Q: What else could we do with £100 billion other than blow it on Trident?

Tweet

A: Spend it on renewables and give us real national security

The Tories, the media and right-wing Labour MPs appear to be of one voice on the importance of spending a vast fortune on the next generation of submarine-based WMDs. Jeremy Corbyn’s insistence that he would never use them has apparently cast him into the wilderness of the unelectable and the dovishly naïve. Russia’s Putin is apparently rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of Britain’s imminent nuclear nakedness.

But in an age of austerity, when the government claims it has to cut the income of 3 million low-income families to the bone, while slashing subsidies for renewable energy following the hottest year on record, surely the question of value for money in achieving security for Britain should be paramount?

It’s not as if climate change has no impact on national security. Charlotte Church was sneered at for mentioning a report that found Syria’s uprising was in part caused by a severe drought over three years that drove thousands of people off the land and into slums prior to the 2011 protests.
Across the world, traditional rain patterns are being disrupted by climate change, adding to stress in regions that are already wracked by social violence. When the Pentagon recognises climate change as a bigger threat to global security than terrorism, the smart move for policymakers would be to invest heavily in green energy, not blow the nation’s resources on an unusable instrument of nuclear terror.
The cost of the subsidy for renewables soon to be axed by the government is £1.5 billion – a billion less than Trident 2’s annual cost of £2.4bn. Britain, by investing a big part of its Trident budget in a renewable revolution, could by 2030 have created a new green economy and weaned us off dependency on OPEC oil (36% of oil imports) and Russian coal (42% of coal imports). This change would surely offer us far greater security than to continue to rely for energy sources on countries who could, at some not too distant future point, suffer violent political change and possible economic collapse.
In a modern economy, energy security is central to national security. Following development of oil and gas production in the North Sea, the UK became a net exporter in the 1980s, but North Sea production peaked in 1999, and the UK returned to being an energy importer in 2004.
In terms of energy security, things have gotten worse since David Cameron came to power. In 2013, 47 percent of energy used in the UK was imported, up sharply from the 2010 level, due to the decline in oil and gas output.
In 2013 Russia remained the leading source of our coal imports, accounting for 41%, with the US at 25% and Colombia 23%. For crude oil we rely on Norway, which accounted for 40% of imports, with OPEC countries – including Algeria, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia - supplying a further 36%. Norway accounted for 58% of UK gas imports, with the remaining 20% as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), with over 90% of this coming from Qatar. UK oil production in 2013 was 70% lower than the record 150.2 million tonnes in 1999. Gas production in 2013 was 66% lower than the record levels seen in 2000.
So there you have it – we are increasingly import dependent for fuel, with a significant portion of this coming from Russia and OPEC countries. Britain in other words, is reliant on fuel from countries – in the Gulf, Russia and Africa – who effectively have a gun pointed to our head over energy. Billionaires from these countries have been accumulating vast portfolios of British real estate, mostly in London.
In the case of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, they have funded the advancement of conservative Islam across an arc from North Africa to Indonesia that has helped spur militant violence across the world.
So Corbyn’s best option to win the argument, and for Britain’s future prosperity and energy self-sufficiency, is to propose investing a big portion of the £100 billion that was due to be spent on Trident in a green economy that will genuinely give us national security in a highly unstable world.
Alternatively we can continue with Cameron’s option of dependency on coal, oil and gas from our friends in Russia, the Middle East and Colombia, while holding a very expensive stick of dynamite and pretending that it makes us safe.

Panorama's report on the Westminster paedophile cases

Tweet

After the Corbyn hit job by Panorama before his election triumph, a Panorama raising doubts over witnesses in the Westminster paedophile cases. Do I detect a pattern here?
Here's a conversation I had with some friends on Facebook about the programme.
Iain McGill Yes think you're spot on, Joe. It's as if Murdoch is already running the BBC.....they're pulling punches and spinning stories all over the place. Well and truly neutered Like · Reply · 11 hrs

Joe Gill God forbid that the BBC would ever actually do a proper investigation of the allegations in the Westminster scandal - and discover that they are not entirely bogus. Perhaps they've already done it and I missed it. Like · Reply · 9 hrs

Ollie Goodall Steve Hewlett on the Media Show just now: "Panorama is not the BBC." Can we stop these sweeping abstract arguments please? Panorama, like much of TV is made by independent production houses. And are shown often, for commercial reasons. I don't necessarily agree with some of it's output but I'll defend the BBC, if not the public broadcasting model, to the hilt. ON the BBC not OF the BBC. Like · Reply · 7 hrs · Edited

