People who want change must not allow themselves to be co-opted by the system

We live in a 'democracy'. A flawed democracy for sure, one with an anachronistic first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, and consequently a parliament which fails to reflect the will of the British people. And in the second decade of the 21st century we have an unelected 'second chamber', a thing that would be regarded as absurdly undemocratic in most other countries, and something which you won't find in nations which our politicians criticise - like Chavez's Venezuela. 

What's more, we don't have a written constitution which people can refer to, and rely upon. Our constitutional arrangements are shrouded in mystery, and the goalposts appear to be moved, almost at will, to suit the needs of those in power. There can be no doubt that this 'democratic' system continues to be maintained because it benefits the alliance of monarchy, politicians, media magnates, capitalists and other 'establishment' figures who make up the British 'ruling class'.

The electoral hurdles are there to make sure that radicals and small parties find it very hard to make a breakthrough and get a toe hold in local or national government, but the story doesn't end there, because once elected, councillors and MPs find there are 'rules' that they are supposed to follow, and naturally enough the 'rules' are intended to make sure that they conform. The idea is that if you manage to get yourself elected you must then be co-opted -  you must become part of the system.

But if Parties and individuals want to get elected and bring about radical change they must avoid being co-opted at all costs, and they must retain their radical edge. 'Rules' are there to be changed, and broken if necessary. Many of the 'rules' are about how people are expected to behave rather than actual written codes. Please note that I'm not suggesting that anyone should make a martyr of themselves and end up getting fined or thrown into gaol. What I mean is that the 'rules' should be actively resisted by any legal means possible, especially peaceful democratic protest and direct action involving party members, supporters and trade unionists. In other words 'kick up a stink' and ruthlessly expose the corruption and anti-democratic nature of the system and its supporters. Don't co-operate with it, challenge it!

For example, if you are elected on a platform to oppose the cuts - oppose them at every opportunity!  A cut is a cut is a cut. There are no 'good' cuts in the Coalition's austerity programme, so vote against them, and work with trade unions and local community groups to defend jobs and protect local services. Form alliances with your local community from which you will gain trust and future electoral support. Once you have been seen to conform with 'the system' you simply become 'like all the rest' and lose credibility, and support - you become just another politician closing libraries and hospitals. Here is a quote from Deborah Mattinson's illuminating New Statesman article, based on in-depth electoral research  - 'Tony, you're just like all the rest' - [link above and well worth reading]:

"A conventional wisdom has grown up around the electoral success of new Labour. It is that to win elections you have to stifle radicalism; that being in touch with those vital "Middle England" voters is at odds with the needs of the Labour core vote; and that anything that challenges top-down thinking is somehow old-fashioned, certainly old Labour. Yet floating voters, and women in particular, were voting for something radically different in 1997. They wanted to see real change - [my italics] "

Of course there are some that will argue that this isn't 'grown up politics', and that 'with power comes responsibility'. But that is just playing into the hands of the the very people whose interests are served by the system. The real responsibility of power is to be true to your ideals and the people who elected you. Change is possible, but only if you don't do as you are told. Change the system, don't let the system change you!

A Green vote is a vote against austerity!

The savage cuts of £81 billion imposed by George Osborne in the Coalition's so-called emergency budget in 2010 were designed to make the ordinary people of the UK pay for the sovereign debt crisis which resulted from the financial crisis caused by banks. These are the very same banks that had already been bailed out to the extent of £1.2 trillion by the UK taxpayer. At the time, Osborne and David Cameron cynically claimed that "were all in it together" but they knew that the cuts would fall disproportionately on the low paid, unemployed and disabled, and would hit women particularly hard. The savage cuts imposed by the Coalition are unprecedented in the history of the UK and are driven by ideology, not by necessity, as has been claimed. The government cuts will lead to 700,000 job losses in the public sector, causing further hardship to those already bearing the brunt of the cuts and will probably lead to economic stagnation in the UK for at least a decade.




In our 2010 manifesto the Green Party provided the UK with a radical and positive economic alternative to this savage austerity programme. We planned to halve the deficit in five years without cutting public sector services or jobs and invest £44 billion in creating one million green jobs, and our programme, based on cutting unnecessary government projects like Trident, environmental taxes to cut pollution, and taxing the better off, was fully costed. This approach, if adopted, would have mitigated the worst effects of the financial crisis and created hope for millions in the UK.

