The Green Party must be a radical party if it is to make real electoral progress

I started this post with an Internet search for the meaning of the word 'radical'. One of the first definitions I found was this: a radical is - "One who advocates fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions". In Caroline Lucas the Green Party has a fine radical campaigning MP who is trying to bring about real fundamental change in our society. One of the recent examples of this is her introduction of a bill into parliament which would bring about the re-nationalisation of the railways. Speaking about the bill she said:

 "Britain was once world famous for our trailblazing and hugely successful railways, but today’s privatised system is ripping off passengers, harming the economy and failing the environment. From my inbox, it’s clear that poor rail services and overpriced fares are amongst the biggest concerns for my constituents".

This is just one of many radical changes that Caroline has tried to bring about since she became an MP, and this has made her deservedly popular, so much so that she was awarded the title of MP of the Year. She was also willing to challenge the conventions of parliament by wearing a "No More Page Three" T-shirt at a select committee hearing.Like many people I think that Caroline Lucas is the best MP we have in the UK and that, if she is re-elected in 2015, as she deserves to be, it will be because of her radical approach.

If you spend any time watching the BBC, you might be tempted to think that all is well in the UK but is isn't. The savage cuts introduced by the government, increasing privatisation, and failure to tackle climate change or tax dodging by corporations have left many people in despair. The Labour Party has failed to challenge the Coalition government on any of these issues, and pledges to maintain the cuts if it wins the next election. Only the Green Party offers a real and radical alternative to "business as usual", to use Caroline Lucas's own words, and this alternative gives the party an historic opportunity to make a real electoral breakthrough in the next two years.

However, the Party won't achieve electoral success if it doesn't present itself as a radical party of change, and implement radical change when it gets the opportunity to exercise power. Simply being a slightly greener version of the Liberal Democrats, or promoting a bit more social justice than Labour just won't cut it with an electorate that wants real change. I've posted before about how the Irish Green Party followed the road to self-destruction by going into a disastrous coalition with Fianna Fail and collaborating with a neoliberal austerity cuts agenda. Why would any of the millions of progressive voters bother to vote for a party that offers little more than the alternatives, especially if you don't think that party can get elected anyway? You have to have a really good reason to take the plunge and vote Green, and that good reason can only be that you are confident in the radicalism the party stands for, and that it will be delivered. That is where the Irish Green Party manifestly failed.

If the Green Party is serious about getting into government, it has to be serious about radical reform of the UK's economy, institutions and infrastructure, and pursuing much much more than an ecological agenda, otherwise it will remain a niche party on the fringe of the British political scene. The Green Party has the right policies for radical change and Caroline Lucas is leading the way, now the rest of the party needs to follow her.

The strange slow death of the Labour Party

Do all political parties have a lifespan? I think so. Its hard to imagine the Tory Party coming to an end, because it represents the interests of a particular class very effectively, and has done for 200 years or more. But even the Tories are vulnerable, not so much because of UKIP, but because they now really only represent a very narrow sectional interest consisting of the corporations and the very wealthy. The 'free' market and globalisation is set to grind down their middle class support, narrowing their political base still further. The latest manifestation of this is the sacrifice of the legal profession on the altar of the market to promote the interests of big business who are eying up what's left of the funding for legal aid. The fact is that the Tory vote has been in decline since 1931, and there is no sign of this changing.

But this post is meant to be about Labour, why is Labour heading into irreversible decline? The answer is simple - the party has abandoned its base, just like the Tories. The only reason so many people still vote for it is that it is seen as the only viable alternative to the Tories, and it is still funded by the trade unions. Of course its true that Labour's base has changed anyway in the past 30 years or so. The bedrock of working class support that could once rely upon has diminished, but Labour still ought to be able to rely on the support of the progressive majority in the UK, but now, it no longer can.

I believe Labour will win the next election and that it will probably win outright, but it will win by default, because enough people want to see the end of the Coalition, not because of any great enthusiasm for its leader or policies. Labour will win purely because it is the lesser of two evils and represents a little hope where now there is none. Labour ought to storm back into power on a positive anti-austerity platform. But it seems the Party has been so rotted by its embrace of the market that despite the mistakes of the Blair/Brown era it has really learnt nothing. Its leadership is incapable of making the break with neoliberalism.

The latest manifestation of this came only recently when shadow chancellor Ed Balls made yet another break with universal benefits by means testing the pensioners' winter fuel allowance. This is pretty poor stuff, which can only serve to weaken the whole welfare state further, and follows on from Labour's embrace of workfare, amongst other things. But it gets even worse because Labour are now likely to adopt the Coalition's spending plans after 2015 and yet further deep cuts are in the pipeline. The acid test will come if Labour forms the next government. Expect protests to grow not diminish. More people will drift away from the party and the decisive point will come if unions decide to make the break. If the Labour leadership continue on their current course they will be leading the party to oblivion. The question is not when, but how long it will take for the crunch to come?

