We need to talk about Tristram

I'm a member of the Labour Party. Being a member of any political party makes me a little bit weird - formal participation has been declining for many years. I'm even weird amongst my friends. Most of us are socialists, and we're not especially welcome in the Party. But I carry on because I'd like to have even a tiny say in the policy determinations of a party that has a strong chance of winning a general election. I admire my friends who spend their time arguing over the minutiae of leftwing ideology before standing in the rain selling three sectarian newspapers a week, but let's face it: that's more of a hobby than a plan for government. 

So I'm in the Labour party. I joined to vote for John McDonnell in the leadership election that led to Gordon Brown's elevation. What can I say? I unerringly support the losing side. I wanted Denis Kucinich to win the US Presidency. I've met both Milibands, and far preferred Ed. David struck me as an unreflective and cynical machine politician. Ed, for all the scrapes he gets into, seemed to be principled and genuinely interested in the people he met.

But my party doesn't make it easy for me to remain a member. There's the whole embrace of neoliberalism, for a start. Then the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture, the kidnapping, the deregulation etc. etc. ad infinitum. There's the latest wheeze, which is to punish young unemployed people for the bankruptcy of Britain (caused by the financial sector) by reducing their social security support. It's marketed as 'help to train' so I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that the 'help' is significantly lower than the current rate of unemployment benefit.

But most of all, there's the Honourable Tristram Hunt MP.

Tristram is the privately-educated son of a Lord (not that I'm particularly bothered about that: Benn and Dalyell were both quite posh) who was unaccountably parachuted into the poor and socialist constituency for Stoke-on-Trent Central, apparently thanks to the machinations of his friend Peter Mandelson. Tristram is an historian, or as the newspapers put it, a 'distinguished' historian, i.e. one who can produce a decent narrative from interesting though not essential material without troubling the reader with tricky metaphysical questions.

Tristram is the Shadow Secretary of State for Education. That means his job is to oppose the work of Michael Gove, the man who thinks that education should be given to private corporations who'll reproduce the atmosphere of Mr Gradgrind's drone factory and make a profit along the way. Mr Gove wants you all to become junior Empire Loyalists who know that Muslims are Bad and the British have been, are and always will be White, Christian and Nice.

Tristram isn't up to the job. Worse than that: he agrees with everything Mr Gove does. He simply feels that Michael could be a little more efficient. For a very clever man, he seems incapable of thinking anything through beyond the question that obsesses all rightwing Labour politicians: 'what will the Mail say about this?'.

Not only is Tristram incompetent, deeply conservative and entirely lacking discernible Labour values, he actively works against his party's history, beliefs and members. A few months ago, this former academic went back to Queen Mary College to deliver a lecture (apparently he doesn't consider being an MP and shadow cabinet member constitutes full-time employment). To do so, he crossed a legal picket line of his own colleagues. The subject of that lecture? Socialism. The biographer of Friedrich Engels stirred the workers with his principled defence of the right of exploited workers to withdraw their labour:

"I support the right to strike for those who have balloted to picket. I have chosen not to join the strike." Mr Hunt, who is also the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, said his "personal commitment remained to the students" he was lecturing.

Funnily enough, that's the exact same claim deployed by my scab colleagues here at The Hegemon. It is, of course, transparent bullshit. I took strike action because I'm committed to my students: I want them to be taught by rested, decently-paid academics who have the opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research, not by exhausted hourly-paid ones exploited by a management that cares for nothing beyond bums on seats, while the financial sector or whatever creams off potentially great thinkers.

I won't be going to my constituency party's summer party to be lectured on Labour values by a man who betrays his colleagues and his comrades. The continued presence of Tristram Hunt, while marginal compared with all the other failures of the political class, has become symbolic to me of a party leadership which can't throw off the mental shackles of the New Labour period, a clique which is more concerned with appeasing the right than developing the self-respect required to make a case for socialism and persuading the voters of our cause.

I know that my party's local and national representatives will write off my whinging as typical of a privileged élitist, but they're wrong. You don't have to be a raving Trotskyist to understand that you don't cross picket lines, especially when you're a massively rich person earning a second or third income by taking work done by former colleagues protesting about eight years of declining pay.

Tristram is the touchstone of the debate, a symptom of the cowardice and isolation of the upper reaches of the Labour Party. If you can't find anything to argue about with Michael Gove, you're in the wrong party and the wrong job.

Democracy in action

Yesterday, I got letters from two men who want to be the Labour candidate for the constituency in 2015. One is Mr Marris, the slavishly loyal New Labour former MP who narrowly lost in 2010. The other is Dr Sundar Thavapalasundaram of, er, London.

