Flailing, hopelessly flailing... posted by Richard Seymour

I can't get over just how pathetic this government is. Not just right-wing, sleazy, wealth-worshipping and unpopular. You would think they lacked the basic instinct for survival. What is their big plan to get voters back on-side? As I expected, they are ruling out a windfall tax on the energy companies, despite the fact that it would be easy, popular and just. Who would seriously give the government a hard time over such measures apart from the companies themselves and the right-wing press? Yet, they just can't bring themselves to do anything that might appear to be slightly left-wing. Rumours emerged yesterday that their big plan for the coming year was to suspend stamp duty on house purchases, a fairly modest way to support homebuyers who are finding it more and more difficult to get credit at a time when repossessions have soared by 40%. Today, they even watered that down, saying it would be a much more limited relief than had been implied, and that they hadn't worked out what the policy would involve. They also suggested they would introduce some limited forms of relief for those suffering from soaring fuel bills, but don't know what that will involve yet. What we will probably see is some inadequate palliative that will both fail to address the problem substantively and get the gutter press gurgling about tax-n-spend Brown. Such is becoming New Labour's hallmark: they hesitate, appear to act, stumble, retreat, hesitate again, and then do something that satisfies no one.

This isn't about indecision. The government is always decisive when the answer is 'no'. They wasted no time on union pleas to reverse public sector pay cuts, for example. The fumbling is taking place because, alas, the 'business cycle' would not simply disappear because Brown said it would. Chancellor Darling will probably have to borrow heavily to fund existing public sector spending. Since the government isn't going to offend the rich for all the votes in the world, and since they believe that extensive borrowing will finally finish off their reputation for economic competence, any policies to alleviate the effects of what looks to be a repeat of stagflation had therefore better come cheap. And that's all there is too it: they are defending the neoliberal order that they have been committed to for well over a decade, and they aren't going to upset that order.

The governing party is not merely crashing in the polls: it has lost so many members in the last decade that its official total is at its lowest since 1900, and the real total lower still. But New Labour's conclusions in the middle of all this are utterly reactionary. One New Labour minister told the Telegraph that Harriet Harman had caused Labour's crash in the Henley bye-election by announcing the Equalities Bill: "We have, as Crewe proved, a problem with the white working class male vote. So what does Harriet do on polling day? Announce that we will bring in laws to discriminate against them." In fact, the Equalities Bill did no such thing. It actually said that employers could positively discriminate in favour of women and ethnic minorities in order to employ a representative sample of the population (should they so wish), and vice versa. Even the Conservatives didn't attack the bill outright, merely criticising some of its provisions. But the minister's conclusion shows that New Labour thinks that it's problem is not being right-wing enough. And, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, the party lacks the resources to change into anything better. There will, for example, be no left-wing candidate for the Scottish leadership. People like John McDonnell MP want to see a real challenge to the government's right-wing policies, but they are completely isolated.

Meanwhile, the Tories are making growing inequality in Britain part of their case for describing Britain as a 'broken society'. Yes, the Tories are talking about inequality, not New Labour. They have a massive cheek, but they are merely taking over New Labour nostrums. They have learned that one can talk about social injustice while preparing to attack the main means by which such injustice is minimally countered (namely, the welfare state). Week after week, it is the Tories who are trying to outflank New Labour as ostensible defenders of public services and the poor, and New Labour has nothing to counter it with.

Cameron's conservatives are being made to look electable because of the government's intransigence, but this would be relatively simple to turn around. Look to Scotland, where the SNP has a 14% lead on New Labour. The nationalists are pledging to do away with council tax and replace it with a local income tax, and only one of the candidates for the Scottish leadership has recognised that this is actually a vote-winner. They have already curbed the right to buy council homes, abolished student fees, cut prescription charges, extended free personal care and frozen council tax and are intent on rolling back the PFI. These are not radical policies, and the SNP is not a radical party by any means - it is just doing what any moderately centre-left government could do if it had the political will.

