Socialism in an Age of Waiting respond to my previous posts on the election by raising the possibility of the Tories attempting to get out of their current predicament by "courting the Lib Dems, with a view to forming a grand anti-Labour alliance around policy positions that both parties could sign up to with only a few adjustments, and, crucially, with the enthusiastic support of much of the media for glib rhetoric about 'consensus' and 'freedom'." (The whole post is here.)
That would certainly make some sense from the Tories' point of view. But it is difficult to imagine the Tory party as it has become electing a leader who would adopt such a strategy. And it would be very risky for the Lib Dems. It's true that there is a great deal of convergence between the Lib Dems and the Tories on economic policy, but the Lib Dems have advanced as far as they have by positioning themselves (rhetorically at least) on the left. Cosying up to the Tories would lose them not only last week's former-Labour protest voters but the anti-Tory tactical voters who won them seats in 1997 and 2001 and (mostly) stayed with them this time.
9 May 2005
LABOUR’S REDUCED MAJORITY – 2
Just to back up my point about the decline of Labour’s backbench rebel army, I’ve had a quick once through my clippings to identify the MPs who on previous performance are most likely to take an anti-government line over the European constitution – the most important issue facing the government in the next 18 months (assuming France votes yes). And by my reckoning the Europhobe rump in the parliamentary Labour Party now has only 29 members:
Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington); Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley); Colin Challen (Morley and Rothwell); Michael Clapham (Barnsley West and Penistone); Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead); Frank Cook (Stockton North); Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North); Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne Central); Jon Cruddas (Dagenham); Ann Cryer (Keighley); John Cummings (Easington); Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West); David Drew (Stroud); Gwynneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich); Bill Etherington (Sunderland North) ; Frank Field (Birkenhead); Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central); Dr Ian Gibson (Norwich North); Roger Godsiff (Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath); Tom Harris (Glasgow South); Kate Hoey (Vauxhall); Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North); John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington); Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby); Alan Simpson (Nottingham South); Dennis Skinner (Bolsover); David Taylor (Leicestershire North West); Alan Williams (Swansea West); and Mike Wood (Batley and Spen).Even if I’ve missed a couple – I don’t know the views of all new Labour MPs – that’s not enough to deny the government a majority even if Labour’s anti-Europeans team up with every single MP from the opposition. Compare and contrast with John Major after 1992.
8 May 2005
TORIES ON THE ROPES – 3
Lots of froth in the Sundays on the election. But John Rentoul makes a lot of sense in the Independent on Sunday (online but you have to pay, so no link):
Most of the Liberal Democrat vote is still potentially part of the New Labour coalition. As much as 5 per cent of the electorate is parked temporarily on Charles Kennedy's lawn, but they are essentially Labour supporters protesting about Iraq or the nexus of Labour 'betrayals' that it stands for. . . With no sign that anyone in the Conservative parliamentary party even begins to understand the scale of the task of reconstruction required, that means we are heading for a Labour landslide next time.And Robert Harris is good in the Sunday Times (click here):
Yes, the Conservatives have 33 new MPs, but many performed scarcely better than four years ago, winning only because Labour voters deserted to the Liberal Democrats. If this is the great springboard for victory in 2009, where is the spring? Yet the coverage in the Conservative press has been little short of triumphalist. Reading yesterday’s Daily Mail one might have thought that the Tories had romped home. It was like the scene in Citizen Kane, when two alternative front pages are being prepared for election night. One carries a banner headline: “Kane governor!” The other has a tiny strapline, “Kane defeated”, above the screaming typeface: “Fraud at polls!” “I’m afraid we’ve got no choice,” says the editor, picking the latter. “This one.” It could have been Paul Dacre, the Mail’s editor, speaking.The Sunday Times also has the best psephological analysis of the election so far, by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, which is unfortunately not online. And The People (also not online) runs a story that appears to confirm my hunch that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have agreed to a handover after the European constitution referendum.
7 May 2005
LABOUR'S REDUCED MAJORITY
The fact that Labour has a smaller majority in the House of Commons obviously changes the terms of trade between the government and the parliamentary Labour Party – but by how much?
The commentariat consensus is that (1) it gives rebels of one kind or another much greater oomph and (2) it necessitates a more collegiate governmental style than heretofore.
I wonder. The old Labour rebel army has been much reduced by retirements and election defeats – there's hardly anyone left now from the old Tribunite Europhobe soft left of the 1970s and 1980s, no one from the Peter Shore Europhobe right, and the Campaign Group is down at least five members to about 20 (among 360 MPs).
This is a much more New Labour PLP than previously.
And on Europe, which will be the key issue of the next parliament (assuming France votes yes to the EU constitution), the government will whip mercilessly to get it to toe the line in advance of the constitution referendum – regardless of the state of the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
My guess is that the current deal between the two is that Blair has said he'll go in 18 months as long as Brown pitches himself 100 per cent into the yes campaign on the constituion, regardless of the result – and that Brown has agreed.
That means war on Labour anti-Europeanism, starting now. And rebels will get the short shrift they deserve.
The commentariat consensus is that (1) it gives rebels of one kind or another much greater oomph and (2) it necessitates a more collegiate governmental style than heretofore.
I wonder. The old Labour rebel army has been much reduced by retirements and election defeats – there's hardly anyone left now from the old Tribunite Europhobe soft left of the 1970s and 1980s, no one from the Peter Shore Europhobe right, and the Campaign Group is down at least five members to about 20 (among 360 MPs).
This is a much more New Labour PLP than previously.
And on Europe, which will be the key issue of the next parliament (assuming France votes yes to the EU constitution), the government will whip mercilessly to get it to toe the line in advance of the constitution referendum – regardless of the state of the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
My guess is that the current deal between the two is that Blair has said he'll go in 18 months as long as Brown pitches himself 100 per cent into the yes campaign on the constituion, regardless of the result – and that Brown has agreed.
That means war on Labour anti-Europeanism, starting now. And rebels will get the short shrift they deserve.
TORIES ON THE ROPES - 2
The Guardian has a good report today by Alan Travis (here) that contradicts my claim (click here) that the Tories haven’t created too many marginal seats for the next general election: he writes that no fewer than 43 Labour MPs are now vulnerable to a swing against Labour of just 2.5 per cent next time around, 35 of whom have the Tories in second position. In this election 22 Labour MPs were vulnerable to a 2.5 per cent swing (ie they had majorities of less than 5 per cent), 19 of them Tory targets.