The Coalition government have cynically left local councils to implement much of their cuts and councillors are left in a position where they will struggle to support vital local services and protect jobs. Despite this Green Party councillors and candidates in the forthcoming election are determined to do all they can to maintain the local services that people need. In Brighton and Hove, our first Green council is the the most democratic and open in the borough's history and has introduced the living wage for council staff, and is fighting to protect the victims of the cuts. If you want change there is a real alternative to the despair and destruction being wreaked on communities in the UK. On 3 May, vote Green!

Tories and sociopaths

Its been a bad week as far as this government is concerned, but we have learnt something very important, that this is a government of cranks and oddballs. First up for this week we have had the resignation of the arch -Thatcherite Defence Secretary Liam Fox, because of his bizarre relationship with his friend Adam Werrity. The mind boggles that anyone in a position of power and trust could just invite his chum to tag along on foreign trips and meetings with foreign politicians to discuss defence issues. But this is the Tories that we are talking about, so while Adam was tagging along, there were, of course, fat salaries and five star hotels, all paid for by their businessmen buddies.

Next, we have Oliver Letwin, another Thatcherite and special advisor to David Cameron who was photographed wandering round a park in London tossing correspondence from his constituents into the waste bins! I'm sure the people who had written to him were well impressed. This was followed by 'man of the people' Ian Duncan Smith, losing it and ranting because the Child Poverty Action Group had the temerity to challenge his plans for the capping of housing benefit, which will lead to social cleansing in London with up to 9,000 families being forced to leave their homes.

And in the same week, Jamie Oliver has rightly condemned the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's obesity strategy as "worthless, regurgitated, patronising rubbish". Because Lansley's strategy is basically to blame obesity on the fat. Is he just daft? No, being a Tory he is a friend of money and the big food corporations.  When it comes to profits the health of the nation is a long way second. The food corporations encourage people to eat processed food containing high amounts of salt and sugar. They are like the tobacco companies and its about time they were treated the same way.

The point is that there is a pattern here. This is a government of reactionary cranks. Tory ministers are simply not the ordinary 'men in the street' that they would like the rest of to believe they are. They are either wealthy people from privileged backgrounds, who have never had to apply for a proper job, or people who support and aspire to privilege, and people who see no problem with there being vast inequalities in society, as long as they and their loved ones have their snouts firmly in the trough. They are a curious blend of the public schoolboy and second hand car salesman, people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. People who are quite happy to impose poverty and hardship on others through £81 billion worth of cuts which will hit the most vulnerable people in society the hardest, and cut health services for the rest of us. I suspect that many of them are probably sociopaths.

The profile of a sociopath is too complex to describe here but if you can take time to examine this definition, reflect on the qualities of the people in power I have mentioned, including David Cameron, and see for yourself if you think they fit the profile. Here are some rules to help you deal with sociopaths when you meet them, because you undoubtedly will.

The Green Party Conference

Plenary session at Sheffield Hallam University

My report of the Green Party Conference has been delayed by work, but my head is still full of ideas after having three great days in Sheffield. One of the best things about visiting any political conference is meeting up with fellow troublemakers.  I met lots of people who I have been talking to online for ages, and it was really good to see all of them.

I arrived on Friday and departed on Sunday after a weekend of passionate debate and very stimulating fringe meetings. The fringe is always an important part of conference, where people come together to discuss ideas and ways forward. There is never really enough time to do much of the debate justice, often, speakers take up too much of the allotted time, and I'm afraid this was the case at conference this year. There were lots of excellent meetings but the two that stood out for me were the 'Living Wage' and 'Greens and Capitalism'.

Jean Lambert (right) speaking at the Living Wage fringe meeting

At the latter fringe meeting there was a rousing speech by Derek Wall, who narrowly missed out on becoming Party Chair this year. The speakers, who also included Jonathan Essex and Jane Ennis,  presented the meeting with a cogent criticism of the crisis of capitalism we are going through, in which ordinary people are being asked to pay twice for the failures of capitalism, first through the bank bailout, and now, through the sovereign debt crisis. The economic failures of neoliberalism are being compounded by the ongoing programme of privatisation and deregulation which is making all of us poorer. 

