'Labour List' is an on-line, pro Labour magazine, sponsored by UNITE, UNISON, the CWU and the GMB unions, and puts it this way:
'In short – Ashcroft has polled almost half of Scotland’s seats now and the picture is the same everywhere – Labour is facing a wipeout.
What does it all mean?
Essentially, Ashcroft’s poll appears to confirm the prevailing wisdom – that Labour is making gains in England, but those are offset by losses in Scotland. A hung parliament is coming. As for who comes out on top – Ashcroft himself says “this is the battle: can Labour fight back against the SNP faster than the Conservatives can fight back against Labour?”. The Tories aren’t on course for a majority according to this polling. But Labour’s collapse in Scotland is earth shattering, and doesn’t appear to be reversed so far under Murphy’s leadership.' (Mark Ferguson, 4 March)
Ashcroft is the Tory millionaire Lord who runs a constituency based polling system. His predictions have proved accurate in the past.
Ashcroft's polls also show that the largest single proportion of Scotland's traditional Labour voters, 39%, actively want a SNP / Labour coalition in Westminster after May 7. They are not voting in memory of the heady days of the referendum vote. They have a positive purpose in voting SNP in the Westminster elections. They do not trust Labour's leaders or policies. They support the SNP's anti-austerity message. They want organised pressure from the left on a Labour government.
Meanwhile the other, more traditional, more England based Labour Left are continuing to try and implement their own 'strategy'. At least recognising the feebleness of the Party's current left in Parliament (only 5 Labour MPs voted against the Tory motion to guarantee £30 billion of cuts in the first three years of the next Parliament) UNITE and some other anti-Blairite unions, have been digging away in tens of Constituencies to get new left candidates for Labour. Unofficial estimates vary but claims of over 50 new left wing MPs are predicted among the most optimistic circles as a result of this push spearheaded by the unions. This particular left is bitterly hostile to the SNP surge in Scotland.
Two thoughts come to mind:
First, which of these two 'strategies' has the greater chance of pushing Westminster in an anti-war, anti-austerity direction after May 7? (For surely the point of all this organising is to benefit the mass of the population in the UK, not to get a particular arrangement of party seats?) It is undoubtedly a 'good thing' to get as many left thinking Labour MPs as possible. They cannot be less influential than the current crop. But will the left's influence on key policy matters be any less or more if the SNP sweep Scotland? Is the English, and trade union left Labour strategy any sort of safeguard against austerity (and war) if their current Labour party line prevails? How would the the left Labour MPs vote on Labour's promised cuts? On the other hand the SNP leadership state they will end austerity, borrow £180 billion more over the next Parliament, and vote on proper funding for the English NHS - as the decision would effect Scotland. The SNP is not Syriza or Podemos, but (sadly) they are significantly to the left of the Labour leadership. They are rooted in a country that, in its majority, is significantly to the left of the Labour leadership, so they have to be.
Second, the Labour leadership have too been priming their constituencies. In a previous blog (the Guardian noted (23 June 2014) that 54% of Labour's candidates in their 90 designated marginal constituencies were political researchers by trade. 'The British Parliament has been Bought', March 3) so we already have an indication that Millbank has been hard at work. And if they have put nearly 50 of their placemen and women into the marginals, then we might imagine how many are in safer seats. The Labour leadership have been careful to build their substantial party majority in Parliament. And in Parliament you follow the party line. But if Labour is forced to make concessions to the left to form a government, then that would surely strengthen Labour's internal left.
Perhaps the real fear among sections of what remains of Labour's left wing is more fundamental. Perhaps they realise that the traditional Labour Party is coming to an end. That its slow demise is as much part of Britain's political crisis as the degeneration of Parliament, the collapse in support for the mass parties, the pressure for referendums, now on the EU, the rise of minority parties etc, etc. The next election could be a qualitative point in the Labour Party's lack of a future. For once Labour can no longer form a government, its political attraction dissolves for the new layers and classes that have come to occupy its leadership positions. If the Tories lose then Cameron will fall and UKIP influences will strengthen, but the Tories will survive. They are a significant class party. In the past Labour could go through long periods of minority status in Parliament. Their survival and regroupment succeeded because the class base that they rested on survived and regrouped. No more. The Labour machine has moved on. The UK working class are also changing. The gap has never been wider.
Perhaps those new Labour left MPs will have a real political job to do in the next Parliament. To help start forming a real political coalition against austerity and war.
Wednesday, 11 March 2015
Tuesday, 10 March 2015
The 'gooder' Euro? Or the 'gooder' Europe
There was an energising, enlightening and sophisticated debate in Parliament on March 9. It was right on the button as far addressing some key issues of wealth and power in the world and how the mass of the people should and could deal with them.
