Election 2015: The campaign has started on Labour's terms, but beneath the surface there are negative undertones

After the first not-debate of the 2015 UK election campaign, the Labour Party is probably feeling like it has had the best of the opening exchanges. But not everything smells of roses just yet.

During the not-debate Labour's leader, Ed Miliband, showed himself to be at least credible. Now the party has staked out its territory on the NHS by committing to restricting private company profits taken from NHS contracts and to the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (Wintour, 2015{1}).

Furthermore, the Conservatives were forced to be defensive over leaks purporting to be their proposed welfare cuts for the next parliament (Wintour, 2015{2}) - which would involve the end of industrial injuries benefit (for £1bn), restrictions on child benefit (for £1bn), taxes on disability benefits (for £1.5bn), and reducing eligibility for carer's allowance (with 40% to lose out for £1bn).

The coverage of the leak largely overshadowed David Cameron's own announcement - accompanied by insults aimed at Labour, describing them as ''hypocritical holier-than-thou, hopeless, sneering socialists" (The Guardian, 2015) - to expand the NHS to a full-time 24/7 service (BBC, 2015{1}). He was hardly helped by a British Medical Association warning that an expansion of services would require extra funding (BBC, 2015{2}).

This will all have been precisely the start Labour will have wanted. Labour looking credible on the NHS, and the Tories looking nasty with their cuts agenda.

And yet. While everything may look rosy for Labour and progressives, there is a negative undertone bubbling away just beneath the surface.

Nowhere is that negativity shown best than in the debate on immigration. The latest outrage has come courtesy of the Labour Party itself. Diane Abbott, Labour MP, has expressed her anger at the party's merchandising of a 'Controls on Immigration' mug. The party is using it to promote one of its key election commitments, itself a platitude to cover themselves with voters for whom immigration is a concern (Perraudin, 2015).

The Labour Party's attitude on the matter of immigration shouldn't really be a surprise at this point. Their language during the European elections, at the possibility of a UKIP threat to its working class base, made clear their turn towards appeasement of anti-immigration rhetoric (Watt & Wintour, 2014; Cooper, 2014).

In many ways, Labour and the Conservatives have become mirrors of one another. Both have tried to court the voters of Britain's broad Centre-ground, and in doing so forsook some of their native territory - and they have both underestimated the level of resistance that they would face from their old, alienated, supporters who would refuse to move with them.

When the Conservatives couldn't keep their house in order while trying to modernise and claim centre voters it spawned an ugly offshoot. Those Right-wing voices have since been allowed to dictate the terms of the debate, and to tie together, in people's minds, their agendas with the insecurities people fear. The sad thing is that the solutions to insecurities of work, or to the lack of homes, are not to be reached by the Right's favoured response of shutting themselves in. There are far more open and progressive solutions.

A strong minimum wage and a citizen's income. House building and social housing. More money made available to the less well-off to create their own start-ups. More support and funding for workers to take over their workplaces as co-operatives when big companies pull the plug and reek havoc in communities. The publicly funded public healthcare system supported by health professionals and service users alike.

There is also support for these ideas. Labour, and the Greens and Lib Dems, are all on board with a rising minimum wage, with house building and with co-operatives. The three main parties of the left and centre are all half way there. All that tends to stand in the way is a commitment to an effective public sector, around which there might be an equitable redistribution of income for health & welfare, and for housing and public investment like co-operatives - whether centralised at Westminster or decentralised to regions and localities.

And yet. Once again Labour has found itself against a wall of public opinion and has not found a voice with which to cut through the propaganda. Instead, feeling weak and set upon, it has paid lip service.

Labour's health proposals are part of a similar theme. They have offered a check on privatisation which, by definition, precludes an end to PFIs (Private Finance Initiatives) in the NHS - which expanded first of all under Labour's stewardship (Dathan, 2015). While it would certainly raise more funds for the NHS, it is still only an attempt at making capitalism work for socialism - or at least democratic socialism - rather than a means of addressing or responding to the fundamental mistrust of private business becoming involved with public services.

Labour's attitude to healthcare and immigration are problems with a common root. On healthcare they have their same old idea - of using private investment to raise public funds - and are just looking for a new way to sell it to people redressed in new packaging. On immigration the party has a fairly positive core - one focussed on a minimum wage increase and working conditions - which it has now encased within a language and policies of anti-immigration scapegoating.

In each case, Labour has come to its own position but has not tried to win the debate over the fundamental ideas underlying them. They have merely looked for how they might sell the idea. That has produced the inconsistent result where the party has resisted public pressure to end NHS privatisation, and yet has caved to it on immigration.

Labour's mix of aloof policy-making and aggressive populism alienates them from the people they should be debating with, trying to convince them of the benefits of progressive alternatives. While the political Right scraps for dominance, Labour needs to wake up to the fact that the Left doesn't have to play the game the same way.

There is so much hunger on the Left for more engagement and less half measures. There is so much room for more co-operation, more optimism and more positivity. Diane Abbott speaking out against Labour's immigration policy is a positive constructive step. People are crying out for a radically positive vision and Labour, as the biggest party on the Left, have the responsibility to facilitate it.

Second jobs for MPs, conflicts of interest and separation of powers

In response to the recent lobbying scandal, Labour took the opportunity on Wednesday, 25th February, to test the government by making a motion in the Commons to ban all Members of Parliament from holding second jobs (BBC, 2015). However, squabbling between the two main parties as to what payments or sources of income are considered a conflict of interest - Labour focussing on consultancies and directorships, the Conservatives on the trade unions - killed the chances of the Labour motion passing.

Under the present rules MPs are allowed to have second jobs, with the majority of those taking advantage being Conservatives - although two of the three highest earners are former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Respect MP, and former Labour MP, George Galloway (Moseley, 2015). Yet, support is low for MPs juggling their time between public and private commitments (Shakespeare, 2015). There are understandable fears of corruption and conflicts of interest.

These problems are exacerbated by the fact that conflicts of interest are virtually built into the Westminster system of government used in the UK. The Prime Minister is also an MP, the Ministers in the Government are MPs, the Speaker is an MP, the members of the committees are also MPs.

In the Westminster system the executive branch - the government, that carries out the business of state - is formed by members of the legislative branch - the parliament where laws are subject to debate and vote. Theoretically this ties the everyday business of governing to the will of the people as embodied by the parliament, in what is known as responsible government.

In the UK, however, this creates a situation where MPs, elected by constituents to represent their interests in debates regarding lawmaking, are caught between various allegiances, ambitions and duties. They are conflicted between the interests of their constituency and their office, whether just an MP or a Minister in the government; the interests of their constituents, their office and their political party, from which stems the opportunity to take office; and between the conflicting duties of the parliament, to make laws, and the government, to administer and enforce them.

Furthermore, the system creates a conflict of interest between Parliament and the Government. The Government cannot govern effectively without the majority support of the Parliament, and yet if majority support is given the role of the Parliament is significantly reduced. These pressures have, over time, changed the Parliament into more of a factional power-base for Government action, than a body of representatives, itself carrying responsibilities on behalf of electors.

With the private and financial interests of MPs placed on top of these conflicts, inherent to the system, Parliament becomes mired in competing interests. The Labour Party's attempt to ban certain additional roles for MPs is just the latest, with previous attempts at restricting various outside political interests including a government-sponsored lobbying law drawing heavy criticism (Mason, 2014).