In the main hall there were a number of important debates on policy and organisational issues. Motions on a moratorium for Shale gas extraction (fracking) and against an immigration cap were passed, as were motions to support One Million climate change Jobs and the Coalition of Resistance. There was a very lively and tough debate about the motion on delegate conferences. The debate was complicated by the fact that the motion presented conference with four options. In the end, conference went for Option 4, which was to re-consider the position when the party membership reaches 25,000. In my view, this was the right result. There are powerful arguments for a delegate conference e.g. delegates represent the views of their local party thus widening representation at conference, which means that more members have a say. But we are still a small party, many local parties don't have the resources to support delegates, and, in my view, as an experienced union steward who attended two Unison conferences and two NUT conferences, delegates tend to be the same people every year, activists who may represent the view of the branch committee, not necessarily the wider membership. I look forward to the time when we will debate this issue again at conference.

Relaxing at conference

I need to mention two of the most contentious motions debated at conference . These were; the GPRC report; and the motion on the GP being a model employer. Both motions criticised the party executive, GPEx, over a contentious staffing change. There was heated discussion at the plenary because GPEx  were being censured for the way they had handled the change, and the way they had communicated their reasons for the change to the Party. In the end, the censure motions were passed. Lets hope that lessons will be learned and we can all move on.

There were also a number of excellent emergency motions on; Legal Aid and Justice for All; Robin Hood Tax; Anti – ATOS; Nuclear Waste Disposal; NHS Listening Exercise; Bombardier - Rail jobs; English Riots; ; and the National Planning Policy Framework.

Overall, it was a great conference, with rousing speeches defending the NHS from Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay which put the so-called Labour Party to shame and consolidated our position as the only mainstream party of the left in England and Wales.

Cameron is wrong about the riots

Since last week, when the UK riots came to a halt, apart from the universal condemnation of the looters, there have been two responses: one from the political right; and another from the left. The right have sought to paint the riots as being all about criminality, and about individual bad behaviour. David Cameron has re-iterated this theme a number of times in the past week, also calling for the rioters to be hammered by the courts. Its typical of the right that they should portray the riots in such simplistic terms. Firstly, most right wingers don't want the riots to be viewed by people in a wider context - the context of poverty, joblessness, exclusion and social despair. That's understandable because if people were to see the wider context they would appreciate how damaging and destructive the right's neoliberal ideology is; Secondly, they know that such a response panders to the prejudices of many of our citizens; Thirdly, its crucial for Cameron and the political right that individuals be blamed because the government might not survive if it was widely believed that it was responsible for the troubles. At the very least re-election would be a remote possibility. So, its hardly surprising that Cameron has been seeking to monopolise the media with calls for 'tough' sentencing which amount to revenge, not justice, as two men in Cheshire discovered recently.

Unlike David Cameron, the left have looked for the causes of the rioting. This is not to excuse the behaviour of the rioters, just simply a recognition the we don't live in a vacuum, and that people's behaviour can be affected by the environment they live in. Part of that environment is that people see our society's leaders, including politicians and businessmen, with their fingers in the till, and getting away with it. Cameron himself was implicated in the expenses scandal as were other cabinet ministers. The phone hacking scandal has implicated the police and other senior people in the media, and then we have the bankers who crashed our economy and carried off big bonuses as a result. Naomi Klein has written a perceptive article about the wider global political context of the riots. Its not just here in the UK that people perceive that the rich elites are robbing us and getting away with it. She said:

"Of course London's riots weren't a political protest. But the people committing night-time robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. "

As said in a previous post, there is nothing new about the recent riots and academic research has shown that austerity measures of the kind we have seen in the UK, with £81 billion worth of ideological cuts imposed by George Osbourne on our society, can cause rioting. The researchers, Jacopo Ponticelli and Hans-Joachim Voth, concluded:

"Nobody knows where and when social unrest is going to happen again, nor the scale it will take. However, history suggests we should not underestimate the consequences of social chaos. Germans to the present day remember Heinrich Brüning, known as the "hunger chancellor", who led the country from 1929 to 1932. He presided over an unprecedented austerity programme. At the same time, the Weimar Republic, Germany's first attempt at democracy, disintegrated amid a wave of social unrest and political violence."

The fact is that David Cameron is wrong about the causes of the riots and wrong with his views on sentencing. Far from being squeaky clean Cameron has soiled hands. He has also flipped on this issue. Do you remember the infamous 'hug a hoodie' speech where Cameron said we should be understanding about young people who commit crime? If not read this. Cameron is the Tory's version of a Blairite poster boy who is not much more than a front for an extremist Tory Party whose favourites include Thatcherite monsters from the crypt like William Hague and Eric Pickles.