The debate was held in Room 18. It was a Parliamentary Briefing convened by Jon Cruddas MP on behalf of the Greek Solidarity Campaign with the support of the Transport Salaried Staff Association to promote British support for a European conference on debt. The Greek alternate finance minister spoke, aided and abetted by Ann Pettifor and Paul Mason. Euclid Tsakalotos, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and responsible for the international economic relations of Syriza, explained in detail and in a frank and riveting way, the nature of the talks with the EU and the political basis of Syriza's position on continued membership of the Euro. His view on the Euro was challenged by another deeply analytical and historically referenced perspective, offered by Anne Pettifor. It soon became clear that besides the MPs and Peers present and the representatives of four different Greek media outlets there were some of Britain's leading economists among us too. The call for a European conference on debt seemed to have virtually unanimous support among those who spoke (although one Tory MP left without comment.) And all who did speak understood the enormity of the stakes in the Greek's government's struggle with the leading institutions of the Eurozone.
The minister shared the outlook of his senior, Yanis Varoufakis. (See Blog 'Yanis Varoufakis Erratic Marxist ...' 3 March.) He imagined the evolution, through struggle, based on the emerging radicalisation and mass mobilisations, in Spain, in Ireland and the early chances of new governments in those countries, the pressure on Italy and on Hollande in France, all this and the Europe wide realisation that there had to be a new economic dispensation in the Eurozone, creating 'the good Euro.' He argued eloquently that the disintegration of the Euro, perhaps starting from a Greek exit, would lead to the collapse of Europe among the world's new power blocks, and the victory of the radical right in several European countries. Endless austerity could only be managed by authoritarian regimes.
Ann Pettifor, while remaining a strong supporter of the Greek government, argued that history was replete with the destruction and dissolution of currency unions, without attendant social catastrophes, as much as any other reason, because they were normally set up under unjust and imbalanced terms between different nations, and their internal contradictions, like with those within the Eurozone, became unbearable. As this future was unavoidable, preparation for exit was essential. The 'good' Euro was a contradiction in terms. The currency had been set up in order to guarantee the superiority of 'lender' nations apropos 'debtor' nations, with the prospect of eternal austerity. A 'good' Euro would need to mean the that all Eurozone nations shared all Eurozone debt. That was precisely the opposite intention of the strongest European nations and their associated Euro institutions. The Eurozone for the weaker countries was the guarantee of endless austerity.
These different perspectives were laid out in an intense and deeply respectful, open and fruitful way. It was understood that the Greek people's interests were front and centre of Europe's battle with austerity. As those attending filed away from the room into the vast, crumbling halls of Westminster it felt like they were entering an alien and empty world. The mother of Parliaments seemed a sad, vacuous place. Real life and real politics was happening somewhere else.
Euclid Tsakalotos had emphasised the crucial victory of time that the new Greek government had won (spelling out the appalling, deliberate trap that had been set up between the past government and the European Bank to engineer Syriza's early fall.) The movement in Spain and in Ireland suggest that Syriza could be joined by other anti-austerity governments in months rather than years. That more and more realistic possibility evokes yet another option in the current discussion - of the beginnings of a 'good' Europe; a federation of anti-austerity nations, with a collective response on the debt issue, on social and humanitarian rights of their population, on taxation and restraint of the rich, on the role of the people in their own societies. The beginning of the 'good' Europe would confront the Eurozone and all its completely autocratic institutions, with a new reality. The argument in room 18 will ultimately be resolved in the struggle for a 'good' Europe that has now started across the nations.
The debate was held in Room 18. It was a Parliamentary Briefing convened by Jon Cruddas MP on behalf of the Greek Solidarity Campaign with the support of the Transport Salaried Staff Association to promote British support for a European conference on debt. The Greek alternate finance minister spoke, aided and abetted by Ann Pettifor and Paul Mason. Euclid Tsakalotos, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and responsible for the international economic relations of Syriza, explained in detail and in a frank and riveting way, the nature of the talks with the EU and the political basis of Syriza's position on continued membership of the Euro. His view on the Euro was challenged by another deeply analytical and historically referenced perspective, offered by Anne Pettifor. It soon became clear that besides the MPs and Peers present and the representatives of four different Greek media outlets there were some of Britain's leading economists among us too. The call for a European conference on debt seemed to have virtually unanimous support among those who spoke (although one Tory MP left without comment.) And all who did speak understood the enormity of the stakes in the Greek's government's struggle with the leading institutions of the Eurozone.
The minister shared the outlook of his senior, Yanis Varoufakis. (See Blog 'Yanis Varoufakis Erratic Marxist ...' 3 March.) He imagined the evolution, through struggle, based on the emerging radicalisation and mass mobilisations, in Spain, in Ireland and the early chances of new governments in those countries, the pressure on Italy and on Hollande in France, all this and the Europe wide realisation that there had to be a new economic dispensation in the Eurozone, creating 'the good Euro.' He argued eloquently that the disintegration of the Euro, perhaps starting from a Greek exit, would lead to the collapse of Europe among the world's new power blocks, and the victory of the radical right in several European countries. Endless austerity could only be managed by authoritarian regimes.
