Michael Meacher MP

When it is said, as it often is, that where America goes, Europe (and particularly the UK) will follow soon, it is worrisome that we do not have our own self-confidence and our distinctive vision.   When it is said about the funding of politics, it is deeply disturbing.

It has just been estimated that spending in the current US Congressional elections will exceed $3.7bn (£2.5bn).   In one State alone, California, $100m (£69m) has already been spendt by two multi-millionaires in the race for the Republican nomination – that’s before the real battle starts against the Democratic candidate.   Such huge sums of money are spent, not only on saturation TV coverage with personal attack advertising, but also on chartered jets, hotels, political consultants (charging up to $90,000 a month), and vote delivery.   Is this where we’re heading? (more…)

It’s beginning to happen already, even before the new Parliament meets for the first time tomorrow, and what are now tiny cracks will open up all too soon into major fissures.   It’s not just Charlie Kennedy and David Steel expressing their reservations, it’s not just hundreds of LibDem supporters already switching to Labour, nor is it just grassroots LibDems at their Birmingham conference today vainly putting down red lines which their leadership should not cross whether on tuition fees (already ditched), VAT, inequality or Iran.   It’s most of all that a party that is so patently sacrificing its fundamental values will lose its identity and be torn apart, not immediately – as in marriage irreparable differences take time to build up – but ineluctably crisis by crisis.

A Tory-LibDem pact is not so much a surprise as a total suspension of belief.   Such a vision reminds one of the Minister’s wife who was asked: ‘Did you ever in your wildest dreams ever see your husband as a Minister in the Government?’ and replied “I have to tell you that my husband never featured in my wildest dreams”.

The grand talk of a reformist coalition is already looking bare even before it’s started.   With the neocon Trident-hardliner Liam Fox as Defence Minister, the anti-EU fanatical and Ashcroft-corrupted William Hague as Foreign Secretary, the inexperienced weakest link George Osborne as Chancellor, the anti-State ultra-marketeer Michael Gove as Education Secretary, and the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights Teresa May as Equalities Minister, it’s a throwback to the Thatcher era, in reactionary instincts if not in the same form.

But the first and biggest crunch will come with the spending cuts, not just the £6bn to reverse the insurance contribution increase, but the far bigger cuts to satisfy the financial markets’ demands for much deeper cuts much sooner than were planned under the previous Government.   The Budget within the next 6 weeks will stretch the credibility of the LibDems – even of “savage cuts” Clegg, let alone his strongest supporters – and this is just stage 1.   And even before we get to stage 2, next year’s swingeing cuts, it is likely that the gathering Eurozone crisis will impact brutally on Britian’s finances.   Already it’s predicted (by the EU Commission) that the British budget deficit will swell this year to become at 12% of GDP the biggest in the EU, overtaking even Greece.   If the Tory-LibDem pact survives these almighty bumps along the road, it would be a miracle, and miracles don’t happen in politics.

A checklist of 4 key items will determine the nature of this new Government and its likely fate.    They are:

1   Who will carry the burden of the big spending cuts which the Tories have repeatedly declared their intention to impose in this next year and which the LibDems have now succumbed to?   If it is low-paid public sector workers – nurses, teachers, porters, dinner ladies, low-level administrative staff, local government workers – rather than the top echelons especially the bankers with their bonus millions, there will be serious social unrest – maybe not on the Greek scale, but certainly enough to prevent a Tory election victory any time in the next year. (more…)

So the Labour-LibDem negotiations never really got off the ground, probably for two main reasons.   Its dependence on the Scottish and Irish nationalists made it too unstable since their demands were likely to be excessive and they could sink the deal at any time.   There was also probably a lingering apprehension that a deal with Labour which had many less seats and a much smaller vote that the largest party was somehow not really legitimate.   But Clegg still pursued the negotiations probably to get a better deal (from his point of view) from Labour in order to force the Tories to up their offer further.   To that extent he succeeded.   But the small print of that improved offer may well torpedo this emerging Tory-LibDem coalition. (more…)

This election has really been a disaster for the Tories.   If they can’t win an election in the event of a financial meltdown and deep economic recession, a highly unpopular Prime Minister, the MPs’ expenses scandal, and a widespread feeling that New Labour had run out of steam, they never will.   Cameron should now be hung out to dry in his own party, and probably will be.