In other countries, and other systems of government, there have been attempts to avoid the inherent conflict. The separation of powers has been used, by dividing the functions of government into separate branches - typically known as executive, legislative and judicial - to, at once, ensure that the different branches might hold each other to account, and keep separate the different functions that might result in conflicted allegiances.

That idea of separation, used to address the inherent conflict, might also be applicable to our thinking regarding the public and private interests of MPs.

While serving as Members of Parliament, these elected individuals are representatives with functions, responsibilities and duties, which they carry on the electorate's behalf, in the public service. For the carrying out of their role they are compensated, to the amount of £67,000, plus expenses (White, 2015). The aim of paying these elected representatives is to ensure that they were able to devote their full time attentions to the role, and to ensure their independence.

There are understandable and reasonable arguments for a public representative to be grounded in the working realities of the world outside, or to be able to keep themselves in practice in technically complicated professional fields, such medicine or law (Wintour, 2015). Whatever the fears of the emergence of a class of career politicians, it becomes problematic for those representatives to continue to pursue - beyond some limited practices - their own financial interests while in office.

There must be a middle ground, with some room for compromise and compensation for individual service, that maintains the independence of public bodies. However, while there are no straight forward answers, it is clear we need to keep competing interests separate. As we need to remain wary of letting the powers and functions of government merge, to ensure oversight and avoid corruption, we also need to keep the private interests of individual representatives separate from the public interest which they serve.

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References:
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+ Frances Perraudin's 'Straw and Rifkind deny wrongdoing amid 'cash for access' claims'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

+ 'MPs reject Labour's call for a ban on second jobs'; on the BBC; 25 February 2015.

+ Tom Moseley's 'What MPs do as second jobs'; on the BBC; 25 February 2015.

+ Stephan Shakespeare's 'Voters support ban on second jobs for MPs'; from YouGov; 25 February 2015.

+ 'MPs' second jobs: What are the rules?'; on the BBC;

+ Rowena Mason's 'Lobbying bill passes through House of Lords'; in The Guardian; 28 January 2014.

+ 'Lobbying Bill to become law after Lords rebellion falters'; on the BBC; 28 January 2014.

+ Michael White's 'Straw and Rifkind were loose lipped but MP salaries are part of the problem'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Straw and Rifkind scandal renews questions about MPs' outside interests'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

Labour warns against splitting the Left, but there could a greater danger in not taking a risk for a better future

With the 2015 UK general election looming, the Labour Party has begun its attempt to shore up support amongst its fringe voters. With polls suggesting that it will be a close run thing, the fragmentation of support across the Left is a threat to the Labour methodology.

Labour's approach has long been about claiming control of the establishment and propping up it up, in order to use its power in support of their goals. Those electoral aims, of propping-up and shielding, are fundamentally contradictory. They leave no room for external compromise or co-operation that might challenge the establishment they hope to use and so requires, and demands, comprehensive majority support. As David Marquand (Bogdanor, 1983) put it about Labour theorist Anthony Crosland:

"Crosland took the traditional structure of the British state for granted, and failed to see that the centralist, elitist logic underlying it was incompatible with his own libertarian and egalitarian values."

Yet, even as it demands monolithic solidarity from voters, the party continues to be blatant in its hypocrisy by remaining as twisted by internal intrigue as ever. Former Brownites, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, struggle amongst themselves, with former Blairites, and also with the more socially conservative voices in the party (McElvoy, 2015). They argue as to which populist policy to throw out next, in an attempt to shore up its wavering support (Ratcliffe, 2015), and they argue over what socialist economics really ought to look like:

"In truth, Balls and Miliband do have different visions of what a progressive economy should look like. Miliband has a fundamentally less approving view of the way markets work than many in the Labour centre ground (a whiff of the idealism of an American east coast seminar room is never far off). Balls takes a more pragmatic view that the best way to advance progressive goals is to allow the markets free reign and cream off revenues to use for social gain." (McElvoy, 2015)

In 2010, Labour warned of the risks of a split vote, caused by those who thought of leaving the party to look for brighter alternatives elsewhere. In the run-up to that election, the Liberal Democrats had appeared like a fresh voice, which spoke of an active and hopeful step forward. Labour, in turn, offered only a stable conservation, centred on the establishment - and they lost a lot of voters, though fear succeeded, at least temporarily, in quelling the tide before it became a flood.

Those warnings from the party and from commentators, in the face of a fragmenting political order, have now turned against the Greens. Former Labour minister Peter Hain has called for the party to come up with policy proposals that will allow the party to cover any potential threat to the solidarity of its support that the more radical Green Party might pose (Wintour, 2015).

In the light of the pressures being placed on the Greens, it is unsurprising that a lot has been made of the apparent announcement that its support for a Citizen's Income will not be in its 2015 election manifesto (Riley-Smith, 2015). In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Green MP Caroline Lucas said that:

"The Citizen's Income is not going to be in the 2015 general election manifesto as something to be introduced on May 8th. It is a longer term aspiration; we are still working on it... The Citizen's Income, as I've explained, is not going to be a red line."

Its apparent absence from the Green Party's campaign was revealed over a series of interviews where the policy was heavily criticised with regards to its cost (Findlay, 2015). While Lucas attempted to play down the party's intentions regarding Citizen's Income, other senior Green Party members have reaffirmed their commitment to putting the policy into the 2015 manifesto (Cowburn, 2015).

However, some of those among the Greens, such as MP Caroline Lucas, seem to be responding to the party's election possibilities with pragmatism. They are looking for the party to gain enough seats to take part in a left-wing coalition, and are setting out, ahead of time, where they draw the line for coalition talks (BBC, 2015).

"What we are going to do is to put forward some radical and visionary ideas which this political system needs so badly. What we are also going to do, with a handful of MPs, is to push Labour in particular to be far more progressive."

That means leading with their more modest aims, to give them the best chance of achieving an agreement. It also means learning from Liberal Democrat mistakes and not committing to things ahead of time, which they may not be able to achieve come May.

However, while the Green Party are making compromises to be a progressive force alongside, and not necessarily instead of or opposed to, the Labour Party, Labour continue to be pushed towards their standard, monolithic, pragmatic response: give us your vote unswervingly and we will save people from cuts and inequality.

The SNP too is now on the receiving end of whispered warnings (Rawnsley, 2015). The rise of Scottish separatism, and of the SNP as a left-of-centre alternative, has Labour scrambling to find a response that allows them to protect the establishment they deem so precious to their goals, while wooing back their disaffected supporters.

Labour remain clinging to their hopes of power in a dead system. They hang on to their two-party, us and them, polarised dynamics, and try to squeeze out the rest of the Left, with negative tactics on the one hand, and populist appeals on the other, and warnings of a need to act practically in response to the system's iniquities, even as they fail to press for reform of those same iniquities.

They encourage a resistance to radicalism within the Left, feeding the fear of loss; the fear of losing the ground claimed inch-by-clawed-inch, year-by-painful-year. Those tactics have motivated continued support for Labour, even as they have failed to secure those hard fought victories with constitutional or economic reforms.

Voters continue to point to the dangers of stepping outside of the safe routine for fear that the selfish other might sneak in and conquer. But there is a longer term danger of failing to reach, than in reaching and falling short. While the Left has hidden away in its Labour bastion, it has been suffering a slow creeping loss. The Left allowed the momentum, the initiative, to be taken by conservative and reactionary forces. The Left, in their fear, have succumbed to a slow shifting, slipping, seeping surrender to an agenda set by the Right.