Ann Czernik At the risk of being shot down, I thought the Panorama programme was right to ask the questions that they did. The programme did'nt suggest and in fact was careful to state that these people had been abused. The question was how journalists had obtained statements, and the interview with Mark from the Grafton Close children's home was really well handled. I've interviewed widely around the Westminster story. I've never been able to stand it up and believe me I've tried. What I found was exactly the same as Panorama. I know of one victim who was plastered all over SKY as abused in Dolphin Square and he is absolutely categoric that it did'nt happen. He like many other boys from the care system was part of a network where staff arranged for boys to be sold for sex. But not at Dolphin Square. Another boy told me of his involvement in a similar ring but he was billed as a victim of Edward Heath.

The abuse these boys suffered is real, and painful but the way that their experience has been manipulated and abused within the media is really wrong. It's not helped focus attention on the biggest child sex ring in history within the North Wales children's homes, nor has it had any impact on raising support for victims who struggle on a daily basis to come to terms with their abuse. Children were abused by MP's. There are over 650 of them so statistically some will be paedophiles, Does that constitute a conspiracy, no it does'nt. Was there a cover up - ask MI5 and the security agencies.

But what is truly tragic about this is that the many, many victims who were abused by lesser mortals are excluded from the investigation. Media is only interested in child abuse as either abuse porn or if there is a celebrity involved. There is no real interest in child abuse or child sex exploitation unless the victims are pupils at privileged institutions or the perpetrators are amongst the rich and powerful. That is hypocrisy and meanwhile a sociological disaster is unfolding because as an industry CSE has taken root in communities. I'm backing the Panorama programme because it asked difficult questions that needed to be asked. We need a justice system which operates fairly. Unfortunately that means that victims of abuse, are witnesses to their own assault, often the only witnesses. What if those accounts do not stand up to the rigours of the justice system? Is it OK to relax those requirements to obtain convictions and what do we do about potential miscarriages of justice. Child abuse is complex, and difficult and challenges black and white thinking. Of course we should believe survivors, but we also need to uphold the justice system. It's the only thing that stands between us and the abuse of human rights that would occur if we compromise that system. It's not perfect but it's the best that there is.

In the UK, we are all innocent until proven guilty. Child abuse - as a crime - has to have the same standards. It doesnt mean that someone was not abused but it does mean that trial by media has to stop. Everyone is entitled to a fair trial and the current coverage means that people like Proctor are unlikely to get that. The problem with that is that they can quite rightly claim that as a defence. I was at a conference on CSE recently where there were discussions about the problems of conviction. There are people out there quietly doing really good work to try to grapple withh the problems of evidence, and interrogation and vulnerable witnesses but no-one wants to talk about that. It's easier to characterise this monstrous crime as the actions of people who are beyond human but the reality is that children are abused mainly by people that they know, and you sit down to dinner with. Panorama - I feel - simply engaged with some of the issues that surround the allegations of the Westminster paedophile ring and there are many. I think they should be allowed as journalists to do that. Unlike · Reply · 1 · 6 hrs

Joe Gill Thank you Ann for sharing that - I have not seen the show so I bow to what you are saying - and perhaps I posted too hastily without seeing the programme. I agree that people should not be put on trial by media. And I did wonder how it was that none of these cases came to trial after years of witnesses being interviewed. In which case does that mean Exaro is not being fair in its coverage of the story? Like · Reply · 6 hrs

Joe Gill Exaro put up a good defence of their reports on Newsnight tonight, Watching Panorama now Like · Reply · 52 mins

Joe Gill The tone of the programme is disbelieving of the witnesses, suggesting the accounts of abuse are mostly made up. It casts doubt over Exaro investigation methods and makes a big attack on Tom Watson's parliamentary calls for action on paedophilia, while also making Leon Brittan out as an innocent victim of a witchhunt. The questions maybe valid, but its a massively pro-establishment programme. Unsurprising really - but what about all the other centres of paedophilia, aside from Dolphin Square and Elm Guest House? Perhaps we can now have a programme about the well-known coverups of the 70s to 1990s of senior paedophiles. I think we'll be waiting a while for that one, or perhaps they never happened either... Like · Reply · 2 mins

Yanis Varoufakis comes with a warning for Jeremy Corbyn

Tweet

Greek ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis brought some rock star glamour to the opening of the TUC on Sunday in Brighton. The Syriza economist smiled for selfie shots with delegates at a 1,000-plus meeting of delegates high on the back of Jeremy Corbyn's stunning victory in the Labour leadership battle.

