Miliband - the firebrand fizzles out

Miliband speaks tomorrow at the Labour Party conference. He was advised to say something bold last weekend by his advisors in order to shake the media clear of Cameron's 'battle for England' and turn attention Manchester-wards.

His announcement, that a Labour government would increase the minimum wage to £8 an hour by 2020, did produce a flurry of interviews with assorted Mancunian youth, working in fast food chains, all saying that yes, £8 would be better than £6.50 (the minimum wage as of the end of October '14). It was 'not good enough' fumed Miliband, that one in five people in the UK were on low pay. His proposed increase would be higher than the rate of inflation. 

The current inflation rate (August) is 1.5 percent. Miliband's raises will be higher. But every Economist and certainly every low paid worker knows that a percentage increase, even one slightly higher than  our currently record low inflation figure, but that starts from a very low pay baseline, is guaranteed to amount to peanuts.

Miliband's legal minimum wage - will rise by 30p an hour each year for the next five years. (Of course this legal minimum is only one of the 'legal minimums.' If you are forced to take a full time working apprenticeship you are on a 'legal minimum' of under £3 per hour.) But just in case this lurch to the left by the worker's friend, Miliband, worries the bankers, shadow Chancellor Balls will announce today that Child Allowance will be frozen for years. 

Who are these people? 

On October 18 we must march against austerity among other things to make sure that the TUC stands by its policy of £10 an hour for the minimum wage today! 

The UK's political system is in big trouble

One theme that has been picked up by this blog (among other sources) is Britain's political crisis. (See 30/5 and 5/6.)

There is a new twist in this story but before looking at this in detail it is worth stepping back for a moment to consider what is at stake. It has been the proud boast of British capital for more than a century that it has established a secure, stable and flexible set of state institutions that have always been the 'envy of the world.' From 'the mother of parliaments' to the incorruptible civil service, British rulers have managed to crow about their historical achievements most credibly in the political sphere. Political stability; no domestic revolutions for centuries; checks and balances; ingenious compromises like the House of Lords; a well worn route for the most trusted candidates to gain access to state and judicial power via specific schools and universities; incorporation of potentially disruptive forces (e.g. women and labour); avoidance of either communism or fascism; this is the package that sells the City of London to Arab Sheiks and Russian billionaires. 

Of course for centuries imperial Britain exported its corruption to its overseas possessions, along with its savage, counter-revolutionary violence and despotism. That allowed the political state 'at home' to retain its liberal fringe and meant that any poison in particular institutions was definitely the product of the odd 'rotten apple' rather than an endemic feature of the whole hypocritical set up.  Britain's imperial enterprise is dying (although its wars, its financial chicanery, its slavish association with the US and its continued possession of most of the world's tax havens, still exports poverty and chaos to parts of the world.) And Britain's political system, embedded in its state machine, is beginning to show signs of wear and tear.

What to do in England, Wales and Northern Ireland after Scotland's referendum? A large part of the 1.6 million Scots voted yes because they despise Westminster politics, politicians and control. This popular mass movement generated (even in the account given by the leaders of the no campaign) a tremendous and unparalleled surge of political interest and participation in Scotland. These two facts, the rebelliousness of a significant and mainly working class section of the Scottish population and the fact that they had access to the means, at least start to carry out their rebellion, have thrown British politics into a new turmoil. Cameron short sightedly wants to make Labour pay for their devolution experiment by slicing away any potential Labour control over the whole of Westminster's business from now on. He also believes that waving the English flag will stem UKIP. 

Cameron's clownish response has the potential to do serious damage to political stability by strengthening Britain's right wing in a contest to promote Englishness and the English. If he gets away with it he will have also contributed to the beginning of the dissolution of the Labour Party as it would no longer offer a route to national, institutional, political influence and thereby begin to dissolve the main raison d'etre for a large part of the labour bureaucracy. Under conditions of the likely continuation of a coalition government after May 2015, AND the EU referendum, the famous and historic British political stability, will begin to look distinctly like a thing of the past. And the City (whose base is paradoxically entirely global despite its highly valued British credentials) would consider its next move.   

