Michael Meacher - Labour's Future

Some useful proposals – though the devil may lie in the detail, not yet revealed – but disappointing on the vision and no razzmatazz of new ideas for a new leader, largely because Gordon Brown has already been leading on the domestic policy agenda for the past ten years and now has nothing much new to say.

It’s good that after two decades of neglect of social housing amidst the triumphalist ideology of private ownership, the national scandal of housing need is now at least being noticed. Council waiting lists are now above 1 ½ million and there are over 100,000 homeless, yet only 100 Council homes were built last year (down from 13,000 a year at the end of the Thatcher era). The housing stock is only growing by some 185,000 a year at present, yet the number of new households being formed each year is about 220,000. We are still going backwards. Building an extra 40,000 homes a year, as the Government proposes, is clearly nowhere near enough to meet the yawning gap of housing need. And how many of the 40,000 will be social housing anyway? And why are local authorities still not being allowed to build more Council houses themselves if they wish, borrowing against the security of their own existing housing stock?

Changes to the planning system, as is proposed, might seem sensible when some planning decisions have clearly taken far too long. The 8 years spent on the Heathrow Terminal 5 decision is usually quoted here (though much of that was accounted for by the time spent on Ministers’ desks after the planning report was submitted). But today’s proposals are motivated by very different criteria. National Policy Statements will be drawn up which will enable an array of major developments – nuclear power and nuclear waste facilities, coal-fired power stations, airport expansions, major road schemes, and large waste incinerators – to be put through without the public having a say on whether they are needed or safe, or where they are to be located. This rather conflicts with Brown’s stated wish to bring more democracy into public decisions.

A Climate Change Bill is very welcome, but again its contents leave a lot to be desired. It promises a review of progress in cutting carbon emissions every 5 years which is far too lax when the UK is way off track to meet the Government’s objectives. Clearly annual targets, published and enforceable, are urgently needed. Moreover, air travel and shipping emissions are omitted, even though they are the fastest rising sources of emissions. Nor are mere targets sufficient anyway when other Government policies, notably a tripling of airport capacity by 2030, are diametrically opposed.

Democratisation has also been one of Gordon’s ostensible goals, which is also desperately needed. But it has to stretch a great deal further than simply giving Parliament a vote before the country goes to war – a concession which after the Iraq debacle would probably be inevitable anyway. Parliament needs real new power on a much broader front – electing Select Committee members rather than letting the Whips use the patronage to gain a wider acquiescence, ratifying (or not) Cabinet nominations made by the PM, approving (or not) the membership and terms of reference of Committees of Inquiry proposed by the PM, and setting up their own Parliamentary Commissions to investigate controversial issues (e.g. extraordinary rendition) when the Government refuses to do so. Nor can the idea of greater democracy cut much ice when the Government is still intending to pursue the ID cards folly and, even worse, extend the 28-days detention without charge in defiance of the 800 year old habeas corpus.

And what is not in the Queen’s Speech is perhaps even more important than what is. There’s nothing about redressing the centralisation of power which is such an indictment of the current state of Britain. There’s nothing about redressing the grotesque inequality of income and wealth – nor was there is in the Pre-Budget Report a month ago. And there’s nothing about restoring the ethos of public service which has taken such a battering under Blair – indeed it’s taking a further hit currently with the huge cutbacks in BBC funding which threaten public service broadcasting. Et tu, Gordon?

Posted by Michael Meacher at 11:22 AM | Permalink

The current debate about whether there should be a referendum on the proposed EU Reform Treaty isn’t really about the precise arguments for or against it at all. Rather it’s about people’s different conceptions of what the EU is about or what it’s for.

If you’re a Eurosceptic who thinks the EU should be a loose trading relationship with little or no political super-structure, you’ll support a referendum in the expectation that it will be lost, which might then open the way to leaving the EU and achieving the neo-conservative goal of closer alignment with the US.

However, the arguments actually used are that having an elected EU President for a 30-month term, creating an EU Foreign Minister in all but in name, making the EU a legal entity in certain contexts, and sacrificing the veto by the switch to QMV in 60 (mostly minor) policy areas constitutes a shift of power to Brussels – which it is – though whether it’s a significant shift is a fine judgement. It’s also argued too that Blair promised a referendum on the EU Constitution before the 2005 election (to keep the Murdoch press sweet) and that this Reform Treaty is almost the same– which it is – though it involves nothing like the leap in integration agreed in the Single European Act in 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 when there were no referendums. And anyway Blair changed his position on having a referendum 6 times in his last 5 years as PM, so there’s plenty of evidence to quote for his supporting either side of the argument.

What drives the pro-referendum lobby therefore is not their ostensible claims, which are anyway not as strong as they pretend, but rather their underlying view of Europe and their hostility to any move towards even the slightest pooling of sovereignty, whatever the corresponding gains might be.

If you’re a Europhile, the argument will be that there’s no loss of power since Member States will still have to reach unanimous agreement over common policy objectives and a declaration confirms that foreign policy will remain under the control of Member States – though the declaration is not legally binding. It will also be argued that Britain retains an opt-in if it wishes to co-operate with other States in tackling such issues as terrorism and crime – though if Britain did opt-in to an agreement and then found that the final draft was unacceptable, it might not be able to opt out again.

Again therefore the anti-referendum lobby is equally motivated less by force of argument over the minutiae of the Treaty than by their underlying concept of Europe and their sense of Britain’s purpose within it. The key issue here then is how precisely that purpose is delineated.