Varoufakis gave an inside account of the madness of the bailout talks with the EU troika and the way the Greeks withstood intimidation from outside and within to vote down the new austerity loan this summer. However he noted with sadness that while the people were up for a showdown with Euro finance ministers, some in the Syriza party were not.

He also warned the Corbyn camp of the challenges it will face in the coming months.

"Throughout this campaign which began yesterday and will end with the general election, it will be a focal point for progressive people throughout the world. You will be facing a wall to wall campaign of vilification, a campaign to discredit Jeremy…to discredit the labour movement.

"There are lessons from Greece. They will use fear against progress. You must return the favour by showering them with reason, with compassion, and with even a degree of self deprecation.

"You must be steadfast when the character assassination escalates beyond belief. I’ve experienced that. Alexis Tsipras experienced that.

"Beyond that, you must always believe as Franklin D Roosevelt said, that the only thing to fear is fear itself, and the people who are there can be made not to fear fear.

"It is important that we believe that because the saddest piece of news I bring you is that we the leaders didn’t believe."

"You will be told that if Jeremy wins, the UK will become another Greece."

On the 2008-9 financial crisis he said it proved that austerity was a non-starter and that the ruling elites were fully aware of this, but used it as a weapon to redistribute wealth - and to punish Greece and its left-wing Syriza government - for the temerity of putting EU diktats to Greek voters.

After the bankers broke the economy "the state ended up holding the baby. The same people who served the interests of the bankers during the era of ponzi growth turned to what I call Ponzi austerity – fake austerity… to ensure the costs of the crisis were passed on to those who never benefited from the Ponzi growth in the first place.

"The British economy began to recover after 2009, then George Osborne put his foot on the break. What did he do immediately after that? He removed his foot, he stopped doing austerity; austerity was very light in Britain. It was used as an instrument to affect a savage redistribution of income.

"From a macroeconomic perspective it was very very light. Greece’s austerity was eight times as harsh. What was effect on Greece – we lost 28% of national income, we lost one third of the jobs. We had a spectacular increase in poverty.

"Austerity doesn’t work. George Osborne knows that."

"Another element that will be very important for the Jeremy Corbyn team to understand - the practice of QE has been exemplary in maintaining some equilibrium in the macro economy of Britain while at the same time using austerity as a narrative to justify the transfer of income from the have-nots to the haves.

"This QE was quite remarkable even by the standards of Europe and the United States. Where did that money go? It went to purchasing mortgages, purchasing derivatives, purchasing bonds. Purchasing those pieces of paper that elevate the value of asset prices, but have nothing to do with industry, like house prices in London, like share prices in companies.

"The Bank of England extended liquidity to banks, banks extended liquidity to companies. And what did companies do with that liquidity when people of Britain did not have enough money to buy more stuff – they bought back their own shares. They did not invest in productive activity, in jobs…

"There has been no surge in investment in the sectors which are essential for the future of Britain. That was a spectacular fail by Cameron and Osborne. And why did they not get challenged? They did not get challenged because the Labour Party lobotomised itself some time ago.

"Now in Greece we had contractionary contraction – the greatest austerity ever.

"What should you do? You are embarking on a long path which is going to excite all of us. Firstly, the Labour Party needs to stiffen its lip. For 30 years now we have had a one sided class war. The only in Britain who disowned the class war was the Labour party. Mrs Thatcher, Mr Major , Mr Blair, were exemplary class warriors, fighting for the interests of the class they represented. There was socialism for the bankers and the spivs, and unfettered markets for everyone else.

Since the 1980s, capital itself was diminished, fragmented, financialised, said Varoufakis. But he warned the British labour movement against looking backward as they work out economic strategies in the coming period.

"What does it mean to have to fight this good struggle? It means a number of things.

"We should not rush to the past for solutions. We have to be critical – [in the 1980s] we in the labour movement were defending tooth and nail towers that were crumbling because of the disruptive technologies of the time. From the Greek perspective, having coal fired electricity stations is a no no.

"We have to revive the spirit of Harold Wilson in the 1960s and the white heat of technology except this time it shouldn’t be the white heat of technology, it should be the cool breeze of green technologies.