Britain has not been in a political crisis like this since the need for the National Government in the 1930s but this time Britain is without the immense resources available to underpin bold political manouvres and shore up the system. 

The contest between Britan's classes has now very prominently spilled into the establishment's political sphere - an arena which despite, or perhaps more accurately, because of the new Labour Party, is virtually unavailable to the modern working class. The Scots have challanged all that.  It is now more critical than ever that there are some voices in this unfolding crisis who, by the elections next May, have the credibility and political reach to represent those who want an end to austerity and a chance for a fresh start. We urgently need new voices to be heard from inside the new mainstream political arena as the ruler's crisis unfolds and, as Scotland shows, that will be based on a mass movement that is capable of creating its own new political reality. 

Scottish referendum result - 18 September and 3 new saws

1.  The pattern of yes votes did not conform to the SNP's main bases of electoral support. The biggest yes votes came in areas most associated with traditional Labour; Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, Dundee etc. Previous elections were therefore not a guide to who voted for independence in Scotland. It was working class areas that wanted the most radical solution available and on offer to deal with their problems.

2.  Besides the historical myriad of fissures in the left, there was a new and major split. Virtually all of the official movement backed a vote for the union. Most of the trade unions (with the honourable exception of the RMT who held a ballot among their scottish members) the Labour Party and the Communist Party argued that a yes vote would divide the british working class. In the event, their claim was rejected and contradicted in practice by a million or so Scottish working class people. The official movement's leadership was unable to lead a large section of the class that they purport to represent in Scotland. They became the sectarians.

3.  The referendum campaign has turned the independence issue into a class issue. The genie will not go back into the bottle. (See blogs from 8 & 14/9.) The national question is no longer 'a dangerous diversion' but will be picked up again by the Scottish working class as the new 'powers' granted to Holyrood do nothing to reduce poverty, to reign in inequality, to remove Trident or to save the health service. The reaction of the national and international 'markets' to Scotland's no vote were not a result of their relief that we still had 'class unity' in the UK. The response of big Capital was a gut reaction to the continued unity of the British state which they had (correctly) seen as the main issue in the referendum. 

It is also of note that Cameron echoed Salmond's own words in his speech commenting on last night's vote. He said the issue of independence was settled 'for a generation.' Unlikely. As austerity conditions bite deeper courtesy of whichever combination of the mainstream parties occupy the House of Commons from May 2015, so the Scottish working class will demand a rerun. They will seek whatever instruments they feel are available to resist. And they will remember the mass movement that was built and the possibilities for deep and rapid change that they had felt were in their grasp. It is also clear that the SNP, as well as the traditional British labour movement chiefs, have barred themselves from leading such a struggle and so another leadership will need to be built.  

Best wishes from England, for the Scot's own future.

Scotland's vote happens tomorrow. A rare moment of genuine democracy in Britain. The vote will not just determine the future of the Scots but effect everybody in Britain.

In Scotland the vote opens the door to a different sort of democracy where the millions mobilised by the independence debate can go onto discuss and argue about what sort of country they want and need. And an enormous favour would have been done for rest of us if the Scots vote yes because at one (peaceful) blow England, Wales and the bit of Ireland still ruled by Westminister will cease to be the puffed up, over stretched, US side kick its rulers have made its identity since the end of Empire. 

Instead a medium sized country will need to deal with the parasitical, overblown City of London and reorganise a properly balanced economy - based in the first instance on the sort of state investment that was made instantly available to the banks in 2008/9. It could cut back on its inflated, embarrasing pretensions, at the UN security council, in the 'chambers of Europe', at the G8 and in NATO's nuclear club. At a stroke the 'terrorist threat' would disappear as the remains of the UK withdrew its sorely used soldiery from countries whose people did not want us there. The rest of the UK would become free from the remnants of empire. And then we could work out, as the Scots would be able to do, how to look after all of our population properly and how to be helpful and friendly neighbours. 