Continue reading "To referendum or not to referendum" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 11:17 AM | Permalink

(Photo: Labour Behind The Label)

The news that three major discount clothing retailers - Asda, Tesco and Primark - import clothes from factories in Bangladesh where workers are forced to work up to 80 hours a week for only 4p an hour in some cases has made the supermarket chains launch an investigation into press reports about conditions in these factories. As though they didn't know!

Bully for the investigative media - what's left of it - but the point is it shouldn't have to depend on such freelance initiatives. The big private companies are major players in the UK and international economy, and the way they operate have huge ramifications - for consumers, suppliers, workers, job opportunities and job losses, labour standards and workplace rights, the environment and climate impacts, resource and energy use, waste generation and pollution, as well as for competitiveness and more generally for the country's social/economic image.

So as in this particular case involving gross exploitation of workers in Bangladesh, the public is entitled to know the facts, the economic realities, and the shameful treatment that lies behind cheap merchandise in our shops. The lesson of this episode is that the scope of the Freedom of Information Act should be extended to, say, the top 1,000 biggest private companies whose influence on our society and way of life equals, if not surpasses, the impact of the public sector. This must be one of our demands on the new Brown Government which has made such a point about strengthening accountability.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 12:40 PM | Permalink

From today's Times:

Politics is in a curiously disorientated state in Britain today. On one side, old-style Toryism was voted out in 1997, and has now been replaced by a soft veneer of environmentalism and family-centredness that contrasts sharply with the excesses of private equity capitalism. On the other, the persistent shifting to the right under new Labour has now blown itself out, as the polls indicate, leaving a large segment of political space occupied by mainstream Labour opinion and probably a majority of the electorate as a whole largely disenfranchised.

This key part of the spectrum urgently needs representation to give it fresh direction — not old Labour either, but a modern progressive politics addressing the big issues now being ducked and championing key groups now being marginalised.

First, we need a change of direction to heal the divisions that are increasingly straining the fabric of our society. The Government has made some progress in reducing poverty, but not nearly enough. Inequalities are actually increasing. The average pay of the chief executives of the top FTSE 100 companies is now £46,150 a week, 250 times the minimum wage and 500 times the state pension, while at the same time there are still 12.5 million people, including more than 2 million children, living in households below the Government’s poverty line. This matters because reducing inequality leads to less violence, better health, longer life expectancy, lower teenage birth rates and higher educational attainment.

We need a new approach to cutting crime if we genuinely believe in being as tough on the causes of crime as on crime itself. It’s not sensible to go on banging people up even faster than we can build new prisons without tackling much harder the causes of criminality, and putting much more emphasis on reducing recidivism. Despite unprecedented increase in the use of custody, reconviction rates have soared. The hardline policy isn’t working.

We must drastically reduce the prison population, confining it to violent and dangerous offenders. We should provide instead secure units in the community where lesser offenders are required to attend compulsory courses on anger control, money management and parenting, and also to receive education and skills training and treatment for drug addiction and mental health needs, and are made to do unpaid work to repay the community.

Probably the best crime reduction value for money comes from parenting programmes and youth inclusion panels, bringing together local services to focus support on 8 to 13-year-olds at highest risk. Of course there are increased costs involved in intensive rehabilitation, but if prison places and reoffending costs can be significantly reduced, there should be a substantial net saving in public expenditure.

We need too to arrest the overcentralisation of power in this country. Key decisions, such as the replacement of Trident and the restoration of nuclear energy, should not be taken without consultation of the Cabinet, Parliament and public opinion.

Indeed, the most direct way to win back public trust and reconnect with the electorate is for the Government to be seen as genuinely accountable, listening and being prepared to adjust in the face of strong public demand.

It also means Parliament reasserting its authority by taking the right to ratify (or not) nominations to the Cabinet made by the Prime Minister, by appointing committees of inquiry where the Government refuses to do so (as over rendition flights), by ending the Royal Prerogative whereby the Prime Minister can unilaterally declare war and authorise military action, and through its select committees tabling its own motions for debate and voting on the floor of the Commons. Giving the public the right to initiate legislation through referendums is another issue to explore.

We also need much more vigorously to tackle the greatest threat facing the world today: climate change. It must permeate every policy area of Government — not just energy, but transport, industry, building, agriculture, public expenditure and taxation, and foreign policy. It is not enough merely to talk of the end of oil dependence when our electricity generation from renewable energy is, at just 4 per cent, by far the lowest in Europe.

We need an overall plan to meet the scientists’ target of reducing carbon emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050. It is a colossal challenge, but a win-win-win-win scenario. It will increase energy efficiency hugely, create large savings for industry and some of our poorest households, protect our economy against sudden destabilising external shocks and safeguard us from climate catastrophe.

Finally, we must stop being subservient to the US. We can’t go on being America’s glove puppet, as we have been over Iraq and Lebanon, and, most worryingly, Iran. We need a foreign policy that robustly reasserts our own essential British interests and our commitment to the UN. The first demonstration of that should be strong opposition to any potential US or Israeli attack on Iran, and insistence that the nuclear impasse must be resolved by negotiation or by UN sanctions, not by violence.

We should take the advice not of the US but of British military commanders on the spot in speeding up our troop withdrawal from Iraq. And we should push for a wider international peace conference for a joint settlement of interconnected Middle East issues that cannot be solved one by one. The latest reports of a US change of heart about talking to Iran and Syria make this now a serious possibility.

