Lib Dems: delusional, dumb and still in power

Nick Clegg: he isn’t sorry at all

The Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton had an air of denial about it. On the platform, there was speech after speech from government ministers praising their supposed achievements in government and telling their members  how well they were doing and how they were “holding the Tories to account”. But this is a party in decline. This is a party that cannot see the writing on the wall because its leadership is so totally blinded by the sudden rush of power that it can’t see the skerries and reefs ahead of it.  What’s worse for the Lib Dems is that Captain Clegg, drunk on power and at the helm, is steering his ship of fools into the rocks and there’s no sign of a mutiny. Indeed, no one in the party wants to take on the role of Fletcher Christian to Clegg’s William Bligh. Even though Twinkletoes Cable is seen as a potential successor, he toes the line, popping up every now and again with a soundbite to rile his Tory partners. Then, as soon as he’s out of his box, he’s back in it again.

The Lib Dems front bench reads like a list of crooks and nobodies. Next to the liar and embezzler, David Laws, Danny Alexander is probably one of the worst. Looking like a rabbit caught in a headlight’s beam, the timorous Alexander can’t make a speech for toffee and resembles a boy whose mother has just told him off for playing with himself in public. Then there’s Home Office Minister, Jeremy Browne with his über-posh accent. Like the rest of them, whenever he is asked a specific question relating to his brief, he falls back on “the last Labour government” as his get-out clause. But it’s much worse than that: he never has any answers, is desperately lacking a clue and comes across as unspeakably dim.

The recently-promoted Jo Swinson is another one of those Lib Dems who’s full of clichés,  soundbites and platitudes. This is from the BBC News website,

Drawing on her own experience of work in a fast-food restaurant and with an “enforced perma-smile” at the Disney Store, Ms Swinson said she knew she was at her “most productive, creative and effective when I have relished going to work”.

Please, show me someone who “relishes” going to a job that they hate; a job that offers no prospects and doesn’t pay enough to cover one’s outgoings and I’ll show you a caring Conservative.

So what about Nick Clegg, the captain of this rotting hulk of a vessel? Well, last week he  claimed to have apologised for his party’s position on tuition fees (among other things) but no one believed him and if his conference speech was anything to go by, we can safely say that anything that comes out of his mouth is going to be insincere. The fact that his ‘apology’ was given the autotune remix treatment and entered  the charts says more about the Lib Dems public relations department than it does the public’s judgement of taste.

Finally, this video with Steve Bell at the Lib Dem conference sums it up beautifully. Bell notes that Clegg’s hair is in “bad condition”. So is his party.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2012/sep/26/lib-dems-steve-bell-conference-video

So what’s Miliband got to say?

Hey dude, where’s my vision?

In a nutshell? Not a lot. Well, nothing that anyone on the left wants to hear. I found this blog in today’s New Statesman, in which Mr. Ed is quoted as saying,

The Government’s economic failure means that whoever wins the next election will still face a deficit that needs to be reduced. The redistribution of the last Labour government relied on revenue which the next Labour government will not enjoy. The option of simply increasing tax credits in the way we did before will not be open to us.

We need to care more about predistribution.  Centre-left governments of the past tried to make work pay better by spending more on transfer payments.  Centre-left governments of the future will have to make work pay better by doing more to make work itself pay.  That is how we are going to build growth based not just on credit, but on real demand.

I think this is a centre-left moment. Why might you think it’s a centre-right moment? Well, because of issues of fiscal responsibility, which is why we must be strong on that. But for me it’s a centre-left moment because people think there’s something unfair and unjust about our society. You’ve got to bring the vested interest to heel; you’ve got to change the way the economy works. That’s our opportunity.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. So if Labour gets into power at the next General Election, we can expect to hear things like, “the country is broke” and “tough choices have to be made” repeated at every opportunity. But what is this “predistribution” idea? It’s a non-word that PPE types love to coin in the absence of real ideas.  If Mr. Ed is serious about “making work pay” then everyone needs to be paid a living wage. I’ve heard little from him about that. What he seems content to do is carry on with the bankrupt idea of negative income tax  Friedmanite bollocks tax credits.

The rest of the interview carries on in a similar vein. Lots of platitudes, loads of “I feel your pain” type stuff.  We also find out what books he took with him on holiday [sighs].

If you were any doubt that Mr. Ed’s Labour Party is a different beast to Lord Snooty’s Tories, think again. This is the same beast but it speaks in warm words and wears a sickly smile. It still has its neoliberal claws and fangs, they’re sheathed… for now. Here’s another snippet,

On welfare and benefits, the Labour leader insists that some form of contribution from the recipients of welfare must replace what Liam Byrne, former head of the Labour policy review, called “unearned support”.

“I do think we need a society where people make a contribution,” Miliband says. “You build a successful society out of people showing responsibility. That’s an important principle at the top, it’s an important principle elsewhere. But people at the top have a particular responsibility because they help define the ethic of the country.”