Gordon's big lie

Gordon Brown argues that the UK is better for Scots than independence because 63 million people sharing their resources according to need is better than only 5 million. He points to greater funds for the Scottish NHS and Scottish pensions because their need is greater than other areas across the UK - only available because the Scots are in the UK.

This argument is a rank lie and Brown knows it. He bailed out the banks. He was the first to give the banks the £3 trillion that they ended up with, courtesy of the UK taxpayer. 

Brown knows that the issue for Scotland, indeed for Britain and the West as a whole, is not how state funding is distributed between welfare priorities and between different areas, regions and, as in the case of the UK, countries. It is how state funding as a whole is raised and who it is raised from and then it is about what the priorities for state spending are. 

Brown knows full well that the diminishing budget for health, education and welfare is unevenly distributed across Britain - but not according to need rather mainly according to political priorities. He also knows that the costs of his bail out of the banks are being paid from the health and welfare budgets, especially in frozen wages, and that there is an enormous shift underway of wealth from those who work for their living and the main beneficiaries of his bank bail-out, the super rich. 

Tomorrow 5 million Scots have the opportunity to break away from Brown's vicious circle and start something different. 

And after the 18th?

Previous blogs (besides, perhaps nostalgically?, renaming Gordon Brown as George Brown - another entirely different but equally dismal Labour figure) have pointed out that a major and unique popular movement has been built in the struggle for independence in Scotland and that It is inevitable that this movement will continue in some form beyond the vote on the 18th. It will characterise politics in Scotland for some time to come. 

Voting will be close. Huge numbers of Scots will vote and that fact is of tremendous significance for what happens next.

Should Scotland vote yes, then a mass movement will be needed more than ever to help remove the obstacles to real independence, to real equality and to real security. The negotiations with Westminster will be like peace talks in the middle of a battle. Moving Trident will take enormous resources that Westminster will insist that Scotland pays. Struggles will need to take place against punitive price hikes, big business blackmail and EU and US recalcitrance. The terrible (and deliberate) mistake of the Obama machine, to demobilise the huge groundswell of support and community action immediately following his electoral victory, predetermined the paralysis of his regime and his inability to remove the Congressional obstacles to all and any reform. If the vote is yes in Scotland, the movement, with its first task of rising to the leadership of the whole nation, is utterly indispensable for progress towards true justice to continue and be consolidated.

Should the majority vote no, then the movement for change, equality and self determination, the yes campaign, has to force 'devo max' as far as it will go and be ready, at the first signs that Scotland is being bent yet again in an undemocratic direction by a Westminster government, to raise the banner of independence immediately. It is complete hogwash that the September 18 vote has to be a final decision that, for the next 300 years, guarantees union. While it is true that independence needs decades to finally show its merit, being as it is, the beginning of the process (as all pro independence leaders now loudly claim) on the other hand the Scots have already seen 300 years of union within the UK. A vote for independence is the start of a new period that will need time to flower. Staying in the union is just a continuation of current and historical experience, of Westminster politics and City of London economics, an experience that goes deep and is very well known throughout Scotland.

Yet, what's this? The Westminster parties are all promising real change in the direction of Scotland's needs in the event of a no vote. It is their main prize offered to Scotland's no voters. There will be change, they say! And because of previous disappointments with such promises made in the past (Thatcher said her regime would be better for Scotland than devolution in 1979, when a majority voted yes, which was a lie worthy of Goebbels) this time change will come in months! That at least is Gordon Brown's claim. Well, so be it. That is certainly something that can be judged, even dismissing Brown's fantasies, in a matter of years and does not require decades, let alone centuries. The assessment of whether Westminster has delivered the change they have promised needs to be made by the people of Scotland. And such accountability requires the maintenance of a movement of the people testing whether they are advancing towards equality, good living standards and security. It will become very clear, very quickly. And if it turns into another piece of baloney as some might suspect, then Scotland will need a new referendum as quickly as possible.