Michael Meacher MP

We were told by an airbrushed David Cameron in a Tory election poster just 8 months ago: “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS”.   We now know there will be £15-20bn cuts within 4 years.   He also pledged repeatedly “to stop the top-down reorganisation of the NHS”.   Just 2 months after the election we were presented with by far the biggest, most risky and destructinve reorganisation in the NHS’ history, with no consultation on the principles whatever, only on how they would be implemented.   Following tuition fees, abolishing universal child benefit and hiking VAT, this is the worst example yet of this Government’s calculated dishonesty. (more…)

Mubarak is finished.   There are two hinge points in revolutionary change.   One is the point at which the army decides whether to suppress the rebellion in an orgy of violence, or whether to withdraw support from the political leadership, refuse to fire on the demonstrators and pave the way for a (relatively) peaceful transition.   It’s clear that that point has now been reached in Egypt, and the signs are they’ve adopted the latter course by putting pressure on Mubarak to stand down.   At least the US and EU governments have performed the important service of telling Mubarak forcibly that the Tianamen Square option – using the tanks and the military to mow down the protesters in their hundreds – was unacceptable to world opinion, and deserted by his Western backers Mubarak now has no option left but to leave. (more…)

The fall of the Mubarak regime, which seems imminent as the momentum of the demonstrations seems unstoppable, will have epic consequences throughout the Middle East.   Egypt, which has hitherto been a pliant partner of Israel in support of Western interests, may well , once it has a government that reflects the popular will, take a more independent and robust stance towards Israeli atrocities like the murderous Gaza invasion and the continuing blockade.   Whilst it may not repudiate the existing peace treaty with Israel, a democratic Egypt certainly cannot be relied on to serve US (or for that matter, UK) interests cravenly or to stand by idly while fellow Muslims in Palestine continue to be subjected to persisting subjugation by Israel. (more…)

As the revolutionary tide gathers pace beyond Tunisia in Egypt and Yemen, is the West going to stay neutral, encourage the surge towards democracy, or covertly foment the resistance by the Western-backed dictatorships?   The answer to all supporters of progressive politics might seem obvious, except that right on cue two of the usual suspects offer a jarring note of discord.   Tony Blair demands that any process of change must be ordderly and stable, as though throwing off 50-year tyrannies without street protests and forceful resistance against violence by state police is an option.  He also warns, yet again, against Islamic extremism when it has been made absolutely clear that the Muslim Brotherhood is in no way an agent provocateur in these spontaneous riots.   Well, we always knew which side he was on – Western dominance and control, and in the Middle East specifically Israel.  Then we were assured by Lillary Clinton that the Egyptian government was stable and was seeking to respond to the legitimate demands of the Egyptian populace.   Such a fanciful notion without a shred of evidence in support merely shows how desperate the US Administration is to maintain the status quo  and how fearful they are of genuine democracy in the Middle East

Why did it take the police 5 years to ‘discover’ the evidence about News of the World phone-hacking which was already in their possession?   Scotland Yard  had been sitting all this time on the evidence that Ian Edmondson, assistant editor (news) at the NoW, was involved in phone-hacking, but had declined to take any action whatsoever.   It is impossible to believe that this was due to incompetence when this was an issue of such importance that two senior journalists at the NoW had already been prosecuted and jailed for this offence and the range of documented emails used to convice them contained ev idence that incriminated other NoW journalists and executives as well.   So why wasn’t this investigated? (more…)

How can the Government expect low-paid workers, the victims of the financial crash, to accept real terms pay cuts for the 6th year running when £7bn is still being paid in bankers’ bonuses this year and the banks, the perpetrators of the financial crash, are actually being given tax cuts this year by the Government?   It is a stunning fact that since 2005 average workers’ wages have fallen in real terms by 12%, and given rising inflation and the 2.5% VAT hike now working its way through the economy, it’s likely that by the end of this annus horribilis of 2011 the real terms fall will reach 14-15%.   This has never happened since the 1920-30s and perhaps even beyond that. (more…)

 There are no precedents for Jeremy Hunt’s concession to give News International another 6 months to try to meet the charge that allowing Murdoch to buy up all the remaining 61% of BSkyB shares he doesn’t already own wouldn’t undermine ‘media plurality’.   Ofcom clearly believes it would (as does virtually everyone else), and is minded to refer it to the Competition Commission, which is clearly right, but Hunt declines to do the right thing.   In addition to this obvious partisanship by the Minister in his new quasi-judicial role after the Cable gaffe, we also now know that shortly after removing Cable from his media role, Cameron had dinner with Rebekah Brooks, chief executive at News International, at her Oxfordshire home – another breach of preserving judicial independence and another sign of likely partiality.   Where is this leading? (more…)

The 1,600 documents leaked to al-Jazeera TV and the Guardian confirm one’s worst fears and open up a nightmare of reprisals and an inexorable slide to war.   The revelations of confidential Palestinian records tell a dreadful story of a nation not only crushed by overwhelming military power, but betrayed by its own negotiators and humiliated by negotiations that are a scarcely veiled cover for continuing relentless land annexation.   The Israeli policy of Might is Right is laid out in all its nakedness by Tzipi Livni, then Israel’s foreign minister, who is reported as saying that it has been the policy of the Israeli government for a long time to create facts on the ground by annexing land and building Jewish settlements within the West Bank sufficient to prevent the possibility of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.   The 20-year peace process is dead, there is no way it will be revived in the foreseeable future, and the most likely outcome – probably sooner rather than later – is war. (more…)