They needed 324 seats (since Sinn Fein won’t take up at Westminster the 4 seats they won) to gain an overall majority.   They got only 306, and with the 9 DUP they can must 315 – 9 short.   Of course the Tories will do their utmost to try to get a deal from the LibDems, but it is very difficult to see how they can manage it.

(more…)

If you think that the election campaign has been a roller-coaster of surprises and shocks, just wait for the constitutional manoeuvrings which will begin at about 5am on Friday morning when the results of the election are beginning to become clear.   Assuming that the Tories don’t get an overall majority, i.e. a total of at least 326 seats or at least 130 more than they hold at present, several constitutional chasms will open up:

Crisis No.1

If there is any hope of doing a deal with Clegg to stay in power and if Clegg states, as he has already done, that (in addition to electoral reform) he will do a deal with Labour but not with Brown,  the Cabinet will likely have an early meeting on Friday and select another leader from among themselves. (more…)

The most revealing point about the Tories’ position this weekend is not that they’re inching into the lead, but rather that they’re not streets ahead.   With Brown’s failure to regulate the banks prior to the financial meltdown, the year and a half of economic decline, the enormous deficit in the public finances, the fall in real incomes during this parliament, and a fragile recovery still lacking in jobs, Cameron had an open goal.   Yet he is still seen even after the third Leaders’ debate as more spin than substance, he has repeatedly made the wrong call on the economy, and despite Labour’s intense vulnerability he has no convincing alternative. (more…)

Nick Clegg’s announcement this morning that he will make no accommodation with Labour while Gordon Brown remains leader is just the latest in this extraordinary confluence of radical scenarios which is the British election 2010.   The most immediate issue is: how, if this were in fact the post-election scenario, could Labour elect a new leader for the purposes of negotiations confined within 12 days after 6 May?   Presumably it would be said, faute de mieux, that the new PLP would be rapidly convened, allow one or two days for nominations, and then one or two days for the election, subject (which can hardly be omitted) to confirmation by Conference in September.   It seems highly doubtful whether Clegg would countenance this.   But how elese can it be done? (more…)

As everyone knows, anything couold happen in this election.   But some scenarious are intriguing:

1   If Clegg can hold his own in the second debate, aided further by significant new registrations to vote up to today’s deadline especially by younger persons intending to vote Lib Dem, he could find himself atop a commanding third bloc of seats in the Commons with neither of the two main parties close to an overall majority.   He could then:

either (i)  refuse to join either of the two bigger parties and seek to constrain a minority government in the direction of key concessions to Lib Dem policy,

or (ii) throw his weight behind whichever party gained the most seats, but only on the basis of certain concessions, particularly electoral reform. (more…)

The ironies abound.   The only reason that Clegg was there in the debate at all was that Cameron agreed it.   The only reason that the debate took place at all was that Cameron insisted on it.   It was he who threw down the challenge in the first place, and when his own advisers strongly recommended against it – on the very good grounds that he was ahead in the polls and had everything to lose and nothing to gain – he overrode their advice.   For Cameron is a vain man and was sure he would triumph, and didn’t want to miss an opportunity of proving it.   He must be ruing it now. (more…)

All three party manifestos favour handing more power to the public.   But underneath the populist rhetoric there’s a very different story of their real intentions.   Labour retains the public sector model, but links it with a federated framework for schools and police forces and a hint of interventionism in industry.    The Lib Dems (or the Dim Libs as my secretary calls them in Oldham) combine people power with tax reform and redistribution.   The Tories however have a very different agenda once you look at the small print. (more…)

1. So we’re all in it together, as the tories keep repeating.   When Osborne first declared this ( repeatedly) at the tory party conference, my first reaction was that this was a barely veiled attempt to slough off the banks’ multi-billion crimes of recklessness on to the rest of us, and notably the public sector in terms of pay cuts and massive loss of jobs.   Whilst that is obviously true, I think a deeper significance in this praying in aid the rest of us is now becoming clear.