The question is, after 2010 brought a fresh voice against Labour's stable conservatism, will people fall back into Labour's drudging march, or will they keep looking for new hope with the Liberal Democrats, or with the Greens, or the SNP? Or, can Labour finally turn over a new leaf after one hundred years where each radical step has been accompanied by a conservative one: civil liberties with authoritarian policing, public health with privatisation, devolution with centralised control, popular power turned into an obsession with establishment power?

If Labour is truly committed to the best interests of the Left, it has to learn to co-operate. The support for the Greens, SNP and Lib Dems, as left-wing alternatives, represents various kinds of idealist hopes for the future, all of which have been strangled within a political system that the Labour Party has persistently used against these left-wing oppositions to its own agenda.

Labour need to overcome that bad habit and get behind political reform, to reshape politics so that the Left, in all of its wonderful and diversely fragmented forms, can work side by side.

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References:
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+ David Marquand, in Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983. [Buy Now]

+ Anne McElvoy's 'The clash of two Eds raises the ghost of Labour past'; in The Guardian; 22 February 2015.
+ Rebecca Ratcliffe's 'Would £6,000 tuition fees be a vote winner for Labour?'; in The Guardian; 16 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Labour needs to be more radical to counter Green threat, says Peter Hain'; in The Guardian; 22 January 2015.

+ Ben Riley-Smith's 'Greens ditch citizens' income from election manifesto'; in The Telegraph; 2 February 2015.

+ Joseph Finlay's 'What Natalie Should Have Said - How to Fund the Green Party's Citizen's Income Policy'; in The Huffington Post UK; 1 February 2015.

+ Ashley Cowburn's 'Green deputy leaders contradict Caroline Lucas: Citizens’ Income will be in the manifesto'; in The New Statesman; 9 February 2015.

+ 'Green leader Natalie Bennett backtracks on terror groups'; on the BBC; 3 February 2015.

+ Andrew Rawnsley's 'Voting SNP is more likely to hand power to Cameron than to Miliband'; in The Guardian; 22 February 2015.

Syriza's negotiation with European Leaders is a reminder that we need to take Europe back, not abandon it

Logo of the anti-austerity party Syriza painted on a pavement in the build up to the January election. Photograph: Syriza logo by Thierry Ehrmann (License) (Cropped)

Greece's anti-austerity party Syriza may well have surprised many with their decision to sit down with European leaders to hash out a deal that would keep Greece in the Eurozone (Monaghan, 2015). After their strident attacks on European economic policy, in an election campaign where they pledged to end those policies in Greece (BBC, 2015), for many a Greek exit from the Euro must have seemed sure, soon and swift.

So if Eurozone austerity is so unbearable, why would Syriza bother to stay and negotiate?

Italy, which has been treated as Europe's economic case study because of its own debt crisis comparable to that of Greece, has resisted austerity and is trying to dig its way out of debt (Traynor, 2014). In that task Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi actually wants the European Central Bank to lead, encouraging the institution to lead the way with its latest round of efforts to boost growth by pumping money into the European economy (Treanor et al, 2015).

As for others in Europe, the reality is that reforming Europe's institutions rather than simply abolishing them, with the countries of Europe working together within a better system, is preferable to a return to isolation and handling these crises without support. Those feelings are reflected around Europe, and demonstrate a positive vision of what Europe could be: a co-ordinating body, a network supporting solidarity between member states.

Right now though, Europe's institutions are in the hands of bartering and deal-making national interests. Those forces have co-opted what was once a juxtaposition to their aims - a broad body looking at the greater community interest rather than narrow nationalisms - and re-centred it on a commitment to the national conservative economics of fiscal austerity and privatisation (Jones, 2015). But, if reformed, Europe could do so much more.

The European Union was once the middle road between the American capitalist and Soviet communist super powers, looking to co-operation over American competition or Soviet collectivisation. It supported co-operation between members of the community of nations, and between labour and management. It supported new member states in getting up to the same speed as existing members (Feffer, 2015).

That path to successful integration and co-ordination followed on from a long succession of plans dating back to the Second World War. During the war, the countries of Europe had taken on huge debts that made post-war reconstruction a daunting task. In response, the United States drew up the Marshall Plan, an Act of Congress - with Bipartisan support - that authorised a huge financial investment in rebuilding Europe's infrastructure.

That plan played a large role in rebuilding the UK, France, Italy and West Germany. East Germany, which had been under Soviet control, would only join a reunited Germany in 1990. By that time, the East was in an economic state that lagged far behind the West. Germany responded with massive deficit spending to rebuild the East and accelerate its ability to catch up with the rest of the country (Feffer, 2014).

The European Union of today has its own version of these functions, but it is not employed to nearly the same degree. It is particularly telling that Europe, in the face of the financial crisis, rather than collaborate and pursue a co-ordinated spending program aimed at helping the member states back up to an even footing, individual member states were expected to find their own individual response, to their own crises.

The 2008 financial crash and the Great Recession that followed, essentially caused by reckless capitalism, was initially tackled through the bailing out of private debts by the public treasuries. That private debt, as a result, became public debt (Bellofiore, 2011). The matter the public has been faced with since, is figuring out how to deal with the crushing weight of the debt that was taken on.

One thing has been obvious in the last seven years of crisis. Individual countries, alone, can't manage the accumulated debts that were inherited from the private sector, not least without massive sacrifices. Despite the crisis clearly being interconnected, and global, with debts comparable to the outcome of another great war, this time there has been no concerted collaborative response.

It is in this case, as much as any other, that Europe's fragmentation and disunity has hurt the most. Europe, as a whole, could have shouldered the weight. Instead, the individual countries have been forced to cut and cut and cut. Instead of a Europe that recognised its common bonds and pulled together, we have a Europe of many interconnected parts, acting like parts alone rather than as the parts of a whole.

That disunity is symbolised in the fact that the European currency is not fully underwritten by the political unity which could have brought with it the capacity to hold debt and to lend against the full weight of European wealth (Bellofiore, 2011). Instead, each individual member is using austerity, cutting back its spending in an attempt to surmount and reduce their individual debts.

That comes with a heavy price (Inman, 2015). That austerity effort has attacked market demand by putting a huge strain on personal incomes. As welfare and public sector work is cut back, the amount that people can spend falls and their insecurity increases. At the same time the cuts have also tightened access to credit, squeezing lending to business and making the possibility of finding alternative forms of security and livelihood in the private sector slim.

The absence of cheap credit puts further pressure on the private sector, leading to demands for more 'labour flexibility' - which, in lay terms, means lower pay, shorter hours and less secure contracts for workers - in an effort to cut costs. Those efforts have only squeezed personal incomes and security further still. The whole effect is compounded for future generations, as young people are suffering through colossal levels of unemployment and lack of training opportunities.

The result has been political turmoil in each member state as they find themselves caught between responding to the debt, under pressure from other nations and private sector interests, and an increasingly hostile public response on the other, from people angry about being expected shoulder all of the fallout from the crisis. That has led to huge protests, democratic rejection of mainstream parties and a dangerously rising nationalism and connected intolerance - people, feeling insecure, afraid and under attack, are circling the wagons.

Some of the larger and more prosperous countries have fared better than others, as the economic policies pursued have suited them, or at least their ideologically dominant parties. However, Europe is bound together. The manufacturing regions are bound to the agricultural regions, and they to the commercial and the financial. So, even for prosperous and powerful Germany, there is no escaping the interdependence.