The global kleptocracy: 'free trade' and corporate economic imperialism

Whilst arguments rage in the UK about the aftermath of the horrific and senseless murder of a soldier in Woolwich, around the world corporations are continuing to push ahead with globalisation by looting the natural resources of developing nations and destroying the livelihoods of indigenous peoples. This is capitalism actively creating poverty in action. A recent article in the Guardian reported that:

"Land conflicts between farmers and plantation owners, mining companies and developers have raged across Indonesia as local and multinational companies have been encouraged to seize and then deforest customary land – land owned by indigenous people and administered in accordance with their customs. More than 600 were recorded in 2011, with 22 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The true number is probably far greater, say watchdog groups."

When this happens, there is invariably collusion between local politicians,  and the police and army, and the corporations, resulting in deaths and injuries to people trying to defend their land and resources. These are the very same corporations we are told we should be supporting, because they provide jobs and create wealth. But this is simply theft. This is the 'free' market in action, showing its true face.

Not so long ago this is what the empires of Britain, France and other colonial powers were doing, but since then nothing has really changed apart from the fact that this naked exploitation is hidden behind a veil of corporate respectability and underpinned by a raft of secretive trade agreements, supported by global organisations like the WTO. The impact of this, long evident in developing nations, is now being felt in western countries, in Europe and the UK, as the same corporations loot our pensions and asset strip our public services, putting profit before people. One of the best explanations of this process I've read 'Globalisation and Democracy' by Michael Parenti which I can't recommend highly enough. Parenti nails the mechanisms by which the 1% and corporations, which I like to call the 'global kleptocracy' steal wealth from the rest of us:

"With international “free trade” agreements such as NAFTA, GATT, and FTAA, the giant transnationals have been elevated above the sovereign powers of nation states. These agreements endow anonymous international trade committees with the authority to prevent, over rule, or dilute any laws of any nation deemed to burden the investmentand market prerogatives of transnational corporations. These tradecommittees–of which the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a prime example—set up panels composed of “trade special ists” who act as judges over economic issues, placing themselves above the rule and popular control of any nation, thereby insuring the supremacy of international finance capital. This process, called globalization, is treated as an inevitable natural “growth” development beneficial to all. It is in fact a global coup d’état by the giant business interests of the world [my italics]."

The latest of these agreements is the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) , which is a further extension of corporate power, enabling corporations to bypass or overrule the democratic decision of our elected governments. Our leading politicians, including President Obama, are promoting this corporate destruction of our democratic rights. We need to raise awareness of what is happening not only because of the destructive power of globalisation, but because it is a theft, not only of land and resources but also our democratic sovereignty.

What is work and what is it really for?

What is work, what is it for, and what is it going to look like in the future? Do we need to work and how much work should we do? These are increasingly important questions, particularly in an age when we have to build a sustainable economy, adjust to climate change, and capitalism is unable to provide people with work. It's worth enlarging on that last point, what exactly do I mean by 'unable'? We can see that capitalism is unable to provide work for millions of people in Europe and America because of the failure of austerity. But austerity itself is simply a means of making the 99% pay for the failures of financial capitalism which culminated in the great crash of 2008.  Western Governments, the implementers of austerity, are working in the interests of the capitalist class, the 1%, and have no intention of returning to 'full employment', which was the policy of governments in the 1960s. Nowadays, we have to hope we can get a job, however, low paid, or we have to create one for ourselves, or we have to suffer the indignity of being treated like a scrounger, on benefits, because governments aren't actively going to intervene to create jobs like they used to. Given this current neoliberal approach to employment, we could end up with high levels of unemployment, and underemployment indefinitely, and there are good reasons for thinking that this will be the case. In other words, there will never be a return to the days of full employment and decent pay and pensions - unless we do something about it.

Neoliberal austerity is a response by the capitalist class, and their supporters in government, to the falling profitability of capitalism. So was the massive financial boom, fueled by deregulation, which started in the 1980s. The global economy is now dominated by financial capitalism and there is still an ocean of debt and dodgy bust banks. In addition, there is the tendency in modern monopoly capitalism towards economic stagnation. In short, the system is bust, and without deep-seated reform, there will be no real recovery.

