You Cannot Vote Labour or Tory

Henry Porter makes an excellent point – neither of the Big Two major political parties in Britain is talking at all about civil liberties or human rights in the run-up to the general election the month after next. Remember this is the election where we can thoroughly repudiate this authoritarian government’s surveillance agenda, and refuse to vote for anyone who doesn’t guarantee to repeal it:

It is [also] a very dangerous government – it has attacked liberty and rights like no other administration in the past hundred years, and it will continue to do so unless stopped by the electorate in 70 days’ time, for the one area which requires absolutely no skill at all is the creation of new offences, the erosion of ancient liberties and filling our lives with endless checking, vetting and surveillance.

Cameron has spoken about these things in the past but this great issue is not apparently big enough to be one of the main themes of an election campaign in which so much is obviously at stake. The only conclusion to draw is that the Tories believe either this is not important, or that the public don’t think it is important. I am not sure which puts them in a worse light because the first displays shallowness, while the second a lack of leadership.

The Tories have rejected changing the voting system and they’re uninterested in talking seriously about civil liberties – this mustn’t be an election about personalities, nor must it be reduced to who can cut public services and how fast. It must be about repairing the social damage caused by New Labour, and proving to all the major parties that the trade-off between security and liberty is a false one.

I shall be voting Green, because they have a strong chance of removing the government minister who doesn’t represent me in any way, shape or form. You should be voting for parties which are against ID cards, think vetting the population for paedophilia before being allowed to work is unthinkably wrong, which don’t demonise asylum seekers (or lock up their children), and which couldn’t condone throwing people off the internet without a trial, or secretly banning websites they don’t like. If the Tories don’t start talking all of these abuses down (and more), you can’t vote for them merely to get Brown, Straw, Johnson, Balls et al out, because they clearly won’t have any intention to do any better. The database state and state surveillance culture must be stopped – this is your best chance to take a stand and make it happen.

You’re Such a Fraud, Gordon!

Gordon Brown wrote this morning for the Guardian. He might as well not have bothered:

I am proud of Labour’s record in reducing poverty, improving public services and limiting inequality – in the last 13 years we have done more than any government to tackle poverty, and raised 500,000 children and 900,000 pensioners out of poverty.

Erm withdrawing the 10p tax band?  Allowing the extraordinarily rich to get even more rich, at a much faster rate than anyone has been taken out of poverty? He seems to have forgotten his own raid on pensions early in his reign as Chancellor too. Quite appalling.

As we address climate change, we will see a wave of low-carbon industrialisation in the UK as well as the rise of new professional service-sector jobs.

As you address climate change? Third runway at Heathrow? The Vestas fiasco on the Isle-of-Wight? How is that addressing climate change? Where is the low-carbon industrialisation?

We will rapidly make Britain a leading world power in digital industries, introducing the fastest possible broadband system in every part of the country to benefit every business and household.

And in the same bill Peter Mandelson is trying to enshrine the right of government to block any website it chooses, at any time, in secret and without needing a reason. Is that really taking a lead? It’s despotism.

It is increasingly clear that the Conservatives want to remove the security and protection of guaranteed, strong, universal services on which all can rely and in which each has a stake.

I don’t think he wants to see the City Academies’ track records scrutinised too closely. I don’t think he wants to talk about Foundation Hospitals either. And he clearly doesn’t want to talk about universities, whose budgets he’s about to slash, and whose standards have been dumbed down by his and Blair’s insane belief that setting a target of 50% of all school leavers to attend university would lead to increased social mobility. Why bother having universal services if they’re simply crap? Let’s not talk about PFIs either – we’d rather keep that invisible too.