Ann Pettifor, while remaining a strong supporter of the Greek government, argued that history was replete with the destruction and dissolution of currency unions, without attendant social catastrophes, as much as any other reason, because they were normally set up under unjust and imbalanced terms between different nations, and their internal contradictions, like with those within the Eurozone, became unbearable. As this future was unavoidable, preparation for exit was essential. The 'good' Euro was a contradiction in terms. The currency had been set up in order to guarantee the superiority of 'lender' nations apropos 'debtor' nations, with the prospect of eternal austerity. A 'good' Euro would need to mean the that all Eurozone nations shared all Eurozone debt. That was precisely the opposite intention of the strongest European nations and their associated Euro institutions. The Eurozone for the weaker countries was the guarantee of endless austerity.
These different perspectives were laid out in an intense and deeply respectful, open and fruitful way. It was understood that the Greek people's interests were front and centre of Europe's battle with austerity. As those attending filed away from the room into the vast, crumbling halls of Westminster it felt like they were entering an alien and empty world. The mother of Parliaments seemed a sad, vacuous place. Real life and real politics was happening somewhere else.
Euclid Tsakalotos had emphasised the crucial victory of time that the new Greek government had won (spelling out the appalling, deliberate trap that had been set up between the past government and the European Bank to engineer Syriza's early fall.) The movement in Spain and in Ireland suggest that Syriza could be joined by other anti-austerity governments in months rather than years. That more and more realistic possibility evokes yet another option in the current discussion - of the beginnings of a 'good' Europe; a federation of anti-austerity nations, with a collective response on the debt issue, on social and humanitarian rights of their population, on taxation and restraint of the rich, on the role of the people in their own societies. The beginning of the 'good' Europe would confront the Eurozone and all its completely autocratic institutions, with a new reality. The argument in room 18 will ultimately be resolved in the struggle for a 'good' Europe that has now started across the nations.
Thursday, 5 March 2015
The British Parliament has been bought
As we watch another two elder statesmen prepare their retirement from the hurly burly of important office in the British Parliament - via a couple of bribes offered, sadly for them, in a sting by TV station Channel 4, it cannot be any wonder that public faith in British politics is declining sharply. But, as a recent survey, conducted by an international anti-corruption think tank Transparency International, demonstrated;
'In Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2013, 90 per cent of respondents believed that the UK Government is run by a few big entities acting in their own interest.'
If it were only a case of just (a few?) rotten apples ...
In the US, politics is conducted mainly by millionaires and votes in Congress are bought by lobbying and donation. But the centres of politics in the US are still significant centres of power. The US still rules through the Presidency and Congress not in every case but still on many critical matters. US political institutions genuinely bring together the US's disparate and decentralised ruling elites, to hammer out a common line, in defence of the future of their class as a whole. When the rulers in business, in industry, in technology and finance and the military, and the East Coast bankers and the West Coast techies and the Southern nouveaus are split; then Congress is split.
Parliament has not held significant authority over wealth and power for decades in Britain. The House of Commons and the ever expanding, £300 per daily signature House of Lords, play with their corruption on the margins, as fascinated observers of how Britain is actually ruled. The magnificent personal scandals of the 18th and 19th centuries have been replaced by relatively tawdry expense frauds and the use of Parliament as the stepping stone up into the real world of influence and wealth on retirement. Tony Blair used his premiership to create the life his ambition really wanted. The understanding of the respondents to the Transparency International Survey seem to look beyond individual MPs and their foibles to something wider when considering the British parliament's corruption. So it is perhaps advisable when analysing it to work from the inside out; from the MPs and their shenanigans to the real forces that seem to move and shake society including the parliamentary tree.
The last Act of Parliament before the coming May 7 General Election will be the product of Prime Minister Cameron's 2010 pledge 'to do something about lobbying - the next, even bigger scandal, facing Parliament.' It turns out that his Act will do little or nothing even to ensure that all the lobbyists now working inside Parliament, in MPs' offices, will need to sign the planned register. Who are these people?
A study by the Guardian (5 March 2015) demonstrates that 1 in 5 of the staff employed in MPs and Peer's offices are lobbyists. 113 in the Commons, 206 in the Lords. These 'workers' are in their majority representing businesses. And while it is difficult to get an absolutely clear understanding of MP's external interests, the Guardian also claims (10 June 2012) that 1 in 6 Peers have paid links to the Financial Services Industry alone.
What arises from such glimpses of life at Westminster is an emergent political class without firm independent roots, with an already existing or with a developing osmotic relationship with a wide range of business. And this is reflected more and more in the background of the people who have started their climb up the slippery pole.
It was the Daily Mail that trumpeted that the new Cabinet in 2010 (see DM 23 May 2010) had 23 millionaires out of its 29 new members. (0.7% of the UK population are millionaires.) The Telegraph told us (5 March 2015) that the combined wealth of the Cabinet was £70 million. The Guido Fawkes website claimed that Ed Miliband (and his brother) had £1.9 million and that there were 7 millionaires in the Shadow Cabinet. (19 September 2013). 35% of UK MPs went to private school; over 50% of Tories. (7% of the rest of us.) 72% of Labour MPs are graduates (compared with 20% in the population at large.) There are 25 MPs who were manual workers and 90, mainly in the Labour Party, who were political advisers of one sort or another. All of these figures come from the HOC Library, 14 December 2010 and the Parliament.uk website. The Telegraph of 10 May 2010 adds that a third of MPs went to Oxford or Cambridge and most MPs in all three main parties came from a business, law, media, public affairs background. Looking specifically at the future of the Labour Party, the Guardian noted (23 June 2014) that 54% of Labour's candidates in their 90 designated marginal constituencies were political researchers by trade. (The equivalent figure for the Tories was 17%.)