These words could have been said by Cameron, the only real difference here is the tone. The word “responsibility” is deployed as a buzzword.  It’s one that makes disciplinarian ex-bankers like Liam Byrne drool with uncontrolled anticipation.

But how does Miliband intend to make people more responsible? If making people work for their benefits is considered to be a mark of their “responsibility”, then he has some serious moral and ethical questions to answer. What about dignity and respect?  In effect, Labour’s support of workfare would be tantamount to giving a nod and a wink to the further erosion of worker’s wages, which have declined in real terms for the last 20 years.  My, wouldn’t Gaitskell be proud of this lot? Ramsay MacDonald too. In fact, this is a party in which even Twinkletoes Cable would feel at home these days.  Maybe that’s the point: to appeal to the SDP lot in the Lib Dems should the coalition fall. Then again, maybe it isn’t. In fact, I think I’m being too generous on Mr. Ed and his crew of weak-willed snivellers. In truth, they haven’t got the guts to offer hope to a nation that’s crying out for it. Instead of doing anything that could be described as visionary, the former party of labour takes another sharp right-hand turn into a ditch.

UPDATE 6/9/12 @ 1758

Mr. Ed fleshed out the “predistribution” idea that I mentioned earlier in a speech to The Policy Network.

The BBC has the story,

“Predistribution is about saying, ‘We cannot allow ourselves to be stuck with permanently being a low-wage economy and hope that through taxes and benefits we can make up the shortfall.’

“It’s not just, nor does it enable us to pay our way in the world.

“Our aim must be to transform our economy so it is a much higher skill, much higher wage economy.

“Think about somebody working in a call centre, a supermarket, or in an old peoples’ home.

“Redistribution offers a top-up to their wages. Predistribution seeks to go further – higher skills with higher wages.

Yay! Higher wages! How? Anyway, it seems I got it wrong vis a vis the tax credits. That was one of Gord’s ideas… well not really, it originally came from Milton Friedman, who was neither a socialist or a social democrat.

The BBC article also notes that Miliband is having text with Twinkletoes (what did I say?).

The FT has this rather interesting story here.  Here’s a snippet,

Mr Cable told the Financial Times in July he did not “exclude” a run for the party leadership and polls suggest the business secretary, who is a former Labour councillor, is more popular than Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister.

But behind the mischief, Mr Miliband is making another calculation: that Labour may need to work with the Lib Dems in the event of a hung parliament in 2015 and that Mr Cable may hold the key to a Lib-Lab deal.

How’s life in that ditch, Ed?

Why do Tories think that we will accept reports that have not been based on research?

The Tories are fond of writing reports but few are based on any form of research. Moreover, the lack of research points to a deep-seated hatred of anything that bears even the slightest resemblance to evidence.  Even when they do conduct research, it is so compromised that they need not have bothered (have a look at some of the Centre for Social Justice’s ‘research’ if you don’t believe me). Such disregard for the intellectual rigours of research and producing evidence in the form of data is nothing less than a form of anti-intellectualism.

In the last week we’ve had the Beecroft Report, which was not only written by a venture capitalist and donor to the Conservative Party, it was produced without a single shred of evidence.  In 2009, right-wing think-tank Localis produced a report titled “The Principles for Social Housing Reform”. Written by  Stephen Greenhalgh and John Moss, the darlings of Tory local government,  they asserted that “social housing is welfare housing”. Looking through their report, one thing was noticeably absent: research. Yet this ‘report’ and the Beecroft Report are held up by the Tories as some form of unassailable truth. This is a logical fallacy (argumentum ad verecundiam).

I can tell you  that as a PhD student, if I were to make the similar assertions about my field of study without conducting any research or any providing any evidence to support my assertions, I would be told, in no uncertain terms, that my report was flawed and that I would have to go away and come back with some hard facts. Not for out Tory friends it seems.

The reasons why Tories think that their reports don’t require research or evidence that has been derived from empirical study is because they are arrogant and intellectually bankrupt. I often think the reason why James Delingpole regularly dismisses empirical evidence out of hand is because it conflicts with his weird belief that pollution is good for us. Jokes aside, this attitude is rooted firmly in the way in which this country has been governed since time immemorial. Parliament was once the preserve of the aristocracy. Even after the Reform Acts, the House of Commons has remained persistently upper middle class and semi-aristocratic save for the years between 1920 and 1989. The Conservative Party believes that it is the natural party of government and its place as a governing party is divinely ordained. Therefore should anyone demand proof, they are met with abuse.  To demand evidence is to question the existence of God Himself.

Like the Localis report, the Beecroft Report is predicated on one thing: class hatred. Beecroft is an unreconstructed Social Darwinist. As a venture (for that read “rentier”) capitalist, he produces nothing. Yet he feels that he has some kind of authority to produce a report that has no findings whatsoever. You can read his report here.