Here's the joint letter I've just sent them.

Dear Mr Marris and Dr Thavapalasundaram,
thank you for your canvassing letters which both arrived yesterday. I thought I would reply jointly so you can see where I stand on both your pitches. Please be assured that as a Labour member, I will work hard to get the candidate elected, whichever one of you wins the selection.

Presentation
Dr Thavapalasundaram, I am less than impressed by the crudely photocopied header and footer on your letter, which appear to use the official party typeface, background, logo and discourse: I hope this isn't an attempt to look as though you've been endorsed by the party hierarchy. Additionally, 'Serving to Lead', 'Working and Winning for WSW' aren't proper sentences. They lack subjects and objects and are therefore meaningless, though reminiscent of the New Labour project. What do 'Serving to Lead' and 'Working & Winning' actually mean in this context? I note they're in the continuous present tense. What 'serving', 'leading', 'working' and 'winning' have you done in this constituency, and elsewhere.

You twice refer to yourself as the 'perspective candidate'. Is this a sophisticated political joke, or do you actually mean 'prospective'? Certainly your body text gives no indication of political 'perspective'. Furthermore, 'honor' has a 'u' in it in UK English. Labour has been slavishly loyal to US political direction in government: let's at least retain our own spelling, eh?

I notice that Mr Marris provides a full Wolverhampton address and landline telephone number. Don't worry, Rob: I won't be popping round for a chat! But Dr Thavapalasundaram only gives a mobile telephone number. Is that because you work and live in London and in fact have no links to or knowledge of this city at all?

Personal history
Mr Marris, you stress your long experience in the constituency, though you slightly gloss over losing the previous election, and you don't mention your work as a solicitor. Dr Thavapalasundaram, however, says that he is an NHS GP and a veteran of two wars. Now, that's not entirely accurate, is it? GPs are of course private contractors, and in your case, you work for (perhaps part-own?) Caversham Group Practice, which is incorporated as a company. Will you be gaining financially from the NHS reorganisation? What if any is your connection to Centrium Freehold Limited?

Political Positions
Mr Marris, you provide a long list of political principles, opposing privatisation, making the case for an empowering state, opposing student tuition fees, academies and free schools and deregulation, while supporting the nationalisation of railways, higher taxes for the rich, banking break-ups and so on. I tend to agree with most of these positions. However, I was a constituent while you were an MP. I distinctly remember you voting for most of the things you now oppose. Time and time again you behaved as lobby fodder for a government which established academy schools, curtailed civil liberties, introduced tuition fees (though you did oppose this), voted for one illegal and two foolish wars, strengthened NHS privatisation, deregulated the finance system, reduced taxation for the rich until very late on (and was 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich', failed to build social housing, oversaw the disastrous railway franchising scheme, and systematically weakened employees rights. I distinctly remember Mr Blair boasting about British workers having the least protection in Europe (the 'flexible' workforce).

So my worry is this, Mr Marris: either you believed in what you did then, or you believed in what you say now. Which is it? Or perhaps you simply did what you were told, despite being a member of a massive majority. If re-elected, will you simply follow the party line once more, or will you vote according to your principles?

Dr Thavapalasundaram: if anything, I'm even less impressed by your political principles, or rather, the total lack of them enunciated in your letter. Mr Marris has listed a number of specific positions. You do not name a single thing in which you believe. Instead, we're asked to accept a vague and fuzzy list of adjectives. Firstly, why do you think this is 'the toughest election battle in the recent history' of the constituency. I suspect Mr Marris might think that the election he lost would qualify for this honour. Or perhaps the many occasions on which our party lost? As far as I can see, running against a lazy, dishonest Tory who could only win by 691 votes against Gordon Brown's (unfairly demonised) government, with Labour strongly ahead in the polls, constitutes a relatively easy battle. I have conducted a running battle with Mr Uppal since the election, investigating and challenging his statements and behaviour forensically: I can't say I've noticed the CLP doing the same.

You say victory demands 'strong leadership, vision, and decisive action'. Well, I'm a bit sick of 'strong leadership' actually: I'd prefer a little consensual democracy. Particularly as 'vision' and 'decisive action' require political clarity, something entirely absent from your letter. You stress your service in Afghanistan and Iraq. What are we meant to make of this? You draw from it 'duty, honor, service and sacrifice'. Nobody opposes any of these things in principle. Yet none of them help in the day to day business of a constituency MP. What do you stand for? In terms of these wars: did you oppose them or did you support them? Mr Marris supported them - I disagree with him but I know where he stands. You, on the other hand, reach for the traditional clichés of patriotism and masculinity. You also say that  you 'know what it takes to lead by the courage of your convictions and from the front'. What was your rank and role in the military? What are your convictions?