Labels: gordon brown, neoliberalism, new labour, recession, snp, tories

Stick a fork in him posted by Richard Seymour

Brown is finished. Let me say that again: Brown is finished. One more time: Brown is finished. I had an inkling this was coming when I saw Margaret Curran's election message for Labour on the BBC - discoursing grimly on the unacceptable inequalities that made Glasgow East so poor, she insisted that the correct response was to ensure everyone had access to sports and ate healthily. Seriously, however, I doubt Curran had much to do with it. And she has every reason to feel disappointed. Labour was ahead in the polls, and there was a jumbo majority that the SNP had a tiny margin of time to erode. But the rate at which New Labour heartlands have been evaporating, turning over to any opposition that runs a half-decent campaign, has been nothing short of astonishing. And look, this turnout may have been down on the general election, but it's actually quite decent for a bye-election. It looks like, alongside glum Labour voters sitting on their hands, there were quite a few motivated voters determined to smack the government.

And let's look at what the Brown administration did to, er, assist its candidate in Glasgow East. They gave in to the City and the rich on tax evasion, declared a freeze on public spending, advertised for bids on the privatised delivery of welfare, and announced a 'revolutionary' shake-up of benefits for the unemployed and incapacitated that will treat both like criminals. Everybody knows by now that Glasgow East is an overwhelmingly working class constituency, with life expectancy in some areas lower than in Gaza. Unemployment is well above the national average: 10% for men over 25, 25% for women. It contains Shettleston, the most deprived area in Britain according to the UN. This is a place where even the Tory candidate was a trade union branch secretary. This is Labour turf, has been for generations, and it has stuck with Labour during the worst of the Blair years, through gritted teeth. A little bit of imagination should tell you something about the combination of fury and heartbreak that produced a 23% swing to an SNP candidate with no profile, no charisma and not much in the way of policy. Not only does the government have no solution for those squeezed by soaring food and fuel prices but to scrap the winter fuel allowance and abolish the 10p tax rate, they decide to go after those on benefits while allowing criminal companies to engage in tax evasion.

Commentators marvel at the government's apparent determination to make itself unelectable. It was once the Tories doing that, with a succession of bland right-wing leaders talking 'tough' on crime or asylum. Let me tell you something - I'm reluctant to link to the Tories, but they are actually running a petition against Brown's NHS cuts. They frame it in terms of inefficiency, of course, but in every other respect it looks like the kind of campaign one would see on a trade union website. The Tory strategy is unmistakeably to pitch for the slightly-left-of-New-Labour vote, and it may have some success. Now the government, aside from constantly attacking its own electoral base, frequently indulges in the right-wing populism that made the Tories look hateful and unelectable to many centre-right voters. (Not least of which, on Labour's part, is the surreptitious Islamophobic poison about the liberal blogger Osama Saeed, the SNP's candidate in Glasgow Central at the next election - a naked attempt to smear all SNP candidates by association with an "Islamic fundamentalist"). The story of the next election will probably be a continuation of the same: New Labour heartlands tumbling one after the others, as working class voters vent their fury about - well, take your pick from Post Office closures, privatisation, benefit cuts, public sector pay, tax breaks for the rich, the abolition of the ten pence tax rate, the abolition of the winter fuel allowance, soaring inequality, tuition fees, etc etc. So, the columnists wonder whether New Labour's head has disappeared up Brown's crack - surely, cabinet ministers with sense can see what's being done? Surely, the backbenchers can understand that their careers are at risk? Why isn't there a revolt? Well, there may be a revolt, but I suspect it would be a Blairite one aimed at removing an elephantine social misfit from a post that they would rather trust to Charles Clarke or Alan Milburn. There will not be a change of course. And the reason is simple: they are committed to this, they like doing what they're doing, they think it's sound economics and good politics. The Labour Party has spent twenty years talking itself into this happy little rut, and it no longer has the means to think that it might be good to get out.