Yesterday,  the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, made a few noises about the report. Beecroft labelled him a “socialist”. This tells us something else: the right are not interested in debates or discussions and would much prefer to hurl insults at anyone who dares to criticise them (have a look at the comments left on this blog if you don’t believe me). Of course Cable is no socialist; he’s a market liberal who has one or two social impulses. He was once a member of the SDP. So he’s hardly a Trot.

The Tories have never liked employment laws and this is demonstrated by their desire to tear up legislation that protects workers from dangerous or unsanitary conditions. The Tories were also implacably opposed to the National Minimum Wage (NMW), some have even demanded that the NMW be scrapped for workers who are under the age of 25.

The Beecroft Report whose author claims it is a strategy to improve economic performance and reduce unemployment has produced a report so full of class prejudice that he should be clapped in irons and dragged by a donkey through the city streets, while the people pelt him with ordure.

Let’s talk about: mandates, unions and strikes

With a public sector strike looming, the Tories are questioning the legitimacy of the numbers of those union members who have voted to go out on strike. Although those voting in favour were in the majority, the turnout was as low as 29%.

But the Tories forget something: most by-elections attract a turnout of around 30%; sometimes less. Yet, in spite of the low turnout, a candidate is elected to parliament with no questions asked about such poor numbers. Many local authorities are also elected on similar turnouts – some of those councils, incidentally, are Tory-controlled councils. In fact,  the turnout for local elections in Britain is the lowest in Europe.  Indeed, some of their own MPs were elected on low turnouts. But not a peep from them about this.

Recently, the likes of Vince Cable, Boris Johnson and now, Francis Maude have all threatened to introduce tougher anti-union legislation if the unions ‘cripple the economy’, which is just another way of passing the buck and covering for the fact that the government is clueless in its approach to the nation’s finances.  In today’s Guardian, Maude said that he and the rest of the government “had not ruled out” tougher legislation. Interestingly enough, one of the unions that voted to strike was the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. The ATL, as far as I know, has never gone out on strike. But this doesn’t stop the Telegraph’s gobshite-in-chief from spouting rubbish about “hardcore Trotskyites”. The ATL is usually known for  encouraging and allowing strike-breaking among its members in its Further Education section.  Of course, The Hon Tobes, being the ignoramus that he is, completely ignores the union’s history to get in a spot of union-bashing.

Having debated Mary Bousted on numerous occasions (see here, for instance), I don’t doubt that she’s completely sincere in her belief that Michael Gove’s education reforms will have a negative impact on state education. She’s wrong, of course, but she’s entitled to use the public platform granted to her by her union to put her case as strongly as possible.

But to go further than this and exploit her members’ anxiety about pension reforms to pursue her own ideological agenda is unacceptable. Whatever her political views, she and her trade union have an obligation to abide by the decision of the British people and respect the will of its elected representatives. To call a strike this summer would not only be an unforgivable attack on our schoolchildren, it would be an affront to democracy.

This Tory-led government is committed to making public sector workers pay greater contributions towards their pensions. Hon Tobes wilfully misleads us when he claims that Mary Bousted is “exploiting her members’ anxiety”. The concern among public sector workers is very real. I wonder if he’s actually spoken to any teachers?

In today’s Torygraph, Maude said,

For the parents – particularly if you’re a single mother who’s working and you’re dependant on the school being open and your child being at school – when that school randomly closes down when all the discussions about the dispute are still going on, people are going to be quite angry about that.

This is an odd statement, particularly as the Tories have repeatedly shown little sympathy for the plight of single parents. But, once again, Maude seems to think that it’s only women who are single parents. But none of us should be surprised by the impoverished thinking among members of the current government. This comment from Hon Tobes blog perfectly illustrates the widespread and wilful ignorance that pervades the party,

If Bob Hawke could fire all the domestic airline pilots in Australia and Ronnie Regan could fire all the air traffic controllers in the USA with neither action really impairing the airline industry, why not fire all the striking teachers. British education is a sad joke and it would be the ideal time to start afresh, completely afresh. A good first point would be to start teaching kids to read phonetically.

This commenter doesn’t think about the process involved in training and, more importantly, retaining teachers. In his/her mind they can all be easily replaced. Presumably this commenter would just as well employ unqualified teaching assistants as teachers. As I mentioned, one of the biggest problems for the education sector is the retention of teaching staff. Many newly-qualified teachers (NQTs) leave the profession in the first year. But this fact appears to have passed the Tories by.

Here is a leader article from today’s Telegraph and, once again, it bases its argument on wilful ignorance of what teachers do.

Not only are the days long gone when teachers could consider themselves particularly poorly paid, they still have greater job security and longer holidays than most. High investment in education over many years has seen salaries rise – and rightly so, since attracting and rewarding good teachers is important for the country. But equally, many children are leaving school without even the basic standards of literacy and numeracy, shortcomings for which the profession must take a large share of the blame. Strike action will hardly help matters: it will be damaging to the children and deeply inconvenient for parents, who will have to organise

child care or take time off work.