Germany's neo-mercantilist policies have made them dependent upon exports to the surrounding countries, and to the United States (Bellofiore, 2011). As such, it relies upon the spending power and trade deficits of its neighbours, who over time have responded to their trade 'partnership' with Germany by rearranging their economies. That has meant a decline in their own internal production, and an economy steered ever more towards imports from Germany, the service industry and the US-UK system of speculation on inflated capital assets (such as housing) along with propping up spending with consumer debt.

When austerity was applied, cutting back public sector work and public services, and with no strong internal economy to fall back on, it led to stagnation and decline in their own economies. That, in turn, has led to a broader stagnation as countries, like (predominantly) Germany, now have fewer partners to trade with. It has become a destructive cycle.

Italy and its political and economic crisis, as the country that most resembles a microcosm of Europe at large, has become the case study for solving the crisis in Europe as a whole. Both sides, the Right and the Left, have attempted to justify their solution to the Italian crisis, which represents to both sides a core example of what is wrong with European economics.

On the Right, there is an idea that the root of the problem in Italy, and Europe, is a lack of 'competitiveness' (Sinn, 2014). Prices are too high, so the cost of doing business is too high. The solution for the Right, amongst other efforts at depreciation, is to reduce the protections surrounding labour, so wages can be decreased and hours and contracts be made more 'flexible'. With these things achieved, businesses would start to grow again and employment would increase, spurring growth - although with admitted carnage along with the way with households going bankrupt. For their efforts in pursuing this painful direction, former Prime Ministers Silvio Berlusconi and Mario Monti have been praised, and electoral politics has been criticised for getting in the way of the brutal necessary.

The left takes the opposite tack. If Europe's financial bodies would step up to tackle national debts, and to invest towards creating more employment and stronger wages, then:

'If internal demand and production increase more than productivity, the consequent higher employment could ground consumption on income rather than on debt.'

New sources of funding, more jobs and higher wages - supported by Europe as a whole tackling the matter of the collective debt - could lead to a way out of the crisis through the empowering of labour, of individualism, rather than the curbing of it. Public welfare could be funded to shield people during the harsher times, rather than cut to pay off debts. The problem of prices could be handled in moderation during stronger economics times, not least through the increased competition created by a recovering economy.

The debate between Right and Left becomes a matter of cutting debt, cutting spending, and cutting wages; or to borrow in order to prop up spending and up prop labour. Force what would effectively be an economic recession to lower wages and allow private investment to reboot, at the cost of private debts and hardships; or let the co-ordinating whole take on the burden for everyone at the cost of additional debt in the short term.

For the Right, it becomes a matter of nation-states handling the matter internally, alone, through cuts that place the heavy burden on individuals. For the Left, the nation-states would act in common, pursuing the European ideal of the self-governing communities standing together in solidarity, supporting welfare and investment that finds a path out of the crisis that takes the burden off the shoulders of the individual.

That role, looked for by The Left, is a vision of what Europe could be, and why Europe is so important. The European project marks the ultimate point, for the people of Europe at present, of overcoming the divisions that our differences create between us. It means reaching across those differences to find commonality, solidarity and potential.

And yet, Europe is faced with resentment and hostility by Far Right nationalist movements; an economic and political crisis eating away at its individual member states; and the mistrust and scorn of people caught under the weight of austerity promulgated through Europe's institutions. Europe is held in the grip of a system of bartering national conservatisms, which prevent it from playing the sorely needed co-ordinating role, with a view to the broader community welfare.

Progressives, from Italy to Greece and onwards, want to reform Europe, but frequently find their efforts running up against a brick wall. The continental institutions are in the hands of conservative groups that unwaveringly push their agenda, and struggle between the reformers and the establishment results in a stalemate.

The answer to breaking the deadlock is to take back Europe. Movements like Occupy and Indignados, Syriza and Podemos show us the means. Radical democracy, conducted through new parties founded on new principles, with more direct involvement and engagement by and with the people. Among the primary aims of these groups has to be the reform of Europe's institutions around those principles.

If these new movements are to achieve progressive ends, however, they cannot be like-for-like replacements for the old parties. Instead of  top down, patronising leaderships, they need be the co-ordinators of Europe's fragmented communities. The spaces where people can meet and debate, and where they can find solidarity in their struggles.

That too is a role that a reformed Europe could play. The place where Europe's fragmented communities come to discuss, debate and act in common, and where they come to find solidarity. The beginning of the road to achieving it, is to rebuild our political movements along the same principles.

Australia's leadership challenge is just the latest embarrassment for the two-party majoritarian system

Last week Australian politics found itself thrown into crisis, as once again the position of Prime Minister was turned into the subject of an internal party squabble. Tony Abbot, PM and Liberal Party leader, has had his leadership challenged following collapsing ratings in the polls (Jabour & Hurst, 2015).

This is just the latest embarrassment for the old two-party system. That system - which revolves around two monolithic groups, with machine politician leaders, using cheap popular appeals and sound bites to build workable majorities, or to struggle over control of them - in the end merely demonstrates its own weakness.

By centralising power around individual figures, the focus is put on the squabbles for control over the establishment. Those squabbles, over often marginal differences, only leads to an increasing detachment from reality that alienates voters and shuts down open political discussions. The disaffection of voters and the narrowing of choice reduces politics to little more than a stagnant and unstable popularity contest.

This is not the first time that Australia has faced this particular kind of crisis (Howden, 2015). Both major parties, Liberal and Labor, have had a number of so called leadership 'spills', where the party leadership is challenged, over the last half decade. The Labor Party suffered through four contests in just four years, as Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd repeatedly clashed between 2010 and 2013 (Phillips, 2012; Pearlman, 2013).

Coming into power on the back of that Labor Party squabbling, the Liberal leader Tony Abbott was elected offering stability (BBC, 2015). And yet, even if Abbott survives this challenge, his time as leader is limited. His rivals are circling and his authority, or popularity, has been undermined (Massola & Kenny; 2015).

In his desperate attempts to ward off those challengers, Abbot has been telling the same old story, warning Australians, and his own party, to be wary of turning leadership into a Game of Thrones (Pearlman, 2015). But it's a tired tale, used to justify centralised and unchallenged leadership. Justifying centrality and authority, not on their own merits, but as a ward and bastion against chaos.

It is the same story in the UK, where a free political choice is suppressed by the two major parties, Conservative and Labour, who cling to power by scaremongering against third parties, warning against split votes, hung parliaments and coalitions (BBC, 2010). These methods are justified as a practical and necessary response to the iniquities of the electoral system, and yet they persist in their refusal to pursue the meaningful electoral reform needed to make politics more representative - all to protect the fragile balance of their system. And so far those methods have worked.

However, the two-party system is fracturing all over the world. The squabbles over power and the suppression of alternatives should, by now, simply act as a reminder that the majoritarian two-party system simply does not offer enough accountability or representation.

These leadership squabbles simply emphasise the detachment from reality suffered at the highest levels of power. In Australia, both Liberals (who in Australia are conservatives in everything but name) and Labor, and in the UK, both Conservatives and Labour, all of the mainstream parties are guilty.

These parties support a system that hands power to one person, who is surrounded by a small group that represents just a fraction of the population, and has been tightly whipped into an ideological line. People are alienated from control over political decisions. Even parliaments and assemblies are regularly cut out of the process.