If you want to, you can choose to believe that the austerity measures in the UK have nothing whatsoever to do with the riots, or you can choose to say that despite austerity and poverty no one should ever be involved in looting and causing wanton damage to life and property, and that the people who have done this should have acted responsibly instead. So why didn't the bankers, politicians, phone hackers and corrupt cops, who are supposed to know better than the 'feral rats' who rioted, measure up to being responsible? Why didn't they set an example? Is it simply that they are too greedy or is it that they knew they would never properly be held to account and face the consequences of their actions? And don't forget, who was it who sought to excuse the actions of the bankers? Why non other than Mr David Cameron himself at the Tory Party conference.

Our anger should be directed against the real villains

After four nights of looting and violence like many other people in our society I'm angry. Very angry. My anger is directed at the people who are responsible for what has been described as mindless vandalism. Not just those who were directly responsible, but those who are really responsible for the crisis we are in. These real villains are the people I've been talking about in many posts on this blog for the past 3 years or so. The people who have imposed 30 years of Thatcherism on our society. The people who said they were going to make us better off when they knew damn well that most of us were going to end up poorer. These people are the privatisers, the deregulators, the people who have taken our pensions away whilst supporting bankers bonuses, the ones who pocketed the profits whilst the losses were being nationalised, the 'free' market fanatics who worship the winner-takes-all, beggar-my-neighbour capitalist economy which puts us all in thrall to the market.

We used to have a reasonable balance in this society. We used to believe in the public sector and the public good. Not any more. People have been seduced by the glitzy worship of celebrity and consumerism that has been rammed down our throats. Private good, public bad. The wanton destruction of good honest public institutions that served to public good. Those institutions weren't perfect. They had their faults. They needed improvement. But they were a bloody sight better than their profit-driven private sector replacements. I look back with nostalgia at British Rail. Yes it was tatty but that is because it was starved of investment. It was a damn sight better than the crowded 'luxury' cattle wagons we are crammed into nowadays at exorbitant prices whilst the likes of Richard Branson trouser millions of pounds worth profit every year.

The phenomenon we have witnessed in the past few days is the result of the chickens of Thatcherism coming home to roost. The underclasses have learnt the lesson from their betters in society - if its there for the taking - take it. The looting is the mirror image of the behaviour of the bankers and politicians. The bankers have looted our society to the tune of hundreds of billions and now the so called "feral rats" are taking their share from Top Shop and JD Sports to the tune of hundreds of millions. The difference is that the "rats" will end up in gaol. But what about the bankers and their politician chums? The message to society is - "If you wear a suit you can go out and loot" - with impunity.

I have seen some very good comments about what has been happening, particularly in today's Guardian letters and I just wanted to finish by quoting this wonderfully perceptive comment from Rick Osborn:

"While we all must condemn the violence and looting of recent nights, we must not allow those who lead our society to duck their roles in the conditions leading up to it. We find members of parliament fiddling expenses and only some of that deemed illegal. We see bankers plundering the public purse to cover their incompetence and still receiving ridiculous bonuses. Members of the press, that bulwark of our freedoms, pay criminals to get them stories and some of those criminals are members of the police force. Meanwhile, what happens to the law-abiding, decent citizens whom we would like our young people to become? They are told that they must pay more for their pensions, have certain health procedures denied to them, pay more for food, fuel and housing, and probably get made redundant to boot. Our young people are not fools. They see quite clearly that in modern Britain, being good brings no rewards; on the contrary, it is punished."

London riots - here we go again!

If, like me, you are middle aged, you will have seen many riots in the UK. Brixton, Broadwater Farm, and Toxteth are some of the the better known examples in the past 30 years or so. These riots are always triggered by an incident involving the heavy handed policing of members of an ethnic minority community, usually black. The Broadwater Farm riot was triggered by the death of a black woman, Cynthia Jarrett, when the police were searching her home. The riots always occur in  communities that are characterised by high unemployment, poverty and poor housing. Tottenham has a history of these problems, Broadwater Farm is just one example, and we still have not heard the true facts about the mysterious death of Smiley Culture, who died whilst in police custody in his own home in April 2011. Allegedly he stabbed himself. A thousand people protested after that incident. What the riots show is the simmering resentment that exists in many inner city communities in the UK.