This idea that teachers have “longer holidays than most” simply isn’t true. During those supposed holidays, most teachers are marking, researching or preparing lessons. Then there’s the stress, the pushy or aggressive parents that need to be dealt with. The endless paperwork. The form-filling. The long hours.

There is a notion in ciculation that the state school system is inherently left-wing and damaging the minds of the nation’s children and,on the other hand there is another that supposes that teachers and other public sector workers are a drain on the nation’s life-force. This image has been partly concocted by the Tories’ allies in the media to create a new Other; a new enemy within for our times.  Public sector workers are variously portrayed in the right wing press as bloodsuckers and greedy bastards. They are seen as the ones who are the obstacle to the nation’s economic recovery. In the Tory imagination, society is represented as an upside down pyramid: the most powerful are at the bottom while the rest of us are on the top, pushing down, oppressing the millionaires and billionaires. It’s a Randist fantasy.

 Good night, everyone!

Cable: if you go on strike, we’ll make things worse for you

Business Secretary and former SDP member Vince Cable has told the unions that going on strike will risk Britain’s fragile economic recovery. He has also told them that the government will tighten its already draconian anti-union laws. Cable has got that so wrong: the recovery was threatened the moment The Hon. Gid decided to raise VAT and impose swingeing cuts on the public sector. Whether this government likes it or not, the private sector relies on the public sector for a lot of its work. Threatening the unions with further draconian legislation is pretty low. Britain already has the toughest anti-union legislation in Europe and its anti-union laws are on a par with those of the US and Chile.

A number of public sector unions are to go out on strike later this month. As a member of the UCU, I will be joining them.

This from today’s Independent

Union chiefs will be warned by a cabinet minister today that a concerted programme of industrial action against the Government’s austerity measures could result in anti-strike laws.

Up to one million workers are expected to walk out on 30 June in protest against the spending cuts, and further shows of union strength are planned for the autumn.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, will tell a union conference that such moves could backfire by playing into the hands of senior Tories pressing for fresh controls on industrial action.

You can read the rest here.

My Coalition verdict: What a shower

The title of this blog is borrowed from a series of similar blog titles in yesterday’s  Torygraph.  As you’d expect, all of them heap praise on their Tory brethren and pour scorn on their Lib Dem coalition partners. None of them claim that the coalition is a “shower”, though clearly many of them wish the Tories had an unassailable majority. But we don’t always get what we want in life, do we? The coalition has been in place for one year and in that year, it has waged war on the poor, the unemployed, the low-waged, the disabled, students and anyone who does not fit into their vision of the perfect society. In fact the word “society” has been absent from their minds as they pursue an ideologically-driven agenda of cuts.

The way in which the coalition parties have used the excuse of the structural deficit to push through cuts has been dishonest. In fact, this coalition government finds it difficult to be consistent. First, it talks about the national debt, then it talks about budget and structural deficits and tries to erroneously compare these things – as Thatcher did – with household finances. They tell us that “Britain’s credit card is maxed out” . Rubbish. The country doesn’t have a “credit card” and it can still raise money on the international bond markets. In spite of what the Con-Dem government and their allies tell us, Britain is far from being broke. There is money in this country but it’s all concentrated in the hands of a small number of people.

The sad truth is that the vast majority of the public haven’t got a clue when it comes to deficits and debts and the government use this ignorance to their advantage. This dishonesty is reproduced by the Telegraph’s bloggers, who are all keen to impress upon us the need to accept reductions in public spending, which the government tries to present as either ‘localism’ or ’empowerment’.

If they want to talk about household finances, perhaps they could start dealing with stagnating wages and the ever-rising cost of living. Britain’s household debt is higher than it’s ever been, yet the government seems quite happy for this situation to continue. At the beginning of this year, the rate of VAT was increased from 17.5% to 20%, which has meant that many things have increased in price – including food which, although free of VAT, is subject to VAT through production and distribution costs.

Education has been area where the Tories have sought to make their mark.  While paying lip service to the idea of education for all, they’ve been pushing forward their divisive idea for free schools. Free schools, in spite of what their supporters and this government tells us, sucks funding away from existing schools.  In Further and Higher Education, they’ve caused the biggest stink by scrapping the Educational Maintenance Allowance and imposing swingeing cuts on universities, which has prompted many universities to raise their tuition fees to the higher level of £9,000 per annum. The curriculum is also about to be colonized by ideology.  The subject of history is going to be rewritten to serve the narrow interests of the state. The revisionist historian, Niall Ferguson has been asked to devise a new history syllabus that will focus on such things as the greatness of empire. In many of the post-1992 universities, arts, humanities and social science courses are being cut because they are seen to be ‘soft’. However the real reason for cutting social sciences and humanities courses is because they teach critical thinking. Say hello to “by-rote” learning.

The Tories have also been keen to misrepresent social housing in their efforts to claim that

1. All social tenants are  ‘scroungers’
2. Council housing is a drain on the nation’s finances
3.  Social housing is “state” housing and
4. It’s a form of welfare.