There is a great danger in structuring the stability of our institutions around any one individual and the power they can muster in support. It has frequently become the means by which an isolated elite make serious and impactful decisions - affecting real people's lives - in ivory towers detached from reality.

We need to find new ways to govern. We need more choice, more representation, and governments that reflect the whole electorate not just the loudest minority.

==========
References:
==========
+ Bridie Jabour & Daniel Hurst's 'Australian prime minister Tony Abbott may be deposed after party revolt'; in The Guardian; 6 February 2015.

+ Saffron Howden's 'Australian politics: Why is it so tumultuous?'; on The BBC; 8 February 2015.

+ Liam Phillips' 'Labor leadership challenge - Gillard vs Rudd'; in The Sydney Morning Herald; 27 February 2012.

+ Jonathan Pearlman's 'Julia Gillard defeated by Kevin Rudd in leadership challenge'; in The Telegraph; 26 June 2013.

+ 'Australian PM Tony Abbott 'will fight leadership challenge'; on The BBC; 6 February 2015.

+ James Massola & Mark Kenny's 'Supporters say Malcolm Turnbull will run against Tony Abbott for Liberal Party leader if spill motion succeeds'; The Sydney Morning Herald; 7 February 2015.

+ Jonathan Pearlman's 'Tony Abbott faces 'Games of Thrones' showdown'; in The Telegraph; 8 February 2015.

+ 'Election 2010: Cameron warns over hung parliament'; on The BBC; 17 April 2010.

Syriza can learn from the Lib Dems that strange political alliances send an inconsistent message

Following Syriza's victory in the Greek elections, where they fell just short of a majority, they were forced to find a coalition partner in order to govern. Their choice of partner was a right-wing anti-EU party.

For a radically left-wing party like Syriza, that choice of partner is drastically inconsistent with their ideology. Inconsistencies, such as these, in the way political parties present themselves can have dire consequences.

That was a lesson learnt only too well by the Liberal Democrats in the aftermath of their decision to go into government with the Conservatives, and to drop their opposition to tuition fee increases. Now, in Greece, Syriza face that same dangerous path as they agree to receive the support necessary to govern from the right-wing national conservative ANEL party (AKA Independent Greece).

The parties, that sit at completely opposite ends of the political spectrum, with entirely incompatible social politics, are going into government together on the basis of their mutual antipathy towards the European Union and austerity.

In the UK, the Lib Dems and Tories put aside their differences in ideology in the name of pursuing a response to the economic crisis with a shared vision of a smaller state. The controversy was not so much in their actions, or their reasons for doing so, but rather instead a matter of how the Lib Dems had presented themselves beforehand.

Having campaigned as a left-wing alternative party, many people felt that their reasons for voting for the party had been betrayed when they went into coalition with the right-wing Conservative Party.

In Greece, Syriza are walking a similar tightrope. In opposition to conservative economic austerity, and the EU establishment that is supporting it, the party is crossing the ideological divide to work with the ANEL right-wing group.

The fact that there is something that they mutually oppose enough to work together to stop it, says a lot about the confusion over political ideology. For all the emphasis that is put on ideology, allegiance and other forms of social structuring in party politics, groups are reaching across the divides in the name of particular issues.

In reality they are parties with very different reasons and motivations to oppose the EU, with very different alternatives preferred - which makes it a tenuous alliance at best. It is a pragmatic marriage of convenience, an inconsistency that, if Syriza isn't careful, could permanently damage their standing as a party of left-wing ideals.

==========
References:
==========
+ Gregory T Papanikos' 'With Greece backing the euro but Syriza in government, another election may beckon'; in New Statesman; 27 January 2015.

+ Sunder Katwala's 'Did Nick Clegg betray 2.7 million voters?'; on The Next Left - A Fabian Society Blog; 26 July 2010.

The collapse of the political mainstream will mean more choice, but it will also call for more co-operation

With tomorrow, 27th January, marking one hundred days until the 2015 UK general election, polling figures are showing us something interesting. The main two parties are weakening, falling as low as 30% each, and the third parties, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and UKIP, are all pushing 10% (Clark, 2015).

It is a sign of something seen in many other countries: the established political mainstream is fracturing (Nardelli, 2015). There is an upside: choice becomes a realistic possibility. People will, however, have to prepare themselves for what it will mean to be represented by many diverse parties. The parties they vote for will have to co-operate with other groups to form governments. Coalitions will be necessary.

The Liberal Democrats' choice to go into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 has been seen by many as a controversial betrayal (Harris, 2011), but multi-party politics means multi-party governments. Those alliances often have to stretch across odd-parts of the political spectrum, working with what they find, and not everyone will get all of the things that they voted for, even if their choice makes it into government.

If we are to see greater choice between parties, all with realistic chances of governing, then people will have to get used to the idea of coalitions and the compromises that come with them. The alternative is to keep the partisan two-party system that divests all of the power upon one vision for the country, a method that can often exclude far more than half of the electorate.

The electoral battle ahead between the mainstream parties and the anti-establishment movements is already provoking fears about the impact it will have - fears that it will simply inflame the antagonism and polarisation that feeds nationalists and extremists (Behr, 2015). Fears that pluralism will bring instability, and that it will be exploited by one of the opposing factions, progressive or conservative, to crush their divided opponents.

The response of commentators has tended towards the same old framework (Jones, 2015), justifying the same old tactics: the mainstream parties (in particular Labour) need to head off and crush the small parties (in particular the Greens), and all of it to protect the position of the establishment party and its vague vision, in opposition to that of its old enemy.

But there has to be a better answer. Instead of crushing other groups on the Left, Labour could be co-operating on common issues, forming electoral alliances and creating a space on the Left for healthy debate. The alternative for the Left is more of the same old party system that has driven whole generations away from the political process.

"Political parties maintain their existence because they represent major cleavages which are persistent and long-lasting. These cleavages may be socio-economic, religious, ethnic or political. Political parties are, as it were, an institutional expression of a country's historical continuity, a mirror-image of the conflicts which past generations have found important...

...However, these traditional stances no longer coincide either with social reality, or with the natural division of opinion on political issues. The two major parties, therefore, appear less as cohesive agencies of political representation than as uneasy and incompatible coalitions held together as much by the needs of electoral survival as by common political beliefs." (Bogdanor, 1983)

When the two-party dynamic breaks down, the major parties survive by being big tents for all viewpoints, though none in particular, and dominate their traditional places on the political spectrum mostly through historical allegiance and fear-mongering about the dangers of vote-splitting. Their major concern becomes technocratic government, aiming to govern technically well according to whatever is the dominant economic system of the day, to justify their own suitability to govern. They become a refracting lens, directing and redirecting public political opinion rather than representing it (Bogdanor, 1983).

The Labour Party, as one of those mainstream, big-tent, technocratic parties, are finding themselves beset upon either side by these new political factions - UKIP, representing an older and more nationalistic crowd on the Far-Right, and the Greens, representing those younger and more liberal upon the Left (Helm, 2015; Ford, 2015).

These two parties, UKIP and Green, have two things in common: they represent a general discontent with the old system, and a fracturing of the old dualistic system into a number of separate factions of varied agendas. The old system is losing its grip. Top down control of policy and priorities is no longer in the hands of a single-faction government.

This is a function of a more open and representative democracy. It means many more viewpoints being brought into political debate, with new third parties emerging to drive change on new issues. The victory of the radical left-wing party Syriza in the Greek elections is a testament to what can be achieved in a multi-party system. However, the need of that party to form a coalition with a small right-wing anti-EU party in order to govern is a strong reminder of the compromises that follow.