So that’s twice as many Labour MPs in marginals – true. But my point (which I should have expressed better) was that the Tories needed to create many, many more Labour-Tory marginals than they now have to have a hope of winning a parliamentary majority – unless, of course, they do a lot better next time than this.
Labour retained a quarter of the Tories’ prime target seats this time, and a similar performance in 2009 would still leave Labour as the largest party in the Commons, maybe even (depending on how the Lib Dems do) with a majority. At best, this is the Tories’ 1987: I think they’ve got 10 more years in the wilderness on current trends. Though of course, current trends are often misleading.
So that’s twice as many Labour MPs in marginals – true. But my point (which I should have expressed better) was that the Tories needed to create many, many more Labour-Tory marginals than they now have to have a hope of winning a parliamentary majority – unless, of course, they do a lot better next time than this.
Labour retained a quarter of the Tories’ prime target seats this time, and a similar performance in 2009 would still leave Labour as the largest party in the Commons, maybe even (depending on how the Lib Dems do) with a majority. At best, this is the Tories’ 1987: I think they’ve got 10 more years in the wilderness on current trends. Though of course, current trends are often misleading.
6 May 2005
THE LIB DEM BREAKTHROUGH
Apart from the dismal Tory performance, the big story of the election is how well the Liberal Democrats have done. They have 62 seats in the new parliament, up 11, as a result of 16 gains – 12 from Labour, three from the Tories and one from Plaid – and five losses, all to the Tories. And they took just over 22 per cent of the popular vote, up from 18 per cent in 2001 and 16 per cent in 1997.
Two things are noteworthy here. First, the Lib Dems' support is about the same as that for the Liberal-Social Democratic Party Alliance in 1987, but it is more conveniently distributed, so they have almost three times as many seats as the Alliance won then. They still have an interest in proportional representation, but it's not quite as pressing as it used to be.
Secondly, they have benefited this time as much from anti-Labour protest voting as from anti-Tory tactical voting. Most of their gains are from Labour and they suffered a net loss of two seats to the Tories. And at the next general election they will be fighting lots more seats from second place against Labour incumbents (see previous post).
It's clear that the Lib Dem advance has come to a large extent from having positioned themselves to the left of Labour (at least in the way "left" is understood by most people) on Iraq, the trustworthiness of Tony Blair and education. But it's unlikely that Labour will be as vulnerable to attack on these grounds at the next election. The Iraq war and the row over university funding should be ancient history by 2009, and hysterical Blairophobia should disappear as soon as the prime minister retires. So at the next election the Lib Dems could well find themselves having to appeal primarily to Tory voters who want Labour out rather than Labour voters who want to teach Blair a lesson.
That is not going to be very easy to handle – particularly if the promised referendum on the EU constitution takes place, which will inevitably force the Lib Dems into alliance with Labour in the "yes" campaign. I could well be wrong here, but my hunch is that the challenge could prove too much for Charles Kennedy and his pals and that 2005 marks the high tide of their advance. We shall see.
Two things are noteworthy here. First, the Lib Dems' support is about the same as that for the Liberal-Social Democratic Party Alliance in 1987, but it is more conveniently distributed, so they have almost three times as many seats as the Alliance won then. They still have an interest in proportional representation, but it's not quite as pressing as it used to be.
Secondly, they have benefited this time as much from anti-Labour protest voting as from anti-Tory tactical voting. Most of their gains are from Labour and they suffered a net loss of two seats to the Tories. And at the next general election they will be fighting lots more seats from second place against Labour incumbents (see previous post).
It's clear that the Lib Dem advance has come to a large extent from having positioned themselves to the left of Labour (at least in the way "left" is understood by most people) on Iraq, the trustworthiness of Tony Blair and education. But it's unlikely that Labour will be as vulnerable to attack on these grounds at the next election. The Iraq war and the row over university funding should be ancient history by 2009, and hysterical Blairophobia should disappear as soon as the prime minister retires. So at the next election the Lib Dems could well find themselves having to appeal primarily to Tory voters who want Labour out rather than Labour voters who want to teach Blair a lesson.
That is not going to be very easy to handle – particularly if the promised referendum on the EU constitution takes place, which will inevitably force the Lib Dems into alliance with Labour in the "yes" campaign. I could well be wrong here, but my hunch is that the challenge could prove too much for Charles Kennedy and his pals and that 2005 marks the high tide of their advance. We shall see.
TORIES ON THE ROPES
By far the best thing about the election result is just how badly the Tories have done. In terms of their overall share of the vote, they have 33 per cent, which means they have put on just over a single percentage point since 2001 and just two-and-a-half percentage points since 1997. (In 1992, John Major won 42 per cent of the popular vote.) The xenophobe parties to the Tories’ right – UKIP, Veritas, the BNP – won nothing in the way of seats but remain a thorn in the Tories’ side: they took roughly 3 per cent of the popular vote overall despite Michael Howard’s “dog whistle” campaign.
The picture is even grimmer for the Tories when you look at their results in individual constituencies. Half their 36 gains are in suburban London (Enfield Southgate, Ilford North, Hornchurch, Bexleyheath and Crayford, Croydon Central, Wimbledon, Putney, Hammersmith and Fulham) and in the commuter towns around the capital (St Albans, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes North East, Welwyn Hatfield, Braintree, Gravesham, Guildford, Newbury, Reading East). Elsewhere they have had slender pickings at best, doing utterly miserably in the midlands, the north and Scotland and not much better in East Anglia and Kent, on the south coast, in the south-west and in Wales. Labour retained dozens of seats that were safe Tory throughout the Thatcher and Major years.