So let's get back to the subject of work itself. What is it? Put simply work is what people do. It is all the things that we do to maintain our existence, build and make the things we need, and make our lives fulfilling. It includes the raising of children, housework, gardening, and caring for others. Raising children, for example, creates the next generation of workers and consumers, that is 'work' that we do for capitalists unpaid - for free. Work should not be slavery, wage slavery or drudgery. Even hard physical work can be rewarding and satisfying if it produces useful things that we need. So why is so much work that we do dull and filled with drudgery? Karl Marx had a compelling explanation. He said that work in a capitalist mode of production created alienation. A succinct explanation can be found here:

"In a capitalist society, the worker’s alienation from his and her humanity occurs because the worker can only express labour — a fundamental social aspect of personal individuality — through a privately owned system of industrial production in which each worker is an instrument, a thing, not a person."

Karl Marx: understood the alienation of workers

There is nothing natural about working in an office or factory from 9 to 5. In the early days of industrial capitalism, workers had to be schooled into working hours and into conditions they had never experienced. We have all been trained to believe that this, or some modern variant, is what 'work' is. But work should be satisfying, creative and produce useful things, and be an activity that we can enjoy with a strong measure of control over what we do. In a capitalist economy, only a relatively few people are able to produce things that they own. The abandonment of the full employment policies of the past is driving more people to create their own work. 'Free' market ideologists would have us believe that this is a success and that people are be becoming more 'enterprising'' but it is really a failure of the system.

If there is less 'work' available, can we divide it up? There has long been a debate about the amount of work there is to go around, and some people have proposed that the available work should be shared out, with people working a shorter week. The New Economics Foundation has suggested in a report that the normal working week should be reduced to 21 hours, which the average amount of time people in the UK work. One of the key findings of the paper was that -  "If time devoted to unpaid housework and childcare in 2005 was valued in terms of the minimum wage, it would be worth the equivalent of 21% of UK GDP" - which would account for a lot of the unpaid work that is carried out.

There are no easy answers, but at least three things need to happen; we have to build a green, sustainable economy which can help us adapt to climate change; we must give people control over what they produce through economic democracy and we must recognise all the socially necessary unpaid work which people do, and that means paying people to raise their children. As for the latter, there is a way of doing this which is fair and equitable and helps to deal with issues of social security which people face - pay everyone a basic income. I'm not going to discuss how a basic income would work in great detail here because that would be a post in itself but it has been successfully tried as this example from India shows. There are various ideas about how it would work and be funded but essentially it is an unconditional payment to every adult in society. But it must not be used to replace benefits. One sensible way of paying for it would be via a land value tax. 

Finally, I was interested to read an article in the Guardian by Guy Standing about job insecurity in a global economy. He suggests that job security is a thing of the past and that we need a better welfare system. Whilst I wouldn't disagree that we need a better welfare system the real answer is to take the economy out of the hands of capitalists and put it into the hands of the people through economic democracy. That is the way to create job security. We can do that by 'occupying' our economy as I have suggested in this post. And for a start, we need a Green New Deal to create one million climate jobs, a national investment bank to fund co-operatives and we need to look at providing people with a basic income. 

If you get a Labour government in 2015 you will probably be sorely disappointed

Remember Neoliberal Labour? The bad old New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown? Well, if you are planning to vote Labour in 2015, and you are hoping for a Labour government, you are likely to be very disappointed, because Ed Milliband's  Labour is unlikely to reverse any of the Tory cuts, which is exactly what most Labour supporters want. Just imagine celebrating a Labour win and then having to face up to the reality that very little is going to change.

How do I know? I've been reading John Harris in the Guardian, and its clear that Harris has been talking to John Cruddas, the alleged lefty whose been leading Labour's policy review, and it makes pretty depressing reading. The upshot is that Labour appears to have accepted that the cuts can't be reversed and the priority is the eliminate the deficit;

"The essentials go something like this. Though there will be no reversal of existing cuts, in the context of George Osborne's howling failure that loud debate about whether to stick to his post-2015 spending plans is completely misplaced. But at the same time, if Labour is to win the next election, it will have to commit to a set of iron, independently enforced fiscal commitments, perhaps to be met over a 10-year cycle, focused not just on the elimination of the deficit, but the ratio of public debt to national income – many of the consequences of which, to quote one Labour insider, could be "brutal."

Ed Milliband: little hope for the future

The problem with this is that it is utter nonsense from beginning to end, and it shows that Labour have learnt nothing in the past three years. One is tempted to scream "Its the austerity stupid!", but even this is unlikely to penetrate the density of Labour's neoliberal skull. The reality is that it has never been easier or cheaper to borrow, never been easier to have our own national(ised) investment bank, and never been easier to invest in the jobs and houses that the UK so desperately needs. What we do not need is more of the same. Austerity must end.