It is because I believe that radical new policies of this kind would reenergise politics in this country that I am standing for the leadership of the Labour Party.

www.michaelmeacher.info

Posted by Michael Meacher at 02:04 PM | Permalink

I think there are four key challenges now facing the EU. First, Europe's economic problems cannot be solved with supply side reforms alone. Weak domestic demand in many cases, made worse by the constriction of the Stability and Growth Pact, should be tackled by setting up a counter cyclical European Recovery Fund and by developing ECOFIN as a real political counterpart to the European Central Bank.

Second, the EU's response to the global economy should be smarter than simply posing a choice between liberalisation and protectionism. It should seek to stabilise exchange rates and prevent speculative capital flows from destabilising healthy economies through a Tobin tax. It should press for an international clearing union to smooth trade imbalances by requiring countries to recycle their surpluses to maintain global demand. And it should take the lead in benchmarking social and environmental standards into world trade rules.

Third, the EU should give its social model a more distinctive European form. To deal with collapsing corporate provision, it should set up a European social fund into which companies should contribute a proportion of their profits to meet at least some of the spending needed to guarantee security in retirement as well as providing at least minimum standards for a European childcare guarantee.

Fourth, it must democratise EU politics so as to enable Europeans to feel involved in a common political debate about their future. Maybe a new Preseident of the European Council should lead on Europe-wide elections so that electors voted more as Europeans.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 01:54 PM | Permalink

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:24 AM | Permalink

Meacher: why Spectator readers should vote for me

A leadership election opens up, uniquely, the opportunity to debate and decide on the future course of a government. I am standing because I believe there are several areas of policy where a fundamental change of direction is now needed. And though Spectator readers may initially be sceptical about the relevance of my policies to them, I believe that if they read on with an open mind, they'll find much that they agree with. I'm sure they'll agree, for instance, that New Labour and Tory policies have become similar, almost overlapping, which means that politics has become increasingly fixated on personalities, as though a blanket consensus on policy had been achieved. This is ridiculous. Old-style Toryism was rejected in 1997, and now New Labour - the continuing moving-right show - has clearly faded. It's time, not for Old Labour either, but for a mainstream Labour approach - which may well represent majority opinion within the electorate but has been suppressed for over a decade - to be reasserted as a modern progressive politics with new solutions to today's profound problems.

Continue reading "From the Spectator (3 March 2007)" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:09 AM | Permalink

(From the Independent)

Labour leadership contender answers your questions, such as 'Why not sell your flats to help fight against poverty?' & 'What's your guilty pleasure?'
Published: 05 March 2007

Are you a socialist? What does that mean today? MIKE WOODBRIDGE, Brighton

Yes, I am. A socialist believes that while the market has its proper place, the fundamental principles underpinning society should be equity, social justice, equality of opportunity, and democratic accountability. Even where the market is a dominant force, socialists believe it should be regulated to ensure high environmental, social and labour standards.

Why, as a socialist, do you own so many houses? GARY BROWNE, Glasgow

As I have regularly stated in the register of Members' interests, I own four flats. I have saved throughout my life, and put my savings into property. I don't think [that] is contrary to socialism.

Given your views on poverty, why not sell some of your houses and give the money to charity? Or are you just another hypocritical politician? V AHMAD, Birmingham

I already give a significant amount to charity . I agree there is an urgent need to build much more social, affordable housing but selling my flats which are already occupied would not contribute one iota to that.

Isn't it delusional of you to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership? MAURICE BURKE, Birmingham

No. There should be a contest because only an election enables us to debate the real policy issues. I also believe that members of the Labour Party should have the right to choose their own leaders. I believe, too, that as New Labour, of which Gordon Brown is perhaps the main architect, has moved continually ever further to the right, the mainstream majority of the party has been left disenfranchised and without a voice. It is not sensible to assume the results of any election before the electors have had a chance to deliver their opinion which may sometimes come as rather a shock to the chattering classes. Not too many people I guess expected David Cameron to come from behind and win the Tory Party leadership.

Don't you think Gordon offers Labour the best hope of winning the next election? VALERIE EVANS, Cardiff

Have you seen the last two polls? Both put the Tories 11 per cent ahead, and one poll found that if Gordon was leader, the Tories would be 13 per cent ahead.

I am a Labour supporter, but I despair that Gordon Brown has been such a coward over the war, talks nonsense on 'Britishness' and seems so in love with Rupert Murdoch that he will hand the next election to Cameron. Do you agree - and if not, which bits do you disagree with and why? DAVE FISCHER, Sheffield

Cameron has certainly, at this stage at least, improved the Tories' poll ratings, but not, I think, for the reasons you give.

A majority on the Labour left support John McDonnell and see your campaign as a spoiler which will only split the vote and stop a contest. Will you stand down if John has more nominations when Blair resigns? SUSAN PRESS, Calder Valley

There is no evidence whatever that a majority of people on the Labour Party left and the affiliated trade union movement support John McDonnell for leader. I have a great deal of respect for John, but I don't believe he can get the necessary 45 nominations, whereas I believe I can. I am not splitting the vote, but rather giving the centre-left the chance, to run a candidate who can pass the nominations threshold. But I do agree that whichever of the two of us has the larger number of nominations, the other should stand down when Tony Blair resigns.

Why not use that photo of you on Blackpool beach (very Daniel Craig) for your campaign posters? CONOR MURPHY, Reading

Good try. At least it shows I'm healthy.

Do you think Blair should stand down now?STEVE HARRISON, Bolton

The sooner he stands down, the better.

Why did you vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq?DEAN PALMER, Norwich

I made the biggest mistake of my political life when I supported the war, on the grounds that the Prime Minister repeatedly gave chapter and verse about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and assured us that if only we knew all the intelligence available to him, we would have no doubts about the necessity for this action. I still find it deeply disturbing for democracy that a prime minister can so massage and fabricate the evidence in order to push through a preconceived war plan.