So MPs as a whole certainly do not represent the people who elect them - which might be counted as a political corruption of a sort. But they do have predominant characteristics in which they either offer an open face to business and/or an absorption with the intricacies of political mechanisms and state functions. These 'talents' seem Ideal for an emerging political class that wants to lever itself into its own indispensable role within a shared preoccupation with business about the favourable fortunes of UK plc.
What do these people actually do? Some assiduously tend their constituencies. Some fiddle their expenses. Some systematise a high income (see published MPs register of interests. It is revealing.) But the day job mostly consists of the sort of list that follows. And here we come to the point. What is the essential corruption of the British Parliament? The examples below open up the heart of the matter.
These are drawn from various news items found in the Guardian in 2012 and 2013.
The government's subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the Dublin-based company ESB International, who has been seconded into the Department of Energy. What does ESB do? It builds gas-burning power stations. (November 10.) On the same day we learned that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn't worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops. His new law will prevent councils from taking action.
The week before G4S's contract to run immigration removal centres was expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud were investigated. (November 8)
In fact there were systematic failures by government contractors.The monitoring which was meant to keep these companies honest was haphazard, the penalties almost nonexistent, the rewards fantastic. Yet since 2008, the outsourcing of public services has doubled, to £20bn. It is due to rise to £100bn by 2015. (February 7.)
Thanks to an initiative by Lord Green, large companies have ministerial 'buddies', who have to meet them when the companies request it. There were 698 of these meetings during the first 18 months of the scheme, called by corporations these ministers are supposed be regulating. Lord Green, is currently a government trade minister. Before that he was chairman of HSBC, presiding over the bank while it laundered vast amounts of money stashed by Mexican drugs barons. (24 July 2012). Now he is asked to answer (but doesn't) for the tax avoiding HSBC Swiss bank accounts.
The list is endless, and the last Labour government was a big part of the same story. Most recently, for reasons of politics, but not the politics of ordinary people struggling with austerity, rather the politics of UK plc, Miliband led his Labour troops into the same voting lobby as the Tories when they laid down the guarantee of a further £30 billion cuts in the next three years after the General election. Dianne Abbot, Katy Clark, Dennis Skinner, Austin Mitchell and Roger Godsiff were the only Labour MPs who voted against.
This is the story of the grand corruption of the British Parliament. It has been stolen from the people. It defends business and the status quo. It is riddled with machine men and women who have found a new 'industry' to serve their ambition and promotion. It is part of the armoury of the rich and the powerful and it attacks the already difficult lives of the millions who just want a decent life.
'In Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2013, 90 per cent of respondents believed that the UK Government is run by a few big entities acting in their own interest.'
If it were only a case of just (a few?) rotten apples ...
In the US, politics is conducted mainly by millionaires and votes in Congress are bought by lobbying and donation. But the centres of politics in the US are still significant centres of power. The US still rules through the Presidency and Congress not in every case but still on many critical matters. US political institutions genuinely bring together the US's disparate and decentralised ruling elites, to hammer out a common line, in defence of the future of their class as a whole. When the rulers in business, in industry, in technology and finance and the military, and the East Coast bankers and the West Coast techies and the Southern nouveaus are split; then Congress is split.
Parliament has not held significant authority over wealth and power for decades in Britain. The House of Commons and the ever expanding, £300 per daily signature House of Lords, play with their corruption on the margins, as fascinated observers of how Britain is actually ruled. The magnificent personal scandals of the 18th and 19th centuries have been replaced by relatively tawdry expense frauds and the use of Parliament as the stepping stone up into the real world of influence and wealth on retirement. Tony Blair used his premiership to create the life his ambition really wanted. The understanding of the respondents to the Transparency International Survey seem to look beyond individual MPs and their foibles to something wider when considering the British parliament's corruption. So it is perhaps advisable when analysing it to work from the inside out; from the MPs and their shenanigans to the real forces that seem to move and shake society including the parliamentary tree.
The last Act of Parliament before the coming May 7 General Election will be the product of Prime Minister Cameron's 2010 pledge 'to do something about lobbying - the next, even bigger scandal, facing Parliament.' It turns out that his Act will do little or nothing even to ensure that all the lobbyists now working inside Parliament, in MPs' offices, will need to sign the planned register. Who are these people?
A study by the Guardian (5 March 2015) demonstrates that 1 in 5 of the staff employed in MPs and Peer's offices are lobbyists. 113 in the Commons, 206 in the Lords. These 'workers' are in their majority representing businesses. And while it is difficult to get an absolutely clear understanding of MP's external interests, the Guardian also claims (10 June 2012) that 1 in 6 Peers have paid links to the Financial Services Industry alone.