I'll let you into a secret. Well its not really a secret but for all the attention it got in the 2010 election it might as well have been. The Green Party had an economic plan in its manifesto to halve the structural deficit in the lifetime of a parliament, and at the same time invest £44 billion in creating one million green jobs. And guess what? No austerity either. No cuts - just let me repeat that - no cuts, except in Trident and one or two other places where cuts were needed. No tuition fees either. Just think how strong our economy would be now if that had happened. But make no mistake, it can still happen, but only if people vote for real change. If they don't we will end up with more of the same, more misery and little hope for the future.

"Democracy itself is at stake"

A while ago I wrote a post about the UK's sham democracy. My argument was that our democratic system is there to make us believe we can change our society but that we are only actually allowed to tinker at the margins. What this means is that we may be able to change social policy - like gay marriage - but the fundamentals cannot be altered. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, our political parties, with the exception of the Green Party, are in thrall to a neoliberal consensus which revolves around austerity, deregulation, and privatisation and asset stripping of the public sector. Secondly, as a nation, we are locked into various international treaties including the WTO, and the Lisbon Treaty, which compel us to put commercial interests above our democratic sovereignty.

So I was interested to read an article by Ha-joon Chang in this weeks Guardian. Chang is always worth reading because he tells it how it really is. I have no idea what his politics are but, as far as I can see, he is a pragmatist who is interested in what makes economies work for people, and how that can be achieved. I recommend you read his post but Its worth quoting a key passage here:

"If even the IMF doesn't approve, why is the UK government persisting with a policy [austerity] that is clearly not working? Or, for that matter, why is the same policy pushed through across Europe? A certain dead economist would have said it is because the government is "in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor". Dead right [my italics].

Current policies in the UK and other European countries are really about making poor people pay for the mistakes of the rich. Millions of poor people have lost their jobs and the support they received through welfare, but how many of those top bankers who caused the crisis have suffered – except for a cancelled knighthood here and a partially returned pension pot there? If anyone has suffered in the financial industry, it is its poorer members – junior analysts who lost their jobs and tellers who are working longer hours for shrinking real wages."

Adam Smith: well aware that government acts in the interests of the ruling class

The quote about 'instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor' is from Adam Smith. Smith never was the patron saint (Chang's words) of economics that the 'free' market fundamentalists have made him out to be. And, as Chang says, it is a very telling quote, one that makes clear that our government was just as biased towards the interests of the 1% in Smith's time as it is now. As Chang also says "democracy itself is at stake" when it becomes just an instrument for maintaining to power of the few - the ruling class and corporations. We have to understand that this is how our democracy works if we want to change it, and we have to re-make it for us, the 99%, rather than for them, the 1%. If we don't do this we will continue to be used for the benefit of a tiny elite, a global ruling class, which sits above the sham democratic process and is immune to it.

Real change is possible if you vote for the Green Party, and now is the time to start

Would you like to see the return of British Rail and the end of rip-off rail fares? How about an end to tuition fees so that young people can go into higher education without massive debt? And what about a Citizen's Income, so that people can live in dignity if they are disabled or become unemployed, and a financial transaction tax and an end to tax dodging? How about investment in housing and a  Green New Deal to end the misery of poor housing, homelessness and unemployment?  These are all things that millions of people in the UK want, a real change to the endless austerity, economic stagnation and pandering to the rich and corporations which is the stock-in-trade of the Coalition government.

But to bring about these changes those people will have to vote for the Green Party locally, and in the European and general elections. Now is your chance to make a start down that road to positive change. Vote for the Green Party in the local elections on May 2nd! Watch our party political broadcast to find out more, and to help us build a better future visit - join.greenparty.org.uk

Thatcher is dead: now we must bury Thatcherism!

Where to start? One place could be the excellent article by Ken Livingstone in the Guardian today. Ken summarises the failures of Thatcherism very well, but there is much more that could be added to what is a very long list. I've chosen one telling quote which shows that Thatcherite policies, continued under the governments' of John Major and Tony Blair's New Labour, have lead directly to the crisis we are now in:

"Thatcher's destruction of industry, combined with financial deregulation and the "big bang", began the decline of saving and accumulation of private and public-sector debt that led directly to the banking crisis of 2008. The idea that bankers would rationally allocate resources for all our benefit was always a huge lie. Now the overwhelming majority are directly paying the price for this failed experiment through the bailout of bank shareholders."

