British haven't done anything without clearing it with Uncle Sam since Suez, which was a disaster.

The way Hersh tells it, Cheney was furious. How dare the Brits use their initiative?

We are doomed

To recover from the St Pat's festivities, we ate Vietnamese food, sat in the Wellington with pints of real ale and read newspapers, then went to Star City for the premiere of The Age of Stupid. What a brilliant place for a green film: a palace of excess and consumption located next to Spaghetti Junction, a place with so much contempt for the environment that they have no information available about how to get there by public transport.

If you haven't heard about it, it's an important film about climate change. Chances are you're either entirely indifferent or bored with the subject. You shouldn't be. You should watch the film and leave with a sense of utter, utter dread, alleviated by a glimmer of hope that we can do something about it before 2015 - after that, we all get to live in a post-apocalyptic Kevin Costner film, and nobody wants that.

Actually, the film's not that good. It makes a lot of important points but makes them badly. The boo-hiss guy is a low-cost airline director, but it's a shame that they couldn't use a Western one, such as Ryanair's O'Leary. Instead, they pick an Indian as though it's poor Asian countries which have got us all into trouble. The nuclear potato is avoided utterly and the clumsy post-fall flashback structure has been done a million times in cheap SF. Pete Postlethwaite's pretty good though.

The strength is the movement that's growing out of Age of Stupid. The live Q and A beamed direct from Leicester Square was interesting, primarily for Ed Miliband's discomfiture. He had the last laugh though - every time they begged him not to build Kingsnorth, he stressed the need to experiment with CCS, clearly meaning 'I'm building it, and CCS might happen in 30 years time so piss off' while hoping that the greens would think 'Ah, he understands why coal's bad'.