The Tories also failed to create very many new marginals – "one more heave" will yield very little next time – and dropped from second to third place in Labour-held seats in many urban areas. The Lib Dems are now the main challengers to incumbent Labour MPs nearly everywhere in inner London: they went from third to second in Brent South, Dulwich, Greenwich, Hackney North, Lewisham Deptford, Lewisham West, Leyton, Tottenham and Walthamstow. Outside London, the trend is patchier, but the Tories lost second place to the Lib Dems in Birkenhead, Birmingham Hodge Hill, Birmingham Ladywood, Birmingham Perry Bar, Bradford North, Burnley, Derby South, Doncaster Central, Huddersfield, Hull West, Knowsley North, Leeds Central, Leeds East, Leeds West, Norwich South, Northampton East, Rotherham, St Helens North, Sheffield Attercliffe, Sheffield Brightside and Stoke-on-Trent Central.
All lists in this post are less than definitive. But it's clear that whoever takes over from Howard has an almighty job to turn the Tories into credible challengers for office. Which is excellent news for everyone but the Tories.
The picture is even grimmer for the Tories when you look at their results in individual constituencies. Half their 36 gains are in suburban London (Enfield Southgate, Ilford North, Hornchurch, Bexleyheath and Crayford, Croydon Central, Wimbledon, Putney, Hammersmith and Fulham) and in the commuter towns around the capital (St Albans, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes North East, Welwyn Hatfield, Braintree, Gravesham, Guildford, Newbury, Reading East). Elsewhere they have had slender pickings at best, doing utterly miserably in the midlands, the north and Scotland and not much better in East Anglia and Kent, on the south coast, in the south-west and in Wales. Labour retained dozens of seats that were safe Tory throughout the Thatcher and Major years.
The Tories also failed to create very many new marginals – "one more heave" will yield very little next time – and dropped from second to third place in Labour-held seats in many urban areas. The Lib Dems are now the main challengers to incumbent Labour MPs nearly everywhere in inner London: they went from third to second in Brent South, Dulwich, Greenwich, Hackney North, Lewisham Deptford, Lewisham West, Leyton, Tottenham and Walthamstow. Outside London, the trend is patchier, but the Tories lost second place to the Lib Dems in Birkenhead, Birmingham Hodge Hill, Birmingham Ladywood, Birmingham Perry Bar, Bradford North, Burnley, Derby South, Doncaster Central, Huddersfield, Hull West, Knowsley North, Leeds Central, Leeds East, Leeds West, Norwich South, Northampton East, Rotherham, St Helens North, Sheffield Attercliffe, Sheffield Brightside and Stoke-on-Trent Central.
All lists in this post are less than definitive. But it's clear that whoever takes over from Howard has an almighty job to turn the Tories into credible challengers for office. Which is excellent news for everyone but the Tories.
NOT SO BAD
With the exception of Bethnal Green and Bow, nothing that hurts. But the campaign to get rid of Galloway starts now.
5 May 2005
2 May 2005
NO TO THE ACADEMIC BOYCOTT — 3
Good news for university lecturers: we've got a special conference to discuss what happens next on the decision of our trade union (the Association of University Teachers) to boycott Israeli universities. Which means there's a good chance of overturning the boycott.
1 May 2005
HELP WANTED
Oona King's campaign in Bethnal Green and Bow wants volunteers on election day, when it is expecting a large turn-out from supporters of George "How can he call it Respect?" Galloway aimed at intimidating voters outside polling stations. Oona's office number is 020 7613 4749.
HAT LEGAL ADVICE
OK, I admit it, I’m late on this one, but I put off reading Lord Goldsmith’s advice to the government on the Iraq war because I was terrified I would have to reconsider my opinion. (Actually, I was just busy with other stuff, but that’s not sexy.)
Now, however, I’ve ploughed my way through it all and all the associated material – and, yup, (1) it’s clear that he told the government that there were grounds to dispute the legality of war against Iraq without a new UN resolution and, yup, (2) it’s apparent that he then decided military action was legal once it was obvious that a new UN resolution would not be forthcoming.
But that’s about it. “Government lawyer points out possible problems with war then backs it when push comes to shove” is a lousy headline – except insofar as it’s a completely accurate summary of the story. Goldsmith did what you hire lawyers to do. Why on earth did the government make such a meal of letting it into the public domain?
Now, however, I’ve ploughed my way through it all and all the associated material – and, yup, (1) it’s clear that he told the government that there were grounds to dispute the legality of war against Iraq without a new UN resolution and, yup, (2) it’s apparent that he then decided military action was legal once it was obvious that a new UN resolution would not be forthcoming.
But that’s about it. “Government lawyer points out possible problems with war then backs it when push comes to shove” is a lousy headline – except insofar as it’s a completely accurate summary of the story. Goldsmith did what you hire lawyers to do. Why on earth did the government make such a meal of letting it into the public domain?
30 April 2005
CRETINO-LEFTISM – 4: RESPECT
What’s most interesting about the electoral campaign of George Galloway’s “Respect Unity Coalition” – aka Gorgeous George, the Socialist Workers Party and a gaggle of Islamist reactionaries – is how far it has shrunk. It’s now about Galloway versus Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow and nothing else.
This is not a serious national political project. But it remains possible that Galloway’s ugly campaign (click here) will win the seat. Labour supporters in Bethnal say that the party’s organisation has left much to be desired – in part because it hasn’t been able to cope with the large number of anti-Galloway volunteers for King’s campaign. Labour needs to get its act together fast, though I dare say it will be helped by this.
This is not a serious national political project. But it remains possible that Galloway’s ugly campaign (click here) will win the seat. Labour supporters in Bethnal say that the party’s organisation has left much to be desired – in part because it hasn’t been able to cope with the large number of anti-Galloway volunteers for King’s campaign. Labour needs to get its act together fast, though I dare say it will be helped by this.
XENOPHOBE LOONS – 3: THE BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY
Robin Butley writes:
The right-wing populists that looked most likely to provide a serious challenge to the Tories from the right, UKIP and Veritas, seem to have been seen off by the Tories’ nasty anti-immigration campaign. But the Tories don’t appear to have drawn the sting of the British National Party, by far the most extreme xenophobes standing a significant number of candidates next Thursday (for a list and much more see the excellent Stop the BNP website here).
My moles tell me that Labour is seriously worried about the level of support for the BNP in several key seats – particularly Margaret Hodge’s in Barking in outer east London. Hodge is unpopular locally; Labour’s organisation is almost non-existent; and the Tories, who are targeting marginal Hornchurch, are almost absent in the constituency. There was an anti-BNP day of action today in Barking: I wasn’t there, but more follows when I hear from people who were.