I recommend you read Ken's piece and I would like to add a few things he clearly knows about but didn't have space for; the Thatcherite policy of council house sales depleted the stock of social housing and has played a considerable role both in the unsustainable house price boom and the housing crisis we now face; Thatcher trumpeted the 'virtues' of "the great car economy", running down public transport and leading to increased noise and air pollution, which we still haven't dealt with, and increased congestion; the privatisation of the utilities has lead to not only the ridiculous rip off prices we now pay for fuel, and increased fuel poverty, but the proceeds from the debacle are largely transferred abroad and lost to our economy; and during the period of the Thatcher and Major governments there was a chronic lack of investment in schools and hospitals, classroom roofs leaked and hospital patients were left in corridors on trolleys.

Margaret Thatcher: a legacy of social, environmental and economic failure

The reality is that only a small minority really benefited from the Thatcher 'economic miracle', and in the process the revenue from North Sea oil was squandered on tax cuts and paying for unemployment. For the majority of people the 'economic miracle' was built on a house price bubble, and the accumulation of debt. It was a castle built on sand.  Nor was the reality of the 1970s nearly as bad as been claimed by the propagandists of the right. Sure there was industrial strife and rampant inflation but who caused the inflation? - not the workers that's for sure. The horrors of the  three day week? - that was down to Ted Heath's Tory Government. If we continue with Thatcherism, and for this read neoliberalism, inequality will increase, our economy will continue to stagnate, and we will fail to deal with the issues of climate change and build a green economy. We need a real alternative, an economy for all our people, such as the one I have suggested in this post, and we need it very soon.

Peter Oborne lives in Tory la la land

Once, I respected Peter Oborne. I probably shouldn't admit that but its true. I have to confess further that I even bought and read, from cover to cover, one of his books - The Triumph of the Political Class - and I thought it was pretty good. But now I have to draw a line. I thought Oborne was one of those rarities - a decent Tory with a fairly open mind. Having read his article in the Telegraph today I now admit I was mistaken because he is just as bad as all the others.

The cause of Peter Oborne's problems are the same as any other British conservative - he doesn't live in the real world but in an imaginary world of Tory good and evil (the right love good and evil, and they like things to be black and white). The Tory fantasy goes something like this; everyone should know their place just like they used to; workers should work and not trouble their betters (employers) with strike action; Britain should still be great on the world stage; cricket should be played on village greens; gays should remain where they belong in the closet; there are lots of really good chaps in the City (!). I could go on and on but I'm sure you get my drift. This is the comfort blanket of Tory la la land where the market is our friend - because, of course, it works for us, and our families and friends. Tough shit if it doesn't work for the rest.

How do I know this? Becuase Oborne thinks that Cameron is a great leader on the verge of great achievements, and he says so in his article. He must be one of only about twenty people in the UK who thinks this but lets examine why he is wrong. He says;

"......I will demonstrate that, though not without serious faults, Mr Cameron is leading a Government with a reasonable claim to be one of the great reforming administrations."

Firstly, he makes the error that all conservatives make; he misunderstands the meaning of the word reform, which means to change things for the better. But nothing that this government has done has made anything better. In fact things have become demonstrably worse. For example, the key claim of this government was to reduce the deficit and make our economy better. in three years it has done neither. Now lets look at his specific claims for Cameron, noting that his key partner in crime Clegg gets no recognition at all.

Oborne claims the scrapping of the FSA is a great achievement. Really? I was never a fan of the FSA but there have been no serious reforms of financial capitalism made by this government and some economists have predicted that there may well soon be another debt bubble. He also claims the health service reforms are great. Many would be disagree with him on this but the best anyone can possibly say is its far too early to tell. Then, of course, he praises 'Wackford' Grove's education reforms which are designed to return our education system to the delights of the Dickensian rote learning of the 19th century. Naturally he also praises the Tory poverty creation project of cuts in benefits. But where Oborne reveals his truly disgusting Tory nature is his contempt for the disabled when he states that the Disability Living Allowance is "a charter for deceit and recipe for state-sponsored idleness". So there we have it.

When I read his article I noticed there were 400 or so comments. I read the first 20 or so and predictably, they were filled with the usual right wing bile and rantings about UKIP and immigrants. But one caught my eye, and strangely enough it had the most 'recommends' of any that I looked at. It said:

"On the verge of something great? I thought we were heading back to the Victorian Age but with more taxation."

Indeed we are if Cameron and Oborne have anything to do with it, but a correction is needed; more taxation for the 99% and less for the rich.

Welfare? That is only for corporations and the rich

Welcome to the new welfare state - Coalition government style. Despite the fact that we are supposed to be struggling with a massive structural deficit and our economy is stagnant, the Chancellor, George Osborne, found plenty to give away in last weeks budget in terms of  welfare - for the 1%. We certainly ain't in it all together but what we do know is that this is a government which punishes the needy and rewards those who have much, much more than they need. 