Their flagship councils, who have been emboldened by having their party in government, have each made attacks on council tenants.  Westminster City Council wants to raise tenants’ rents if their incomes increase. Hammersmith and Fulham Council have threatened West Kensington and the Gibbs Green estates with bulldozers as part of their ‘redevelopment’ plans for the area around the Earl’s Court complex. The Queen Caroline Estate in the Broadway ward has also been targeted. The word that is often used in conjunction with these plans is “vulnerable”. These two councils claim, as the government does, that social housing should be for the “most vulnerable”. So who qualifies as “vulnerable” and what happens to those people once they have ceased to be “vulnerable”? Will they be evicted after a couple of years?

Let’s look at another of the more common misrepresentations.  Early in their administration, the Tories claimed that there were millions lost through “widespread benefit overpayments”. It turned out that the numbers had been vastly inflated and the amount of money was only dwarfed by the amount lost to the exchequer through tax evasion and avoidance. While those of us on lower incomes have no choice but to pay tax, those people who earn the most find ways to wriggle out of paying it.

It’s time for a look at some of those Telegraph blogs. Here’s one from the Great Lord of Darkness that’s titled  “My Coalition verdict: Iain Duncan Smith scores high, Vince Cable scores low”

The once respected Vince Cable, now an object of derision, scores zero, while Ed Miliband gets 2 out of 10 and must work harder.

There’s only one problem: Miliband isn’t in the coalition, so why mention him?

Ed West also has a pop at Cable.

Biggest loser: Either of the two leading rattle-throwers, Vince Cable and Chris Huhne, who are going to destroy their party because they overestimate the size of their political constituency. “Progressives” comprise a fairly small portion of the British public, and even within the Left are outnumbered by Blue Labour social conservatives and Jack Straw-style authoritarians. They could probably all fit inside Chris Huhne’s living rooms.

Super-Catholic, Cristina Odone can’t resist the sitting duck either.

Biggest Loser: Vince Cable. Energy Minister Chris Huhne may resign from government, but no one really liked him much in the first place. Vince, instead, was the nation’s darling for his purported knowledge of the economy (his book The Storm was a best seller), charmingly romantic Desert Island disc performance, and his fancy footwork on Strictly Come Dancing. Then he  blew it, boasting about his importance to the Coalition. He now looks like a foolish, self-important old man who seems as out of touch with his colleagues as with the public that once cherished him. Sad.

I won’t bother quoting the rest because they all plough the same dull furrow.

The coalition started badly. In the space of 15 days it suffered its first ministerial scandal and resignation when crypto-Tory, David Laws was forced to hand his portfolio to the equally worthless, Danny Alexander.  Today, Laws has been suspended from the Commons for breaching parliamentary rules. He won’t be returning to government any time soon.

The Telegraph says,

He is expected to be ordered to apologise to Parliament and pay back tens of thousands of pounds after an investigation that resulted from a Daily Telegraph report last year.

It is the most serious punishment imposed on any parliamentarian by fellow MPs following the expenses scandal and is likely to block any return to government for Mr Laws.

The Prime Minister had hoped that Mr Laws, who was popular among Conservatives as well as Liberal Democrats, would return to the cabinet soon, but this has now been ruled out.

Ironically it was the Telegraph that broke the Laws expenses story. For someone with a great deal of personal wealth, why did he feel the need to cheat the taxpayer out of over £40,000? One word: arrogance.

It’s hard to see how this coalition can last another 4 years when the Conservatives are trying to find ways to divorce their partners. The Tories’ allies,  the bloggers and commentators at the Torygraph,  spend a great deal of time sticking pins into their Lib Dem voodoo dolls. With these kinds of tensions, it is only a matter of time before the coalition collapses and in the aftermath of the Lib Dems drubbing in the English local elections and their obliteration in Scotland, this can’t come soon enough.

Paddy Power is offering the following odds on the year of the next general election:

2011                  7/2

2012                  5/2

2013                   10/3

2014                   5/1

2015 or later  6/4

Those look like pretty good odds.  I’m almost tempted to have a punt.

Boris Johnson: the fallout

Yesterday Boris Johnson claimed that he was against any “Kosovo style” social cleansing of London. His words immediately found their way to their intended target: David Cameron who was out of the country on business. His choice of words was also seized upon by Nick Clegg who described them as “outrageous” while Vince Cable, the pre-election hero, accused him of  being “ludicrously inflammatory”. Yet the government has failed to present a decent counter-argument to the charge that their proposed cap on housing benefit won’t force many people out of London to the periphery. The Housng Minister, Grant Shapps was in denial,

“Just because you are on housing benefit, that shouldn’t give you the ability to live somewhere, where if you are working and not on benefit you can’t. We’d all love to live in different areas, but I can’t afford to live on x street in y location. The housing benefit system has almost created an expectation that you could almost live anywhere, and that’s what has to stop.”