"We need to show [young people] for whom the idea of the internet is decentralizing, it is what the idea of common ownership of means of exchange distribution and production meant to previous generations.

"The emerging markets have cottoned on to the importance of having a publicly owned development banks. Brazil has one, China has one, America doesn’t need one because it has the military industrial complex, which operates as their magnificently efficient development bank. In Britain we need one.

"People’s QE was a right-wing idea – helicopter money – created by Milton Friedman.

"Why can't a development bank issue bonds to the City of London to fund a green new deal? This will not push up house prices in London, you are not pushing up the share value of media companies – you are supporting the development of real productive green technologies directly.

"There are lessons from Greece. They will use fear against progress. You must return the favour by showering them with reason, with compassion, and with even a degree of self deprecation.

"You must be steadfast when the character assassination escalates beyond belief. I’ve experienced that. Alexis Tsipras experienced that.

"Beyond that, you must always believe as Roosevelt said, that the only thing to fear is fear itself, and the people who are there can be made not to fear fear.

"It is important that we believe that because the saddest piece of news I bring you is that we the leaders didn’t believe. The magnificent people of Greece responded to a terroristic act – they [the ECB and troika] shut down the banking system – [by defying it and voting No in the referendum on the austerity package].

Draghi and the Euro group said the Greek banks were solvent but warned me to keep my mouth shut or he might change his mind. He told me, ‘You have to protect their solvency by keeping your mouth shut.'

"On 27 June, the Eurogroup said they had no choice but to shut the Greek banks down – because we [Syriza] dared to put [the new loan agreement] to the Greek people in a referendum. I could not responsibly sign this agreement because I knew we could not repay it. That was considered an act of irresponsibility that deserved the reaction on their part of shutting down the banks. And I can't look at the Latvian, Slovenian or German finance minister in the eye and say I am going to sign this loan agreement and we’re going to pay the money back, because I knew we couldn’t – and they knew we couldn’t.

"The Greek media was beaming into their homes that if they vote No they will be destroying their land, they will be destroying their country – and they responded to this with a 62% No."

Yanis went on to say that the “magnificent Greek people" had shown that they could not be bullied, and were not prepared to surrender, but sadly that could not be said of the Syriza government.

"This was the first time in history that a creditors have offered a loan to a sovereign state that the creditors know will ensure that the old loan and the new loan cannot be repaid.

"We were elected with 36% and 62% said no. That no was a no to the fearmongers. The message I took from this 62% was: we don’t want to be taken out of the Eurozone, we want an hourable agreement within the Eurozone. We want compromise, not to be compromised. If they push us through the mud and humiliation, then let them do their worst."

"But comrades, to finish on a slightly pessimistic note and a word of caution to what is happening here [in Britain]: the enemy is always within. The enemy is always the Ramsay Macdonalds, the enemy is the fear in our ranks. Try to excise it from your hearts and the hearts of your leaders."

Corbyn's rise is caused by neoliberalism's onslaught on 'Middle Britain'

Tweet

Hark the sound of panic from the Labour establishment and its media backers, from the Sun to the Guardian, vainly trying to warn voters away from the surge in support for Jeremy Corbyn.
But Tony Blair's warning of annihilation, along with those of Mandelson and Campbell, are a Canute-like chorus against a swelling tide caused by decades of neoliberal policies of new Labour and the Tories.
Essentially the middle ground, middle England voter to whom new Labour has always sworn its undying faith, has been whittled away as a voter demographic by the economic and social policies of the last 35 years, and especially of the last five years. The first signs of this were clear from the 2015 election - with the millions voting Ukip, SNP and Green.
The theory of Blairism was that the working class was disappearing, being replaced by a new middle class of aspirational voter, especially in the south and Midlands where most elections were won or lost. This was the result of the policies of Margaret Thatcher, which deindustrialised Britain and turned many more people into homeowners, thanks to the Right to Buy policy, and also the culture of consumerism and the decline of trade unions.
In theory this change was irreversible and meant that the traditional Labour social base was being replaced by a new type of voter more naturally inclined toward consumerist and individualist ie Tory values. Hence new Labour's shopping list approach to politics, with pledges and carefully triangulated messages - minimum wage, yes, but tough on welfare and immigration, and an insouciant acceptance of rising inequality.
Behind a lot of this was fear of the Tory media, which new Labour spent an enormous amount of energy cultivating in order to avoid the fate of Neil Kinnock. Recall Blair's early meetings with Rupert Murdoch in Australia and of course, his model, Margaret Thatcher.
However, it makes no historical sense whatsoever to believe that the moderate centre-left appeal of early Blairism that worked in 1997 after 18 years of Toryism is in any way relevant to the 2020 election. The biggest party in recent elections has been the non-voters - who in 2015 were 34 per cent to the Tories' 24 percent. These are the people Russell Brand says he represents - those who no longer have a stake in a political system that appeals to lower middle and middle-class homeowners. As for traditional Labour voters - public sector workers and carers, they were always treated with contempt by Blair - but in Corbyn, they at last have a candidate who unashamedly shares their values.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, the social divisions caused by a policy of deregulation and privatisation have accelerated - and it is clear who has lost out: average wage earners, young people, renters and others, such as those on in-work benefits and zero hours contracts, have suffered declining living standards, while often apparently treated by our political class as the great unwashed whose votes don't count.
Home ownership is in decline, private sector renting is moving toward 9 million, zero hours contracts have rocketed, food bank use has become a commonplace. In this deeply divided country where the wealthiest 0.1 percent saw their assets double in value since 2008, for whom austerity is what happens to the little people, Corbyn is the answer to the question - who stands up for us?
This is the socio-economic soil from which the Corbyn surge emerges, and is only surprising to those living in a privileged Westminster-media-West London bubble. It is not going away.