You say you can 'unite the CLP'. Is it divided? Is this the extent of your 'vision'? How does 'leading from the front' equate with uniting the local party?

The closest you get to espousing a political principle is your vow to 'defend our most precious institution, the NHS'. Adding to my specific enquiry about your relationship to the NHS, can you explain what you mean? I have watched David Cameron saying that he will 'defend the NHS' and that the Conservative Party is 'the party of the NHS'. What you say is no more specific or meaningful than when he says it. You say 'I bring real life experience gained not in a policy seminar, but at the sharp end'. What do you mean? Mr Marris is or was a solicitor. You are a doctor and you've been a soldier. You've both worked outside politics. I suspect that you've both spent a fair amount of time in policy seminars however: I note that Dr Thavapalasundaram is a executive member of the Fabian Society: not exactly a proletarian, coal-face operation.

Your 'pledges' only just stop short of proclaiming your love of babies and blue skies: being 'faithful to the Constituency and our shared vision of electoral victory' is minimal to the point of meaninglessness. Imagine being opposed to party loyalty and wanting to win! Similarly, holding surgeries and doing casework shouldn't be a noble pledge: it's what MPs do, every single day.

I hope you see my quandary. In Mr Marris we have a good, hard-working former constituency MP who enabled the worst excesses of the previous government and rarely displayed any independent principles, who now promises to oppose most of the things he supported. In Dr Thavapalasundaram we have a carpet-bagger candidate who appears to have no political beliefs at all and appeals to the constituency on the basis of aspirational boiler-plate and personal qualities.

I'm not kidding myself that my vote will swing the selection in either direction, nor that my particular political beliefs are the majority in the CLP. But I do think that you both need to address my objections.

Yours,
Plashing Vole.

Nuclear holocaust: once more for slow learners

I wake today to this headline:

Labour to join Tories in backing a £25bn deal to renew Trident fleet

and the story starts with this:

Labour will fight the next general election on a pledge to retain Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, senior party sources have said. 

So actually, it starts with a direct untruth: Britain doesn't have an 'independent' 'deterrent'. The nukes are largely built, maintained and in some cases rented from the United States. Americans build them. Americans maintain them. Americans provide the satellite targeting information required to fire them. Can we imagine launching one without American permission and technical help? I don't think so.

So not independent. What about 'deterrent'? Well, it's true that the UK hasn't got into any wars at all since it acquired nukes in the 1950s. Unless you count Northern Ireland. And Malaya. Kenya. Suez. Korea of course. A little covert involvement in Vietnam via the Commonwealth. Libya. The Falklands. Iraq (the first time). Iraq (the second time), Afghanistan, Mali, and of course Mr Cameron has now threatened us with 'generational conflict', which sounds like something from Orwell. Bombs have exploded on buses and on tubes.

So yes, it's true that Luxembourg, Andorra and the Vatican have refrained from raining death from above upon the UK, and that may be attributable to the 'nuclear deterrent' if you want to believe that. But the boffins in Tory and Labour think-tanks appear not to have noticed that the UK's enemies are not cackling dictators intent on wiping out their enemies. North Korea has a magnificent line in rhetorical invective, but its citizens eat grass and it survives on China's sufferance. China doesn't need to nuke anybody: it owns the US economy through its investment in American debt. Iran wants nukes because it feels threatened by Israel's nukes. India and Pakistan have nukes because they hate each other and fear China.

The UK faces no enemies who might be usefully dealt with through the judicious application of nuclear weapons. Its enemies tend to be suicide bombers from British streets. Nuclear annihiliation won't deter someone who welcomes death, and even the Tories' hatred of the North won't stretch to dropping 10 megatons on Bradford. The same applies to enemies from abroad. Are we going to nuke Somalia? Or the bits of Mali and Nigeria which harbour opponents? Can we guarantee that only the bad guys are atomised?

Would the UK drop nuclear weapons on non-nuclear enemies? The Americans did it to Japan and the world has been a sadder, more suspicious place ever since. Britain would be a pariah state for ever if it did so. What's the threshold for such an action? It's the act of a psychopath. Governments spend a lot of time condemning acts and groups as 'terrorism'. What is more purely, completely, terrorist than basing your political authority on the ability to kill absolutely everybody both now and in future generations in pursuit of a temporary disagreement?

The UK military knows this. It increasingly doesn't want £25bn spent on useless weaponry in a period of budget cuts, £25bn which would build a lot of ships and buy a lot of boots. There is no possible war using nuclear weapons that doesn't end in the wholesale destruction of entire countries and peoples. If it's true that the UK is in more danger now than ever (mostly, I submit, because it keeps invading places), it needs conventional weaponry: not Doomsday devices.