From 1st April we will see yet more cuts in welfare, the punitive bedroom tax,  and further massive cuts in public services. Add to that an ongoing clamp down on public sector pay which is reducing the standard of living of hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom are low paid. In contrast the richest in the UK will receive a massive tax cut and corporations will see further cuts in corporation tax. George Osborne is also doing his best to create another house price boom by allowing for £130 billion to back house buyers, a move which can only make it more difficult for people who want to buy houses.

As I've posted before the government's austerity cuts programme has nothing to do with reducing the deficit and everything to do with the demolition of the welfare state and privatisation of public services. The truth is that the main recipients of welfare in the UK are the 1%, the corporations and the rich. Whilst the 99% see their living standards cut further in order to pay for a crisis caused by neoliberal capitalism, corporations like Starbuck's benefit from not paying taxes and tax dodgers avoid £120 billion in tax. It may be hard for some people to accept but we are all under attack - from our own government. There is only one option - organise and fight back to protect our living standards. Groups like UK Uncut have lead the way but there is much more work to be done. Its time to get involved. Come and help us defend our communities!

Stop this war on the poor - fight back against the bedroom tax!

Yesterday thousands of people in a hundred UK towns and cities came together to protest against the bedroom tax. This pernicious piece of Coalition legislation will cause harm to the 660,000 poor, unemployed and disabled people who will be affected when it is introduced on April 1st. Families who have a 'spare' bedroom will be expected to move into accommodation with less bedrooms or face a financial penalty. There are a series of draconian rules which mean the children will be expected to share a room rather than having separate bedrooms. This is a quote from the National Housing Federation website:

"The size criteria in the social rented sector will restrict housing benefit to allow for one bedroom for each person or couple living as part of the household, with the following exceptions:

• Children under 16 of same gender expected to share
• Children under 10 expected to share regardless of gender
• Disabled tenant or partner who needs non resident overnight carer will be allowed an extra bedroom,

 "The cut will be a fixed percentage of the Housing Benefit eligible rent. The Government has said that this will be set at 14% for one extra bedroom and 25% for two or more extra bedrooms."

The Green Party believes we should tackle bankers bonuses and tax dodgers rather than attacking the poor and disabled

The government claims this will save £500 million pounds in housing benefit but this is nonsense. If people do move and downsize they are likely to have to move to the more expensive private rented sector thus increasing the amount of housing benefit they claim. That is assuming they can find suitable accommodation in their local area, and many cannot. The reality is that many of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the UK will take a further financial hit at a time when millionaires are getting a tax cut courtesy of George Osborne. 

Bedroom tax demo at the Cross in Chester

That sums up the Coalition government; benefit cuts for the poor and tax cuts for the rich. There will be many more protests about the bedroom tax, I hope you will get involved and join the fightback against this rotten government.

Why we must all bow down to "The Market"

Sometime ago I posted on here about the people of the remote Lambayeque Valley in Peru who were threatened by a series of environmental crises, and who sacrificed some of their number and destroyed pyramids they had built to appease the gods in an attempt to save themselves. You see, they believed that the gods were angry and must be appeased if they were to be saved from catastrophe. Needless to say they were wrong and after lasting for 450 years their civilisation was destroyed.

I was reminded of this when I watched Question Time last week. In fact I am reminded of it almost every time I open a newspaper or switch on a radio or television these days. On Question Time the redoubtable Melanie Phillips was one of the pundits telling anyone who could be bothered to listen that there was only one answer to the economic crisis we are in - we must appease "The Market". Like so many others she believes that "The Market" can only be appeased by a few selected actions, the favourite of which appears to be "tax cuts". Cut taxes and all will be well. The crisis will come to an end. There are of course other things which appease "The Market"; they include "privatisation", "flexibility of labour" and another important cut known as "cutting red tape". In fact there are lots of cuts which appease the market. Cutting benefits and cutting public expenditure also keep "The Market" happy.

Of course there is never any acknowledgement by supporters of "The Market" that the great economic crisis we are in might have been caused by "The Market", or even that it is in fact just the latest and greatest in a series of crises caused by "The Market", because "The Market" can never be blamed for anything. We can though, blame everything else, the government, trade unions, public sector, regulators, benefit scroungers, or even the weather. If anything goes wrong the inevitable answer that we get is that we need more of "The Market", not less. Because "The Market" is there to be admired and worshipped by the devout. Its not difficult to imagine Melanie as a Lambayeque priestess administering cuts to the unfortunate sacrificial victims on a Peruvian pyramid. But have no doubt; faith in "The Market" is just that; faith. Its not economics or policy or even ideology, it is a belief system as strong and irrational as the beliefs of the high priests of the Lambayeque Valley. On the day that a new Pope was elected let us not forget that the believers in the true faith are people who believe in "The Market".