What arises from such glimpses of life at Westminster is an emergent political class without firm independent roots, with an already existing or with a developing osmotic relationship with a wide range of business. And this is reflected more and more in the background of the people who have started their climb up the slippery pole.
It was the Daily Mail that trumpeted that the new Cabinet in 2010 (see DM 23 May 2010) had 23 millionaires out of its 29 new members. (0.7% of the UK population are millionaires.) The Telegraph told us (5 March 2015) that the combined wealth of the Cabinet was £70 million. The Guido Fawkes website claimed that Ed Miliband (and his brother) had £1.9 million and that there were 7 millionaires in the Shadow Cabinet. (19 September 2013). 35% of UK MPs went to private school; over 50% of Tories. (7% of the rest of us.) 72% of Labour MPs are graduates (compared with 20% in the population at large.) There are 25 MPs who were manual workers and 90, mainly in the Labour Party, who were political advisers of one sort or another. All of these figures come from the HOC Library, 14 December 2010 and the Parliament.uk website. The Telegraph of 10 May 2010 adds that a third of MPs went to Oxford or Cambridge and most MPs in all three main parties came from a business, law, media, public affairs background. Looking specifically at the future of the Labour Party, the Guardian noted (23 June 2014) that 54% of Labour's candidates in their 90 designated marginal constituencies were political researchers by trade. (The equivalent figure for the Tories was 17%.)
So MPs as a whole certainly do not represent the people who elect them - which might be counted as a political corruption of a sort. But they do have predominant characteristics in which they either offer an open face to business and/or an absorption with the intricacies of political mechanisms and state functions. These 'talents' seem Ideal for an emerging political class that wants to lever itself into its own indispensable role within a shared preoccupation with business about the favourable fortunes of UK plc.
What do these people actually do? Some assiduously tend their constituencies. Some fiddle their expenses. Some systematise a high income (see published MPs register of interests. It is revealing.) But the day job mostly consists of the sort of list that follows. And here we come to the point. What is the essential corruption of the British Parliament? The examples below open up the heart of the matter.
These are drawn from various news items found in the Guardian in 2012 and 2013.
The government's subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the Dublin-based company ESB International, who has been seconded into the Department of Energy. What does ESB do? It builds gas-burning power stations. (November 10.) On the same day we learned that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn't worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops. His new law will prevent councils from taking action.
The week before G4S's contract to run immigration removal centres was expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud were investigated. (November 8)
In fact there were systematic failures by government contractors.The monitoring which was meant to keep these companies honest was haphazard, the penalties almost nonexistent, the rewards fantastic. Yet since 2008, the outsourcing of public services has doubled, to £20bn. It is due to rise to £100bn by 2015. (February 7.)
Thanks to an initiative by Lord Green, large companies have ministerial 'buddies', who have to meet them when the companies request it. There were 698 of these meetings during the first 18 months of the scheme, called by corporations these ministers are supposed be regulating. Lord Green, is currently a government trade minister. Before that he was chairman of HSBC, presiding over the bank while it laundered vast amounts of money stashed by Mexican drugs barons. (24 July 2012). Now he is asked to answer (but doesn't) for the tax avoiding HSBC Swiss bank accounts.
The list is endless, and the last Labour government was a big part of the same story. Most recently, for reasons of politics, but not the politics of ordinary people struggling with austerity, rather the politics of UK plc, Miliband led his Labour troops into the same voting lobby as the Tories when they laid down the guarantee of a further £30 billion cuts in the next three years after the General election. Dianne Abbot, Katy Clark, Dennis Skinner, Austin Mitchell and Roger Godsiff were the only Labour MPs who voted against.
This is the story of the grand corruption of the British Parliament. It has been stolen from the people. It defends business and the status quo. It is riddled with machine men and women who have found a new 'industry' to serve their ambition and promotion. It is part of the armoury of the rich and the powerful and it attacks the already difficult lives of the millions who just want a decent life.
Wednesday, 4 March 2015
An anxious Osborne
The British Chancellor came onto the BBC Radio 4 'Today' programme to promote the idea that his coalition government's economic policy was vindicated by the latest report from the Independent Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS.) The IFS report apparently told us that 'median incomes' in the UK had now risen to their pre 2008 level. Osborne then lied that the report had also indicated that there was a reduction in income inequality. It actually says that, taking in to account both the rise in the poor's benefits in 2008 and 09 after the crash, which slightly decreased the inequality of income AND the rise in food and energy prices subsequently, which increased the income equality gap again, inequality of income remained roughly the same as in 2008. Additionally, Osborne had nothing to say about IFS's Director Paul Johnston's comment from the same report that he had made previously on the same programme;
'Working age households' incomes' he noted 'are still less than they were prior to 2008.' If you are working, the chances are you are still at 2007 levels. Osborne was not asked about his plans for a further, deeper round of cuts should his party get back to power.
Nevertheless it is worth spending a little more time, just on the equality issue in the UK. The Chancellor's false claim about the IFS report shows some nervousness among the UK elites in this regard.