The right-wing populists that looked most likely to provide a serious challenge to the Tories from the right, UKIP and Veritas, seem to have been seen off by the Tories’ nasty anti-immigration campaign. But the Tories don’t appear to have drawn the sting of the British National Party, by far the most extreme xenophobes standing a significant number of candidates next Thursday (for a list and much more see the excellent Stop the BNP website here).
My moles tell me that Labour is seriously worried about the level of support for the BNP in several key seats – particularly Margaret Hodge’s in Barking in outer east London. Hodge is unpopular locally; Labour’s organisation is almost non-existent; and the Tories, who are targeting marginal Hornchurch, are almost absent in the constituency. There was an anti-BNP day of action today in Barking: I wasn’t there, but more follows when I hear from people who were.
28 April 2005
NO TO THE ACADEMIC BOYCOTT
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, April 29 2005
For the first time in a working lifetime of trade union membership, I’m seriously tempted to tear up a union card. Last Friday, one of my trade unions, the Association of University Teachers — I’m also in the National Union of Journalists — voted narrowly in favour of an academic boycott of two Israeli universities, Bar-Ilan and Haifa, with a boycott of a third, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, possibly to follow.
I think I am probably in breach of the boycott at the moment — though I can’t be sure because I have not yet received details from the AUT of what the boycott is to entail. Several of my students at City University are here on scholarships organised by the Olive Tree Educational Trust in collaboration with Israeli and Palestinian universities to foster dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. It is a great scheme to which I am fully committed, and I’d rather leave the AUT than endanger it.
But it’s not just my personal interest in this particular project that is making me think about resigning from the AUT. I’m against the boycott on principle and think that it’s a disastrously stupid course of action to pursue.
This is not because I’m a great supporter of Israel. I’m horrified by the brutality of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and by the way Israel treats Palestinians who live inside its 1967 borders. I believe that the rest of the world should be encouraging Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and to clean up its act. Although I consider that centuries of anti-Semitic pogroms and the Holocaust give Zionism a large measure of legitimacy (and I cannot accept the argument that Israel is an illegitimate state), I recoil from the idea that states should be based on religion or ethnicity. In an ideal world I’d like to see a secular democratic state covering the whole territory of what was British mandate Palestine, with people of all faiths and none and every ethnic group living in peace and harmony.
In reality, of course, such an arrangement is a pipe-dream — and the best that can be hoped for in the short to medium term is a two-state solution, with democratic Israel living peaceably next to a democratic Palestinian state and both of them (with any luck) eschewing religion- and race-based politics.
The question, however, is how we get from here to there. Such is Israel’s might both as an occupying power and as a regional military force that it is clear that the only way is through dialogue and negotiation. To put it crudely, Israel is not going to be made to leave the West Bank and Gaza to a Palestinian state: it has to be persuaded. And for that to happen it needs to feel secure and to trust its Palestinian interlocuters.
This is of course a matter for Israelis and Palestinians to sort out. The Palestinian leadership has the particularly difficult task of convincing Israelis that a Palestinian state is not a threat but an opportunity, at the same time as persuading its people that responding violently to the humiliations of occupation — however tempting it might be — does nothing but strengthen the hands of the diehard Israeli right.
But the rest of the world can play a small but significant part in helping the process along. By encouraging cultural, political and academic dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians at every level, we can help build the mutual trust and understanding that is a prerequisite of successful creation of a viable Palestinian state. Boycotting Israeli universities as part of a grand strategy of turning Israel into an international pariah is precisely what we shouldn’t be doing.
* * *
On a different matter entirely, I had yet another reminder the other day that I’m now middle-aged: an old comrade reminded me that this week marks the 25th anniversary of the launch of European Nuclear Disarmament at the House of Commons by Edward Thompson, Mary Kaldor, Ken Coates and others.
END played a major role in the movement against nuclear weapons in the 1980s, providing it with its leading intellectual spokespeople and ensuring that the pro-Soviet minority in CND was effectively marginalised. I worked for its magazine END Journal for three years in the mid-1980s — and I don’t think I’ve ever had a job that was quite as much fun.
Whatever, my old comrade and I got reminiscing, and we decided it would be a good idea to have an END reunion some time during the summer. We’ve not organised anything yet, but if you’re an ex-ENDer who’d like to come along, email me at Gauche.
For the first time in a working lifetime of trade union membership, I’m seriously tempted to tear up a union card. Last Friday, one of my trade unions, the Association of University Teachers — I’m also in the National Union of Journalists — voted narrowly in favour of an academic boycott of two Israeli universities, Bar-Ilan and Haifa, with a boycott of a third, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, possibly to follow.
I think I am probably in breach of the boycott at the moment — though I can’t be sure because I have not yet received details from the AUT of what the boycott is to entail. Several of my students at City University are here on scholarships organised by the Olive Tree Educational Trust in collaboration with Israeli and Palestinian universities to foster dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. It is a great scheme to which I am fully committed, and I’d rather leave the AUT than endanger it.
But it’s not just my personal interest in this particular project that is making me think about resigning from the AUT. I’m against the boycott on principle and think that it’s a disastrously stupid course of action to pursue.
This is not because I’m a great supporter of Israel. I’m horrified by the brutality of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and by the way Israel treats Palestinians who live inside its 1967 borders. I believe that the rest of the world should be encouraging Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and to clean up its act. Although I consider that centuries of anti-Semitic pogroms and the Holocaust give Zionism a large measure of legitimacy (and I cannot accept the argument that Israel is an illegitimate state), I recoil from the idea that states should be based on religion or ethnicity. In an ideal world I’d like to see a secular democratic state covering the whole territory of what was British mandate Palestine, with people of all faiths and none and every ethnic group living in peace and harmony.
In reality, of course, such an arrangement is a pipe-dream — and the best that can be hoped for in the short to medium term is a two-state solution, with democratic Israel living peaceably next to a democratic Palestinian state and both of them (with any luck) eschewing religion- and race-based politics.