Why the right can't handle democracy

Tweet

The horror, the horror. Democracy - that quaint idea of the people actually deciding who leads us, as against having to choose between pre-selected establishment candidates - has broken out in the Labour Party. The Blairites and others who see in Jeremy Corbyn everything they hate about their own party's traditions - honesty, socialism, commitment to principles - must be truly cursing Ed Miliband now for introducing a new democratic system for electing the leader. In the 1990s, the Parliamentary Labour party had half the votes on the leadership of the party. It was a way of making sure grassroots members didn't get above themselves and start thinking it was their party. God and Tony Blair forbid!
At some point, the leader election system was changed again, with a third of votes going to members, a third to affiliated unions, and a third to Labour MPs. That system put Ed Miliband in charge over his brother, whose Blairite record made him a dead duck for the unions.
And now, thanks to Ed, its just one member, one supporter, one union affiliate, one vote. Oh glorious democracy. Getting Corbyn on the ballot was a way of showing how fair minded Labour MPs were in the wake of the shocking defeat in May. But very few ever expected there to be an insurgency of the kind we are now seeing.
They bought into the Tory media line that Miliband lost for being too left wing. What is it about Labour politicians that they believe everything they read in the Sun, Telegraph and Mail? It's as if they lack the capacity for independent thought. They all trot out the same line - the Tories won and Labour lost because we don't 'get' popular right wing sentiments on immigration, welfare, tax etc. Yes, many people do worry about these things, but if you go and ask someone on the doorstep what they feel about these issues, some of them might repeat what they have read in the papers. Gypsies with big families are given five bedroom houses. People enjoying a life of ease on welfare. God forbid that you should challenge the distortions and lies that appear in the papers and point out some other salient facts - the billions in subsidies that go to landlords and businesses to subsidise high rents and low wages. No, no - that would be to suggest you could change these inequities and build a fairer country No, that would be a dangerous raising of expectations. Just keep it vague and aspirational and hope people vote for you out of desperation - maybe stick it on a stone plaque with apple pie promises of sunshine and warm feelings. This then becomes Labour policy.
Then along comes Jeremy Corbyn, squeezed onto the ballot for Labour leader and now leading the pack. I've known Jeremy for years as a peace and solidarity campaigner whose commitment is second to none - he has supported a lot of unfashionable causes, from Diego Garcia, to Palestine, CND, to Colombian trade unionists and the Kurds. Those who sneer should ask themselves what it is about political commitment they find so off-putting.
Corbyn is straight talking and is not burdened with the kind of inflated ego that has been the downfall of other left leaders in the recent past - abrasive personalities who, while charismatic, too often can't live up to the principles they espouse.
Kendal and Blair and all their right-wing media acolytes warn that we might be moving back to the 80s. They seem to be unaware that when the country voted Labour in 1997 and 2001, it was looking for an alternative to the right-wing Thatcherism that had governed the country and raised levels of inequality and poverty in the 80s and 90s. They did not actually vote for Blairism - they voted Labour. A landslide in 97 was almost inevitable. But even more important than this, 2020 is 23 years after 1997. The country has been ruled by a neoliberal regime - with a very short interregnum of Gordon Brown - since 1979. Perhaps only a radical candidate committed to real social change can challenge and bring to a halt this juggernaut that keeps coming back stronger like a zombie we thought we had killed.
Remember 1990 and the end of Thatcher. After that we got Major and the closure of the mines and the rail privatisations. With Blair we got Public Private Partnerships, Iraq, and ever greater security surveillance, plus the micromanagement and farming out of public services.
Neoliberalism comes in different guises, with different faces - but each time the electorate is fooled that it has voted for change, the continuity candidate wins. Even Brown, confronted with the biggest crisis in capitalism in 80 years, bailed out the banks with our money and asked for nothing in return - no radical reform of a financial sector that had become a blood sucking beast on the backs of ordinary people.
Blair reorganised Labour's democratic system so that members no longer had any real say over policy. Miliband began to change that.
So yes, people are desperate for something different. Janus-faced candidates like Burnham and Cooper - who declare love for big business or Israel whenever someone says jump and can't give a straight answer to a question - are not going to do it.
This is why Corbyn has caught the moment, and why Labour's political establishment - and the right-wing and liberal media including the Guardian - are in shock and don't know what's hit them.
Can Corbyn win in 2020? Who knows? And who knows what catastrophes Osborne will have inflicted upon the nation by then. Anything is possible - except the sudden discovery of conviction and principles coming from any of the other three candidates.
And as for the Labour right, the slick-faced elitists like Tristrum Hunt and Chukka Ummuna, they have shamefully exposed their contempt for democracy. After 20 years of managed control of the party in the name of staying rigidly to centrist politics that kill all enthusiasm, they have revealed the very reason millions in Scotland and England no longer want their kind of politics.
There is every chance that if Corbyn wins, they will split the party as happened in 1981 with the Social Democrats. That didn't work out well. However, as European politics has shown, new popular left movements can eclipse traditional social democracy - or at least give it a run for its money. See Spain, Greece, Italy, Holland. Britain needs a left-wing alternative to Ukip and the SNP in Scotland. This could be the beginning of something truly exciting.