Brown has got to be joking if he expects to win in May on his record (and notice how civil liberties aren’t even obliquely mentioned). And it would have to be on his record, given the complete absence of new ideas in this piece. Fairness? Tell that to asylum seekers and their children. Tell it to people barred from work when the ISA thinks they’re undesirable to work with ‘vulnerable people’ (which is pretty much anyone if you think about it). Tell  it to the working class people who can’t get  (or keep) jobs because the neoliberal economic system and EU deregulation is allowing foreign workers to get paid even less than them and take their jobs. No, the Tories won’t be better – David Cameron would be much worse, for all sorts of reasons (some of which I’ll mention in a blog post later today), but this man’s record is a disgrace. Do we really want more of the same?

No Money Left? Keep Locking Them Up Anyway!

We have a budget deficit of about £178 billion, but New Labour can still find the money to keep locking people up:

The £4.24bn bill for the government’s prison building programme is unsustainable and the cash would be better spent on rehabilitation and prevention so as to cut crime, says a Commons select committee report on justice published tomorrow.

The MPs say the prison building scheme is at present a “costly mistake” that will take jail capacity in England and Wales to 96,000 by 2014, making it the prison capital of western Europe.

The report, Cutting Crime: the Case for Justice Reinvestment, is based on a two-year inquiry by a cross-party group of MPs. It discloses that the £4.24bn cost of creating 10,000 extra prisoner places by 2014, from 86,000, has “more or less been guaranteed by the Treasury” regardless of the coming squeeze on public spending.

The MPs claim the government “is wedded to a prison-building agenda” despite overwhelming evidence showing jail is not the most effective way of reducing reoffending for many people. At the same time the justice ministry is being asked to make £1.3bn of cost savings.

“This forecast represents an incarceration rate of 169 per 100,000 in England and Wales, the highest proportion in western Europe,” says the report. It estimates that the annual cost of keeping someone in jail has reached £40,000 a year per prisoner.

So the government’s authoritarian agenda doesn’t look set to disappear any time soon. Ironic really that they were elected in the first place, considering a ‘lock em up’ policy was one of the many hated by the electorate of the previous Tory administration, and Simon Jenkins shows the scale of the explosion in criminalisation under New Labour:

Labour has created more than 3,000 new offences since 1997, of which 1,472 at the last count were imprisonable. You can go to jail in Britain for not having a licence for a church concert, smoking in a public place, selling a grey squirrel, trans-shipping unlicensed fish, or disobeying a health and safety inspector. In many cases a prison sentence is casually tacked on the end of a statute, like some macho cherry on a cake. Parliamentarians, judges, lawyers, prison officers all complain of overwork – but complain all the way to the bank.

When the justice select committee acknowledges that jail doesn’t work in reducing reoffending, it begs the question why the Home Office should remain so resolute about chucking so many people in jail, particularly when they can’t afford it. New Labour really no longer gives a toss about being tough on the causes of crime. The reason why is clear: cowardice. The Daily HateMail’s response to the report:

The prison population should be slashed by a third – putting 28,000 offenders back on the streets, according to a group of MPs.

The justice select committee says Britain will have 96,000 prisoners by 2014 – the highest incarceration rate in western Europe – but spending £4.2billion on building the extra 12,000 prison places needed is a ‘mistake’.

The committee wants the prison population to be stabilised at its current level of 84,000 – then slashed by a third.

It would leave 56,000 inmates in jail and put 28,000 criminals on the streets.

They’re terrified of being seen as soft on crime, or at least as being portrayed by the nastiest tabloid as being soft on crime, and 12 years later are as paranoid as ever. I mean why not just explain why it’s not a good idea, stand by the argument and prove it by example? The Right manage to do that with their ideology (even though they never succeed in proving it by example), so why can’t the Left, when they actually could demonstrate the truth of their argument? Why continue to try to outflank the Right by being rightist?

Ed Makes His Move?

The Spectator picks this from the Climate Change Secretary’s Observer article:

Let’s start, as our manifesto will, with what the country needs in the coming five years. It can’t be about business as usual. We need to rebuild our economy in a different way from the past, with more jobs in real engineering not just financial engineering. This economy of the future can only be created if we understand the role of government, complementing the private sector, in making it happen, nurturing industries from digital to low carbon. The last thing Britain needs is a government that thinks its only role is to get out of the way.