The new tory mantra is now ‘There is such a thing as society, but it is not the same as the state’.    Well, maybe it’s good to see Mrs. Thatcher’s political cadaver finally dead and buried, but it’s not as simple as that.   You really can’t continue to say that everyone should look after himself or herself, that individualism is rampant, that markets are about maximizing self-interest, and then say, as the tories repeatedly did at their Battersea Power Station send-off yesterday, that we need ‘national effort’, ‘new economic models’ (so capitalism or neo-liberalism won’t do any more – tory shock horror!), and ‘collective endeavour’.

So how are the tories managing this ideological gymnastics?    By making a distinction between the State and the ‘Big Society’ (whatever that is).   But then what’s the point of this distinction (if, that is, you can understand it)?   The real point here is that the tories have been brought, reluctant and sullen, to recognise that social, not to say collective, responsibility is a key ingredient in any half-decent and civilised society.   If society is broken, as Cameron keeps on insisting, it’s because of the Thatcherite onslaught in favour of unabashed selfishness.

The other problem the Tories have is with the other side of the equation.   Between gritted teeth they’ll admit that action to limit the huge downsides of Britain’s unadulterated class system is needed, but they don’t want the State involved at any cost.   Partly that’s because they’ve always wanted to shrink the State, to reduce their own taxes, but even more it’s because the State is the one effective instrument of making sure things actually happen.   Leave it to Lady Bountiful, leave it to charity (preferably with some nice tax breaks), leave it to voluntary activity, and we can just do our token bit for the lower classes.   Without the State there is no enforcement, no assurance of outcomes, just a tingling of the charitable impulse, but never enough to be anything like affective.

Now wonder the Tories are in a conceptual mess.   Neo-liberal selfishness has run its course, they’ve been forced to see the need for social action, but the one thing they’ll never concede is a strong State which alone can make that social action effective.

Labour’s manifesto has been spun on two levels.   One, for the great mass of voters who look to elections for who will most improve their lives, offers enhanced hospital, school and police services through mergers and takeovers by authorities with a better track record.   The other, more subtly for the political classes, hints at a switch to more interventionism and less trust in unfettered markets.

The risk with the first is that it puts too much emphasis on structure and managerialism to the exclusion of other deeper causes of poor performance.   But a wider point is that once again, as in the previous three elections, the focus is narrowly on health and education (and police) as though everything else has been sorted and agreed.   It hasn’t.   There is nothing about the march towards a more authoritarian State, nothing about the public service (affordable housing for low-income people) which has been consistently ignored for three decades, nothing about rancid inequality and out-of-control greed at the top.

On the second point about the political tone of the manifesto, there is certainly no trace of the market triumphalism of the past.   But the shift towards the values of social democracy is still very weak and nuanced.   Even on the key commitment to keep Royal Mail in the public sector, Mandelson is still openly keen to keep options open (to wave the Blairite flag) which spoils the whole effect.

But what is really most extraordinary about this election is that after the biggest financial collapse for nearly a century and a recognition on all sides that capitalism needs major reform, not a single scintilla of ideology is emerging from any of the three parties.   It is incredible that official institutions and pundits are queueing up to condemn some of the central planks of modern capitalism – not only the discredited banking system, but the wholehearted business emphasis on short-term profit, unlimited executive pay, exclusive concentration on shareholders, and corporate takeovers determined by hedge funds rather than the national interest.

Yet not a word of this seeps into the political debate.   No wonder there is such disillusionment about the political leadership of all the parties.