In the case of the Tottenham riot, which took place on Saturday, supporters of the  family of Mark Duggan, who was shot and killed by the police last week, staged a peaceful protest. The police failed to respond to requests from the family to speak to a senior officer. The family and their supporters were kept waiting for hours. The police clearly failed to deal reasonably with the family, sparking further anger. After the Duggan shooting incident, we heard that a police officer had been shot, implying that Duggan had fired on the police, now we hear that both the bullets that were fired came from police weapons. Did someone fire on the police? We don't know. But what we do know is that the police have a history of putting out misleading information in the aftermath of incidents of this kind. In the case of Jean Charles De Menezes, in 2005, the police said that he had behaved suspiciously, and had vaulted a barrier at Stockwell tube station. This turned out not to be true. Jean Charles De Menezes was just a man on his way to work. The police killed an innocent man, and eye-witnesses to the shooting later claimed that they had no need to shoot him dead.

There is a clear pattern here. Communities plagued by unemployment, poverty and poor housing. Heavy handed, inept and racially dubious policing. The police putting out misleading statements about what happened. The police being used to keep a lid on the simmering community resentment. The establishment mouthing platitudes and making token gestures about investment and regeneration.  And so it goes on and on and on. This is 21st century Britain, a place where institutional racism and poverty are still being swept under the carpet, where mass unemployment, and four million people needing housing, has become acceptable . Riot inquiry follows riot inquiry but the same old pattern is still repeated. Kack-handed responses by Home Secretaries like Theresa May, who today launched a tirade against the "criminals" who burned and looted. Yes, Theresa, it was wrong and should be condemned, but why did it happen on your watch? Why were so many people involved? Why did it spread so widely? Tell us the answers to that Theresa, instead of mouthing off the usual platitudes about criminality.

The people who really suffer in the end are the people of the afflicted communities themselves. They are the ones whose houses and businesses are destroyed. I wonder what would happen if people took their resentments, arson and riots to Kensington or Mayfair? What sort of police response would we see then? A very different one to one we saw in Tottenham on Saturday night I'm sure. The point is that nothing will ever change until we have an economic system that can provide decent housing and jobs for all, and a police force which is there to protect citizens, instead of helping to keep them under control. Clearly capitalism is not that economic system, and as long as it exists, so will these problems.

We can win the economic argument - so lets do it!

"Its the economy stupid!" - it sure is. The economy is just about all we hear about these days, and its no wonder, because we are going through the biggest economic crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression. But the problem we have is that the neoliberal right are in the ascendancy, they have the power. This means that the response to the economic crisis is the same as it was during the Great Depression. Does this mean we have learnt nothing in the past 80 years? To some extent yes, but the real problem is that the same kind of people are in control now as were in control in the late 1920s - capitalist corporations and the politicians who support them. The Great Depression lead to immense hardship and deprivation for people around the world. In America, the slump, despite the uplift given by Roosevelt with the New Deal, lasted over a decade until the end of World War II. It was the massive US spending during the war economy that lifted the whole world out of the Great Depression. Without that lift the world economy would probably  have remained stagnant for many more years, possibly decades.

In the mid 1930s  the economist John Maynard Keynes explained that in a economic slump governments needed to take counter-cyclical measures to revive the economy. In other words, you don't cut spending in a recession - you increase it. But Keynes's ideas were ignored then - just as they are being ignored now. Then as now, for reasons of class, politicians preferred to cuts jobs and welfare rather than increase spending or increase taxes on the rich - who could have afforded to pay more. Belt tightening was, as usual, forced on the poorest in society.

So where does that leave us? The sovereign debt crisis which is now engulfing Europe and the USA is a direct result of the banking crisis known in the UK as the 'credit crunch'.  This crisis would have brought down the world economy, if it had not been for the fact that the state intervention, both here and abroad, propped up the faltering world private banking system. The resulting losses (costs) were nationalised and the gains (profits) remained in private hands. The people who caused the crisis got away free whilst ordinary people picked up the tab, bailing out the banks, and paying by losing their jobs, homes and pensions.