The collapse of the established status-quo, and the fracturing of the system into a more open form, is far from complete. But more parties, with realistic chances of governing, and the possibility of electoral reform (Jones, 2015), mean that a more representative politics isn't far away. In that new form, the political Left - particularly the Labour Party - will have to adapt and rid itself of its own top down, patronising tendencies inherited from the present system.

The Left will need to find a way to co-operate, and to facilitate the presence of diverse views and fragmented factions. Those diverse groups, divisions and debates have always been a part of how the Left works, and that's fine. Its natural diversity is a positive, not a weakness. Openness to debate and the divisions that come with it are the lifeblood of progress.

==========
References:
==========
+ Tom Clark's 'Labour lead falls as Greens hit 20-year high in Guardian/ICM poll'; in The Guardian; 20 January 2015.

+ Alberto Nardelli's '2015 election: five key themes'; in The Guardian; 23 January 2015.

+ Evan Harris' 'The myth of Lib Dem 'betrayal''; in The Guardian; 6 May 2011.

+ Rafael Behr's 'The general election could unleash a new wave of contempt for politics'; in The Guardian; 21 January 2015.

+ Owen Jones' 'How Labour should respond to the ‘Green surge’'; in The Guardian; 22 January 2015.

+ Vernon Bogdanor's 'Multi-party politics and the Constitution'; Cambridge University Press, 1983. [Buy Now]

+ Toby Helm's 'Green surge could hit Labour in 22 election battlegrounds, new study finds'; in The Guardian; 24 January 2015.

+ Robert Ford's 'How Green party surge threatens Labour’s election hopes'; in The Guardian; 24 January 2015.

Charlie Hebdo, John Stuart Mill and the Harm Principle

The events in Paris have put freedom of speech at the front and centre of political debate around the world. Governments are discussing their response, including expansion of surveillance powers particularly in the domestic sphere (Watt, 2015).

In the light of the attack upon the offices of Charlie Hebdo, which has been defended as a satirical publication, conservative voices are arguing that some things are sacred, and cannot be ridiculed (Topping, 2015). In response, others have accused conservatives of blaming victims for 'provocation', rather than condemning those who wield violence to achieve their ends (Toynbee, 2015).

The question is, what is free speech? What does it look like? Why is it important? How can we use it?

John Stuart Mill, an influential figure in liberal political philosophy and contributor to utilitarianism, argued that free thought and expression were key to the discovery of the truth, and to keeping honest the establishment that is supposed to embody that truth. Out of these ideas, Mill developed his harm principle:

"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant... Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

The point of individual freedom is that you may do as you will freely, but only where you do not impose upon the freedoms of others. The question raised by recent events, and by the opinions thrown out by public figures, is what happens in the grey area?

For Mill, there exists, between the clear freedoms of any two parties and the clear infringements of those freedoms, a grey area of debate. It is in that space that governance takes place - and it requires two voices: one liberal and one conservative, one for progress and one for the status quo. Freedom of speech plays an integral role in the relationship between the two. It is part of the encouragement of individuality, and protection of it. It is part of our defence against powerful establishments that reinforce their own opinions against criticism, tyrannies both of government and of the majority.

Something that the events in Paris brought into particular focus are the tools that those without institutional power use within that grey area. Protest, terror and satire.

Protest and terror are two sides of the same coin. They seek to create an alternative form of power to that of the establishment, in order to project their views and challenge the authority of the established position. One of them is about peaceful civil action or disobedience designed to persuade, and the other is about using force, fear and violence in order to coerce.

Satire follows a different path. Rather than creating a source of power, it instead seeks to undermine power with humour - ostensibly in order to hold it to account. It is meant to be the tool of those who want to challenge a powerful establishment, from a position of relative weakness or powerlessness. The humour of satire aims to dispel the seriousness with which ritual and adherence are followed, to create a dehallowed critical space.

That is, of course, a difficult task. It means walking a line between irreverence towards the things that people hold dear, and a fall into racism, homophobia and sexism, the cheap tools of cheap victories. How do we go about challenging the presumptions of others, or basis of their power, without falling into those traps? How can we safely disrespect the taboos of others, in order to shine a light on the unquestioned, unchallenged or corrupt?

On the matter of how we express ourselves through free speech, and the idea that we ought only to be 'temperate' in that speech, Mill's answer was pragmatic. He argued that while law and government could not, and probably should not, shut down sophistic, 'invective' or 'intemperate discussion', they were none the less tools best not used.

"The gravest of [the principal offences] is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely possible, on adequate grounds, conscientiously to stamp the misrepresentation as morally culpable, and still less could law presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct."

While those methods - like lying about your opponent and their views or using generalised slurs to sully your opponent and therefore anything they say - are effective at shutting down debate, these tools serve only to sully the causes connected to their use, and to damage our chances of understanding truth by distorting or stopping the contributions of free voices.

"It is, however, obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either [intemperate argument professing the prevailing or contrary positions], while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case - condemning everyone, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves; but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own; and giving merited honor to everyone, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor."

Conservatism seeks to argue that some things are sacred, and cannot be made fun of. To build up dogmas, religious and ideological, to be adhered to. The whole point of satire is to the contrary - to poke fun at, and so undermine, the things people hold sacred when they become corrupt and despotic. To call into question those things that people fail to think about, to critique, for themselves and instead follow blindly.

That aim is at the heart of free speech. We are to be free in our opinions so that truth will not be lost or suppressed, and so that the powerful may be held to account. Those who seek to shut down free speech likely have a vested interest in the prevailing opinions, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Those who fall into racism, homophobia, sexism and other kinds of chauvinistic bigotry also wish to protect a vested interest in an opinion, but through the use of such methods only mark themselves and their cause.

Free speech for Mill was about peaceful, calm and reasoned debate, a process necessary for the discovery of truth and for the advancement of good governance. In the everyday sense, it translates to thinking and expressing yourself freely, but that those thoughts and expressions are not free of criticism, from being challenged and proved false, and that this is the very point of free speech. It is how we move forward, how we learn, how we discover the truth. Ad hominem attacks, bigotry and violence contribute nothing.

==========
References:
==========
+ The Guardian's World News section devoted to the Charlie Hebdo attack.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Ed Miliband rejects calls for revival of snooper’s charter after Paris attacks'; in The Guardian; 11 January 2015.

+ Alexandra Topping's 'Pope Francis: freedom of expression has limits'; in The Guardian; 15 January 2015.

+ Polly Toynbee's 'On Charlie Hebdo Pope Francis is using the wife-beater’s defence'; in The Guardian; 16 January 2015.

+ John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty'; 1859. [Buy Now]

The 2015 UK general election leader's debate might not happen. But is that a bad thing?

As January sees the campaign for the 2015 UK general election begin in earnest, so too does it see the negotiation over possible televised debates become more intense. Following the impact of the 2010 debates between Prime Ministerial candidates, there are obviously those who want more of the same this time around.

A group including YouTube, The Guardian and The Telegraph have proposed to expanding the format with a digital debate between the five main UK-wide parties (The Guardian, 2015). However, all of the proposed debates have already resulted in a lot of squabbling.

The rise in polling support for UKIP and the Green Party has seen demands for the presence of their leaders on the podium alongside those of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats (Hodges, 2014; Morris, 2014). Yet, the presence of reactionary right and radical left parties at the debates are only likely to make the bigger parties less interested in the debates happening at all - no one particularly wants to be upstaged (Rentoul, 2015).