Do you think Blair lied to his MPs and lied to the country over Iraq?JEFF TERRY, Dundee

I think the highly selective manipulation of such evidence as there was, together with the highly prejudicial use to which it was put, was deeply dishonest.

You claim you were misled that Saddam had a WMD programme. Yet you say the West has no right to tell Iran not to develop nuclear weapons. Aren't you being rather inconsistent over Iraq and Iran?JIM ROLAND, London NW11

No, these are two quite separate arguments. Yes, we were certainly misled over Saddam's alleged WMD programme. While we should try to prevent Iranian nuclear weapons by negotiation and UN sanctions, we cannot say that nuclear weapons are indispensable for our own security, and then say Iran does not need them for their own security, especially when Iran (unlike the West) is surrounded by seven states which are nuclear-armed and some very hostile.

Do you truly believe that the US government knew about 9/11 but failed to prevent it?CHRIS QUIGLEY, by email

Clearly the US government did not know the precise time and location of the al-Qa'ida attack, but equally clearly there was a great deal of intelligence beforehand which, for whatever reason, it seems that they did not follow up.

You have suggested that the US government knew about the 9/11 attacks (which is pretty obvious I reckon, but fair play to you nonetheless). How complicit do you believe the UK Government was in 7/7? PAUL HUGHES, by email

Not at all.

Do you also believe that the FBI shot John F Kennedy, that Princess Diana was murdered and the US government has covered up the landing of aliens?BEN TROTTER, Cirencester

No. Such allegations are cheap and rather silly.

What steps will you propose to counter global warming? DR GEORGE BLAIR, by email

We should rapidly increase our use of renewable sources of energy (windpower, solar, and micro-generation in people's homes). We should require the airline industry, like every other industry, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions each year. We should increase vehicle excise duty sharply for gas-guzzling cars and use the proceeds to subsidise bus and rail, and smaller-engine cars. We should give each family a carbon entitlement which then has to be reduced each year.

How often have you flown in the past 12 months? FIONA MILLS, Edinburgh

Not at all.

You criticise the 'Westminster bubble' but said you spent the last two months talking to MPs about your campaign. Does this not show you have the same disrespect for people's views as the rest of the Westminster bubble? MARSHA JANE THOMPSON, by email

I said that when people around the country come to vote, they may well take a quite different view of things from the inward-looking Westminster scene, and should be listened to. But I also extensively canvassed my colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party because they alone are the ones who make the nominations.

Why did it take you so long to announce your intention to stand for the Labour leadership when John McDonnell has been campaigning up and down the country for months?MAX MITCHELL, by email

I have been told that John McDonnell announced his candidature without consulting his colleagues. I thought it right first to consult extensively to confirm that my candidature would have the necessary range of support.

What are your guilty pleasures (apart from homeowning)?ALICE SHERWOOD, Tadworth

Wouldn't you like to know! Dropping childish comments in the waste paper basket is one of them.

You always look a bit boring. Are you? ROB JACKSON, by email

No. Why? Are you?

Posted by Michael Meacher at 12:28 PM | Permalink

From

There are three reasons why there should be an election for a new leader when Tony Blair finally goes. Only an election confers democratic legitimacy on the succession. Second, party members expect to have a choice about who should lead them. They have hardly been listened to for most of the last 13 years, and have every right to demand that their voice be listened to now. And third, there are major differences of view about the government's direction of travel which need to be understood, debated and voted on within the party. There are other, better alternatives.

New Labour has over-centralised power at the top, which has undermined democratic accountability at all levels. Its economy, driven exclusively by market forces, has played down intervention to secure a stronger manufacturing industry, a more balanced regional policy, and a lift out of its low pay, low skill, low productivity base. Its authoritarian civil society has eroded civil liberties across the board. Its deregulatory philosophy plays down environmental standards and labour rights.

Its indifference to, indeed embrace of, inequality -- "New Labour is relaxed about people getting filthy rich", as Peter Mandelson told us so charmingly -- has presided over a sharp increase in the gap between rich and poor. And its obsession with privatisation is leaching away the public service ideals which lie at the heart of a caring and committed society.

Because Labour and Tory policies are now so similar, politics has increasingly focused on personalities. But that is a fundamental misapprehension. A large part of the electorate on the centre-left, perhaps even a majority, has effectively been disenfranchised for the last three decades. Old-style Toryism was discarded by the voters in 1997, and now New Labour -- the continuing moving right show -- has clearly run its course. It's time, not for old Labour , but for a new implementation of core Labour values in a modern progressive politics addressing today's profound problems.

We need a new foreign policy which is based on fundamental British interests, not subservience to the US, particularly over the middle east. If our political status is to rise across the world, it is not sustainable to continue as America's glove puppet. We need a new social policy if the growing divisions within our society are to be healed. It is not sustainable for £9 billion of city bonuses to be doled out last year while 12.5 million people, a fifth of the population, remain in poverty.

We need a new penal policy if we are going to be genuinely as tough on the causes of crime as on crime itself. It is not sustainable to go on banging people up even faster than we can build prisons without trying to deal with the underlying causes of criminality and doing more to reduce recidivism. We need a new climate change and energy policy if we are not to become over-dependent on imported fossil fuels. It is not sustainable, let alone not legal, to go on fighting wars to grab control of the remaining reserves of Middle East oil when anyway the oil will soon run out.