So that's the military case dismissed. On to the legal case. It is, and has been since international law was codified, illegal to target civilians. Yes, most countries have done so: Dresden, Coventry, most of Vietnam – but the rather thin defence is that they were 'collateral damage': not the intended target but unfortunate bystanders. It's Israel's standard defence for bombing Palestinian schools and hospitals.

You can't do this with nuclear weapons. A nuke atomises every man, woman, child, sparrow, gnat and flower over a huge area. It poisons the earth and air and water for generations. Any use of nuclear weapons is therefore illegal. The political defence of course is that possession of nukes makes the use of nukes less likely, through the deterrent effect – which is both madness and as I've explained above, ridiculous.

The only genuine defence for the possession of nuclear weapons is Labour Cold War hawk Aneurin Bevan's impassioned plea to the Party not to send him 'naked into the conference chamber'. It's instructive that he framed the possession of nuclear weapons in such terms: there is a distinctly sexual, phallic aspect to nuclear power. Bevin firmly believed that Britain had no credibility in world affairs unless it too possessed the power to kill millions of people and poison vast swathes of the planet. He may, sadly, have been right: under the soothing tones of our politicians, the only thing our political classes respect is savage violence.

This is the law of the playground, of the hostage taker, of the spree killer. Respect me, or I'll blow your head off.

I'm ashamed and disappointed that my party still clings to this doctrine. Underneath the bluster, it's cowardice: fear of the big boys pointing and laughing at the little boy who doesn't have a gun. It's time to grow up. Bevin's nukes were a prosthetic to wear in place of an Empire, part of the embarrassing and unseemly British obsession with remaining 'important'. It doesn't have to be like that. The world is full of decent, honest, principled and highly respected countries who don't, in the last resort, depend for their authority on possessing the ability to turn large areas of the globe into toxic cinders. Japan. Germany. Italy. Australia. New Zealand. Denmark. Sweden. Norway. Spain. Brazil. Chile. Canada. South Africa. Ireland. It's time to accept that possession of nuclear weapons is a tacit admission of political, diplomatic and moral failure: not of significance.

Labour has a chance to puncture the self-delusion of the bullies. It can divert that £25bn towards conventional weaponry if it must, or towards diplomacy. It can demonstrate that even for Security Council chair-holders, respect can be acquired without possessing the means to the Apocalypse. It can become a leading realist, showing the others that the nuclear obsession is a military and political dead end.

Sadly, Labour doesn't want any part of this. Not due to any principle, but simply because it is scared of the Daily Mail, which will echo cynical Tory accusations of being 'soft on defence'. It's not true, of course: Labour has shown an unseemly haste to get into any wars going, however illegal. But short-term tactics will always trump principle in this rotten excuse for a polity. I'm not surprised that the Conservative Party is and always will be keen on nukes: their politics are and always have been honestly and openly based on oppression, dominance and violence, because it believes that people are essentially animals. But Labour: Labour always professed to be more humane.

My politics are based on hope and aspiration towards a better future. Time and again, even my own party demonstrates that it prefers the certainty of small-c conservatism, war, cynicism, distrust and fear.

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.

Lessons from the past

Last time I visited the excellent People's History Museum in Manchester, I bought postcards of great campaign posters from history. These two seem particularly apt for the current government (click to enlarge)

1910

Now, of course, pensioners have been hit again, while the minimum wage has been seriously cut for the young too. The noble lord, on the other hand, has received a massive tax break,

1929

God knows New Labour were a vicious crew of rightwing plutocrats themselves, but let's not forget that the economy was in recovery on election day 2010. It didn't last long once the coalition got in. 

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.

Of little interest, presumably

Hello. Yes, I know it's late, but I got back from the UK School Games very late indeed, after a trying and exhausting last day. I slept until 11.30 this morning and moved very slowly even then.

The first order of the day is to vote in the Labour Party election. Despite being a socialist, I'm still a member of this benighted party, which seems to exist mostly to treat its members like dirt. Ben and I are having a little disagreement over the election. He's voting David Miliband first and Diane Abbott second, on the basis that DM is most electable and Abbott opposes Trident. I don't see the point of making an anti-nuclear weapons gesture by giving first preference to someone who does think retaining the ability to kill millions of civilians is a good thing - and I'm a loyal member of CND - and I don't quite see what makes David more electable than Ed. They're both bright, confident, thoughtful people.

