Michael Meacher MP

This is a dangerous moment for the Labour Party.   The poison now being spread around by former Blairite Ministers is not about the change in policy direction or ideology.   The Blairite project was never much bothered about ideology; it was almost exclusively about power – destroying both the pre-existing Labour Right and Left, taming the PLP, marginalising Parliament, and subordinating the Cabinet – all to consolidate power on Blair and the tiny unelected clique around him.   They believed, like many autocrats before them, that they had set down a structure and a culture which would control British politics far into the future even when Blair himself left.   Which explains their incandescent rage – and unpredictability – now. (more…)

Slightly rephrasing Mark Antony, we came not to praise New Labour, but to bury it.   And bury it he did.   Ed Miliband ran as the change candidate, and three days into his leadership he delivered on it.   This was a tour de force – laying about him without fear or favour, straight-talking, establishing himself immediately as his own man.   Out went defence of the Iraq war, complacency over boom and bust (surely one of the most arrogant hostages to fortune ever dreamt up), support for Israel over settlement-building and the Gaza blockade, disregard for inequality, connivance with pressure to raise tuition fees, authoritarian dismissal of civil liberties, collusion with market fundamentalism, enthusiasm for the City and deregulated finance, indifference to concerns about immigration.   Phew! (more…)

Choosing the new Leader of a major political party, and therefore a potential Prime Minister, is at the heart of democracy.   But in the case of Ed Miliband’s recent elevation, it so nearly didn’t turn out like that, and it’s worth reflecting on the hidden factors which can so easily distort the democratic process. (more…)

The officials at the Labour Party Conference, pursuing again as usual the hard-right bias instilled by the culture still remaining from the tenure of a previous General Secretary, Margaret McDonagh, stitched up the economic debate today.   It was largely anodyne, consensual, safely attacking the Tories but saying little at all about why we lost or what our economic policy now is or should be.   So here is my contribution to that debate, however much they may disapprove. (more…)

The Tories and the Murdoch press were only to be expected to try to smear a new Labour leader.   But the jibe about a narrow victory only secured by trade union backing is just plain silly.   Once the weightings of the three sections of the electoral college (by which an MP’s vote counts 60 times more than an ordinary member’s vote) is removed and all votes count equally on a level playing field, Ed Miliband obtained 175,000 votes and David Miliband 147,000 votes.   The real measure of Ed’s victory is not the 1.3% lead in the electoral college based on weighted votes, but the 9% lead he secured on the basis of all votes counting equally.   And it’s worth noting that Cameron was elected on the back of 130,000 votes – rather less than both the main Labour candidates. (more…)

Ed M has run as the change candidate and that was unquestionably the right stance.   Change is what is overwhelmingly needed both by the Labour Party and by Britain.   If he wins, that change will come in four key areas.   First there will be alternative policies to redress the deficit which will oppose huge mindless cuts that hit the poorest hardest and decimate public services.   The Labour Party’s position on the cuts so far has been timid, rigid, compromising.   That will change as much greater focus is put on growth, job creation and taxing the super-rich.   When the weight of the cuts over the next 2 years cracks the coalition, a relentless Labour political onslaught on the Tories’ needless destruction of the Welfare State will be backed by sound economic alternatives on the deficit. (more…)

So far from being all in it together, there could hardly be a clearer illustration of selectivity in allocating pain than Pickles’  announcement today that there will be no house revaluation for the purposes of rebalancing the local Council Tax burden.   The last one was in 1993, and it is now hugely overdue.   The postponement of this necessary tax readjustment is pure politics.   Of the 7 million who would have been affected, it’s estimated that the overwhelming majority would have been in London, Surrey and the South-East.   Nearly all of these would have been Tory voters.   So the moral could hardly be clearer. (more…)

Rarely can a pamphlet have got it so wrong.   The significance of Peter Kellner’s diatribe against social democracy is not its ideas, which can be readily dismissed as extreme and even outlandish, but rather that such an unbalanced farrago of right-wing populism can purport to represent any strand of contemporary Labour thinking.   It reveals the mountain that has to be climbed if the Labour Party is to rid itself of the smothering blanket of the marketisation of everything, an endless programme of spending cuts, privatisation of welfare, and the abandonment of any concern about inequality (Mandelson’s ‘supremely relaxed about the filthy rich’ writ large).  But the analysis is deeply flawed and the counter-arguments scream out to be made. (more…)