The whole political Internet is familiar with Oxfam's briefing on inequality put out for the Davros Conference earlier this year, that by 2016 the top 1% in the world will own more of the world's wealth than the bottom 50%. Even 'Fortune' (4 March 2015) the US mag promoting wealth, adds
'The richest 80 people on the planet doubled their cash wealth between 2009 and 2014. They now have as much as the bottom half of humanity put together. Whereas five years ago, it needed the 388 richest billionaires to rival the spending power of the poorest half, by 2014 that number had fallen to just 80.'
What about Britain. What is making Osborne anxious?
On the 15 May 2014 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that 1% of Brits already owned as much as the bottom 55%. (The measure was made in property, pensions and assets.) The Poverty and Social Exclusion Website, an independent research tool, noted on 17 March 2014 that 5 families were 'worth' more than the total assets and income of the bottom 20% in the UK. Credit Suisse recorded in its Global Wealth Report for 2014 that
'The UK is the only country to record rising wealth inequality from 2000 to 2014...Wealth inequality has risen by 4 times faster in the 7 years after the crash compared with the 7 years before. Wealth inequality' the report goes on, 'rose under Labour; it rose faster under the Coalition.' It concludes ' The rich in the UK are becoming richer faster than ever.'
A recent article (John Nickson 19 May 2014) in the Huffington Post is well referenced and worth quoting at some length.
'Wealth is news. the Sunday Times Rich List tells us the top 1000 have doubled their wealth in five years, the UK has more billionaires per head of population than any other country and that London is the world capital of the super rich...
According to the ONS, the number of millionaires has risen by 50% in four years despite the financial crisis. 9% of households have assets worth more than £1million...
The bad news is that growing inequality is approaching pre first world war levels. The richest 10% in Britain own 44% of total national wealth, five times more than the poorest 50% of the population who collectively own 9%. The figures for share of national income are even more startling. The share going to those on the lower half of earnings has fallen by 25% since the 1970's (OECD) whilst the slice going to the top 1% has increased by 50%. The most recent figures from HM Revenue and Customs confirm that the return of economic growth in the last year has overwhelmingly benefited the top 1% of earners.'
'Working age households' incomes' he noted 'are still less than they were prior to 2008.' If you are working, the chances are you are still at 2007 levels. Osborne was not asked about his plans for a further, deeper round of cuts should his party get back to power.
Nevertheless it is worth spending a little more time, just on the equality issue in the UK. The Chancellor's false claim about the IFS report shows some nervousness among the UK elites in this regard.
The whole political Internet is familiar with Oxfam's briefing on inequality put out for the Davros Conference earlier this year, that by 2016 the top 1% in the world will own more of the world's wealth than the bottom 50%. Even 'Fortune' (4 March 2015) the US mag promoting wealth, adds
'The richest 80 people on the planet doubled their cash wealth between 2009 and 2014. They now have as much as the bottom half of humanity put together. Whereas five years ago, it needed the 388 richest billionaires to rival the spending power of the poorest half, by 2014 that number had fallen to just 80.'
What about Britain. What is making Osborne anxious?
On the 15 May 2014 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that 1% of Brits already owned as much as the bottom 55%. (The measure was made in property, pensions and assets.) The Poverty and Social Exclusion Website, an independent research tool, noted on 17 March 2014 that 5 families were 'worth' more than the total assets and income of the bottom 20% in the UK. Credit Suisse recorded in its Global Wealth Report for 2014 that
'The UK is the only country to record rising wealth inequality from 2000 to 2014...Wealth inequality has risen by 4 times faster in the 7 years after the crash compared with the 7 years before. Wealth inequality' the report goes on, 'rose under Labour; it rose faster under the Coalition.' It concludes ' The rich in the UK are becoming richer faster than ever.'
A recent article (John Nickson 19 May 2014) in the Huffington Post is well referenced and worth quoting at some length.
'Wealth is news. the Sunday Times Rich List tells us the top 1000 have doubled their wealth in five years, the UK has more billionaires per head of population than any other country and that London is the world capital of the super rich...
According to the ONS, the number of millionaires has risen by 50% in four years despite the financial crisis. 9% of households have assets worth more than £1million...
The bad news is that growing inequality is approaching pre first world war levels. The richest 10% in Britain own 44% of total national wealth, five times more than the poorest 50% of the population who collectively own 9%. The figures for share of national income are even more startling. The share going to those on the lower half of earnings has fallen by 25% since the 1970's (OECD) whilst the slice going to the top 1% has increased by 50%. The most recent figures from HM Revenue and Customs confirm that the return of economic growth in the last year has overwhelmingly benefited the top 1% of earners.'
Returning to the IFS report, it puzzles over a problem that many mainstream economists and politicians have also worried at. Why is productivity (of labour) still so low in Britain? There are many suggestions on offer to explain this apparent paradox - low grade jobs; lack of government incentive; etc. What however turns out to be the most obvious and glaring reason for Britain's dismal record on productivity is the ingrained investment 'strike' by big capital in the UK. That 'strike' is intimately linked to the UK's horrific concentration of wealth which is constructed completely outside of the creation of new tecniques and new means of production. We will return to this issue, and also the direct and indirect effects of this economic gangrene for our political system. Suffice it here to say that inequality in Britain is a scandal and a disaster and getting worse.