The question, however, is how we get from here to there. Such is Israel’s might both as an occupying power and as a regional military force that it is clear that the only way is through dialogue and negotiation. To put it crudely, Israel is not going to be made to leave the West Bank and Gaza to a Palestinian state: it has to be persuaded. And for that to happen it needs to feel secure and to trust its Palestinian interlocuters.
This is of course a matter for Israelis and Palestinians to sort out. The Palestinian leadership has the particularly difficult task of convincing Israelis that a Palestinian state is not a threat but an opportunity, at the same time as persuading its people that responding violently to the humiliations of occupation — however tempting it might be — does nothing but strengthen the hands of the diehard Israeli right.
But the rest of the world can play a small but significant part in helping the process along. By encouraging cultural, political and academic dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians at every level, we can help build the mutual trust and understanding that is a prerequisite of successful creation of a viable Palestinian state. Boycotting Israeli universities as part of a grand strategy of turning Israel into an international pariah is precisely what we shouldn’t be doing.
* * *
On a different matter entirely, I had yet another reminder the other day that I’m now middle-aged: an old comrade reminded me that this week marks the 25th anniversary of the launch of European Nuclear Disarmament at the House of Commons by Edward Thompson, Mary Kaldor, Ken Coates and others.
END played a major role in the movement against nuclear weapons in the 1980s, providing it with its leading intellectual spokespeople and ensuring that the pro-Soviet minority in CND was effectively marginalised. I worked for its magazine END Journal for three years in the mid-1980s — and I don’t think I’ve ever had a job that was quite as much fun.
Whatever, my old comrade and I got reminiscing, and we decided it would be a good idea to have an END reunion some time during the summer. We’ve not organised anything yet, but if you’re an ex-ENDer who’d like to come along, email me at Gauche.
27 April 2005
21 April 2005
OBITUARY: DONALD BRUCE
Donald Bruce, who died this week, was for most of his political life Lord Bruce of Donnington – possibly the most anti-European Labour peer of them all, though there was some competition. He was an MP very briefly (1945-50), in which role he served as parliamentary private secretary to Aneurin Bevan, then spent a quarter of a century making money as an accountant before being given a peerage by Harold Wilson in 1974. During the 1970s he was an MEP in the days before the European Parliament was elected or had any power – and after that, until not long ago, he made inumerable obsessive anti-European speeches in the House of Lords.
A dull cove? Yes. But in the 1980s and early 1990s, he played a bizarre but important role in the story of Tribune, which is why I’m noting his death here. Appropriating the mantle of Nye – has any Labour figure since Nye had a mantle? – he and John Silkin took it upon themselves in the early 1980s to rescue Tribune from the predations of Bennism, in the form of Chris Mullin, then the struggling weekly’s editor (now a struggling minister), who wanted to turn the paper into a workers’ co-operative.
Bruce acquired the shares owned by Bevan’s wife Jennie Lee, and he and Silkin threatened to use the full force of the law to assert their rights as proprietors to prevent the workers seizing the means of production. In the end, it fizzled out: Mullin left to write books and the dispute was sorted out by his successor as editor, Nigel Williamson, the late and much-lamented Norman Buchan MP and Michael Foot, leaving de facto control of the paper in the hands of the staff.
But Bruce hung around for ages. As a worker-director of Tribune in the late 1980s (no, I was, really), I sat opposite Silkin and Bruce in board meetings once a month to put the case for workers’ control – well, actually, to keep the two daft old gits happy by noting their concerns and carrying on regardless. And we kept on humouring Bruce for the best part of a decade afterwards, long after Silkin died and their tired and crazy anti-Europeanism had lost any credibility.
I am not speaking ill of the dead. Bruce was a man of his time. When I knew him, he was a red-faced old buffer who was pretty much compos mentis and perfectly pleasant socially on most of the occasions I met him. But politically he was – as Neil Kinnock might have put it – completely, totally and utterly useless. He lost every battle he fought. It's not entirely his fault, but Tribune is now owned by the trade unions. RIP.
A dull cove? Yes. But in the 1980s and early 1990s, he played a bizarre but important role in the story of Tribune, which is why I’m noting his death here. Appropriating the mantle of Nye – has any Labour figure since Nye had a mantle? – he and John Silkin took it upon themselves in the early 1980s to rescue Tribune from the predations of Bennism, in the form of Chris Mullin, then the struggling weekly’s editor (now a struggling minister), who wanted to turn the paper into a workers’ co-operative.
Bruce acquired the shares owned by Bevan’s wife Jennie Lee, and he and Silkin threatened to use the full force of the law to assert their rights as proprietors to prevent the workers seizing the means of production. In the end, it fizzled out: Mullin left to write books and the dispute was sorted out by his successor as editor, Nigel Williamson, the late and much-lamented Norman Buchan MP and Michael Foot, leaving de facto control of the paper in the hands of the staff.
But Bruce hung around for ages. As a worker-director of Tribune in the late 1980s (no, I was, really), I sat opposite Silkin and Bruce in board meetings once a month to put the case for workers’ control – well, actually, to keep the two daft old gits happy by noting their concerns and carrying on regardless. And we kept on humouring Bruce for the best part of a decade afterwards, long after Silkin died and their tired and crazy anti-Europeanism had lost any credibility.
I am not speaking ill of the dead. Bruce was a man of his time. When I knew him, he was a red-faced old buffer who was pretty much compos mentis and perfectly pleasant socially on most of the occasions I met him. But politically he was – as Neil Kinnock might have put it – completely, totally and utterly useless. He lost every battle he fought. It's not entirely his fault, but Tribune is now owned by the trade unions. RIP.
20 April 2005
OBITUARY: GEORGE MATTHEWS
I didn't really know George Matthews, the last surviving senior member of the Stalin-era Communist Party of Great Britain until his death at the end of last month, but I saw him often while I was working as deputy editor of New Times, the last attempt of the former-CP (by then Democratic Left and well past any pretence of being other than a soft-left pressure-group) to conquer the news stands. He came into the office most weeks and was a very pleasant old gent, always friendly and solicitous. It was strange to think that he'd been one of the CP's most hardcore Stalinist apparatchiks – not least as editor of the Daily Worker – yet had been the one who blew the gaffe on Moscow gold once the game was up (but not before). Mike Power's obituary in the Guardian is here; a slightly bizarre piece on his role in the wartime National Union of Students here.