So what should be done? To end the continuing horrendous carnage in Iraq, to complete our troop withdrawal and break the impasse over Palestine, we should use our political clout to initiate a wider international peace conference bringing together all the relevant actors for a joint settlement of the related middle east issues of contention which from experience cannot be resolved singly. That must include not only Iraq and Palestine within such a grand bargain, but above all a negotiated, not a military, settlement over Iran. If the US were to attack Iran, I would not put at risk a single British soldier or a single RAF pilot in support of such a crazed venture.

Domestically, the Unicef report marking Britain bottom of the table for children's experience shows how urgent it is to reverse the growing rich-poor divide. Less inequality leads to less violence, stronger community life, better health, longer life expectancy, lower teenage birth rates, as well as more social mobility and higher educational attainment. We should start by raising the national minimum wage (one of Labour's best achievements) quickly to £6 an hour, and then soon to £7 an hour. And recognising that wealth creation is not an individual but a team effort, we should move towards a system where there is no more than an acceptable ratio between top pay and bottom pay, so that pay rises at the top draw up the lower paid behind them too.

Globally we are at war against climate change. Business as usual, while relying on improved technology as a get-out card, is a fool's game. We need a profound change in every aspect of government and our way of life -- not just energy, but transport, industry, building, agriculture, public expenditure and taxation, and foreign policy, in order in every area to give absolute priority to combating climaten change. We need a crash programme, as we have done before in wartime, to develop renewable sources of energy, in which we are very well endowed, plus a massive programme to improve energy efficiency and energy conservation.

Peace, social justice, climate survival - those should be our top priorities. That is why the future lies with a centre-left agenda, and clearly there must be a centre-left candidate to lead this agenda forward who has the necessary nominations in the Parliamentary Labour Party to stand. I am fully confident I do have that necessary level of support, and that is why I am standing.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:39 PM | Permalink

If Labour is going to win the next general election, we need a fundamentally new direction of travel for the new Government after the election of a new Leader and Deputy Leader. We have lost 4 million votes since 1997 and more than half our membership. This is not just because of the Iraq War, it is also because we are widely perceived, both in the Party and the electorate, to be going down the wrong track over a range of policies. We are losing support too because the style of government – spin, manipulation, centralising power at the top and not listening to the people – is unacceptable. We need radical change on both counts.

We need more than corrections of where we have clearly gone badly wrong – over Iraq, Lebanon and subservience to Bush, over the centralisation and unaccountability of Government today, over the growing and unacceptable inequality between rich and poor, over the privatisation of our public services, over the decline of manufacturing
and the weakness of workplace rights, and over the continuing erosion of civil liberties. What we need above all is a vision of a new direction which can fire the imagination of today’s generation.

What is the biggest threat facing the world today? It isn’t the so-called war on terror, whatever Bush may think. It isn’t the risk of nuclear war, now that the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union disbanded. The overriding political issue today, the danger that could overwhelm much of the planet, much of the human race, if not in our lifetime but certainly in that of our children or grandchildren, is climate change.

It’s not just the dramatically increasing frequency and ferocity of hurricanes, unprecedented flooding, rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, or melting permafrost. Nor is it just the inextinguishable forest fires, the drying out of millions of hectares of croplands which will no longer produce food, or the mega-dustbowls from Northern China to the American mid-West. What is really frightening is that climate change is not a linear process, but a dynamic and unstable one. Scientists say there are tipping points where a gradual process suddenly explodes out of all proportion, where positive feedback effects abruptly accelerate climate change in unpredictable and overpowering ways – like the dieback of the Amazon, the release of billions of tonnes of methane hydrates from the ocean floor, or the collapse of the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets. If any of those happened in the next 50-100 years, the impact on human civilisation would be incalculable. There is no precedent – we are entering uncharted territory.

Now some may say: but that won’t affect us here in the UK, or at least not in our lifetime. Both assumptions are wrong. The UN predicts 50 million environmental refugees by the end of this decade, and where will they come to if not the richer, more settled, northern regions like the UK? The WHO estimates that 9 out of the world’s 10 most dangerous vector-borne disease will increase their coverage worldwide. If the ocean pump fails, the Gulf Stream will collapse and the UK temperature will plummet to that of Siberia. And as to not in our lifetime, Jim Hansen, George Bush’s leading climate modeller – no less – said recently we have “at most 10 years” to make the drastic cuts in emissions that might head off climate catastrophe.

So what should be done? Labour has to become the Party that will lead the world in a fundamental change of direction. It requires a change in how we think about our economics, energy, water management, food security, transportation, international policies, and the nature of civilisation itself. We have to move from the peripheral and tinkering to the profound and visionary.

Tackling climate change is the overarching policy which should permeate every other policy in government – not just energy, but transport, industry, building, agriculture, public expenditure and taxation, and foreign policy. Put bluntly, we will never have food security, water security, or energy security in this country (or anywhere else) unless we give absolute priority to combating climate change.

So what specifically should a new Government do?

We should be shifting away from massive old-fashioned power stations to decentralised energy systems (wind and solar power, and micro-generation plants in people’s homes), together with much more ambitious investment in large-scale offshore wind farms.

We should require the airline industry (like every other industry) to reduce year by year their emissions which are the fastest growing source of global warming.

We should increase VED massively for gas-guzzling cars and use the proceeds to subsidise bus and rail, plus give a rebate to smaller-engine car owners.

We should require industry to measure and make public their environmental and climate change impacts, not only greenhouse gas emissions, but their energy efficiency, waste generation, water consumption, and transport impacts, and reduce them year by year.

We should incentivise local food production which would regenerate British agriculture, dramatically cut air miles, and protect security of supply.

We should tighten building standards so that all new construction at least meets the most energy efficient standards already met in Europe and Scandinavia.