Bully for Vince Cable today turning a harsh light into the murky world of corporate and City practices.   Pity that New Labour in 13 years never thought of doing this – they were too busy sucking up to City bosses.   But there’s one large glaring gap in the Cable plans.     He’s concerned about exorbitant bonuses, short-termist investors looking for a speculative killing, directors seduced by fat fees, and disregard for the interests of wider shareholders.   All quite right.   But the one group that is currently disadvantaged, even victimised, more than any other by capitalism are the employees.   So, Vince, what about the workers? (more…)

After yesterday’s performance one has to ask what grasp of economics Nick Clegg has.   His speech must count as one of the shallowest of any party leader at conference for many years, even in this non-ideological age.   On the central question of the cuts, it’s still unclear from his Blairite-style gush of rhetoric whether (1) be believes in TINA, that there is no alternative, or (2) he doesn’t agree with it and fought hard against it, but was knocked back, or (3) he doesn’t really agree with it, but he’ll accept anything to stay in government, or (4) he’s swallowed Osbornomics whole, hook, line and sinker.   What do you think? (more…)

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – the targets at the turn of the new millennium in 2000 to halve world poverty by 2015 – are self-contradictory  when the system that aspires to the reduction of global need is also the system that generates it in the first place.   The latest, and very serious, example of this is the worldwide rise in food prices and severe food shortages which in 2008-9 tipped 100 million people into starvation, caused by floods, droughts, waves of wildfires, and export bans from the world’s main granaries.   All of these were variously exacerbated by the international trading system, the refusal to mitigate or adapt to climate change, and rich country speculation on food prices.   So what should be done? (more…)

The last minute flurry of media columnists giving a lift to David M in a final effort to head off the Ed M threat, just before voting ends this Wednesday, shows how panicky they are that the safe haven of New Labour as an acceptable temporary option to the Tories may be about to end.   To take one example, Will Hutton delivers a rather contrived and shallow endorsement of DM in today’s Observer which falls well below his usual standards of insight and fair comment – as though he’d been told to make the best job of a slipping candidacy, but found the evidence to do so lacking.   Here are his words. (more…)

So the LibDems at their conference this weekend are trying to restore their battered image  by taking on the rich.   Bully for them.   Or is this another vain promise to keep the flag flying that evaporates within a few months?   Let us help them by suggesting a few targets for their campaign.   But first, they should be clear what the problem is.   According to the Tax Justice Network, the current UK tax gap now stands at £120bn.   This is made up of £70bn of illegal tax evasion, £25bn of tax avoidance (half by comapnies and half by super-rich individuals), and £28bn of uncollected/written off taxes.   Altogether this amounts to nearly one-fifth of the UK total tax liability which is owed, but not paid, by big corporations and ultra-rich individuals.   So what to do? (more…)

Nuclear is causing quite a finncial headache.   Given that the Treasury will force cuts on MoD of some 15-25%, Liam Fox’s determination to go ahead with Trident replacement at all costs means that the squeeze on the conventional remainder of the MoD budget is likely to be, not just painful, but seriously destructive for the armed forces.   Then there’s civil nuclear power.   Huhne has already complained publicly (but without achieving any of the intended Treasury concessions) that the legacy of nuclear waste management and decommissioning of existing nuclear plants as they drop out of service over the next dozen years will use up three-quarters of  his ECC Departmental budget.   Then there’s the big one – the cost of a whole new round of nuclear build on which the Tories are so determined.   This is turning out crippling. (more…)

Mervyn “we let it slip” King made the right TUC noises in his speech yesterday to trade union delegates in Manchester.   However, that is all he did do – make the right noises.   Banks that get it wrong in future, he said, “must be allowed to fail”.   Does he (the second most important financial wallah in Britain) think that if HSBC, Barclays, RBS or Lloyds collapsed next year, they would under current provisions be allowed to fail?   Of course not.   The only way that would happen is if their casino investment arm was split off from their basic High Street retail operations.   Is the Vickers Inquiry which is currently examining this question likely to recommend this enforced division?   Almost certainly not – the City and the Tories will trump Vince Cable. (more…)