Myths and tropes.

The Leader of Westminster City Council, Cllr Colin Barrow, claimed on the BBC that people from lower incomes deliberately target his borough because of its stylish properties. Oddly enough he provided no evidence for this assertion. Remember this is the same council that sold off loads of council homes in order to gerrymander certain wards. It also sold off 3 cemeteries for 5p each.

But has Bojo gone all One Nation on the Tory Party? When someone like Johnson comes out with a statement like the one he did yesterday, you have to spend time looking for the reasons behind it. First, the mayoral elections take place in 2 years time.  He has Ken Livingstone snapping at his heels and he wants to try and steal as much thunder from his as he can. Secondly, he is well aware that London relies on a lot of cheap labour and he wants to ensure that there is a massive pool of cheap labour for London’s businesses to draw from. He isn’t doing this for altruistic reasons; his reasons are the same as any other capitalist exploiter of labour.

The press have taken up differing positions: much of the right wing press is reporting how Johnson has been slapped down by Downing Street. Others tell of how Cameron and Johnson are on a collision course over benefits. Kennite claims that his hero has recanted his words. He says “I confess, however, to less sympathy for the capital’s unemployed”.  Alors, quelle surprise! He then goes on to repeat every single right wing cliché in order to bolster his case, like this one,

Of course, everyone has the right to live where they choose. But nobody has the right to require the rest of us to pay for their choice. And on the whole, the real losers will be not the poor, but the private landlords who have bought up council houses and made fortunes from the taxpayer. As the state is by far the biggest customer in their market, they’ll have to cut their rents, helping every tenant – subsidised or not – and further reducing the number who lose their homes.

Maybe he didn’t see the Panorama programme about the dodgy landlords who make a fortune out of Housing Benefit? When have private landlords ever reduced their rents? Someone is being a little naïve here.

Meanwhile the Hon Tobes and The Independent point to the rivalry between Cameron and Johnson that dates back to their time at Eton and Oxford.

One final word: to say that the government’s proposals don’t represent a form of social cleansing would be dishonest. But for the government and its apologists to deny that the effect of the Housing Benefit cap will not force those on low incomes to move elsewhere is equally dishonest.

Vince Cable: Marxist? I think not

I have to laugh: the usual Tory talking heads are still foaming at the mouth over Vince Cable’s supposed ‘anti-capitalist’ rhetoric which all hinges on a single passage in his speech to conference. The section of the speech in which he proposes to “shine a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour”  was joined to the line “capitalism kills competition [where it can]”. This was initially presented on the BBC as a sort of diatribe against capitalism. If only. Dream on…

The Economist has an article with the bizarre  headline “Karl Marx meets Adam Smith”.

Business leaders were duly outraged. Richard Lambert of the Confederation of British Industry, an employer’s body, called the extracts “emotional”, and questioned whether Mr Cable had an alternative to capitalism. Pat McFadden, Labour’s business spokesman, accused him of disparaging the private sector that the economic recovery depends on. Others speculated that Mr Cable was undermining Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems’ leader and deputy prime minister, or that he might be destined to quit.

Oh dear, the Director of the CBI was upset. That isn’t anything to lose sleep over. But Pat McFadden? It just goes to show how far the Labour Party has slid to the right. I fail to see how Cable was “disparaging the private sector” when it was pretty obvious he was talking about consumer choice.

Meanwhile the Torygraph goes loopy with this gem

Yesterday, the Adam Smith Institute dismissed Mr Cable as “wrong on capitalism and wrong on Adam Smith”, complaining that “we have a Business Secretary who doesn’t understand business and who misinterprets the founder of modern economics, too”

To tell truth, who cares what the Adam Smith Institute or any of the other creepy right wing think tanks says? Adam Smith would be spinning in his grave if he knew that the ASI had taken his name and distorted his ideas!

In his ‘attack’ on the banks he manages to get a pretty nasty, if ill-informed, dig in,

On banks, I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer. There is much public anger about banks and it is well deserved.

Bob Crow is a “Trotskyite”? That’s news to me, the last time I checked he was a Tanky.  That Vince Cable isn’t a very good Marxist if he doesn’t know the difference between a member of the SWP and the CPB (Marxist-Leninist)! But the worst thing about this swipe is that Crow is actively working on his members behalf. Why should he attract the ire of Cable who, after all, worked as an economist for Shell? My guess is that Cable needed a crowd-pleaser but the man hasn’t got a clue; it’s a cheap shot but this is what we have come to expect from the Lib Dems.  Crow has his critics and the only point his critics ever seem to make is in relation to his salary. But is Crow drawing down the same kind of salary as Fred Goodwin? No. To be perfectly frank, Bob Crow is worth every penny of his salary: he’s a hardworking union leader who gets the best deal for his members…unlike Dave Prentis of UNISON.