We should give each family, according to its size, a carbon entitlement which then has to be reduced each year in such a way so as to reward the conscientious and penalise the wasteful.

And in order to meet the target set by scientists of at least 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 compared with 1990, Government should set a target of 3% annual reduction in overall UK emissions, set out the new mechanisms to achieve this, publish the results each year, and make whatever changes are necessary year by year to keep the UK on track.

Underpinned by this comprehensive policy, Britain should gain the moral and political authority to lead the way internationally in pressing all other countries, especially the US, China and India, to commit to an enhanced and extended new Climate Change Protocol beyond 2010.

Above all, we should eliminate the biggest political threat to world security today by leading the world out of dependence on fossil fuels, particularly oil and gas, the struggle for the dwindling supplies of which lies at the heart of the incessant murderous carnage in the Middle East. We do that by huge new investment in renewable sources of energy, in which Britain is unusually well endowed, and by a massive targeted programme in energy conservation. Britain, because of its offshore location, has more wind-power capacity than the rest of Europe put together, but we are using only a tiny fraction of it. At present only 4% of our electricity generation comes from renewables. In Germany, France, Italy and Spain it is 15-25%, and in Scandinavia 25-35% or more. And our waste of energy – in transport, construction, industry, agriculture, and private households – is prodigious.

This is a win-win-win-win scenario. It will bring about a huge step-change in the efficient use of energy, it will save very considerable sums of money both for industry and some of our poorest households, it will protect our society against sudden destabilising external shocks, and it will safeguard the environment from the apocalyptic nightmare of climate change. It is not a utopian vision. It is highly practical and resolutely necessary if the world is to survive in a sustainable form. It will excite the imagination and galvanise our Party by restoring our commitment to a greater and deeper collective cause which has always been our inspiration.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“EMBRACING globalisation,” according to Gordon Brown in his CBI speech on Monday night, “is the best way to growth, jobs and prosperity.” Looking at the facts, however, might prompt a rather different response: is globalisation, once thought unstoppable, actually now in decline?

Continue reading "Crushed by well-heeled global boots: The poorest countries need tariff walls to protect them from international competition " »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Meacher courted much controversy with his 'difficult' questions about 9/11 and the war on terror, but, he tells Matthew Tempest, he is absolutely not a conspiracy theorist

Matthew Tempest
The Guardian

Since losing political office as Tony Blair's environment minister, Michael Meacher has been saying - and writing - some controversial things.

Not Robin Cook controversial ("the weapons inspectors should have been given more time"); not Clare Short controversial ("the post-war reconstruction was mishandled"); but really controversial: "why weren't F16 jets scrambled quicker on September 11? What is the truth about the mysterious MI6 unit Operation Rockingham which 'liaised' with UN weapons inspectors? What was the role of the Pakistani intelligence services in the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl?

These are not the sort of questions that are designed to aid one's ascent up the greasy pole of a political career. Quite the opposite. Not only are they difficult to answer, they burst the bubble of etiquette and respectability at Westminster and get one labelled with the career-suicide stamp of "conspiracy theorist".

Not surprisingly, this is the first thing the now backbench MP for Oldham West and Royston wants to get off his chest when I meet him in his south-London home.

"I am absolutely NOT a conspiracy theorist. I am anything but paranoid. I have an extremely rational belief in systematically collecting the evidence and seeing where the facts and the documents take you.

"However, conspiracies do occur, but that would be a last-resort explanation rather than a first. I am also a believer in the cock-up theory."

Since writing an article for the Guardian last September, detailing unanswered questions about the events of September 11 2001 and the predetermination of the US to go to war in Iraq, Meacher has faced a torrent of abuse and derision beyond that borne by most mainstream politicians.

The US embassy in London dismissed the article as "monstrously offensive" and Meacher as not being "serious or credible", while many journalists found his arguments unconvincing and even deranged.

Despite this, Meacher is unrepentant about airing his concerns. "That analysis has been confirmed. In the past nine months [his unanswered questions] have proved both logical and correct. I'm not aware of a word that has not been accepted.

"Indeed, some of it has been confirmed - for instance, Paul O'Neill's account of his time serving Bush, where he reveals that Iraq regime change was a priority from day one of the administration."

For the record, Meacher believes the biggest mysteries surrounding 9/11 were why more effort was not put into catching the hijackers beforehand, why fighter jets were not scrambled from US Andrews airforce base 10 miles from Washington until the Pentagon had already been hit, and why little or no effort was made to catch Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

The Senate's Kean commission into 9/11 finds a confused chain of command on the day, but confirms that while the Pentagon was hit at 9.38am, planes from nearby Andrews were only scrambled at 10.38am, a few minutes after the vice-president, Dick Cheney, had authorised shooting down hostile planes. Planes from Langley airbase were already in the air, but had not received orders to shoot down hostile aircraft.

Curiously, for a man who seems out on a limb in British politics, Meacher hasn't yet seen Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which provides similar succour to his theories, especially concerning the US military's semi-detached efforts in and around Tora Bora, the al-Qaida stronghold in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.

"Oh I must see it!" he declares, when told that it backs him up on several counts.

Meacher says his postbag was "95% supportive" after his initial article in the Guardian. Probably as a result of its attendant publicity, he was asked to write the foreword to a new US book entitled: The New Pearl Harbour: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11.

He's quick to intervene: "Writing a foreword does NOT mean I agree with everything in it. It is an unconventional book which says things which deserved to be listened to and have an airing.

The book suggests that there may have been explosives inside the World Trade Centre before the attacks - does he believe that?