Labels:
Inequality,
Inequality in Britain,
Osborne,
the IFS report
Tuesday, 3 March 2015
Them and Us
In the last blog the political situation in Western Europe was characterised as a growing polarisation between 'them and us' (as opposed to a Thatcher style defeat of the traditional organised labour movement, which the Greek finance minister thought was an appropriate guide to today's conditions and consciousness among ordinary people in the euro zone.)
But who in the 'post industrial society' in the West, are 'them'? And who, more significantly, are becoming 'us'?
'Them' is easy. Oxfam reports that by 2016 the richest 1% will own more than 50% of the world's wealth. (80% of the current world's population own just 5.5% of the world's wealth today.) In 2014 the 80 richest people on Earth already had the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people. But does that effect western democratic politics and power? Are the rich also defined politically as well as economically? You bet your sweet bippy. In 2010, 800 000 Americans (0.26% of the US population) made 68% of the contributions to Congress. One group of people on the planet have never been more politically active. And you get what you pay for.
Ok. That's 'them'. Who are 'us'?
One thing that the new youth rebellion in the West, in the Middle East and North Africa has taught us is that people who hate the effects of their political and economic system and despise its rulers do not have to work out a theory about why they exist in order to act. In reality the character of the Western working class and its traditional movements has been evolving for decades - in some cases beyond the traditional left's recognition. In some countries trade unions remain important residues of organisation and defence and often it is the best militants from there who lead in the understanding of the vast changes in society and the consequent changed conditions of struggle. The industrial working class organisation no longer creates the political working class expression, as in the classic case of nineteenth century Britain. One might almost say the reverse, in that it is in the new political expressions of resistance and challenge that we find the grouping and then the regrouping of a new working class.
We should not be surprised. Since the dawn of capitalism the working class has gone through many evolutions, often associated with the most tumultuous struggles. The initial gathering of the British working class, conscious of itself as a class, with its own distinct interests, was in response to the explicitly political campaign of the Chartists for the vote. Weavers from rural hamlets and mining families scrabbling for coal in green valleys, as well as the boot makers and basket weavers and brewers and canal builders gathered at Peterloo in the name of the Charter to be hacked down by Britain's cossacks on the say-so of Wellington. History does not lay down a prescription about the right and the wrong movements of the workers, the toilers, the poor and the oppressed. A class becomes itself; it is not given its credentials by virtue of how the system decides it should be mustered today, tomorrow, next year.
The 'us' consists of all those who struggle with and against austerity. The students, the single mums, the health workers, the oaps, the disabled, those who challenge war, those who will not pay, those who face down racism. In action they seek redress. In action they find allies. They become a class for itself.
Right now such a new class coalition has already won a government in Europe, in Greece. By December this year it could win another in Spain. Ireland could follow. And the the rock of traditional British stability is shaking as Scotland too starts down the anti-austerity road. A new working class, a new 'us' is stirring, forming, acting, seizing a political life for itself, albeit in a dangerous world. How right that is; a light against dark.
But who in the 'post industrial society' in the West, are 'them'? And who, more significantly, are becoming 'us'?
'Them' is easy. Oxfam reports that by 2016 the richest 1% will own more than 50% of the world's wealth. (80% of the current world's population own just 5.5% of the world's wealth today.) In 2014 the 80 richest people on Earth already had the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people. But does that effect western democratic politics and power? Are the rich also defined politically as well as economically? You bet your sweet bippy. In 2010, 800 000 Americans (0.26% of the US population) made 68% of the contributions to Congress. One group of people on the planet have never been more politically active. And you get what you pay for.
Ok. That's 'them'. Who are 'us'?
One thing that the new youth rebellion in the West, in the Middle East and North Africa has taught us is that people who hate the effects of their political and economic system and despise its rulers do not have to work out a theory about why they exist in order to act. In reality the character of the Western working class and its traditional movements has been evolving for decades - in some cases beyond the traditional left's recognition. In some countries trade unions remain important residues of organisation and defence and often it is the best militants from there who lead in the understanding of the vast changes in society and the consequent changed conditions of struggle. The industrial working class organisation no longer creates the political working class expression, as in the classic case of nineteenth century Britain. One might almost say the reverse, in that it is in the new political expressions of resistance and challenge that we find the grouping and then the regrouping of a new working class.
We should not be surprised. Since the dawn of capitalism the working class has gone through many evolutions, often associated with the most tumultuous struggles. The initial gathering of the British working class, conscious of itself as a class, with its own distinct interests, was in response to the explicitly political campaign of the Chartists for the vote. Weavers from rural hamlets and mining families scrabbling for coal in green valleys, as well as the boot makers and basket weavers and brewers and canal builders gathered at Peterloo in the name of the Charter to be hacked down by Britain's cossacks on the say-so of Wellington. History does not lay down a prescription about the right and the wrong movements of the workers, the toilers, the poor and the oppressed. A class becomes itself; it is not given its credentials by virtue of how the system decides it should be mustered today, tomorrow, next year.