All of which raises the question: what is to be done? My favourite kind of question as it happens. The left has to have a strategy for coping with the collapse of Labourism that doesn't threaten to drag it down with the irreparable hulk. That can neither take the form of sectarian disengagement with Labour supporters, nor can it take the form of some 'progressive alliance' uniting the various fragments of the radical left, since a) it would not necessarily be more than the sum of its parts, b) it is not going to happen anyway, and c) even if it did, it would in practise be tied to the Labour Party. Both of the above solutions are tempting short-cuts, to be sure, especially when there appears to be a paucity of alternatives. But an alternative to Labourism cannot be built from above by a loose association of 'ecosocialists' and Eurocommunists who flee under the Labour umbrella when there is the slightest of sign of precipitation. It has to come from below, and to that extent it has to come from the ongoing revival of trade union militancy, particularly from the fightback against Brown's government by the very working class who can no longer stand to vote for that shower. As these strike waves become more frequent and longer, as they are sure to do, the question that has dogged previous trade union conferences - why are we funding these bastards? - will return with force. The hardcore of Labour left hangers-on will have to look increasingly outward, toward alignments beyond the party that it is kicking them. Of course, no alternative that could conceivably be built would be a 'pure' working class movement, or from the old left. It would embrace all the diverse campaigns that the Left has thrown itself into, including defending council housing, defending asylum seekers, fighting the BNP, resisting the war, and so on.

I suppose it's about time I mentioned the People Before Profit charter, which has got the support of Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn MP, John Pilger and others. The purpose of the charter is to formulate a set of demands and signposts for the way forward. It expresses some basic requirements that the left can agree on - no wage increases below the rate of inflation, tax businesses and the rich to fund welfare and public services (particularly impose a windfall tax on energy companies), repeal anti-union laws etc. It also commits to support for various essential campaigns such as Stop the War, Unite Against Fascism, Keep Our NHS Public, and so on. You can read it in full here [pdf], although I believe a separate website is being developed for this. And you can sign it by e-mailing your name and details to: peoplebeforeprofitcharter@googlemail.com.

Labels: gordon brown, neoliberalism, new labour, snp, tories, working class

Election results. posted by Richard Seymour

A really interesting mix of results so far. Respect has gained some councillors, and for some reason Michael Lavalette is so popular in Preston that he won more votes than all the other candidates combined, and we polled some extremely strong seconds and thirds. New Labour obviously got stuffed, mostly by seats transferring to the Tories it seems (both Labour and the Lib Dems have lost seats). That isn't encouraging, and suggests that Cameron's snake-oil has made him a more comfortable vote for centrists than any of his creepy predecessors. I bet that Cameron has won over a large swathe of old-fashioned Tory 'wets' who had previously deserted to New Labour and the Lib Dems. Aside from that, Labour voters almost certainly stayed away in droves. The Lib Dems have done poorly in no small part because of their hopeless leader, and their new 'Orange Book' set of policies.

The BNP scum didn't do as well nationally as it might have expected when polls said it could get 2% of the overall vote and when it decided to field 750 candidates. It would once have been difficult for them to get that many people to a meeting. They didn't get anything for their money in the West Midlands, lost Broxourne, and picked up a couple in Leicester. The preponderance of their candidates appears to have been in Yorkshire, the West Midlands, and the North-West - and so far it doesn't look like they have made a breakthrough. That said, the facists seem to have made an inroad into parts of Wales that are traditionally strongly Labour. Still, congratulations to the antifascist activists who have tirelessly exposed Griffin's Nazis for what they are.

Sadly, Tommy Sheridan has lost his seat with 4.1% of the vote, suffering in part from the rush to the SNP, who are taking seats from everyone, particularly Labour and the smaller parties. With the charismatic Alex Salmond at the helm, and a 'left' face put on for voters, especially with regard to the war in Iraq and nuclear weapons, the SNP have capitalised on disaffection with the government even while support for their key policy - independence - remains in the mid-twenties.

Labels: bnp scum, elections, labour, lib dems, respect, sheridan, snp, solidarity, tories