This is true of so many of the issues our country faces: climate change, reforming social care, getting more young people a good education, dealing with crime and antisocial behaviour. All require a party that believes in the power of collective action.

What’s the point of the article, they ask? I think the answer’s obvious. Ed’s prepared to weather the oncoming storm, and set out a no-nonsense stall for the leadership post-general election clamity. He’s articulated a new political thinking – it’s threadbare, sure, but there’s a cohesion to what he’s suggesting which is not what is coming either from Brown or the cabinet. My money is still on Ed Miliband to lead the Labour Party in opposition, which if he plays his cards right could be quite brief. There’s no love for Cameron out there, and I’m going to guess his majority will be slim. On contentious issues like the repeal of the Human Rights Act he may well find himself at the painful end of a vote of no confidence. That’s the time at which David Miliband would fail to strike – leaving the question: what about Ed?

My question remains – if he has any intention of providing governmental solutions by ‘collective action’, will it be by authoritarian diktat or will he enable the individual freedom needed in order to achieve them? New Labour decided it would force people to behave as it wanted in every conceivable sphere – what follows will have to decide to undo that mentality. If a Miliband shadow administration were prepared not to kowtow to every corporate interest coming its way, it may the first one in some time with something positive to offer. Time will tell.

Tenth Doctor Says ‘Don’t Vote Tory’

David Tennant, a long-time supporter of the Labour Party has come out sharply against David Cameron:

David Tennant has urged people not to vote Tory, warning that life under David Cameron would be a “terrifying prospect” for the future of Britain.

The Doctor Who star branded the Conservative leader a phoney who jumps on every bandwagon going and insists Gordon Brown is the man best placed to look after the interests of all Brits, not just a privileged few.

In an emotionally charged interview, Tennant said: “Clearly, the Labour Party is not without some issues right now and I do get frustrated. They need to sort some stuff out, but they’re still a better bet than the Tories.

“I would rather have Gordon Brown than David Cameron. I would rather have a Prime Minister who is the cleverest person in the room than a Prime Minister who looks good in a suit.

“I think David Cameron is a terrifying prospect. I think he’s a regional newsreader who will jump on whatever bandwagon flies past.

“I get quite panicked that people are buying his rhetoric, because it seems very manipulative.”

It’s a great line, and one which skillfully bypasses Brown’s numerous deficiencies. And it’s going to be a decisive issue in May. Whilst there are terrible things being done in the name of New Labour (Digital Economy Bill, ID cards, ISA, policing), the same would be true under the Tories but far worse. Gutting the BBC as well? Chumming up with the vilest racists and homophobes in the EU Parliament? Repealing the Human Rights Act? No thanks. I’m with The Doctor on this.

Brown Stays Put

Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon didn’t have the guts to knock Gordon Brown out of Downing Street, and he survives again to lead to New Labour to eventual election disaster in May. No surprises there. David Miliband fails to act, the party screams blue murder about fractiousness so close to a general election and everyone goes on as they were. But this didn’t come from nowhere – they all know Brown is going to destroy them, whatever else the spineless two may have said on camera last night. What they didn’t have, and what noone else in the party is offering (at this stage) is new thinking. Extreme neoliberalism is the order of the day, be it Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman, Jack Straw, Ed Balls, Miliband (either of them I suspect) or any of the other non-entities who would have to carry the can for the next five months, and it is that which is poisoning politics more than anything else, regardless of the nominal advantage it’s giving governments around the world to do as they please most of the time.

No doubt we’ll see more of this as May approaches and the campaign continues to become more urgent. Brown could have been secure by winning on his terms in 2007, but as we know now he’s not a natural (or effective) leader and couldn’t even make that decision. We do deserve better, but while our electoral system remains first-past-the-post I don’t see that happening any time soon.