Antibiotics - another failure of "The Market"

At the moment, millions of people are being sacrificed on the altar of austerity because that is what "The Market" wants. Not only that but the planet and the people that depend upon it are in danger of being destroyed like the Lambayeque people to suit the needs of "The Market". Yesterday we heard of another failure of "The Market". We are facing a crisis in healthcare due to a lack of effective new antibiotics. This is because "The Market" deems it is not profitable to produce them so they aren't going to be made. Could this be the same "Market" which is feeding antibiotics to farmed animals to make them fatter, rendering the antibiotics we need less effective in the process? Or is it the same "Market" that can't provide us with houses to live in, or vaguely ethical financial services or fairly priced utilities, or was responsible for BSE, or can't provide two billion people with an income of more than $2 a day? The list goes on and on, and so does the madness of  "The Market" and its disciples. But let's make no mistake, if we don't end the tyranny of this mad belief system the fate that befell the people of Lambayeque awaits all of us too.

There is a real alternative plan for the economy and RBS

Today I came across two news items which struck me as absurd. In the first David Cameron was making a speech in which he defended the government's economic 'policy of deficit reduction', which is better known as austerity. In his speech he came out with all the usual stuff, including the fact that reducing government spending was the only way to cut the deficit, and that there was no alternative. But clearly he is wrong. As others, including even Vince Cable have stated, there are very real alternatives. In a shrinking or stagnant economy its more difficult to reduce a deficit, and that, after three years of austerity is where we are now. 

The problem in our economy is lack of demand caused by high levels of unemployment, and falling living standards for the 99%. In those conditions people can't afford to buy, and tax revenues fall, especially when commodity prices are rising. If governments increase spending on much needed infrastructure projects such as social housing that stimulus creates jobs, raises tax revenues and revives the economy. You don't have to be a Keynesian to subscribe to this view. The key point though, is that it has never been cheaper to borrow money, so this is the time for governments to spend. Furthermore, there is really no need for our government to borrow, it can create money through quantitative easing (QE). The Bank of England (BoE) has created £375 billion of dosh through QE without any beneficial outcome because it has been wasted on buying bonds. In effect all this has done is benefit the very banks which caused the crisis in the first place by increasing their profits! What we really need is green QE, which means spending money created by the BoE on building environmentally friendly homes, investing in renewables and creating a million green jobs. This will revive our economy, help end the misery of unemployment, create the renewable energy we so desperately need, and move us towards  a green economy for the future.

The second bit of news was as priceless as Cameron's failed analysis of the 'need' for austerity; Mervyn King who is still governor of the BoE today put forward a cunning plan to sell off the infamous Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). This consisted of splitting RBS into a 'good bank', with all the profitable bits, and a 'bad bank' containing loads of nasty debt. There is a huge problem with this plan because the private sector gets the good bits and we, i.e. muggins the taxpayer, gets to pick up the bill for all the nasty stuff, which we will no doubt be paying off for the next generation or so. But there is a much better plan. Split RBS and give the 'good' parts to the taxpayer to create a green national investment bank, and give the 'bad' bits back to the people who created the problem in the first place -  the bankers and their shareholders.

These two news items speak volumes about the people who run our country. They live in the past. They have no idea of what is good for the UK and the people who live here. They serve the interests of a narrow and privileged elite. These are the real benefit scroungers - to use their own terminology. They leach off the state to the tune of £billions whilst seeking to deny the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our country the tiny amounts of money needed to keep them going. They also haven't a clue about the restructuring our economy needs to undergo if we are going to create a green economy to deal with climate change. We deserve much better than his, and the only way to achieve real change is to campaign, agitate, and ultimately vote for a positive alternative. That alternative is the Green Party. Join us and help make that change happen. There is no time to lose.

Are there Green red lines? - You bet, its time to fight the bedroom tax!

Since the general election in 2010 the Coalition government has been waging class war against the people of the UK. In his 'emergency' budget in 2010 Chancellor George Osborne inflicted £81 billion of austerity cuts on the poorest and most vulnerable people in our country, including the low paid, the unemployed and disabled people. Women have been disproportionately hit by these cuts and 700,000 public sector workers have lost or will lose their jobs as a result. And all this after those very people helped to bail out the banks and financial capitalism with their hard earned taxes.

We are told that the purpose of the austerity cuts is to 'reduce the deficit' and save the economy. But that is a lie, and austerity hasn't reduced the deficit. The real aim of austerity is to use the economic crisis to destroy the welfare state, and privatize the NHS and public services for the benefit of capitalists and their corporations. Austerity is working, and working very well for the richest, who are gaining wealth whilst living standards for the rest of us have fallen. Austerity is class war. Those who have read the book 'The Shock Doctrine', by Naomi Klein, will know that, in times of crisis, capitalists and their tame politicians use the crisis to roll back the social and economic gains made by the 99% by imposing 'free' market 'policies' such as welfare cuts, privatisation and deregulation.

