Michael Meacher MP

How did the super-rich get away with flaunting the extreme and disgusting excesses of wealth for so long, without hardly a ripple of disapproval?   And why is the issue now being propelled to the front of the political agenda, first by the August riots and now only 2 months later by Occupy LSX?   Perhaps the reason is that when the economy is booming, contentment is widespread, even if some people are doing vastly better than others.   When the economy crashes as it did in 2008-9, everyone takes a knock and the reaction, however hurtful, is experienced as generally applying to all.   But when, as now, it is perceived that a few have bounced back to where they were before or even more and are gorging themselves off the fat of the land while the vast majority are feeling the pinch and are seriously squeezed, then the anger erupts.   And it won’t go away.   If the St. Paul’s encampment is swept away, it will only start up again elsewhere, and next time the rage will burn even more. (more…)

Tomorrow Compass will formally launch Plan B to kickstart the economy.   Typically however in today’s media it has already been fully leaked in today’s Observer.   It has some helpful (though not particularly original) ideas.   It wants to stop the cuts, start a new round of quantitative easing but giving the money direct to businesses, raise benefits to ease poverty and increase demand, make tax more progressive through a financial transactions tax and a multi-tiered income tax as well as a land value tax, establish a national investment bank to make loans and lever in private investment, and green the economy by decarbonising buildings and investing in green transport and infrastructure as well as achieving a better work-life balance.   All warm words from the Centre-Left perspective.   But it avoids the hard issues:  How is it to be paid for?   How is the economy to be rebalanced from finance to industry?   And how is manufacturing to be revived? (more…)

I went to  Occupy LSX outside St. Paul’s today after delivering a speech at a conference on how the banks had taken over and grossly abused in their own self-interest the control of the money supply.   It is critical to our economy and the future of the British State, yet it has never been discussed in the media and it has never been debated in Parliament.   In the tent village outside the cathedral however its iniquities and injustices are all too virally felt and expressed, even if the technicalities are not fully understood.   But where else is this cry of pain being raised, and why is it not being listened to? (more…)

The message written on the tents in front of St. Paul’s “What would Jesus do” goes to the heart of the matter and challenges all the actors in this drama.   Are you in favour of morality or mammon?   Of course it won’t be put like that since modern concerns like health and safety, land ownership, policing culture and legal constraints on the right to protest will get in the way and obfuscate the central issue.   But it isn’t just the Church which is caught on this dilemma – when the chips are down, which side are you on, community or greed? – it’s the political parties too.   We know which side the Tories are on, the enthusiastic champions of greedy capitalism, but where is the Labour Party in all this?   Does it remain holed up in its Westminster bubble, or is it clearly and actively going to take sides? (more…)

Some of the essential urgent components have now been put in place at last night’s Brussels summit, so that the Eurozone is safe for at least a few months ahead.   But this was dealing with the immediate symptoms.   The underlying structural flaws remain.   The main one is that the Eurozone was always built on the fallacy that tying together Germany – and its comparators Austria, Finland and the Netherlands – with Greece, Portugal, Ireland and maybe Spain and Italy could be made to work where the weaker economies were no longer able to change their interest and exchange rates.   That problem has not been solved and is perhaps insoluble.   The theory is that fiscal union, redistributive transfers and common European bonds, together with strict budgetary discipline, would enable compatibility.   They won’t, for some very good reasons. (more…)

Navigating the seemingly impenetrable Eurozone maze should not be impassable.   First, Greece should be allowed an orderly default since its debts will have risen to €357bn, or 160% of GDP, by the end of this year and cannot be paid off when its national output has shrunk by 15% over the last 3 years.   Second, to absorb a Greek default, holders of Greek bonds will have to accept substantial ‘haircuts’ (as high as 50-60%) and there will have to be a significant recapitalisation of core listed European banks exposed to Greek debt, especially French banks with an exposure of €12.7bn.   Third, a firewall must be extended round Spain and Italy by a much consolidated EFSF (European Financial Stability Facility), essentially the Eurozone rescue fund, to prevent the contagion spreading more widely. (more…)

To the innocent outsider it may seem odd or eccentric that the Tory party can so regularly self-destruct over Europe.   Yes, there’s plenty wrong with the EU – not least a sovereign debt crisis and a Eurozone economic structure which is currently untenable, but also a democratic deficit and genuine problems arising from the free movement of labour.   But what is really at stake here is not Europe as such at all, it’s rather the kind of society and economy that people want.   The far Right of the Tory party and UKIP, who are the ideological backbone of the anti-EU movement, want the removal of almost all regulations from finance and commerce so that wealth and power can achieve unfettered domination, a low tax and preferably flat tax system (i.e. no higher rate), and an employment system that allows ‘flexible’ (i.e. unregulated) hire and fire with minimalist constraints so that labour is firmly under control as a mere component of production.   Normally they keep quiet about their real objectives, but the referendum vote exposed it – and a lot more. (more…)

Buried in all the reporting about Gadaffi’s death was a much more significant piece of news about the Middle East.   Obama announced late on Friday night – with a timing very likely connected to the news from Libya – that all US troops will be withdrawan from Iraq in 2 months time.   This is a total and comprehensive defeat for the US over Iraq on every count.   The main motive for the US-UK invasion in 2003 was to secure and retain physical control over the Iraq oilfields; they have lost that.   Another key motive was to obtain a political, military and economic platform in the Middle East from which to dominate the region; they have lost that.   A further objective was to constrain and weaken the rising power of Iran throughout the region; the opposite has happened, and the influence of Iran has been substantially enhanced.   A lesser objective, but one much trumpeted, was to promote the cause of democracy in the Middle East; Iraq is now ruled by an authoritarian leader, has no democracy to speak of, and only the entirely unrelated Arab Spring is bringing any democratic influence to the region. (more…)