If It’s Either of Them It Should Be Ed

It’s been clear to me for some time that David Miliband, eager to be liked by all of the people all of the time, hasn’t had the drive needed to become Prime Minister. And as New Labour declines towards its inevitable, ideology-free end in May, it’s also been clear that new thinking and new presentation – a whole new attitude is needed to guide a rump Labour Party to its next incarnation. It should be Ed Miliband, and others are starting to agree:

Miliband Jr has four strengths, goes the thinking. He is a more natural media performer than his brother, as his assured appearances at Copenhagen showed; he connects more easily with the party, which he has been courting assiduously as co-ordinator of Labour’s general election manifesto; and he would find it easier to unite the party, whose left and right wings are warming to him. As a 40-year-old, who has only been an MP for five years, he represents more of a break with the Blair/Brown era.

There is another factor that is being whispered: he may have worked for Brown, but Miliband Jr has not been afraid to stand up to his master. A year ago he irritated the prime minister by wringing out environmental concessions before signing up to the third runway at Heathrow.

“Heathrow was Ed’s coming of age,” one member of the cabinet says. “Ed, who made life quite difficult for Gordon, had a big influence on the decision. But he is collegiate and he has stuck by it.”

He’s by no means perfect. His lofty words about the green economy are rarely matched by deeds (Vestas anyone?), but in my mind he’s the only choice to lead the party away from the utterly discredited Blair/Brown era. Time will tell if it happens, and more importantly if he chooses bring an actual ideological bent to it, the complete absence of which after all is what caused voters to be alienated from it in the first place.

A New Leader Would Not Be Enough

Tory blogger Iain Dale has posted a letter from former Home Secretary Charles Clarke which says:

In Parliament and elsewhere an overwhelming majority of Labour opinion believes that in this position Labour’s chances would be significantly improved if Gordon Brown were to stand down.

Over Christmas there have been signs that this strength of opinion is understood in the Cabinet. The New Year will be the time to ensure that the overwhelming feeling which does exist is turned into the action which brings about the necessary change. The price of failure is just too high.

Doing nothing now may seem the easiest option. But Labour should learn from the Tories, who have had many whole decades in power: political parties need the killer instinct to hold on to office. David Cameron’s Conservatives are relying on Labour failing to learn that lesson.

From the beginning of 2010 we need a renewed Labour Party which can offer the people of Britain a genuine and positive choice at the ballot box.

It’s a potent argument, but one which sadly ignores a number of key realities. Sure it would be ideal if Brown were to stand down. Even his successes become failures, but under his watch we’ve also seen the database state and our growing surveillance society grow now almost out of our ability to control; we’ve seen economic disaster and an impotence to change the arrogant behaviour which would allow it to happen again. We’ve seen Brown’s government walk away from Copenhagen with precious little, and massive (and growing) inconsistencies in its attitudes towards the ‘green economy’. We’ve seen the expenses scandal break, with only platitudes and vague promises for the reform our political system needs. And let’s not forget how Brown’s government bends to whatever corporate will offers the best luxury holidays. I’ve already written about the draconian Digital Economy Bill. Would replacing Brown  fix the political carnage from these failures?

We need to look at the alternatives: David Miliband, Ed Balls, Peter Mandelson (he’d find a way), Jack Straw, James Purnell, Harriet Harman, Jon Cruddas, Ed Miliband – who out of that bunch would actually do things differently? I believe the electorate’s disinterest in voting for Brown is entirely down to his failure to represent the wishes of the huge swathes of them not considered ’swing voters’ in marginal constituencies. That would mean an end to the neoconservative adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would mean an end to the doomed belief that marketisation solves the problems in public services. It would mean ending the paranoia which Brown (after Blair) has set in motion between voters and not relying on databases and police batons to further the interests of the state. It would demand an honest voting system, which reflected the will of the majority not a flitty minority. Cruddas? Maybe. Ed Miliband? Barely anyone knows him. The rest? Where is the rallying cry for a return to ideology and an end to neoliberal economics? No, I’m not hearing it either.