In fact, those in power see so little reason to voluntarily put themselves on the same platform as those claiming to offer even slight alternatives, let alone drastically different approaches, that the debates may not even happen at all (Rentoul, 2015). UKIP and the Greens may want in, but Cameron and the Conservatives, it appears, do not (Watt, 2015) and without the sitting Prime Minister the debates would struggle to be considered representative.

From one perspective, being denied the opportunity of seeing the five UK wide parties debating would be a disappointment. Politics in the UK already struggles to engage with voters, is already too remote and inaccessible, without then cutting off one main focal point through which the majority can stay in touch.

However, the short format of a couple of hours of television makes it difficult to ensure depth of discussion and analysis of the ideas presented. The ideas and critique are reduced witty or snide one-liners, jabs aimed at the subjective weak spots of an opponent.

Informative analysis - something needed to keep the people, who ultimately have to make the choice, well informed - can be given much more space when offered in other formats, like newspapers (print and online) and blogs. If done well, and presented well, they can even reach as wide an audience, if not wider, through the internet than might engage passively with a couple of hours of prime time television.

Whether or not we want to see the political parties debate their ideas, there are still some things to consider about the format. Do the televised debates increase visibility and engagement enough to make up for its fairly limited approach to analysing the facts? Or does it just present grandstanding populists with an opportunity to score cheap points with simplistic sentiments, and so to distort the facts and the argument?

We must be wary that, in seeking to increase the visibility of politics and in attempting to reach out to engage with people, we do not lose the depth and complexity of analysis required for the making of sound decisions.

==========
References:
==========
+ 'An invitation to UK party leaders digital debate'; The Guardian; 9 January 2015.

+ Dan Hodges' 'Nigel Farage is desperate for Ukip to join the cosy Westminster clique'; in The Telegraph; 14 November 2014.

+ Nigel Morris' '260,000 people sign petition to include Green Party in election debates'; in The Independent; 12 November 2014.

+ John Rentoul's 'I agree with David Cameron – there will be no TV debates'; in The Independent; 11 January 2015.

+ John Rentoul's 'Footnote on TV debates'; in The Independent; 11 January 2015.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Cameron is running scared from TV election debates, says Ed Miliband'; in The Guardian; 11 January 2015.

The Autumn Statement shows us the flaws in the Tory cuts agenda

The UK government's Autumn Statement, released last week, is a mid-year review of its economic policy (Treanor, 2014), and an opportunity to stop and assess the general health of the national economy.

On this occasion, that assessment has stirred up controversy. The main story behind the review was that the Conservatives have not reached their target reductions to the country's budget deficit, and will likely seek further and deeper cuts to public spending in the next parliament (Allen, 2014).

While senior Conservatives have criticised coverage of future spending cuts as hyperbole predicting that the world would fall in (BBC, 2014), they did not deny that further cuts would be coming. In fact, further cuts to welfare certainly appear to be planned.

The most baffling thing is that, despite the Autumn Statement having laid bare that the Conservative approach has failed to deliver the promised results, the government seems intent upon pushing on, further and deeper, with their strategy of cuts, and of placing trust in markets. They seem to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the economy is still weak, the recovery remains slow, and the public deficit has not been eliminated.

The possibility of more cuts is sure to inflame more than a few hearts that are already set against the Conservative austerity agenda. That will not be helped by independent assessments that say future cuts could take the UK's public spending down to an 80 year low, the lowest since the inter-war era (Reuben, 2014; Johnson, 2014).

It has been suggested that one key reason for the failure of the Conservative approach to achieve its goals, was hinged upon a rise in private sector employment. Conservatives thought that a rise in employment - which they believed would follow from economic incentives and encouragements for the private sector, along with cuts to the public sector - would boost the economy to pick up the slack as public sector spending was reduced. Their gamble, however, did not deliver (Arnett & Nardelli, 2014).

The new jobs, that the Conservatives have celebrated, have come with very low pay and short, unstable hours. In conjunction with the general failure of wages to rise, the decrease in unemployment has not led to an increase in the funds available to pay off public debts and deficits. Further, and even more disastrously, austerity and cuts are being directly linked with rising poverty (Wintour & Butler, 2014).

If, as predicted, the next stage of the Conservative approach returns Britain to its pre-war settlement, with a drastic reshaping of the state and its role in society - with further retraction of the state and a return to a market place with fewer safety nets - it is not unreasonable to ask if the continuation of the cuts agenda will drop public spending so low as to threaten even the most basic services like health and welfare that protect people who fall on hard times.

Conservative policy is steering towards an economy built on the backs of workers labouring through unstable and fluctuating hours, for low pay, and with no safety net when something goes wrong in their incredibly temporary situations. That assault upon the security of workers lives, in pursuit of making labour markets more 'dynamic', is undermining the living standards of workers while simultaneously failing to produce a useful growth in the common wealth.

And that is not good enough. It's not enough to just peddle cheap impermanent work, and assume that work itself will be some sort of miracle cure for societies ills. To live the better and fuller lives that they deserve, people need more security and better pay, with real safety nets.

'We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'
(Yellow Book, 1928)

The Autumn Statement is just the latest demonstration that Conservative austerity and cuts are failing, both economically and socially, to address the problems of the day. The question now becomes: what alternatives do we have?

==========
References:
==========
+ Jill Treanor's 'Autumn statement 2014 at a glance: eight key points'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Katie Allen's 'George Osborne thrown off course by pay squeeze and falling income tax take'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ BBC's 'Osborne: Autumn Statement cuts warnings 'hyperbolic''; 4 December 2014.

+ Anthony Reuben's 'Headline Numbers: Public spending heads to 80-year low'; on the BBC; 3 December 2014.

+ Paul Johnson's 'Institute for Fiscal Studies: Autumn statement briefing, 2014 - Introductory remarks'; for the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS); 4 December 2014.

+ George Arnett and Alberto Nardelli's 'Why has George Osborne missed the deficit target?'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Patrick Wintour and Patrick Butler's 'Tories seek to avert rift with Church of England over food bank report'; in The Guardian; 8 December 2014.

+ 'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928. [Buy Now]

Constantine's flawed humanity makes for good television

NBC's new TV show Constantine, with a second series yet to be commissioned, has joined a long list of shows that have seen fans start campaigns aimed at keeping them alive (Wickline, 2014). It was always going to be a brave decision to try and translate the character of John Constantine to the small screen. The Hellblazer comics are often dark and intensely grim, and Constantine himself is a hero often shown to be flawed and manipulative, and even prepared to sacrifice his own friends should the need arise.

Yet, so far, NBC's new show has held true to that course. We have seen Constantine smoking, itself a fairly big challenge to modern television standards; he has exploited the abilities of his allies, like Zed and Liv; and he manipulated his friend Gary Lester into sacrificing his life to trap the hunger demon Mnemoth.

But we have also seen him struggle with a troubled and violent childhood. He struggles with his guilt over, in his arrogance, failing to save a little girl named Astra. We have seen him show nobility in trying to save people from many dangers that they might not even believe to actually exist.

These struggles, and the weight of burden that his failures have cast upon him, are what makes him a character that is easy to identify with - and were all key parts of the complicated character that was so beloved on the pages of the Hellblazer comics.