Cable is a signed up, fully-fledged and functioning member of the capitalist fraternity. He’s not a Marxist and he certainly isn’t a Trotskyite. He’s a slippery Lib Dem politician who was once a member of the Labour Party. He was on the right of that party; he was so far right that he joined the SDP. Remember them?

Who is Vince Cable trying to fool?

One of the worst things that the New Labour government did was to take responsibility for the universities out of the hands of the Department for Education and place them under the authority of the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation. This told us exactly how the government regarded universities: as degree factories that produced workers for white collar jobs in banking, business and customer services. Education for its own sake was discouraged and those embarking on a journey through higher education were encouraged to take up degrees in subjects like  Business Studies. The idea here was to produce ‘entrepreneurs’. But not everyone can be an entrepreneur.

So imagine my disgust when I heard Vince Cable announce that higher education funding would be cut and graduates would be subjected to a higher rate of tax on completion of their studies.  We know that social mobility decreased during the last years of the New Labour government and the numbers of working class HE students fell too. Here is one of the biggest myths about HE

Graduates earned on average £100,000 more than non-graduates in their life-time, Cable said, and there are significant premiums for degrees such as medicine

Yes, but that’s medicine. What about those with degrees in History, English or the Arts? Those graduates will be lucky to earn that kind of money, if they ever earn it at all. Someone isn’t living in the real world here and I think it’s Dr. Cable.

There is also provision being made for more private universities. To date, there is only one private university in the country and that is the University of Buckingham . A favourite of Thatcher, Buckingham is known for its rigidly conservative approach to education. You will find no arts or philosophy courses here. Oh no, it’s business, business, business, medicine and a bit of science.

Cable also announced that more degree courses will last 2 years rather than the current 3 or 4 years.  In my mind, this is something of a con-trick. Aaron Porter of Leftfootforward says,

Dr Cable is right that that greater flexibility is needed in higher education in combination with greater fairness, and this includes expanding the range of study options and modes. However, it would be wrong to force students to take two year degrees or to stay at home because they would not otherwise be able to afford the cost of university. The re-opening of a two tier system would not be in line with his stated aim of greater fairness for students.

That’s Aaron Porter as in the toady president of the National Union of Students Aaron Porter.

Universities have been a favourite target of Tory governments. In the past they have been accused of being ‘hotbeds’ of  extreme left wing activism or delivering courses that have no [economic] value.  Sociology was one such course singled out by the Tories in the 70’s and 80’s as being part of a left-wing conspiracy to undermine the fabric of society. Recently, Media Studies has been subjected to the same vilification. Perhaps the underlying reason for the hatred of Media Studies has little to do with people ‘poncing about with cameras’  and more to do with opposition to creating a more media literate society. It is easier to con people who are less media literate with digital editing tricks than those who have been exposed to media studies.

A graduate tax will put many more students off going to university. The hardest hit by these proposals will be people from low income families. Mature students will also be put off by the imposition of a graduate tax. so if you come from a family that owns a £968,000 property and has an income of £500,000 pa, you’re okay. If you’re 26, single and on benefits, forget it. The mature undergraduate student will become a thing of the past.

The various university groups have expressed their dismay at the proposals. Wendy Platt of the Russell Group said,

“It would lead to many years before revenue from the tax became available so until then there would be a requirement for a very major upfront investment in universities by government – a very costly solution.”

I was lucky, I got a grant to go to university. It wasn’t worth much but  it was something. Unlike today’s students, I didn’t have to pay tuition fees nor did I have to burden myself with a student loan. I was also a mature student. Education is an investment for the future and by restricting education to those who can afford it, spits in the eye of a fair society.

Big Society, my arse.

The Lib Dems: a spent electoral force?

The Liberal Democrats are finished as an electoral force. Having accepted the poisoned chalice of going into coalition with the Conservatives and with members leaving the party for Labour and others, the party faces losing its own identity too.  They would have stood a better chance as partners to Labour – at least they could have pretended to be left-ish. They would have even stood a better chance propping up a minority Conservative government under a confidence and supply arrangement. But Clegg and the rest of the leadership wanted power…and who could blame them?

79 years of hurt and all that…

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the rightward drift of the Lib Dem leadership began with the appearance of The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism. Published by the think tank Centre Forum, the book contained essays by David Laws, Vince Cable, Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and others.  This group is generally referred to as the Orange Book tendency.  The Orange Book appeared at the same time as pressure was mounting on Charles Kennedy to resign (some felt that he was leading the party too far to the left). The book was not a hit with everyone as Richard Grayson of Goldsmiths College writes,

Many in the party were deeply hostile to The Orange Book; others simply tried to ignore it. A response eventually came in 2007, in the form of Reinventing the State: Social Liberalism for the 21st Century, which I co-edited with Duncan Brack (also a former director of policy) and David Howarth, then the MP for Cambridge. This sought to give a more sophisticated account of internal party divisions, and indeed included chapters from Orange Book-ers such as Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne. It argued that, although there was much wrong with the state, the answer was not to reduce it, but to reform and relocate it, principally by making public services locally and democratically accountable.