They can replace Brown if they like but the ideas which the electorate knows it needs (which aren’t right wing ideas by the way) simply aren’t coming forward.

Labour Party in Denial

I couldn’t agree with with Mick Hume at Spiked more:

The storming reception accorded to Mandelson on Monday was widely hailed as the moment when New Labour’s fortunes could start to turn. To me it signalled the opposite. The sight of Labour activists cheering their Blairite bête noir showed how bad things have got, and how desperate they have become. After all, Lord Mandelson is the unelected, widely reviled symbol of all that the old Labour left is supposed to despise about the Tony Blair years: a backroom fixer and backstabber for whom politics is about positioning and image more than principles and ideas. That he has been brought back into the centre of government owes less to his own self-styled status as a giant of politics than to the standing of the political pygmies around him.

It is not Mandelson who has changed. He remains the embodiment of the fact that New Labour believes in nothing beyond its own re-election. Yet there were the rank and file Labour Party delegates, cheering him to the rafters. It sounded like a death rattle, a case not so much of whistling past the graveyard as singing from the grave.

And this is why they are going to lose next summer. It’s also entirely avoidable. They could wipe ID cards out today, but they’d rather pretend otherwise. They could end the ISA today, but they’d rather ‘review’ it instead. They could improve their environmental standing, but would rather stick with the neoliberal idea of growth and pretend there’s a reason for a new runway at Heathrow. They could deal with the issues such as a terminal lack of new social housing, which the BNP are feeding off, but even the Home Secretary would rather just stick his head in the sand. Electoral reform? Try a solution which will boost their fortunes rather than the Greens or Lib Dems. Reform the House of Lords? In a generation or so. House of Commons? Not any more…

The party which introduced the Human Rights Act is going to sacrifice itself needlessly to one which has insisted it’s going to repeal it, and is best friends in the European Parliament with the far right. Proportional representation couldn’t be more needed to help get a better deal for us.

Teenage Mothers To Be Put Into Care

It’s almost like John Major’s government never left. Gordon Brown, in what might be his last Labour party conference speech as Prime Minister has repackaged ‘family values’:

Teenage parents on benefits will be forced to live in “supervised homes” instead of being given council houses, Gordon Brown declared today in a bid to cut the number of pregnancies.

The Prime Minister said it was not right that a 16-year-old girl could “get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own”.

Instead, he told the Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton, groups of young mothers and fathers would be taught responsibility and how to raise their children “properly”.

“It’s time to address a problem that for too long has gone unspoken: the number of children having children,” he declared.

“For it cannot be right for a girl of 16 to get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own.

“From now on all 16- and 17-year-old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes.

“These shared homes will offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly.

“That’s better for them, better for their babies and better for us all in the long run.”

He told delegates: “We won’t ever shy away from taking difficult decisions on tough social questions.”

A difficult decision or a lame decision? Yes there is a problem, yes the rate of teenage pregnancies in the UK has gone up again, but to suggest it’s because girls just want a council flat isn’t just ignorant, it’s stupid; I mean anyone would think there was an election under a year away. The reasons are complicated and interconnected, from British attitudes towards sex, to mixed messages about sex education provision in schools, through to various governments’ disinterest or inability to tackle child poverty. I’m sure there are many other reasons too, not to mention answers to the problem, but a ‘network of supervised homes’ is just insane. What exactly is likely to change the mentality of teenage parents by being in care? Will boys be put into ’supervised homes’ as well as girls, or is this a staggeringly mysoginistic policy? For that matter where will the extra money which social services will need to enforce this policy come from? I can’t be the only one thinking these very simple thoughts, surely?