19 April 2005
XENOPHOBE LOONS – 2: THE UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY
Robin Butley writes:
UKIP’s manifesto, launched at the end of last week, is a slim document with as much detail left out as is decently possible. The party, which did well in the 2004 European Parliament election, winning 12 seats (up from three in 1999), is adopting the guise of the outsider for this general election – which is hardly surprising. It’s what right-wing populist campaigns always do, it fits with UKIP’s myth that we were once free-born Englishmen who have been stripped of our rights and identity by faceless Brussels bureaucrats and the conniving of the “old parties” – and UKIP knows that it hasn’t a hope in hell of winning a seat in the Commons.
It’s not just that UKIP’s support is too thinly spread for success under first-past-the-post. The creation of Veritas (see below) has split its core vote and has taken away its main man of 2004, Robert Kilroy-Silk, leaving the party in the hands of such charismatic figures as Godfrey Bloom MEP (“No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age”) and Nigel Farage MEP, who was photographed in June 1997 in conversation with two members of the British National Party, Mark Deavin, then the BNP’s head of research, and Tony Lecomber, who has served one prison sentence for possession of explosives and another for stabbing a Jewish schoolteacher.
UKIP doesn’t even have very much hope of inflicting real damage to the Tories – unlike the Referendum Party in 1997, which split the right-wing vote in many key constituencies on an issue that clearly separated it from the Tories. This time out, there is no meaningful difference in rhetoric. The only clear blue water is UKIP’s clear commitment to leaving the EU without a referendum. The Tory policy of an immediate referendum on the EU constitution followed by “renegotiation” clearly amounts to the same end, in the minds of potential voters oscillating between the two.
All the same, the UKIP manifesto says a lot about the obsessiveness of the right-wing Eurosceptic mindset. As its leader, Roger Knapman MEP, says in his introduction: “The UK Independence Party exists because none of the old political parties are prepared to accept that the real government of Britain is now in Brussels . . . People sometimes tell me that UKIP is a single-issue party. The point is that the single issue of freeing Britain from the EU over-rides all others – no other issues can be properly addressed while we remain in the EU.”
The manifesto proper is predictably focused on the EU’s supposed evils: “This alien system of government is bad for our economy, our self-respect and our prosperity. . . The only way for Britain is UKIP's way: we must leave. Until this is done, individuals and our businesses will continue to be strangled by all the ill-conceived intrusive regulation, supposedly to protect our environment, to ensure our health and safety, to uphold all our 'rights' and, most recently, to protect us from terrorism.”
“Formal withdrawal from the EU will be achieved by repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. This will release us from obligations under EU treaties and reestablish the precedence of UK law over EU law. We shall immediately stop paying into the EU budget and we shall resume full independent participation in international bodies such as the World Trade Organisation. It will be possible to scrap some EU rules like the working time directive without delay.”
But won’t this have some deleterious effects? Of course not. UKIP confidently predicts that “there is no question of threats to the 3 million UK jobs that are associated with exports to the EU” – despite clear warnings from reputable economists and significant foreign investors. But never mind, the EU depends on us to import their stuff: “We consistently buy more from EU countries than we sell them so it would not be in their interests to disrupt this trade –- they will still want to sell us their wine and cars . . . Our release from the EU's common external tariffs will also enable us to strengthen our trade relationships with countries outside the EU such as the countries of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), the Far East and our natural trading partners in the Commonwealth who share our language and business methods.”
But it’s not just no to the European Union: “We also say NO to the culture of paperwork, performance targets and spin, NO to uncontrolled immigration, NO to a society in which everything is regulated and dissent is suppressed by fear and political correctness.” Needless to say, “Having taken Britain out of the EU, the UK Independence Party would aim to approach zero net immigration both by imposing far stricter limits on legal immigrants and by taking control, at last, of the vexed problem of illegal immigration.”
As for fiscal policy, UKIP says that there is an “urgent need for immediate tax reduction in several areas”, including income tax, council tax (which should be halved) and inheritance tax (the threshold for which should be raised to £500,000) – all of which would be paid for by “raising government borrowing to provide £30 billion per year”. In the long run, “UKIP would aim for substantial simplification all round and a lower overall tax burden … We are sympathetic to proposals for a 'flat tax'.”
OK, you might think, so UKIP comprises a bunch of reactionary right-wing anti-tax deregulationist xenophobes – but so what? They’re not going to win anything. Which is fair enough until you realise that, unless there is a major upset on May 5, UKIP is going to be at the core of the “no” campaign when it comes to the referendum on the European constitution next year (assuming France doesn’t vote no first). And the useless idiots of the British anti-European left – the Labour Party’s Eurosceptics, the Green Party (in England though not in Scotland and Wales), Respect, Sinn Fein, most of the Trots and Stalinists – are going to have to work out sooner rather than later whether they’re prepared to hold hands with these loons.
UKIP’s manifesto, launched at the end of last week, is a slim document with as much detail left out as is decently possible. The party, which did well in the 2004 European Parliament election, winning 12 seats (up from three in 1999), is adopting the guise of the outsider for this general election – which is hardly surprising. It’s what right-wing populist campaigns always do, it fits with UKIP’s myth that we were once free-born Englishmen who have been stripped of our rights and identity by faceless Brussels bureaucrats and the conniving of the “old parties” – and UKIP knows that it hasn’t a hope in hell of winning a seat in the Commons.
It’s not just that UKIP’s support is too thinly spread for success under first-past-the-post. The creation of Veritas (see below) has split its core vote and has taken away its main man of 2004, Robert Kilroy-Silk, leaving the party in the hands of such charismatic figures as Godfrey Bloom MEP (“No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age”) and Nigel Farage MEP, who was photographed in June 1997 in conversation with two members of the British National Party, Mark Deavin, then the BNP’s head of research, and Tony Lecomber, who has served one prison sentence for possession of explosives and another for stabbing a Jewish schoolteacher.
UKIP doesn’t even have very much hope of inflicting real damage to the Tories – unlike the Referendum Party in 1997, which split the right-wing vote in many key constituencies on an issue that clearly separated it from the Tories. This time out, there is no meaningful difference in rhetoric. The only clear blue water is UKIP’s clear commitment to leaving the EU without a referendum. The Tory policy of an immediate referendum on the EU constitution followed by “renegotiation” clearly amounts to the same end, in the minds of potential voters oscillating between the two.