Matthew Parrish fails to demolish socialism

Tweet

Times columnist Matthew Parrish suggests socialist economics should be as discredited as believing the earth is flat, AIDS denial and eugenics.

This century’s intellectual consensus should show Marxism the door. Whether strictly defined as public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, or more loosely as state direction of the “commanding heights” of the economy, socialism must be counted as definitively discredited. Over almost a century that theory has been tested — in every case — to destruction. 

He goes on to mention a list of 20th and 21st century socialist experiments - Albania (Hoxha), Argentina (Kirchner), Chile (Allende), pre-capitalist China, Cuba, Eritrea, Mozambique (Machel), North Korea, North Vietnam, Venezuela - to show that socialism never works.

Is he right? It's very easy to take examples of Stalinist central planning, Mao's Great Leap Forward and some of the African socialist experiments to show that there are huge deficiencies in attempting to control economic activity from the centre without a free market. And it is true that Venezuela, the most high profile recent attempt at "21st century socialism" has run into a lot of trouble with price controls, despite having reduced poverty and inequality.

So clearly there is something to that old argument that a state controlled economy will not produce prosperity, and cannot know what millions of consumers want, and that much of this can be left to markets.

His particular beef is with the English distaste for making profit, which he urges the Tories to come out in open defence of rather than skirt around. It's true that profit can be a dirty word, but it is the capitalist system in general that needs to be understood, rather than simply the pursuit of profit. Parrish's argument seems to be a slight aunt sally. After all, state firms under socialism in many cases make a profit but the wonderful thing about a state company, as against a corporation run for shareholders, is that it can cross-subsidise so that unprofitable but socially necessary activities are subsidised by profitable ones. Royal Mail made a profit for the UK treasury until George Osborne flogged it on the cheap, while also supporting loss making postal services.

Profit per se I don't see as a universal bad, even though it does occupy a level of hell in classical marxism, since it derives from surplus value taken from workers. In this sense, I agree with Parrish that the pursuit of profit should not be seen as the primary bad. However, what happens to profits once they are made is a legitimate question for society and will remain so. If our entire economic system is devoted to profit making at the expense of all other social goals, the results will be the same old bad ones - massive inequality, rising poverty, economic bubbles and the economic irrationality of failing markets, such as we saw in 2008. It is a fact that the state cannot substitute itself for markets across the whole economy - and will likely end up causing distortions if it tries to control the price of say, food, as has been seen in the Venezuela case. Subsidies - to individuals or producers - have been shown to be far more effective than price controls.