"Well, I'm not a technical expert and I have no idea and I just don't know.

"But it's a worthwhile thing for the Kean commission to examine even if it's just to disprove it. After all, there were two previous bomb plots against the Twin Towers, and bombs would alter the whole concept of what happened on 9/11, but that should have been up to Kean to look at."

More recently, Meacher wrote another high-profile piece in the Guardian demanding to know the truth about Operation Rockingham, an intelligence cell mentioned to the intelligence and security committee by weapons expert Dr David Kelly the day before his death.

Meacher alleged, on the basis of the evidence of former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, that the previously unheard of unit was designed to spread misinformation about Iraqi WMD capabilities.

On page 90 of Lord Butler's inquiry into intelligence failures over Iraq is a five-paragraph explanation of Operation Rockingham, calling it a briefing and liaison unit for the Unscom inspections. Meacher believes the explanation is there as a result of his probing.

"It's a pedestrian few paragraphs, but I've seen it and I'm glad it's there and it shows that they've taken it [the article] on board. I believe it [Rockingham] had a key role in seeking to handle intelligence to provide the 'right' material for its political masters.

"Obviously that will be denied, and I'm not expecting Butler to prove it, but I suspect the reason that they felt the need to include it [the explanation] is because of the article."

In all of this, it's easy to forget that Meacher in fact voted for the war. As a minister at the time, the alternative would have been immediate resignation.

"I voted for it because I believed what the PM said. He reeled off weapons inventories, and I presumed that this must be reliable.

"In fact, I've long called for military interventions for humanitarian purposes [he wrote a pamphlet on the theme as far back as 1991], but there would have been no legal basis for that, and the 'humanitarian' reasons for the war have only been used retrospectively."

His high-profile and well-informed campaign against GM crops since being sacked from the environment post in 2003, as well as his difficult questions over 9/11 and the Bush administration have led some senior Green party officials to hope he could be persuaded to jump ship, and become the first ever Green MP in Britain.

"Never, never, never, never, never," he chides. "I respect the Greens. In fact, I respect the Lib Dems and I respect Respect, but there is no question of me switching.

"I've always been a mainstream politician, and I shall die Labour."

There doesn't, thankfully, seem much prospect of that yet, as Meacher boasts of having lost weight since losing office, and "feeling fitter and more energised than I have ever done".

No chance of this 64-year old quitting parliament at the next election, then?

"Not only shall I fight the next election, I could go on for another 10 years yet!"

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:39 PM | Permalink

Biotech giant Bayer has halted GM cultivation in Britain because of flawed trials and financial risk. If only the government was so wise, says Michael Meacher.

The Guardian

Why did Bayer do it? The company's decision to pull its genetically modified Chardon LL maize so soon after the British government authorised its cultivation is a huge setback for the industry and a major embarrassment for the prime minister's championship of GM.

Bayer said the conditions imposed by the government were too restrictive - richly ironic when the government is leaving no stone unturned to get GM crops approved and grown in Britain. Ministers had already gone out of their way to wave through GM maize following the farm-scale evaluation (FSE) trials, even though the trials' conclusion did not justify the go-ahead.

The government's decision was flawed on several counts. No valid conclusions can be drawn from these trials because the weedkiller atrazine was used on almost all the conventional maize - a highly toxic chemical with damaging side effects which is now banned EU-wide. Any tests based on atrazine as a comparator are now irrelevant. New trials with a new chemical are needed; the government, however, disagrees.

Continue reading "You reap what you sow" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A shorter version of this article was published in the Financial Times.

Should a third runway be built at Heathrow? This collision between the needs of the economy and the environment focuses one of the most contentious decisions facing Parliament for a decade as the Government prepares to issue its White Paper on air transport policy to 2030. It will require wholly new thinking if this decision is not to go badly wrong.

For BAA the case for a go-ahead is clear. The number of airline passengers using British airports will triple by 2030, and quintuple in the South East. It will give a huge boost to the economy. And we should not deny new, lower-income passengers the right of access to air travel if they wish. But all these premises are seriously flawed.

The demand projections are based on the assumption that air fares will continue to fall by 1% in real terms per year. They also assume that aviation will continue to benefit from substantial tax breaks. They ignore any proposals that there should be a significant switch to high-speed, long-distance rail. And they are built on the presumption that the airlines continue to avoid their full external social and environmental costs. All four of these bases should be challenged and altered.

Continue reading "The false arguments for airport expansion" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:05 AM | Permalink

This article first appeared in The Guardian.

Only a world environment court can curb capitalism's excesses

Unseen by most, our world is being transformed at an exponential rate. It is a process driven by unfettered industrial exploitation, growing technological control, soaring population growth and now climate change, the effects of which open up an apocalyptic scenario for the human race.

Man's ecological footprint is now outpacing many of the natural phenomena that govern our world. Indeed, we have almost become our own geophysical cycle. Our biological carbon productivity is now exceeded only by the krill in the oceans. Our civil engineering works shift more soil each year than all the world's rivers bring to the seas. Our industrial emissions eclipse the total emissions from all the world's volcanoes. We are bringing about species loss on a scale of some of the massive natural extinctions of palaeohistory. We are altering the nitrogen cycle. Even in the remotest parts of the world, contaminants like lead and DDT appear in the food chain.

The ravages are there for all to see. Some 420 million people live in countries that no longer have enough crop land to grow their own food. Half a billion people live in regions prone to chronic drought. By 2025 that number is likely to have increased fivefold. Deserts are likely to become hotter. Marine ecosystems are at risk, including salt-water marshes, mangroves, coastal wetlands and coral reefs. In 1998, the hottest year on record, large areas of forest burned down after prolonged drought. By 2050 it is projected that the Amazon will have died back.