I'm voting for Ed Miliband on the depressing basis that he's minutely more left than his brother and shares all of David's better qualities. They all thought the war, and benefits cuts etc. etc. were brilliant at the time - they're all tainted except for Abbott, who's not convincing as a serious thinker despite my sympathy for her proper leftwing instincts.

Update: I've had loads of promotional material, but David Miliband's people just phoned me. If I hadn't already voted, they'd have been happy to talk policy, which was nice.

Who'd have thunk it?

According to a book by Gordon Brown's pet pollster, British people are a bit thick, and Labour Party members (probably all party activists), of which I'm one, are a bit weird!

Labour's 2010 election slogan – "a future fair for all" – was confusing. "Voters misunderstood, thinking that this might refer to some sort of futuristic theme park – a 'future fair'," Mattinson writes.

Basically, they are all a bit weird. I mean, what they had in common wasn't their political opinions – they covered the whole spectrum, from centre-left to far left – they weren't united by any ideology or political belief. 

No, it was that they were all slightly strange people ... strange personally, I mean. They were people who really did want to spend their evenings sitting in church halls or community centres agonising over quite arcane points of detail. 

And they weren't just doing it that night, but every night – the committee for this, the committee for that, the council, whatever. They were sort of lonely and socially odd.

I guess you do have to be a little it obsessive to care about participatory democracy rather than just hope it carries on without any help, and it can be time-consuming, but I'm a bit miffed by the arrogance of this rich cosmopolitan parasite. Activist keep the parties alive, raise the money, pick candidates, hear about voters' concerns… all things that the centralised marketing scum who run party HQ want to abandon. To them, party members are the annoying ticks who keep reminding them that beliefs and policies are more important than soundbites and acquiring free lunches and lucrative directorships. The bastards.


I don't think voters are thick either.


Unless, of course, it's possible that a pollster is just one rung up from an advertiser in the intelligence/values/trustworthiness stakes…

That's all, folks!

Judging by the mood music on the post-election live blog, we're getting a Liberal-Conservative coalition, or alliance of some sort.

Lots of Labour politicians are against a deal with the Lib Dems. They argue that the mathematics is against Labour, that a deal would be unstable, or that 'the people have spoken'.

I think these people are insane, or cynical. If cynical, it's because they want the Tories and Lib Dems to inflict the massive cuts supposedly needed before a quick second election follows the inevitable collapse of the coalition, leading Labour to clean up. These idiots want a few months out of office to grab the leadership and cabinet jobs for themselves. They don't want to do anything radical with electoral reform because they're in safe seats.

I think they're insane. The only reason to be in politics is to be in power. There's no point having ideals unless you're ready to put them into action. Refusing even a few months in government suggests that you're tired and out of ideas, or that you prefer political manoeuvring over making life a little bit better for your citizens, however limited.

They need to rediscover conviction. If they have better ideas than the Tories, if they think they can do the country good, it's their duty to grab control of government and hold on as long as legally possible. I'd like to see the current Cabinet retire to the back benches and shut their faces: discredited, broken hacks all, obsessed with triangulation, personal fiefdoms and last decade's personality wars. Their job now is to seal the deal with the Lib Dems, then mutely vote Aye to every proposal put forward by a new generation of motivated, dedicated leftwing parliamentarians until the Tories are dead and the country renewed.

Brown, Balls, Straw, Mandelson, Blears, Harman - the lot: shut up and sit down.

Update - journalists seem to think that Labour has given up on talks with Lib Dems (and here). Luggage being removed from Downing Street, presumably Gordon's. It's all over. The Tory boot will be stamping on our faces for the foreseeable future. 

Coup? What larks!

Morning all. How's your day shaping up? I'm invigilating an exam. In law. For one person. It's multiple choice. So I guess I'll use the next hour and a half to mark some dissertations. While being vigilant, of course.

I saw The Sun on the way in. The rightwing papers are excelling themselves in hysteria. A couple of days ago, The Sun was calling Brown a 'squatter' who needs to go. Now he has gone, it's shouting about 'chaos', 'running away' and stitch-ups, as are the other Tory papers. The Telegraph even calls it a coup!

This is the 'vast rightwing conspiracy' in full cry. They all like the First Past The Post system - until it delivers a constitutional method for the Labour Party to stay in power. Whether you voted Labour or not, the system is working. These papers are democratic, but only when it suits them. The Tories and their media friends are trying the full GW Bush election tactics: don't win, but get the juggernaut rolling anyway.

There's a roundup of the media coverage here and a picture gallery of front pages here: its viciousness and lack of concern for law and fact is horrifying.

So The Sun splash (headline: "GOING BROWN") began: "Downing Street squatter Gordon Brown finally turned his back on power last night - and left a trail of chaos behind him."