Four breakdowns in the last three days all point to the same central flaw which is now endemic in British society.   Public order policing is out of control and clearly would have remained so for many years had not the undercover police spy Mark Kennedy gone native.    Phone hacking of public figures we also now see has been clearly out of control at the News of the World and its existence was covered up again and again by Murdoch’s News International, apparently also with the connivance of the police.   Blair at his second appearance before Chilcot puts on full display his Manichaean view of the world as a struggle between good (the West) and evil (militant Islam), and his determination to let neither the views of his Attorney General his Cabinet, Parliament, or public opinion get in the way of implementing his own views and his total adherence to Bush.   And Lansley’s NHS ‘reforms’, unmentioned either in the Tory manifesto or in the coalition agreement, boun ced even his immediate colleagues.   These all have one fatal link. (more…)

Cameron clinging to Coulson as his media fixer to the last possible moment, well beyond the point when his departure was inevitable, does say something about Cameron’s judgement since he behaved in exactly the same way over Michael Ashcroft, the ex-patriate from Belize who bought up the Tory party.   Virtually everyone believed that Coulson must have know about the phone hacking at the News of the World when he was editor since it is inconceivable that any editor would have demanded to know where his big stories came from.   But Coulson’s enforced departure as the evidence has  mounted about the number of senior NoW jouralists in the know – the number so far is 5, though the true number is almost certainly far more – will not mark closure on the matter.   It is rather opening up  a much bigger scandal as the BSkyB decision hangs in the balance. (more…)

Thye Chilcot Inquiry seems to be getting near the truth about the lead-up to the Iraq War (nearly 8 years on after the event), but there are certain profound constitutional questions which even it may not answer, perhaps not even raise.   The most profound is: how should the State hold to account a Prime Minister whose performance and decision-making in matters of supreme national interest fall far short of the honesty and integrity expected of any holder of such high office?   A classic Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? question  (Who will guard the guards themselves?), but in terms of power the most important question of all.   It has arisen now because the full extent to which Blair played fast and loose with the truth, with Parliament and with his colleagues is at last becoming unambiguouslyclear. (more…)

It seems that Alan Johnson has resigned for genuine personal reasons, and we must wish him well in handling whatever those personal reasons (unspecified) are.   His successor, Ed Balls, is the right person for the job on several grounds.   He has great experience and a long track record in finance and unlike his predecessor will not need to bone up on an economic primer to master the subject; far from it he will hit the ground running.   He will also rough up George Osborne something terrible, which will go down extremely well both within the PLP and in the country.   He is of course helped in that by Tory economic policy which could hardly be more maladroit and ill-advised.   But the biggest reason to welcome the Balls appointment is that his instinct to move away from the damaging Brown-Darling New Labour economic legacy is right and strongly needed at the current juncture. (more…)

The combination of the 49,000 rise in unemployment to over 2.5 million, plus the biggest monthly rise in inflation on record to 3.7%, is explosive.   Two factors make this even more disturbing.   One is that this unprecedented hike in inflation, 0.4% in a single month, comes before the impact of the rise in VAT to 20% kicks in.   The second is that the big one-month rise in unemployment clearly foreshadows a gathering momentum in joblessness – most worryingly for young people – as sharply rising costs (with oil in particular now nearly $100 a barrel) choke off business activity and consumer confidence falls as the price and spending cuts squeeze takes effect.   So what should be done? (more…)

The degree of business takeover of key public services under this Tory-led government gathers pace almost by the day.   Today’s announcement about a minimum price for alcohol to curb binge drinking is a farce.   Sir Liam Donaldson, the former chief medical officer at the Department of Health, judged that the minimum price for a unit of alcohol should be 50p if 3,400 deaths a year from alcohol poisoning and 41,000 cases a year of serious disabling ill-health were to be avoided.   The price chosen by the government – or rather, since this is the whole point, by the Wine and Spirits Association – is a pathetic 21p a unit.   This is a price so absurdly low that it is estimated that it will affect only some 1% of alcohol sales.   The alcohol industry can rest assured that binge drinking can continue unscathed.   But that’s not the only issue by a long chalk. (more…)

This week the economic announcements are likely to show that unemployment is beginning to rise sharply, inflation too is edging up (even before the VAT hike kicks in), and consumer spending portends a further economic slowdown.   That might of course be explained as temporary but necessary pain before things get better.   But there is another scenario which is far more likely.   The clue to what is really happening is supplied by the OBR’s marking down of the deficit total at the time of the June budget to £155bn compared with the Treasury’s estimate of £178bn six months earlier.   This £23bn reduction before the Budget cuts took effect was never officially explained, but plainly follows the increased boost to spending provided by Labour in 2009.   This obviously disproves Osbornomics that increased spending can only increase the deficit and that drastic cuts are required.   That must be the starting point for Labour’s alternative strategy.   So how much further can additional spending now be pushed? (more…)