All the same, the UKIP manifesto says a lot about the obsessiveness of the right-wing Eurosceptic mindset. As its leader, Roger Knapman MEP, says in his introduction: “The UK Independence Party exists because none of the old political parties are prepared to accept that the real government of Britain is now in Brussels . . . People sometimes tell me that UKIP is a single-issue party. The point is that the single issue of freeing Britain from the EU over-rides all others – no other issues can be properly addressed while we remain in the EU.”
The manifesto proper is predictably focused on the EU’s supposed evils: “This alien system of government is bad for our economy, our self-respect and our prosperity. . . The only way for Britain is UKIP's way: we must leave. Until this is done, individuals and our businesses will continue to be strangled by all the ill-conceived intrusive regulation, supposedly to protect our environment, to ensure our health and safety, to uphold all our 'rights' and, most recently, to protect us from terrorism.”
“Formal withdrawal from the EU will be achieved by repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. This will release us from obligations under EU treaties and reestablish the precedence of UK law over EU law. We shall immediately stop paying into the EU budget and we shall resume full independent participation in international bodies such as the World Trade Organisation. It will be possible to scrap some EU rules like the working time directive without delay.”
But won’t this have some deleterious effects? Of course not. UKIP confidently predicts that “there is no question of threats to the 3 million UK jobs that are associated with exports to the EU” – despite clear warnings from reputable economists and significant foreign investors. But never mind, the EU depends on us to import their stuff: “We consistently buy more from EU countries than we sell them so it would not be in their interests to disrupt this trade –- they will still want to sell us their wine and cars . . . Our release from the EU's common external tariffs will also enable us to strengthen our trade relationships with countries outside the EU such as the countries of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), the Far East and our natural trading partners in the Commonwealth who share our language and business methods.”
But it’s not just no to the European Union: “We also say NO to the culture of paperwork, performance targets and spin, NO to uncontrolled immigration, NO to a society in which everything is regulated and dissent is suppressed by fear and political correctness.” Needless to say, “Having taken Britain out of the EU, the UK Independence Party would aim to approach zero net immigration both by imposing far stricter limits on legal immigrants and by taking control, at last, of the vexed problem of illegal immigration.”
As for fiscal policy, UKIP says that there is an “urgent need for immediate tax reduction in several areas”, including income tax, council tax (which should be halved) and inheritance tax (the threshold for which should be raised to £500,000) – all of which would be paid for by “raising government borrowing to provide £30 billion per year”. In the long run, “UKIP would aim for substantial simplification all round and a lower overall tax burden … We are sympathetic to proposals for a 'flat tax'.”
OK, you might think, so UKIP comprises a bunch of reactionary right-wing anti-tax deregulationist xenophobes – but so what? They’re not going to win anything. Which is fair enough until you realise that, unless there is a major upset on May 5, UKIP is going to be at the core of the “no” campaign when it comes to the referendum on the European constitution next year (assuming France doesn’t vote no first). And the useless idiots of the British anti-European left – the Labour Party’s Eurosceptics, the Green Party (in England though not in Scotland and Wales), Respect, Sinn Fein, most of the Trots and Stalinists – are going to have to work out sooner rather than later whether they’re prepared to hold hands with these loons.
17 April 2005
XENOPHOBE LOONS – 1: VERITAS
Robin Butley writes:
Robert Kilroy-Silk's party Veritas is unlikely to win seats on May 5 – but it has had oodles of benign publicity from the media. Veritas (website here) advertises itself as "the straight-talking party" that stands up to "the bullying and the intimidation of the liberal elite in London" – and most coverage has taken it at face value. It's populist and right-wing, to be sure, but harmless: what the Tory party could become if it was a little more Eurosceptical and had a perma-tanned TV host as leader.
But a look at its manifesto shows that it's a lot nastier than that. Far from being "straight-talking", Veritas plays fast and loose with the facts. And its message isn't just Eurosceptic: it's xenophobic bordering on racist – and loopily right-wing.
The cavalier attitude to truth is most apparent on Europe. "Our membership of the European Union probably costs us around £40bn or more a year," the manifesto intones. "You can check the figures in the recent reports from the independent think-tank Civitas." In fact, Civitas (click here) is a right-wing free-market pressure group led by former big-wigs from the Institute of Economic Affairs – and the claim was made in a pamphlet written by Ian Milne, director of Global Britain, a whacko anti-EU pressure group (click here). Just to add to the suspicion that the £40bn figure was simply made up, it contrasts oddly with the claim of the UK Independence Party in last year's European election (in which Kilroy-Silk won a seat for UKIP) that the cost of Britain's EU membership was £20bn a year.
Then there's this canard: "The EU is removing our ability to govern ourselves and make our own decisions about our future. Decisions in the EU are made by unelected and unaccountable Commissioners, who now make 70 per cent of our laws." According to research by the House of Commons library, that's utter nonsense: only 9 per cent of UK legislation emanates from the EU.
As for the Veritas proposal to "secure an agreement with the EU similar to the ones Norway and Switzerland have. They have a free trade agreement and only have to implement a minimum number of EU regulations, paying a modest fee for the privilege of free trade" – well, it's barking. Not for nothing are Norway and Switzerland known as "fax democracies": they have no say in the development of EU directives that arrive by fax, but must obey them in order to trade with EU countries. And the "modest fee" for free trade for Norway is more than £150m a year, for Switzerland more than £90m. Norway has a population of less than 10 per cent of the UK's and sits on a lake of oil. Switzerland also has a small population and sits on a mountain of banks. Even the Spectator thinks the comparison is absurd.
But it's not just on Europe that Veritas allows its prejudices free rein. On crime, the manifesto states: "Countries like the United States, Spain and Ireland have relatively high prison populations, and relatively low crime rates. In Britain we have the opposite – high crime rates and a low prison population." In fact, as official statistics show (click here), Britain imprisons 141 people in every 100,000 – well behind the US (701 in every 100,000), but more than any other EU country. (Ireland's figure is 85 and Spain's 100, incidentally.)