The Daily Mail called it "A SQUALID DAY FOR DEMOCRACY" and saw it as a cynical way for Labour to keep hold of power. As did the Daily Express with "THIS SHABBY STITCH-UP."

By far the best headline among the Tory-supporting press was the Daily Telegraph "A very Labour coup".

The big gun commentators at the Mail, such as Quentin Letts ("What a tarts' bazaar"), Richard Littlejohn ("a scandalous piece of party political self-interest") and Peter Oborne ("Yesterday was a revolting day for British democracy") were on fire.

Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun was also over-heated: "Gord riddance to the Scottish idiot," he wrote in a piece headlined: "THE END OF AN ERROR." Kelvin MacKenzie was generous to "psycho" Brown: "I believe he came into politics to do good. He may have failed but when he leaves he will not fill his wallet and besmirch the good name of No 10 in the manner of Tony Blair."

In case journalists have forgotten, the Tories polled 36%. The Unionists polled 1-2%, as did the BNP and UKIP (neither of which gained seats). So 60% voted for Labour, the Lib Dems, Sinn Fein, the SDLP, Plaid and the SNP. That, to me, says that Britain is liberal-left country and legitimises a liberal-left government.

It really is time to move to Norway.

Goodbye, Gordon

How do I feel about Gordon Brown's resignation as Prime Minister and party leader? Ambiguous, I think. When he and Blair took over the Labour Party, I already distrusted Blair, but hoped that Gordon's background in proper Scottish socialism would keep the party honest.

On that, I was totally wrong. As Chancellor, Brown seemed to see it as his duty to make the Labour Party safe for bankers, speculators and associated charlatans. Pension contribution holidays continued, regulation was almost abolished, tax rates on banks, hedge funds and speculators were slashed (hedge fund traders pay tax of 18%: their cleaners pay 20%). The eocnomy was run on the fantasy maths of the city while manufacturing was allowed to die. Brown supported every rightwing dream of the authoritarian Fabian faction - illegal wars, ID cards, nuclear weapons, the lot. He saved the economy after the crash, without a doubt, but he saved capitalism rather than saving us, because he long ago lost his ideological and moral compass.

And yet, and yet. There's a personal tragedy here. I don't care about the gibe that he was never elected as PM: nor was John Major or Margaret Thatcher. Nobody is, technically: he's elected as an MP and the biggest party chooses. The tragedy is the way in which an intelligent, passionate and committed man sold his soul for power, then found himself unable to wield that power effectively. The struggle to succeed broke him, distorted him, hollowed him out. Sometimes, we're told, he's a loving, jolly man in private. Perhaps, and perhaps he'd have won and governed well.

Let's not forget, too, that he suffered the misery of a dead child, yet had to continue in office and political life as though it had no effect. A few years ago, a Swedish prime minister took time off for depression. How sad that our own political system is so staggeringly immature that a period of mourning and recovery would have been depicted as weakness. Sad, too, that his near-blindness and partial deafness were points of mockery.

I'm sorry for him on a personal level, and I'm sad that a man with such potential wasted it all. The cliché is that all political careers end in failure. For poor Gordon, his started in the same way. He's both brilliant at small politics (you don't get to be PM without eating a lot of rubber chicken and burying plenty of daggers in friends' backs) and useless at big politics: tone deaf when it comes to public opinion (e.g. the 10p tax, and ID cards) and incapable of communicating effectively ('bigot-gate').

Will Britain and the world be better off without him? I wish it were so, but I see no heavyweight intellectual in the Labour Party - the Cabinet is a collection of bitter losers and degenerate children of Blair, obsessed with presentation and power, yet lacking principle. John McDonnell for PM!

Steve Bell's election morning cartoon

Shock Labour lead in Stumville South West

It's election day, for Liberal and Labour voters - Tories get to vote tomorrow.

Labour surged into a 100% share of the vote this morning, exit polls show. By 7.01, the voter had decisively swung behind Labour in this Labour-Tory marginal. When asked why, he replied 'because although Labour have betrayed the people on everything from illegal wars to civil liberties, they did bring in the minimum wage and Sure Start. And anyway, David Cameron is Sauron and I don't fancy working in Mordor'.

OK. The voter was me and nobody else had yet turned up. The Guardian's claiming an 8% lead for the Tories, which wouldn't quite give them a majority, but we'll see: national swings don't count for much in a constituency-based system. They may be doing better in their target marginals, which is bad news, and worse in their Lib Dem targets, which is good news.