But that was only round one. The debt form the economic crisis didn't just  disappear - it became the sovereign debt which is crippling Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal, and which now threatens the USA itself with debt default. So, the people are  being made to pay for the crisis a second time around. The name of the game now is austerity. Yet more cuts in welfare and more jobs losses - all to protect the same people  - the private sector, the banks and bondholders - financial capitalism. But as Keynes showed more cuts and austerity won't fix the problem - it will make it worse. That means the best we can hope for in the UK and Europe is economic stagnation, continuing high unemployment, and increasing hardship and poverty. The result is that your children will inevitably be poorer than you are and your grandchildren will be poorer still, in a society blighted by homelessness and inequality.

In the UK we have our own austerity crisis. The Chancellor of the Exchequer,  George Osborne, has taken a reckless ideological and political gamble with our economy by instituting savage austerity cuts of £81 billion. His aim is to use the debt crisis as cover to slash the welfare state - which is something the right have always hated. He is hoping that the economy will recover enough so that he can announce tax cuts before the next election. he believes this will win the next election for the Tories. That is why the Tories wanted a fixed term five year parliament - because they need at least 5 years for this ideological economic gamble to have a chance to work.

So, if the economic policies being followed by the EU, in Greek debt crisis for example, and in the UK government aren't working, why are they being followed? The answer is simple - neoliberal ideology. This is class war politics. The lesson of the past thirty years is that the capitalist class and their politicians have allowed a world economic crisis to develop by following neoliberal 'free' market dogma, by deregulating financial capitalism (the banking and shadow banking system). Now they are exploiting the outcome of that crisis, and using it to roll back all the democratic gains made by working people in the last century. 

So what does the left do about this? Well, we have to win the economic argument. That is essential. We have to explain to people how the failed 'economic' policies of the neoliberalism got us here. We have to explain how the crisis has been exploited to benefit the people who caused it. We have to debunk the myths about the benefits of the unregulated 'free' market. But most of all, we have to show that we have an alternative which can create jobs and prosperity. That is what the Green Party did in its 2010 election manifesto. We showed that  by investing in creating one million green jobs, and by building housing, by improving public transport, by controlling the banks, and by growing our economy in a sustainable way, we could lift the UK out of the economic crisis it is in.

The reality is that Osborne's reckless ideological gamble with our economy won't work, and when it fails, we have to be ready to strike. The next UK quarter figures are due soon. All the indicators are that they will be very poor - either very low growth, or no growth at all. That is the time we must put the boot it - and hard. People in the UK are beginning to waver in their support for cuts. In the past year support for the cuts has fallen from 69% to 55%, with 45% now against Osborne's savage cuts. Once the British people realise that Osborne's economic 'policy' isn't working the Tories economic competency will be finished. It is then that the Coalition will be in real danger. The Coalition government is a weak and divided government which has only survived because the British people have been conned into believing that it was acting in the national interest, to tackle the economic crisis. Cameron has already been severely wounded by the phone hacking scandal. Its hard to see how the government could survive similar damage to Osborne.

The reality is this; pensions and the welfare state aren't unaffordable; low taxes only benefit the rich; the state is not inherently a bad thing - governments can and should intervene to create jobs, build houses and protect the vulnerable; we can only have a better health service if it is provided by the public sector; privatisation means that you pay more for less; banks can be nationalised and brought under democratic control; co-operation is much more important than competition.

These are the messages that all those who oppose this government; UK-uncut, the Coalition of Resistance; trade unionists, and all the other anti-cuts groups need to get across, and get across soon. The only way we can slay this neoliberal system and get rid of this government is by winning the economic argument. Until we get on with the task of doing that we won't have the power to change things for the better and we won't be able to stop the deliberate destruction by this government of all the things which make this a society worth living in.

What is the Labour Party for?

A lot of people are wondering what the Labour Party is for. Since Ed Milliband became leader its been hard to to tell. But at least we know what the Labour party is not for; its not for the working class, it abandoned them a long time ago, letting the BNP fill the vacuum; its not for decent public sector pensions; its not much interested in housing; or the poor; or trade unions. It is, we know, in the historic words of Peter Mandelson - "intensely relaxed about the filthy rich" and it seems to be pretty keen on the banks; Oh!, and privatisation of the NHS, education, and well, pretty much anything else that moves.