This is confusing me, Clegg and Huhne wrote chapters in a response to the Orange Book? No wonder there is a such a lack of real focus to the party or a uniquely identifiable ‘brand’  image. Grayson also says that there are few factions within the party, which suggests that the Lib Dems are less split over issues that would split Labour and the Tory ranks. Nonetheless,

Political culture helps to explain the party’s support for the coalition. The Liberal Democrats have become extremely leadership-loyal. The trauma of losing Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell in quick succession should not be underestimated. However narrowly Clegg won, the party was always going to stick with him, and his brilliant personal performance during the election campaign consolidated support for him. The culture of the Liberal Democrats is also in*herently reasonable. There is a willingness to try to see all sides of an argument and a long-standing belief that coalitions are desirable.

At this point, we need to remind ourselves of the factions within the party. There is the traditional bearded Liberal, sandal-wearing wing; the Orange Book Tendency which is  represented by the party leadership; and the residue of the old Social Democratic Party (SDP), which merged with David Steel’s Liberals to form the Social and Liberal Democrats, the Democrats which then became the Liberal Democrats.

A fine mess.

Therefore it comes as no surprise that Charles Kennedy is uneasy about the coalition and so is The Emperor. But the Orange Bookers are in the ascendancy: they are the engine that drove the Lib Dems into the arms of the Tories. There is little difference between the Orange Bookers and the libertarian wing of the Conservative Party; they both want a smaller state. But how much of this ‘small statism’ can the social liberals stomach? Kennedy was once a member of the SDP, while Emperor Ming has always been a Liberal. Campbell stood by and watched as his Young Turks plunged the knife into Chatshow Charlie’s back. Once he became interim leader he rewarded them with front bench positions.

A big mistake.

Campbell, too, would find himself ousted by the very same forces he unleashed within the party: the Orange Book Tendency. They said he was “too old” to lead the party: they wanted a leader that could match David Cameron’s youth. Step forward, Nick Clegg.  Huhne  stood no chance against Clegg’s youthful good looks and his aristocratic background (he’s the great-great grandson of Ukrainian nobleman, Ignaty Zakrevsky and the great-great nephew of Moura Budberg, who was also known as “The Russian Mata Hari”). Perhaps it was inevitable that Clegg and Cameron would engage in full-blown inter-party relations. Cameron is, after all, an indirect descendant of William IV and therefore a cousin of the Queen.

Two blue bloods for the price of one!

That’s the parliamentary party, what about the membership? Lord Greaves is appalled at the news coming from the coalition. The Guardian ran a story on 15 May that told of grassroots Lib Dem members deserting their party. The leadership denied this

A Lib Dem spokesman claimed that fewer than 100 people had left since the coalition was announced four days ago, while more than 400 had joined.

“We don’t believe it’s anything to do with disillusionment over the new government. On the contrary, we have gained more than 1500 members over the election campaign,”

I find it hard to believe that 400 would join the party because of the coalition but then the Lib Dems have never played with a straight bat. Other parties are working hard to attract disillusioned Lib Dem voters including the Greens and Labour.  Harriet Harman claims that Labour has attracted 21,000 new members many of whom are former Lib Dems. But can we believe this? Why would anyone want to join Labour? Libdemvoice claims that 4,500 have joined since the election. Again, this seems a little far-fetched; people don’t join parties because they like the ‘chalk and cheese’ nature of the coalition.

I suspect that the Lib Dem leadership is in denial about the potential loss of members and voters. They prefer to content themselves with how things might look should their plans in the coalition succeed. But the proposed referendum on ‘political reform’ is an awful abortion of a compromise; AV is not proportional representation nor is it the first stop on the road to PR. As with most compromises this one will please no one but those who want to keep the present system for voting. Once voters see AV for what it is, they may decide to stick rather than twist. This will not help the Lib Dem’s cause in any forthcoming election or by-election, because they will not only be seen as liars, they will be seen as weak and wishy-washy.

Here is a history lesson for the Lib Dem leadership: in 1931, Ramsay MacDonald’s second Labour government lacked the numbers to form an outright majority. The Liberal Party agreed to prop up the government but this was too much for some Liberals who broke away to form the Liberal National Party. This party moved closer to the Conservatives and by August of that year, a national government was formed and headed by MacDonald. This coalition government contained many Tories as well as Liberal Nationals. MacDonald was famously expelled from the Labour Party and led his breakaway National Labour Party in the coalition. Most Liberals wanted nothing to do with this arrangement and consequently the support for the Liberal Party plunged and the party split into two camps that would never be reconciled. In fact many Liberal Nationals and National Liberals (as they later called themselves) joined with the Conservatives and fought elections together until 1968. But by then the pretence was over and they were subsequently absorbed into the Tory party. The Liberals on the other hand never scored more than 12 seats from 1945 to 1974 and by 1979 the party could  comfortably squeeze itself into a London black cab. Could history repeat itself?

I think so.