The 'us' consists of all those who struggle with and against austerity. The students, the single mums, the health workers, the oaps, the disabled, those who challenge war, those who will not pay, those who face down racism. In action they seek redress. In action they find allies. They become a class for itself.
Right now such a new class coalition has already won a government in Europe, in Greece. By December this year it could win another in Spain. Ireland could follow. And the the rock of traditional British stability is shaking as Scotland too starts down the anti-austerity road. A new working class, a new 'us' is stirring, forming, acting, seizing a political life for itself, albeit in a dangerous world. How right that is; a light against dark.
Yanis Varoufakis - erratic marxist?
Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek minister of Finance, is not a member of Syriza. This ex Essex and Birmingham University student has written that some of his ideas, particularly about the EU, came from his experiences in Thatcher's Britain. He has now risen to international prominence in the battle with the EU over Greek's debts. As recently as December 2014 he recomposed a version of an earlier talk that he had given about his views on marxism and the future of the EU, and wrote it up in a blog. The title of the piece started 'Yanis Varoufakis, Erratic Marxist...' It was a 'confession' (his word) that he had been intellectually formed by Marxism, but that he had to amend Marx in order to resolve mistakes that Marx had made. Perhaps more significantly for Greece and Europe's future, he also used his article to lay out his surprising, Thatcher-influenced, policy on the EU.
There is no intention here to engage in a theoretical tussle with Yanis Varoufakis over Marx and his 'errors'. The minister has a fairly traditional critique that any interested people might have first encountered when the post 1968 'New Left (as opposed to the traditional Communist Party cannon) began to argue about the younger, more Hegelian, versus the older, more deterministic Marx. For example Yanis Varoufakis focuses on how a mistaken Marx elaborated a mathematical formula to 'prove' the labour theory of value in Capital Vol 3 which mistakenly attempts to quantify the inherently creative and dual nature of labour under capitalism. He also spells out his policy on the EU which is perhaps more pertinant to study in current conditions. His complete essay is short and clear and might be read here.
Yanis Varoufakis proposes that it is necessary to defend the EU, including against itself, in order to protect European civilisation. Although he is opposed to a capitalist EU in principle, he is convinced that any collapse of the EU in the foreseeable future will usher in a reactionary disaster for Europe. This lesson (to which we shall return) he draws from his experience of Thatcher. In fact he does not believe he will see any radical 'humanistic' transformation in Europe in his life time, but a civilised and progressive arrangement might be salvaged which would at least defend us from a carnival of reaction. The main political tactic that emerges from Yanis Varoufakis's schema is that wide ranging alliance needs to be built across the political spectrum, for a more succesful, more progressive, more innovative, capitalist EU. He has spent some years trying to construct such a bloc, most famously in the UK in his 2014 London meeting with Hedge Fund managers. Their collective reaction is so far unknown.
Returning to his brush with Thatcherism, Yanis Varoufakis tells us that at first he welcomed Thatcher's election, not because he supported her in any way. Her attack on organised labour he thought would shake up the politics and the ideas of her opposition and, in due course, reorganise and strengthen radical forces that would go on to make a big step forward. Instead he discovered that the labour movement and the left was progressively beaten down by Thatcher. Her legacy was not a new radicalism among her enemies but the establishment of Tony Blair! His 'lesson' from this experience was that recession and a major offensive to squeeze more profit out of labour does not creat conditions for a shift to the left, but rather it builds the right in politics. He sees the UKIPs and worse as the natural inheritors of a busted euro-zone. Therefore he sees its dismantling as a defeat. Therefore he wants to become 'the man with a plan' for a new euro-zone.
Sadly for Yanis Varoufakis the leaders of Europe do not want to play. Whatever his theories about potentially progressive capitalism, the strategic aim of big capital in the west is to reorganise the ever mounting debt in their favour. The US is attempting to reorganise the Pacific rim accordingly. The main economic power in Europe uses the Euro to do the same in Europe. Even the remaining Keynsians in the world now argue for the conscious anihilation of international debt as the only way to get new growth in capitalism. Yanis Varoufakis has things turned on their head. Today, escaping from the Euro is the only means by which Greece will be able to repudiate its debt burden - the volcano that permanently smokes and rumbles and threatens devestation across its economy.
And today popular opposition to the debt and its sister, endless austerity, opposition to our traditional rulers in Europe, to 'the way things are', is stronger than at any time since the 1960s. The left has reorganised and, unlike the 1960s, come in sight of government already in three important countries. The convulsuons of 2008 have not had the Thatcher effect. Of course radicalisation does not come out of the mouth of defeat. There is despair and reactionary moods sweeping through wide populations. But what has emerged since 2008 is a polarisation. 'Them and us' has never been clearer. If the left acts boldly and well they have a tremendous opportunity.
Buck up Yanis. You will see radical, 'humanitarian' transformations in your lifetime. Start by preparing the repudiation of the debt and the defence of social conditions in the context of a Grexit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)