But it is one thing to claim that the abolition of the price mechanism and private profit making does not work if it is applied to the whole economy. It doesn't lead magically to the opposite being true: that letting unfettered markets control all aspects of economic life will lead to prosperity for all. That too is idiotic and flies in the face of all evidence. Market failures happen all the time, and can sometimes be catastrophic. While Stalin and Mao both created mass famines with rapid and forcible collectivisation of agriculture, Britain's 'free market' policy of selling grain from India and potatoes from Ireland on the world market when the indigenous people were starving led, not surprisingly, to the death of millions. According to Amartya Sen, the Indian Nobel Prize winner, the common factor here was the absence of democracy, rather than too much market or too much state (given that most so-called free markets require a very large amount of state cohersion to enforce them).

And contrary to what Parrish implies, state direction of the “commanding heights” of the economy is still widely practiced - in many Asian countries, including those rich Gulf Arabs, energy, transport, health and education are still largely state controlled.

Some industries are natural monopolies or quasi monopolies and privatising them simply allows for massive rent-seeking at the expense of the rest of society. The joke of state subsidised 'competition' on Britain's railways is a classic case in point. Certain models of socialism have been discredited, and price controls are sometimes ineffective and counter productive - although rent regulation works perfectly well in Germany, enabling it to avoid the housing bubbles that felled the UK and US in 2008, and also nearly did us in the early 90s. Markets often fail but the free market fantasy continues, despite the evidence that very few free, competitive markets exist - most are dominated by large companies who bully and destroy the competition.

Parrish attempts to caricature socialists as believers in a defunct ideology, but only in a bubble universe can the believers in classical free markets continue to uphold such an abstract model in the face of reality: most markets are distorted by the massive power wielded by large companies and the very rich. And that is something that capitalism and profit motive can never fix. Enter the state - or perhaps the democratic will of the populace harnessed in new forms of social ownership and control.

Long live the mixed social democratic market economy!

As Labour veers right, the left needs to learn from the Leninist neocons

Tweet

The world has crept into my new dad bubble and now I must respond with political analysis...

Chris Leslie, Labour's Treasury spokesman turned shadow chancellor, comes across with all the political passion of a smooth-talking bank manager.

His interview in last Sunday's Observer was a manifesto for a post-Miliband Labour economic policy that eschews anything remotely radical in favour of pure managerialism. It's an unashamed bouquet of promises to do absolutely nothing that ruffles the feathers of big business.

Sadly, Labour doesn’t seem to get that it is perfectly possible to be left wing and also believe that free markets are actually necessary and good - within the framework of a mixed economy. Alas, an economy in which public and private co-exist in healthy competition was abolished by Margaret Thatcher and her successors.

Leslie used to run the New Local Government Network, a think tank that spent the 2000s arguing for deregulation and privatisation of local government services. In the interview, Leslie takes an axe to all of Ed Miliband's progressive policies - rail nationalisation is out, as too is rent control, capping banks' market share, even the mansion tax was "too crude". Deficit reduction, predictably, is a favourite. Market "transparency" is his watchword.

Instead of supporting competition in the private sector combined with strong public regulation of natural monopolies and essential services (health, education, housing, utilities, rail etc), nice Mr Leslie offers blind support for big business.

Leslie may or may not continue to be Labour's economic spokesman, but with this approach, he clearly puts himself to the right of Ed Balls and anyone with a hint of pinkish social democracy. This man is cut through like rock with neoliberalism and the promise of never being outflanked to the right by Osborne or anyone else.

It is a peculiar thing that Labour politicians always see electoral defeat in terms of failing to appeal to middle England Tory voters. Yes, the Tories won the most votes in the south, but if you combine Ukip, SNP and Green votes, that's nearly 6 million people who actually want left-of-centre economic policies that favour working people, such as a living wage, nationalisation of rail and utilities, rent control and so on.

Labour is not interested in these voters, and it wants nothing to do with the emerging progressive alliance of parties - SNP, Green, Plaid Cymru - as witnessed by Miliband's fatal refusal to make a deal with Nicola Sturgeon. (Once voters saw that Miliband was blind to the inescapable fact that Labour needed the SNP’s support to form a government, he was toast.) Amazingly, Labour’s tribalism and blinkered hostility to new political forces meant it cut itself off from potential allies, and left itself adrift and without credibility come election day.