Shifts away from equilibrium unlock other changes that interact with the original shifts and grossly magnify their effects until the whole process spirals out of control and makes our planet uninhabitable.

Continue reading "The planet's polluters should be put in the dock" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:22 AM | Permalink

Six years ago when I was appointed Minister for the Environment, I had never heard of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Today it has come close to taking over my life and some argue has already cost me my job as Minister.

I first became interested in this as the sheer magnitude of what the GM project meant for the nation's food supply gradually dawned on me. At first we were assured by officials in MAFF (before it became DEFRA as it now is) that this was an interesting and important new technology which would solve some of agriculture's challenges by reducing the use of herbicides (chemical weedkillers) and helping to feed the world.

However, several problems began to emerge. First, when the issue started hitting the headlines in 1998, the public was clearly deeply sceptical, even hostile, and for very good reason. They remembered BSE. The Government, the scientists and officialdom all assured them in 1990 that it could never cross the species barrier and infect humans. Then in 1994 it was found that it had done exactly that, and several dozen people have now died very unpleasantly of new variant CJD. Before that there were other food scares too - salmonella and e-coli. And more recently of course we have been through the trauma of foot and mouth.

The net effect of all this was to leave the Government with a huge credibility problem, and I felt drawn to try to get to the bottom of what appeared to be an unfolding environmental crisis. Were GM foods a genuine breakthrough or a 'frankenstein foods' nightmare?

Continue reading "GM: why I think it matters" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 03:21 AM | Permalink

From The Times

World peace and the future of the planet are threatened by the overwhelming power of an "aggressive and unilateralist America" run by a right-wing President with close connections to the oil industry.

Such is the view of Michael Meacher, who until being sacked, or "liberated" as he put it, in last week's reshuffle had spent six years as Environment Minister. During his period in office he was described as Tony Blair's green fig leaf, a lone voice supporting environmental policies or even the last Bennite in government.

In an interview with The Times, Mr Meacher insisted that none of this was really true. He is his own man and a supporter of the Prime Minister and of a Government that has worked as a team since coming to power to "embed a fresh approach to sustainable development".

His charity does not, however, extend across the Atlantic to George Bush, with whom Mr Blair has forged a close alliance in the war against terrorism. Mr Meacher's departure from the Government comes as the Kyoto Protocol for tackling climate change is "on the cusp" of international ratification, despite the US President's opposition.

He said that America's stated reasons for refusing to sign up are "ridiculous and wrong-headed". The cost of adhering to the protocol, he said, would be between 0.1 and 1 per cent of the extra growth predicted for America by 2010. "They say, what about the rest of the world like China and India? But those coutries will only come on board if the rich nations show they mean business."

Instead, he suggested that a more sinister motive may lie behind Washington's decision as he highlighted the new US investments in oil production in Africa and South America. "Everyone knows that George Bush is a Texas oil man, his family have long-term connections, nearly all his senior advisers and closest aides have connections to a very, very powerful oil industry," he said. "I think that is a relevant consideration. They believe in the oil business and the traditional way of generating power and if they gain personally that is a bonus."

Mr Meacher said that these interests played their part in the decision to go to war in Iraq: "America is pursuing future oil supplies with extreme vigour, so it is difficult, when you look at Iraq, which has the second biggest oil reserves in the world, not to think it was a factor."

He did not, contrary to reports at the time, oppose military action. "What persuaded me was the idea that getting rid of a murderous, barbarous, genocidal regime responsible for millons of deaths overrode anything else," he said. "It was a justification for military action." He added: "It was not the reason why we went to war. My view is that we went to war because America wanted to establish a political and military platform in the Middle East, it saw a need for oil and of course it wished to support Israel. Weapons of mass destruction, if they existed, even on the most threatening predictions, were certainly not going to put Europe or the US at risk. But Tony Blair took the view that if you are a close ally you have more influence than if you are a protagonist. That is a view which still prevails. The problem is that Bush is not Clinton."

Mr Meacher is deeply concerned about the US "occupation" of Iraq and the sidelining of the UN, suggesting that Mr Blair should start puting some distance between himself and Washington. "The biggest political problem in the world today is the overwhelming power of the US. That is very serious for the world order. How you deal with an aggressive unilateralist like America is a problem for us all, but there are no easy answers."

Mr Meacher denied that Britain had been too soft on America on Kyoto, saying that Mr Blair had been taken by surprise by Mr Bush's decision to oppose ratification and had since tried to bring the US "on board" for a programme to reduce fossil-fuel emissions through technological change.

Since being sacked last week, however, he has focused his efforts on the looming government decision on allowing commericial production of genetically modified crops. Mr Meacher said that the GM food lobby had already won its battle in America, partly because of the links between the Washington Adminstration and firms like Monsanto.

Mr Meacher talked about the "happy days" spent negotiating with his EU counterparts on the environment, suggesting that Europe, which has risked a trade war with the US by opposing GM food, could be a bulwark against Washington. He promised to be a "sympathetic but critical friend" of the Government, saying it had done much good for the NHS and education but should pay more attention to a traditional Labour agenda of tackling poverty and improving equality.

From his new position on the backbenches, however, he will have already discovered that his views about Mr Bush chime with those of many of his colleagues. "My view is that we should not get too close to America. It is an important friend and ally, but in the end we should make our judgments about where the public interest lies and we should take note of public opinion in that as well."

Posted by Michael Meacher at 05:58 PM | Permalink