Its take on immigration and asylum is equally slanted: "Britain is a soft touch for asylum-seekers." That is of course questionable: asylum applications have been down the past couple of years (click here), and two-thirds of them are unsuccessful. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Veritas's solution is draconian and unjust – to "dismantle the whole expensive and shambolic asylum operation of detention centres, advisory centres, courts, appeals, legal aid and the rest - saving the British taxpayer £2bn a year." How abolition of due process will help distinguish between "real" and "fake" refugees is never explained.
It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Veritas simply doesn't like immigrants of any description – or indeed foreigners. "The British people are fed up with being made to feel ashamed of their history, tradition and culture," declares the manifesto. It's time to "stop this nonsense – and refuse to allow British people to be bullied and intimidated by the political elite telling us what to think and say" and to "fearlessly and openly speak up for the British people . . . and defend the British way of life". Veritas would review the work of Commission for Racial Equality with a view to abolishing it, would "train enough British people to become doctors, dentists and nurses" – no more GPs from India, then – and would "change the national curriculum to ensure that children learn about the history and culture of these islands, and take a pride in their nation".
Nor does the right-wing loopiness stop here. The Veritas fiscal policy is for a massive handout to the rich. It wants "a 'flat-tax' system with a single rate of tax that is only paid by the better-off half of the working population", to "replace council tax with a local sales tax" and to "completely exempt the value of the family home from inheritance tax". Every one of these measures would penalise all but the well-off. Just as iniquitous, in local government Veritas would "restore the powers of local county and district councils on planning and development matters" but at the same time "remove the disclosure requirements imposed on unpaid local councillors". So councillors get planning powers and keep their financial interests to themselves – a recipe for graft and corruption that could only be welcomed by wannabe John Poulsons.
What a shower.
Robert Kilroy-Silk's party Veritas is unlikely to win seats on May 5 – but it has had oodles of benign publicity from the media. Veritas (website here) advertises itself as "the straight-talking party" that stands up to "the bullying and the intimidation of the liberal elite in London" – and most coverage has taken it at face value. It's populist and right-wing, to be sure, but harmless: what the Tory party could become if it was a little more Eurosceptical and had a perma-tanned TV host as leader.
But a look at its manifesto shows that it's a lot nastier than that. Far from being "straight-talking", Veritas plays fast and loose with the facts. And its message isn't just Eurosceptic: it's xenophobic bordering on racist – and loopily right-wing.
The cavalier attitude to truth is most apparent on Europe. "Our membership of the European Union probably costs us around £40bn or more a year," the manifesto intones. "You can check the figures in the recent reports from the independent think-tank Civitas." In fact, Civitas (click here) is a right-wing free-market pressure group led by former big-wigs from the Institute of Economic Affairs – and the claim was made in a pamphlet written by Ian Milne, director of Global Britain, a whacko anti-EU pressure group (click here). Just to add to the suspicion that the £40bn figure was simply made up, it contrasts oddly with the claim of the UK Independence Party in last year's European election (in which Kilroy-Silk won a seat for UKIP) that the cost of Britain's EU membership was £20bn a year.
Then there's this canard: "The EU is removing our ability to govern ourselves and make our own decisions about our future. Decisions in the EU are made by unelected and unaccountable Commissioners, who now make 70 per cent of our laws." According to research by the House of Commons library, that's utter nonsense: only 9 per cent of UK legislation emanates from the EU.
As for the Veritas proposal to "secure an agreement with the EU similar to the ones Norway and Switzerland have. They have a free trade agreement and only have to implement a minimum number of EU regulations, paying a modest fee for the privilege of free trade" – well, it's barking. Not for nothing are Norway and Switzerland known as "fax democracies": they have no say in the development of EU directives that arrive by fax, but must obey them in order to trade with EU countries. And the "modest fee" for free trade for Norway is more than £150m a year, for Switzerland more than £90m. Norway has a population of less than 10 per cent of the UK's and sits on a lake of oil. Switzerland also has a small population and sits on a mountain of banks. Even the Spectator thinks the comparison is absurd.
But it's not just on Europe that Veritas allows its prejudices free rein. On crime, the manifesto states: "Countries like the United States, Spain and Ireland have relatively high prison populations, and relatively low crime rates. In Britain we have the opposite – high crime rates and a low prison population." In fact, as official statistics show (click here), Britain imprisons 141 people in every 100,000 – well behind the US (701 in every 100,000), but more than any other EU country. (Ireland's figure is 85 and Spain's 100, incidentally.)
Its take on immigration and asylum is equally slanted: "Britain is a soft touch for asylum-seekers." That is of course questionable: asylum applications have been down the past couple of years (click here), and two-thirds of them are unsuccessful. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Veritas's solution is draconian and unjust – to "dismantle the whole expensive and shambolic asylum operation of detention centres, advisory centres, courts, appeals, legal aid and the rest - saving the British taxpayer £2bn a year." How abolition of due process will help distinguish between "real" and "fake" refugees is never explained.
It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Veritas simply doesn't like immigrants of any description – or indeed foreigners. "The British people are fed up with being made to feel ashamed of their history, tradition and culture," declares the manifesto. It's time to "stop this nonsense – and refuse to allow British people to be bullied and intimidated by the political elite telling us what to think and say" and to "fearlessly and openly speak up for the British people . . . and defend the British way of life". Veritas would review the work of Commission for Racial Equality with a view to abolishing it, would "train enough British people to become doctors, dentists and nurses" – no more GPs from India, then – and would "change the national curriculum to ensure that children learn about the history and culture of these islands, and take a pride in their nation".
Nor does the right-wing loopiness stop here. The Veritas fiscal policy is for a massive handout to the rich. It wants "a 'flat-tax' system with a single rate of tax that is only paid by the better-off half of the working population", to "replace council tax with a local sales tax" and to "completely exempt the value of the family home from inheritance tax". Every one of these measures would penalise all but the well-off. Just as iniquitous, in local government Veritas would "restore the powers of local county and district councils on planning and development matters" but at the same time "remove the disclosure requirements imposed on unpaid local councillors". So councillors get planning powers and keep their financial interests to themselves – a recipe for graft and corruption that could only be welcomed by wannabe John Poulsons.
What a shower.
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