The Tories look like getting 35% of the vote. If true, that's an awful result for them. Under Michael Howard, generally loathed, running against Blair (still inexplicable popular), they took 33%. If Cameron can't improve hugely on that, with his personal skills, apparent transformation of the party, in the middle of a massive depression and running against Gordon Brown, then he's an idiot. They should have had the result sewn up years ago. How have they blown it?

I didn't cast my vote for Labour with any enthusiasm. My local MP, Rob Marris, has been an excellent constituency representative and very good on university issues, but he's voted for every reactionary proposal New Labour has dreamed up. Yet again, it's a matter of voting for the 'least worst'. I actually would be very happy with a Lib Dem-Labour coalition: the Lib Dems would tame Labour's authoritarian, reactionary streak, and Labour would rein in the Lib Dems' concealed neoconservative economic policies. However, Rob gets my vote for his personal qualities too.

All the newspaper front pages are here.

I'm reading The Spirit Level at the moment, a social science book for the rest of us, which conclusively demonstrates that unequal societies are sick, violent and mentally ill. Not just the poor in unequal societies, but the rich are less healthy and happy too. I've learned a couple of things from it: I need to move to Norway, and that Cameron's Big Society is utter, utter bullshit. His tax policy - in the deepest recession for 70 years - is to cut taxes for the super-rich. This will make the UK more unequal, and therefore sicker and more violent. Drink and drug dependency will increase and quality of life will suffer. But hey: toffs will be able to rip apart foxes again.

Follow this link for a presentation of the most important graphs proving the points made in the book.

Go Gordon

The scandal of the election has just hit.
Gordon Brown was heckled by a former Labour voter, Gillian Duffy who objected, in strong terms, to immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe and about pretty much everything else (we only have the tail-end on film here). They had a conversation which didn't go particularly well, then he got back into the car.
He still wore his microphone, and after berating his aides for setting the conversation up, described the woman as a bigot.

'that was a disaster. Should never have put me with that woman .. . Whose idea was that?' It's just ridiculous ... she was just a bigoted woman

Now he's apologising all round and fudging what he said.

Of course I apologise if I have said anything that has been offensive, and I would never put myself in a position where I would want to say anything like that about a woman I met. It was a question about immigration that really I think was annoying.

I'm blaming myself. I blame myself for what is done. You've got to remember that this was me being helpful to the broadcasters with my microphone on, rushing into the car because I had to get to another appointment.

They have chosen to play my private conversation with the person who was in the car with me. I know these things can happen. I apologise profusely to the woman concerned. I think it was just the view that she expressed that I was worried about that I could not respond to.

Labour spin-doctor:

Gordon has apologised to Mrs Duffy personally by phone. He does not think that she is bigoted. He was letting off steam in the car after a difficult conversation.

No, Gordon. She is a bigot. I know it doesn't look right for the PM to criticise a pensioner, but she made a bigoted comment. You should have told her that. Now you've definitely lost the election.


Ho hum. Decades of Tory rule stretch out before us. The Tory press is going to push this for weeks, as will the BBC.

Your face may be taken down in evidence

Labour has been the worst government in living memory for civil rights - and I say that as a party member. Their trick is to trumpet their identity politics triumphs (e.g. repealing homophobic laws) while hoping you don't notice that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the right to protest have largely been withdrawn, often through unchallengeable administrative methods. (The Lib Dems are far and away the best party for civil liberties).

There are 3000 more criminal offences since 1997. The police behave as though they have the right to know everything about you, in every situation - as photographers have found out - to 'prevent terrorism', despite none of these laws being necessary when the IRA was conducting a serious campaign.

As an example:

Police have paid compensation and apologised to the comedian and activist Mark Thomas after they admitted unlawfully searching him for looking "over-confident" at a demonstration. A police officer recorded on an official form that Thomas may have been carrying weapons as he had an "over-confident attitude". Nothing was found.

In January the European court of human rights ruled it was unlawful for police to use arbitrary stop-and-search powers against peace protesters and photographers under terrorism legislation. Kent police admitted conducting unlawful searches on 11-year-old twins and other activists at an environmental demonstration. 

Hello Swindon…

(OK, that's from an old Eddie Izzard routine).
He's recorded a pro-Labour video. Ideologically unsound, but his heart's in the right place.

Hilarious political satire

As they've got no money and advertising men are all Tory scum, Labour asked supporters to design posters. Some are very good - see them here. This is my favourite (sorry, overseas readers: they're all failed soccer managers).

Our turn to eat

I've always hated the Tories and New Labour because they've never pretended to care for the citizens they wish to govern. Instead, they've seen the state as something to capture for their own and their friends' interests. This is the 'our turn to eat' syndrome (as invented in Kenya).