As the Tory party returns once again to its masochistic fixation with in-fighting over Europe, it is tempting for any Labour Leader to exploit self-inflicted Tory divisions by siding with the Tory rebels, perhaps a quarter of the whole party.    But Ed Miliband is right to forego a bout of schadenfreude.   First, to choose this moment for deliberately unleashing massive uncertainty about the future of the EU when it is facing the greatest threat to its existence over the sovereign debt crisis would be utterly irresponsible.   Second, to pretend that Britain would somehow be better off outside the EU when half our exports go to Europe and outside the EU would be faced with a high common external tariff is nonsense, just as imagining that Britain, 1% of the world population, would somehow be a greater force for good or better able to protect its wider interests outside the EU is pure illusion.   And thirdly, what the Tory Right is so obsessed with about coming out of Europe is repealing the very social, environmental and employment rights which make EU membership, warts and all, a gain not to be lightly dispensed with.

Occupy Wall Street, St Paul’s and 900 other cities across the world challenges the Labour Party to demonstrate that it’s not just a clique holed up in the corridors of Westminster, but a mass campaigning organisation that reaches out to the people and responds to their demands.   The second Occupation site now established in Finsbury Square, Moorgate, perhaps to be followed by others in addition, and the resolution to stay on site till Christmas or beyond, marks this out as no passing sit-in or protest march, but rather a determined campaign to bring about radical change in the grotesque excesses of power and wealth where the current parliamentary process is seen as irrelevant or ineffectual.   The question is, where is the Labour Party in all this? (more…)

Today 1.1 million members of Unison received their ballot papers asking them if they supported strike action in the event of the Government remaining fixed in their position that public service employees must pay more towards their pension, work further years before drawing their pension, and finally receive a smaller pension than had been previously promised.   The Government’s argument for this unwholesome menu is that the cost of public pensions is going through the roof, people are living longer so that postponing the age of retirement is inevitable, and anyway Labour left the economy in a terrible mess so that everyone has to grin and bear it whilst taking swingeing cuts.   Each of these arguments is is nuts. (more…)

The news about the police is unremittingly oppressive.   For the first time ever in crowd control they used a taser at the Dale Farm evictions, amid sickening scenes of unnecessary violence.   We now discover that senior police officers authorised undercover officers to conceal from the courts their real identities when giving evidence under oath while being prosecuted for offences committed during their secret deployment.   Even more alarmingly, the report by Hogan-Howe, the new Metropolitan Commisssioner, apparently (reliably leaked in advance, but withdrawn at the last moment through embarrassment about deceiving the courts) proposes to rule out more robust and independent oversight of undercover police officers, despite the widespread condemnation of the antics of Mark Kennedy and others in long-term fraternising with, and then betraying, green activists.   Then when this latter episode came to court, the case was dismissed because the CPS and police had wilfully concealed material evidence.   Even that is not the end of the story. (more…)

The Government has set great store on claiming that the Fox saga was a one-off.   He had broken the Ministerial code, he had refused to heed warnings from his Permanent Secretary that his behaviour was outside the constitutional guidelines for such a sensitive position, and in effect he was running a privatised foreign and defence policy independent of the FCO and MOD.   But, Cameron and others insisted, there were no wider implications because no other Ministers were behaving in this way.   Step forward Jonathan Djanogly, the justice minister, who right on cue has been forced out of regulating the claims management industry after an investigation by the Cabinet Secretary on the grounds that he didn’t declare that his brother-in-law owns a firm that provided staff for the claims management companies, and that he and his family could profit from the changes to legal aid he was piloting through Parliament.   But that’s minor compared to Gove. (more…)

George Monbiot in (yet another) forceful defence of democratic transparency draws attention to Atlantic Bridge,  founded by the disgraced Liam Fox and registered with the Charity Commission as a thinktank,  actually a lobby organisation demanding the usual right-wing menu of deregulation, privatisation, tax breaks, and cuts in public expenditure (apart from defence of course).    No.10 has now said that it will bring in a statutory register of lobbyists in the next parliamentary session (meaning 2012-3), and we should be grateful for the Fox-Werrity saga because, although it was part of the Coalition Agreement, it would probably have never seen the light of day otherwise.   But Monbiot adds a very important further point. (more…)

Hardly anyone has heard of the Beecroft report which went to Ministers several weeks ago, and that’s because it’s so rabidly right-wing that Cameron and Letwin refuse to disclose it.   Beecroft is a multi-millionaire private equity boss who was commissioned to examine easing the ‘burden’ of regulation on businesses – rather like  asking the wolf to decorate the sheep pen.   Leaks from his report indicate he is proposing the virtual phasing out of all employment rights, to the point where even someone who had worked for a company for 20-30 years would have no comeback if they were summarily sacked.   For Beecroft, labour is a mere commodity of production whose cost should be pared down to the irreducible minimum, and if the associated impedimenta of workplace rights can be stripped out, so much the better.   And now he’s proposing that over pensions too. (more…)