So, if Labour refuses to reach out to the parties who do win progressive votes – or to adopt policies that win back working class votes from Ukip, eg rail nationalisation and strict enforcement of the minimum wage – then where does that leave the hopes of non-Tory Britain?

As the pitiful Labour leadership campaign has already shown, whoever wins the Labour leadership will focus on reaching out to big business and Tory voters in order to win back those marginals. It’s a narrow, opportunist politics that eschews fundamental principles and long-term thinking in favour of pure electoral machination.

This idea - to see politics purely as a short-term electoral game under current badly broken rules - is a fatal aspect of Labourism, and can be contrasted with the long-term hegemonic strategies of the Right to not just win the immediate battle but to win the class war.

Learning from the Neocons 

Since the 1970s at least, neoconservatives and their UK counterparts in the Tory party have approached politics with a Leninist, revolutionary focus that uses emergent crises as opportunities for “clean breaks” – and for reshaping politics in their own interests.

This was seen in the aftermath of the miners’ strikes of 1972 and 1974, when chief ideologue of the Tory right Nicolas Ridley came up with a plan to break the miners by enticing them into a confrontation and then smashing them. This was part of a plan to break the back of the labour movement, and so move Britain away from socialism, which at the time was seen as a mortal threat to the British capitalist system. They used the global oil crisis of 1979-81 to begin a process of deindustrialisation, a brutal form of social engineering that gutted the communities that were the rock-bed of the post-war social democratic consensus.

Neoconservatives were never parochial or short-termist in their outlook. Like good Leninists, they were internationalists – 1989-91 was a key moment in the victorious march of western-led globalisation, when first the east European communist states, then the Soviet Union, collapsed after a long period of armed confrontation. Afghanistan and a bankrupting arms race finished off the Soviets. After 1991, neoliberal economic specialists moved in to radically overhaul the post-Soviet economy, causing devastation to millions. Since then, the 9/11 attacks, and more recently the 2008 crash, were both huge crises in the international system that neoconservative forces used to re-engineer society toward militarisation at home and abroad, and ever increasing concentration of wealth and corporate power.

The left naively believed 2008 would mark the end of neoliberalism. But where were the left-wing Leninists plotting to bring down the system thanks to its own fundamental weaknesses when it was on its knees? They certainly were not in the Labour cabinet – Gordon Brown, rather than seize the moment and bring the banking system to heal with a new model of state-regulated and socially responsible finance, rushed to the rescue of the banks, leaving them largely unreformed. He was not thanked for saving capitalism, instead the voters rejected him - and the Tories managed to make Labour’s economic record an election issue in 2015.

It is remarkable how the Tories were allowed to get off scot-free for their support for financial deregulation since the 1980s that ultimately led to the crash of 2008. If Labour had any political sense, it would have mercilessly slayed Osborne for his restoking of the housing bubble, rather than weakly echo the homeownership myth. Miliband, to his credit, saw that housing was a major issue, but the mansion tax was too ad hoc a policy to sound coherent (compared to land value tax), and rent control was only announced in the last month of the campaign.

There is no short cut to a revival of social democracy in Britain. But looking to Labour as a vehicle for radical change is almost as daft as expecting Fifa to reform itself. Labour needs to embrace the fact that the era of its big battalions is over and it will never again be given a mandate to rule without the support of other parties.

The next crisis

Governments lose elections, oppositions rarely win them.

The lesson taught by the neoconservative strategists is to look ahead to the next crisis and prepare for a political offensive when it comes, so that for once, the left can seize control of the political narrative. We can’t know what or when it will be exactly, but capitalism goes through a slump on average every ten years. Cameron and Osborne have recklessly reflated the housing and credit bubble and that bubble will burst. International crises can be expected – the Middle East is slipping towards apocalypse, while a new cold war is flaring in Europe.

The message of progressives must be one of hope, always, but hope not built on an unsustainable model of financial capitalism, ever-rising debt, climate crises and endless war. All these factors points toward disasters down the road but also the possibility of a saner, greener, more equitable politico-economic model that could replace this broken one.

Either the movement against neoliberalism will be ready to fight back when the next crisis comes, or, as in 2008, the financial oligarchy and their neocon allies will once again turn it into a new assault on what’s left of society to further enrich the 0.1 percent.