The weekend's story about Stephen Byers MP ('I'm a cab for hire), Geoff Hoon (wanted 'something that frankly makes money'), Patricia Hewitt ( for a fee of £3,000 a day, she could help "a client who needs a particular regulation removed, then we can often package that up") and others is utterly symptomatic of this attitude. For people like him, a period as government minister isn't the pinnacle of a life devoted to serving the public: it's a period of political glory which leads on to wealth and comfort obtained by using the contacts made in the service of whichever corporation buys his time. Ex-soldiers and defence ministers work for arms manufacturers, ministers for health work for private health companies, treasury officials go to the City, all betraying their beliefs (if they're Labour).


There's no sense that Byers has any political principles which might restrain him - it's all about the money (£3000-£5000 per day, he says).


What really shocked me, and which summed up the ideological vacuity of New Labour, was Byers' use of pronouns. He told the undercover reporter that he'd lobbied ministers to save millions of pounds for National Express railways and helped Tesco weaken food labelling laws. All the way through, he used 'we'. Not referring to the government of which he was a minister, nor to the party he represents as a member of parliament, nor to the people he claims to represent. No. To this man, elected by the citizens and paid by us, 'we' referred to these corporations.





That is a resigning matter.


This is the kind of thing that makes me a socialist. And keeps me away from elected office.

RIP Michael Foot

Michael Foot, campaigning journalist and former Labour leader has died. He was 96, and perhaps the last socialist leader the Party ever had, despite his occasional shifts to the right (by my standards, anyway).

Was he a successful leader? No: he never won an election and saw his party riven by left and rightwing splits. He was constantly, appallingly attacked by the usual newspapers who criticised his clothes (pathetic: they falsely claimed he wore a donkey jacket to the Remembrance Day ceremony), claimed he was an agent of the USSR and all the other smears applied to threats to the establishment. Perhaps this was related to the fact that as a serious journalist, he really, really hated Rupert Murdoch.

He was right about everything (Suez, Vietnam, the Prague Spring, Korea, Rushdie, Serbian aggression, republicanism - he refused all honours) except on Europe: I think a USSE is possible, he thought that it was inevitably a capitalist plot.

However, I admired him hugely as a great journalist and author in the 1930s, and as a Cabinet Minister under Wilson and Callaghan. He was a great constituency MP from 1945 until 1992, and was at the heart of the leftwing intelligentsia which used to be such a prominent part of this country's intellectual life. He was also, under the pseudonyms of 'Cato' and 'Cassius', author of two Left Book Club publications, which I collect.

And, of course, he was a co-founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, of which I am proud to be a member. He was a thoughtful, intelligent and gentle man who had the misfortune to be active in a period in which these qualities were perceived as weaknesses.

His 1983 Labour Manifesto caused the biggest Labour defeat in its history - and one rightwing Labour MP (and notable expenses hoover) called it the 'longest suicide note in history', yet most of its ideas are now being implemented, it having taken 25 years for New Labour to realise that market forces are inherently evil (still waiting for disarmament, but we're getting there):

The 1983 Labour manifesto, strongly socialist in tone, advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament, higher personal taxation and a return to a more interventionist industrial policy. The manifesto also pledged that a Labour government would abolish the House of Lords, nationalise banks and leave the EEC. Among the Labour MPs newly-elected in 1983 in support of this manifesto were Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. 

Gordon is a Moron?

So the newspapers are full of reports (culled from Andrew Rawnsley's new book, The End of the Party, which I pre-ordered last year) that Gordon Brown has a ferocious temper and takes it out on anyone in the room, from advisers to secretaries.

I can't get too excited. It's not very socialist to treat the staff badly, but then he hasn't been a socialist for a long time. Nor is it a shock to discover that politicians have tempers or get stressed, particularly when we're in the worst recession in decades. It's only a surprise to some because politicians have spent too much time pretending to us that life at the centre of power is like one long wise-cracking episode of The West Wing rather than a combination of plotting, extemporising and panicking. A little more honesty would go a long way.

Tony Blair had his occasional rages ('the fucking Welsh' was one choice quote), but his general eery calm is far more frightening to me than Gordon's human anger and misery. Blair was messianic: he rose above mere democracy, and that's what led him into error. He didn't care enough to be stressed by events, or the voters. Gordon does - and that's endearing.

Poor Gordon is a bit odd - but then, to survive in politics, and in the Labour Party, and to want to govern, requires oddness. If you want some real horror, read Francis Wheen's Strange Days Indeed, about Britain in the 1970s. Extremely senior civil servants stripping off and rolling around on the carpet, royals, generals and newspaper editors seriously discussing a military coup, and a Prime Minister (Harold Wilson) talking about himself as the 'fat spider in the corner'.