The Labour Party is a party that has lost its way completely. So much so that it doesn't really know what it is for, except perhaps a vehicle for its leaders to get elected and hold political power, a vehicle for career politicians, the political class that I blogged about in this post. That means that it is the job of party members, who presumably think they are part of a project to change things, merely to have a role of furthering the career aspirations of Milliband, Jowell, Balls, Alexander et al.

I'm sure that Ed would be horrified if he read what I'd just written. He'd protest that he believes in a progressive future and that he, and his colleagues, have been traduced by that statement. If he thinks that I'd like to suggest its his own fault, because I think I think those are perfectly reasonable conclusions for onlookers like me to draw, based on the statements, and behaviour of Ed and other leading Labour politicians.

For example, for him to state that the June 30th strike was wrong, on the basis that negotiations about public sector pensions were ongoing, was laughable. It was obvious to all but the most naive that the government wasn't involved  in meaningful negotiations and had no intention of compromising on terms remotely acceptable to the striking teachers and civil servants. Not only that, but it was clear that the government had been hiding the fact that the Hutton Report showed that public sector pensions were affordable, and this had been exposed on the Today programme.

The Labour party has become a right-wing reactionary neoliberal party and there is little to distinguish it from the other neoliberal parties; the Liberal Democrats and the Tories. The reason for this transformation is not difficult to discern. This transformation has happened to 'left' parties all over the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Social Democracy has been abandoned in favour of 'free' market globalisation, and the domination of democracies by the multinational corporations and the banks. In fact, this is little different to Fascism. It is only a matter of degree, because Fascism is the subjugation of democracy to capitalist corporations -  with some goose-stepping in uniform, and gratuitous violence, thrown in.

This is what is happening in Greece. Democracy has been openly replaced, under a 'Socialist' government,  by the control of financial technocrats from the EU and IMF, on behalf of their market masters. Our politicians, including Ed,  are complicit in this free market coup d'etat. There is only one way we can stop this. We must stop voting for these people. We need to vote for parties which can stop the rot. In the UK there is only one party of social justice left - the Green Party.

We are the economy

One of the things that I find utterly baffling and amusing, in a very darkly comic way, is the BBC's analysis of 'our' economy. I listen to Radio 4 because it is supposed to be a serious news station, with journalists who allegedly offer us a realistic analysis of the world we live in. I mean people like; Robert Peston, Stephanie Flanders and Nick Robinson. The problem I have with these people is that their analysis is fairly useless if you really want to understand the world we live in.

What we get offered is an 'orthodox' economic analysis. Just think -  "Middle Ages" and "Catholic Church" . Because that is really what it is like. If you think further you might even get to "Spanish Inquisition". Keep listening  to this stuff and you hear things like - blah IMF, blah blah, default, blah Euro, blah blah Mervyn King, blah blah the markets, etc etc - remember Bart Simpson and his teacher Ms Krabappel? That is what happens to me when I listen to this stuff. Is it because I am thick - or is it because I am hearing total bollox?

I'd like to argue it is the latter, and I'd like to argue that the BBC is little more than a propaganda station for the UK government, and the market. In fact, I'd like to argue that I know more about economics than Stephanie Flanders and  Robert Peston. Is that because I am a bighead? No, its because I am a worker. Remember them? Well, you probably are one if you are reading this.

All you need to know about economics is that all the wealth in the world is created by working people. By wealth I don't mean suitcases full of cash. What I mean is houses, cars, and iPods. I also mean services like teaching, passports, probation, and emptying the bins. This is stuff that we do. Without us, none of these things would happen. We are the world economy. Fuck the markets, they are irrelevant. We don't need them, but they need us, because they prey upon our labour like parasites. They contribute nothing that is socially or economically useful.

Tomorrow, public sector workers will go on strike. Without them there is no economy. Without teachers, our children won't be taught, without civil servants, you won't get a passport.  Whether private or public sector workers - without workers, as Marx explained, we have nothing, no wealth and no prosperity. We don't need bankers, or hedge fund mangers. We don't need the free market. These people and their gambling casino are irrelevant. This is our economy and its about time we took control of it. Support the public sectors workers pensions strike tomorrow, and make that the beginning of a peaceful revolution to bring us to a position where our economy really does belong to us.

Cuts where they're needed, not where they hurt

Cheshire West Against the Cuts

We had a another good stall in Chester today. Lots of people signed our petition. Get involved and support us. We have a public meeting in Chester on Wednesday 20th April at the Guildhall on Watergate street - see you there.