The Constantine of Hellblazer is a punk, a bisexual and a smoker. A working-class mage. He is burdened by enormous guilt over the past, and cares about the people around him, though often reluctantly. He gets by on wit and guile, rather than brute force and physical strength.

Even with the faults in his methods, like the dangerous manipulation of his friends and allies, he is still a charming and likeable anti-establishment figure - and that makes him easy to sympathise with. He is a controversial hero, and a complicated and imperfect person who earns our sympathy through his flawed humanity.

These things, translated to the small screen, make for a fascinating character. His belief in himself is not unshakeable - he has doubts. He has regrets. He is caustic and short-tempered. He is manipulative, using, and exploiting his friends. He is self-righteous when he gets the chance, and angry when he gets called out on his hypocrisy.

These characteristics make him flawed and vulnerable, and so reveal to us his humanity. They are the kind of traits that make for a great television character.

==========
References:
==========
+ Dan Wickline's 'There Is Now A Save Constantine Petition'; on bleedingcool.com; 27 November 2014.

+ Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette & John Ridgway's 'Hellblazer'; DC/Vertigo; 1988. [Buy Now]

+ Daniel Cerone & David S. Goyer's 'Constantine'; on NBC; 2014. [Buy Now]

Arts of Leadership: Part 2 - The Fallacy of Stability

Subjective truths, by their nature, are difficult to argue with. They are also a useful tool of persuasion. Attempts to draw grand conclusions from ambiguous statistical observations are a sure sign that someone is trying to convince you of something they can't (or couldn't be bothered to) provide evidence for, or they're trying to sell you something.

The essential factor in such statements is context.

'We've got an economy mired in debt and we badly need to get it growing... Now ask yourselves, who is going to get that job done?... Is a hung parliament going to get that job done? A hung parliament will be a bunch of politicians haggling, not deciding, they'd be fighting for their own interests, not fighting for your interests.'
(Cameron, 2010)

In some fields, it is impossible to avoid arguments such as these. In politics half of everything is justification for ideologies. But as any good Sociologist could tell you, the difference between honest and crooked uses of them are in the clear signposting of all such assumptions and biases. In this instance, the assumptions made about the stability of a hung parliament against a majority, and the evidence that such a claim is based on.

This brings me to the great fallacy spun during the elections that I feel needs to be addressed. The great argument, from all ends of the political spectrum, was to avoid hung parliaments at all cost. The reasoning given is that it chokes off chances for stability. I'm afraid I have have a bone to pick with that argument.

'In the 50 years since the World War ended, Italy had an equal number of governments. Thus, governments in Italy lasted on average barely a year. Yet, Italy today is among the most industrialized countries in the world. This, if nothing else, should make us wary about drawing any facile conclusions about the effects of political instability on the economy.'
(Thakurta, 2008)

'(In) Nordic countries and the states of northern Europe, election days there are seen as just the beginning of a frequently protracted negotiating period over the composition of the next government. This is normal. The sky usually doesn't fall in.'
(Tisdall, 2010)

First, a question. In what way has the first-past-the-post, two party dynamic, in anyway, offered the British people 'stable' government? We have spent the years since the great wars lurching from one extreme to the other; the Labour Party nationalising everything in sight on the one side, before the Tories return five years later to privatise it all again.

And so this pattern went, until Mrs Thatcher decimated the power base of the Labour movement opposition by crippling the nation's industrial base. Even now, as a Conservative Government sits again, the effects of the Thatcher administration's focus on economy based solely on financial speculation is being felt.

In Europe by comparison, they have had no shortage of stable governments despite having an average of five mainstream parties, each covering five relatively concrete positions across the political spectrum. Now while this might not produce majority governments, it does encourage stable government, because potential coalition partners don't have to face the enormous task of overcoming huge political differences. Instead stable yet co-operative government is encouraged by the room for agreement to be found.

'It's clear that, in my view and in our experience at A.T.Kearney, European companies tend to take a longer term view of world and global developments; they're less likely to react very quickly and be constrained by daily events and quarterly earnings statements... which could serve them well on the one hand, and on the other hand create a certain lack of flexibility or dexterity...'
(Paul A. Laudicina, 2010)

The tendency for the Euro area countries to lean towards coalition offers companies a fair degree of stability in economic policy, not just thanks to negotiation between parliaments for moderate policy, but between nations themselves. These systems of cooperation and negotiation foster respect for aspects of 'tradition which... cannot be substantially changed', again forging an area of stability that allows business to act in a long term fashion (De Benedetti, 2010).

A simple means of demonstrating stability might then be through competitiveness. In the Global Competitiveness Ranking of 2009, in Business Week, showed that nations with coalition or minority governments dominated the top ten.

1.SWITZERLAND, 2.United States, 3.Singapore, 4.SWEDEN,
5.DENMARK, 6.FINLAND, 7.GERMANY, 8.Japan, 9.CANADA,
10.NETHERLANDS,... 13. Britain.

The nations in bold all possess coalition or minority governments, with the major majority government in the top ten being the United States, whose economy has the stigma of instability. The quotation from Mr Laudicina, above, was in comparison to the US approach, where businesses are forced to be flexible in order to survive in a market that lacks the long-term stability afforded to European business (Laudicina, 2010).

Even these brief statistics suggest that the two party arguments are off the mark. This system has stifled our democracy with partisan fears of a return to a 20 year Conservative Majority, or elective dictatorship as majority may also be read. This fear has forced a tolerance of excesses from Labour Party leaders who have been quick to exploit the trust of their supporters; in exchange for remaining a watchdog, a bastion against the right that leftist voters fear. This cows the voices in the Labour movement from speaking out against their own party's excess in case it brings the house of cards down.

This all forces the lines between social movements and populists to blur, forcing the use of contemptible politics in order to hold onto the shifting middle ground. This means resorting to tactics of coercion, of negative reinforcement, and negative out-group stereotypes. My concerns are that:

+ First, this narrowing of our political options is leading to a 'trickle-down' system of policy for a party's taken for granted voting core.

+ Second, that these bi-partisan swings are damaging to the nation's economy, preventing businesses from making long term plans, which in turn prevents any kind of long term employment plans.

+ Finally, that all of this serves only to exacerbate my fears that the two party majority system is marginalising even democracy itself, by making parties less diverse but policy more radical and unpredictable.

This is just one example of an issue that is easily manipulated in the public imagination. The scary thing is how little effort it takes to shift polling results from the UK general election debates to election night on an issue like this. During the debates, Mr Clegg was widely shown to have won at least one and polls reflected this by putting the Liberal Democrats a competitive second, at least. By election night this expected turn out had shifted with a drastic speed, following campaigning by both ends of the spectrum to avoid the centre.

Next week will be the third and final part of this short series about leader 'tricks of the trade'. Last week covered misdirection, this week we have had confuscation and next week will be looking at how the language of leaders can be used as a weapon to control image, identity and choice.

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References:
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+ David Cameron, addressing a Crowd in Gloucester; April 17 2010;

+ David Cameron, dismissing talk of a Lib Dem deal; May 7 2010;

+ Paranjoy Guha Thakurta's 'Political instability and Growth'; 2008;

+ Simon Tisdall's 'Coalitions are the norm in democracies';

+ Paul A. Laudicina of A.T.Kearney at 'European Companies and the Great Recession: A view from the trenches'; October 5 2010;
+ Carlo De Benedetti of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso at 'European Companies and the Great Recession: A view from the trenches'; October 5 2010;

+ Global Competitiveness Ranking in Business Week, 2009;