One month to go, and the main issues so far seem to be safeguarding the economic recovery, immigration, and whether exempting half or more of employees from the 1% rise in insurance contributions at a cost of some £7bn is a good idea or not.   Yet that is not what the real arguments should be about.

Neither party is addressing the central issue of whether deep cuts (‘deeper than under Margaret Thatcher’) are needed at all to bring down the deficit if the rich (the top 10% and particularly the top 3%) are made to pay their way through increased taxes, reduced allowances and tax breaks, and the stopping of artificial tax avoidance, and if economic growth picks up anywhere near as fast as the Government is predicting.

Neither party is offering policies to tackle directly the economic disaster of 2.5 million jobless through a public sector-led job creation programme rather than a range of minor tax incentives to business which will leave unemployment far higher for far longer.

Neither party will face up to the banks, whose bail-out and the recession it generated has increased Britain’s national debt to over £73obn so far and who have used the money overwhelmingly to stuff their own balances, by forcing them instead to lend to businesses and homeowners starved of credit and thus to cut unemployment and strengthen the recovery.

Neither party is mentioning the biggest social indictment in Britain today, – the collapse of house-building to its lowest level since 1922 and the failure over the last decade to build more than 300 Council houses a year (half a house per constituency) when there are 1.8 million households on Council waiting lists.

Neither party is offering any prospect of serious banking reform which will prevent a recurrence of the worst financial crisis for 80 years, namely the splitting off of casino investment banks from retail banks, the prohibition or tight regulation of toxic derivatives, and the downsizing of gargantuan banks that are ‘too big to fail’.

Neither party is offering any policies to eliminate unacceptable inequality which is now greater than at any time in the last century and which now leaves top executives with incomes 100 times higher than the average worker, and will not even introduce a High Pay Commission to regulate the grotesque excesses at the top of the income scale.

If all the big issues are being sidestepped, what’s the point of an election?

One of the (many) curent complaints against Parliament is that it doesn’t reflect the diversity and pluralism of the British people.   This is true.   There are far too may lawyers, P.R. specialists, and former devotees of student politics, and not enough women, black or Asian members, or working class representatives.   The bad news is that these trends are set to get worse in the next Parliament as the leadership of both the main parties ruthlessly fixes their own parliamentary party selections to ensure their own factional and personally favoured candidates get chosen and that any serious rivals are squeexed out even before any vote takes place.

This last weekend saw a classic example of this, just the latest of a long long line of skulduggery.   There were 7 potential candidates applying for the relatively safe Labour seat of Stoke Central, when very sadly the sitting MP, Mark Fisher, was forced to stand down because of ill health.   There were two women and two Asian candidates in addition to the potential front-runners, Tristram Hunt from the Blairite Right, Byron Taylor as the trade unionist secretary of TULO, and Mark Seddon from the Centre-Left.

Prior to this selection Tristram Hunt had contested the Leyton and Wanstead seat as the candidate of the Right, supported strongly by Mandelson, but in the event came fourth and lost out to John Cryer from  the Centre-Left.  Mandelson was reputed to be furious, and determined that at the next selection his favoured candidate would as far as possible be guaranteed to win.

Tristram Hunt had already been given some weeks ahead the membership lists of constituency members entitled to vote – a big advantage in enabling him to canvass members before any other candidate had a chance.   But not content with this, steps were also taken to ensure that Mark Seddon didn’t even make it on to the long list despite a track record of service to the Party second to none, including the editorship of Tribune, and Byron Taylor wsas excluded from the short list despite holding a senior strategic position within the Labour Movement.

The manipulation of these selections by the machinations of the party machines and the predilections of party leaders, without any regard for local democratic choice, represent one of the seamiest aspects of current politics which bring the parties – both parties – into utter disrepute, cynicism and disdain among the general electorate.   If the leaders really cared about democracy and constitutional transparency, as they all profess to do, this kind of ugly malpractice would be stopped immediately.