There is an alternative

On March 26th 400,000 - 500,000 people marched in London for an alternative to the government's cuts programme. In the aftermath, political pundits sniped at the marchers claiming that protests don't work and that the marchers had no coherent alternative.

This blog is about the alternative. In over 200 posts I've laid out how we can create a different kind of economy which will create jobs, wealth and greater economic equality for people in the UK. I'm not a lone voice. The Green Party laid out such an economic plan in its election manifesto. Working with the New Economics Foundation, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas proposed a Green New Deal which would have revitalised our economy in the face the current economic crisis caused by financial capitalism.

This is the kind of fresh economic thinking that we need. It replaces the tired old neoliberal paradigm which has produced the economic stagnation and failure of the past thirty years. If you want economic progress, jobs and greater social equality you can't depend on the unfettered market to provide it. The market is an engine of inequality, producing extremes of wealth and poverty. This has been well demonstrated in the USA in the past thirty years where the rich have become the super-rich whilst the incomes of ordinary people have stagnated. Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote about this recently in Vanity fair and its worth quoting from his article - Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%:

"Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

Neoliberalism has allowed the rich to grab an ever greater share of the economic cake, at the direct expense of the rest of us. Our politicians have cravenly submitted to the demands of capitalists and their huge corporations. We need an economics that is for everyone, not a tiny minority, and this is what the Green New Deal is about. Its time to put aside the failures of the past, but this can only happen when people wake up, realise what is being done to them and vote for genuinely progressive alternatives espoused by parties like the Green Party.

Another Tory budget demonstrates the poverty of neoliberal thinking

I've posted many times on the blog about the current neoliberal paradigm, and the 'free' market fanatics who espouse it. Yesterday we saw a classic neoliberal budget, entirely one dimensional and doomed to failure in terms of doing what the country needs - creating jobs, greening the economy and lowering economic inequality. Its important to understand that if we had a Labour or purely Liberal Democrat government, we wouldn't have seen much difference. All three main parties subscribe to the same 'economic' philosophy - the market must rule - even though its clearly been shown recently that the unregulated market causes boom and bust which only the state can rectify.

Neoliberalism is more akin to a religious cult than a political philosophy and all its adherents, from Blair to Clegg to Cameron to Sarkosy and even Sarah Palin subscribe to the same narrow orthodoxy; only the market can be allowed to do anything. The role of governments is simply to make the market supreme, they are not allowed to intervene, take initiatives, engage in economic planning, or invest in society through public services.

This means that the only economic measures we are allowed to pursue are ones that (big) businesses want - lower taxes and cutting 'red tape'. This is similar to the policy that was followed by Western governments during the last great economic crisis in the 1920s and 1930s - we are going backwards rather than forwards. Suffice to say these policies failed then and they will fail now, leading to at least another decade of economic stagnation, mass unemployment and increasing poverty. The irony then was that it took a world war and massive government spending in the USA, which was the powerhouse of the world economy, to lift the world out of depression and into post-war prosperity.

The neoliberals only have only three economic levers to pull: lower taxes, cutting 'red tape' and labour market flexibility (bashing the workers). These fetishes have already demonstrably failed to make the West more prosperous in the past thirty years. All they have succeeded in doing is making the rich much wealthier and the rest of us poorer. The cunning plan is supposed to be that if you cut taxes on corporations and the rich they will invest more - thus creating more wealth for all of us. Unfortunately the evidence is that this doesn't work. The rich pocket the money and corporations pass it on to their shareholders. Large corporations just don't create jobs anymore, or if they do they invest in low wage economies like China. The wealthy invest in property or financial schemes which bring a bigger return.

We need government investment in our economy. The Green Party has an economic programme which would have cut the deficit by £70 billion over 4 years, created one million jobs and protected the public sector and the welfare state - see our manifesto. Yes, we would have raised taxes but to the same level they were during the Thatcher government - about 43% of GDP. Higher taxes benefit the economy and ordinary people. The public sector generates wealth by investing in society and stimulating private sector growth.

The irony in all this is that the greatest period of wealth and economic equality we had in our history was at a time when we had a mixed economy, strong trade unions, high taxes and a strong public sector. The neoliberal approach only benefits the rich and corporations. The question is - how long can this go on before the penny drops with the majority and there is a real drive for political change? I suspect that we are all going to have to get a lot poorer before the tide is turned.