In the UK, the Coalition government has tried to deflect blame for the cuts by making councils impose them at a local level. Councils have already had to impose cuts but we are now at a stage where some of the most savage cuts in benefits are being introduced, including changes to council tax and the so-called 'bedroom tax', affecting the disabled, unemployed and low paid. I have always opposed all of the government's austerity cuts but now, as more and more people are becoming aware of the brutal nature of the cuts, we have reached a stage where it is possible to launch a real fightback and make the 'bedroom tax' into this government's poll tax. 

As far as the Green Party is concerned we have opposed the cuts from day one, and we showed in our 2010 manifesto how the crisis could be resolved without privatization or cutting public services. Our Green council in Brighton and Hove has worked hard to do its best for the local people in very difficult circumstances and has been supported by the Party. The question is - are there any red lines for our councillors? When do we reach a point where we can no longer impose austerity cuts on the poorest? The answer to that has to be now, with the advent of the 'bedroom tax' in a months time.

We need to resist the bedroom tax with all the peaceful democratic means at our disposal. We need to learn from the successes of UKUncut, by using protest action and direct action, including supporting victims of these benefit changes whom councils try to evict. We also need to look at all the measures that councils can use to mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax, including the re-classification of rooms in social housing. Its heartening to see that a recent meeting of B&H Green Party passed a motion on the bedroom tax, supported by our MP Caroline Lucas, which stated:

"The Green Party of Brighton and Hove therefore resolves to:

   1. Publicly condemn the 'Bedroom Tax' as an ideologically-driven attack
   on the least well-off in our society.
   2. Request that the Convenor of the Green Group makes a clear public
   statement that no household will be evicted from a Brighton and Hove   City Council owned home as a result of rent arrears accrued solely as a result of this cut to Housing Benefit
   3. Request that the Chair of the council's Housing Committee instructs
   officers accordingly.
   4. Publicise this position, externally and in our own publications and
   websites."

Its time for our councillors to grasp the nettle and lead the fight against this pernicious bedroom tax. If they fail to do so we will lose credibility as a Party nationally. Parties which support austerity get rightly punished by the electorate as recent elections in Europe have shown. As a Party, we have to make a breakthrough to make a real difference in UK politics. We can only do this by leading the resistance to further cuts and providing people in England and Wales with hope for the future with our positive alternatives to austerity.

The good news is that the Tories are making themselves unelectable

Have you been following the Eastleigh byelection? No, neither have I. Its hard to get exited about a straight fight between the Tories and their Coalition partners, the Lib Dems, even though it could have implications for the future of the current government. What eventually brought the contest to my attention was the antics of the Tory candidate Maria Hutchings. I live in the North of England but you can hear her knuckles scraping from up here.

Hutchings is a typical Tory candidate, someone who sounds and looks like she was buried in the 1950's and has just been dug up for the occasion. Like most Tories, fifty years and more of social progress has passed her by. She's anti-abortion, doesn't like gay marriage and thinks her son is too intelligent to go to a mere state school. She says that her son wants to be a surgeon, and if he succeeds, after the high-powered private education she has planned for him, he would be well advised to operate on his mother and remove the small particle of brain lodged in her skull.

I'm not a psephologist, and I don't look at opinion polls, but what I do know is that the Tories last won a general election in 1992. Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010, much to the ire of his backbenchers, but Cameron himself is far more popular than the Tory Party. Cameron didn't fail. What he did do was to give the Tories a chance of power by de-toxifying the brand of the nasty party sufficiently to enable them to win more seats than any other party. As I've said before, Cameron is a complete charlatan, a deeply reactionary Thatcherite toff, who manages somehow to con people that he is the bloke next door, rather than a fully paid-up member of the ruling class. 

But every cloud has a silver lining, and despite the fact that Cameron,  Osborne and co. are screwing our economy and waging class war against all but their own kind, what they are doing in the process is making the Tories even more unelectable than they were in 2010. They are in a very similar predicament to the Republicans in the USA. Making predictions in politics is a dangerous game but here we go; I predict that the Tories already have no chance of winning outright in 2015, and will not be the largest party; furthermore, they will never win another election in their own right unless they stop serving their own narrow class interests and wise-up to that fact that they are completely out of touch with the majority of the British people. The former being impossible of course. Nothing could be better for Britain than the demise of the Tory Party, a Party which has caused immense damage to this island and its people.