27th August 2015

It was Margaret Thatcher who thought that her greatest legacy was New Labour.

If this is true, and it certainly sounds as though it could be, then it is a sad reflection on what happened during the three terms that Blair won for Labour.

New Labour was never a Tory Administration, not even as some would now say, Tory Lite.

But in its determination to hold the centre ground, despite some progressive policies, it allowed the centre ground to shift to the right politically and economically.

Relaxed about the super rich, happy to allow the wealthy to buy their way into Education Provision or Health Provision, happy to allow public services to be privatised.

In the end, when the banks failed and the wealthy fled taking their money with them, their debt was socialised and now increasingly we are seeing welfare privatised.

And now the Labour Party is riven by ideological divisions with Charles Clarke referring to Jeremy Corbyn as a 'continuity Benn/nutter' candidate.

Well, how true is this?

Continuity Benn?

Benn saw clearly how the Civil Service can frustrate policies and decisions of popularly elected governments.

He identified the centralised nature of the Labour Party which resulted in it becoming the personal fiefdom of its leader.

He drew attention to the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by the use of crude economic pressure on Government.

And warned against a media which was always on the side of those who enjoy economic privilege.

Well it seems to me that if this is an accurate reflection of Benn's political views and it was, he reflected, these four points that made him move to the left of politics, then there is little here with which anyone can disagree.

These four principles are pretty key to understanding British political life, the Civil Service continues to exercise disproportionate influence, with the Treasury standing as the key arbiter of what can and cannot be 'afforded'.

The Labour Party has introduced one member one vote leading to an almighty row, a witch hunt, claims of hard left Trotsky style infiltration resulting in what? Corbyn 'the nutter'?

Economic Pressure? What happened during the Scottish Devolution Campaign? Banks and Businesses threatening to leave, which was 'crude economic pressure' if there ever was.

And, from Blair as Godfather to Murdoch's young daughter to the friendships between David Cameron and Rebecca Brooks and the famous 'fast, unpredictable ride' texts, who can deny the role of the press in raising up and bringing down individuals who can be famous one moment and infamous the next.

If Corbyn is elected, and if there is no coup and if he is able to form an opposition, then Trident, PFI and Women only Railway Carriages will be the least of his problems.

He will face a Civil Service committed to maintaining the Status as close to the Quo as possible.

He will face a Parliamentary Labour Party itching to take control back from the Trotskyites, which is it seems most of those who have voted Corbyn.

The more clearly it becomes, with China facing its economic meltdown, that capitalism is transforming itself into post capitalism, the economic pressure to stay with austerity until wages in the third world rise to meet wages in the west as they fall, as non-workers i.e. those who used to work in Blue Collar jobs, most of which have fallen out of the economy to be replaced with fewer high tech jobs and an increase in low paid service jobs, are blamed for claiming welfare the economic pressure to keep the billionaires in luxury so that they can continue to afford to buy the goods advertised in the FT's How To Spend It Magazine will continue and any attempt to resist will hailed as Class War.

And the Media will continue to exercise an influence.

I did on one occasion have supper at a table in Somerset House, our host on that occasion was Charles Clarke, he seemed to me to be a gracious host and committed to ensuring that the Government of which he was a part supported the working people who had elected it.

So his comments seemed a little to quote the title of his recent lectures 'The too difficult Box'

Clarke is of the view that politicians fail if they can't identify the problem, the solution, identify the implementation strategy needed, where the vested interests are, what the legal constraints are, how to bring in legislation and if they lack political energy.

So continuity Benn/Nutter? Not a good call!

I think Corbyn is strong on both analysis and prescription and is channelling the zeitgeist of those who have had enough of blaming the poor, austerity and socialising the indebtedness of failed banks.

11th August 2015

Last week I was invited to a meeting by Tom Watson.

The meeting, in Carlisle, was in the Ballroom of a City Centre Hotel.

The meeting was poorly attended. Most seats were empty and those attending appeared to be members of the Carlisle CLP.

The meeting was Chaired by the Candidate for Carlisle who was defeated in the last election by the sitting Conservative Candidate John Stevenson, during the meeting the person next to me played patience on their iPhone.

I live in Penrith and the Borders Constituency and there was no-one I recognised amongst those attending.

Tom's pitch was based around three topics:

Why did we lose the last election?

What are the issues of current concern?

What is the job description for a Deputy Leader?

During his opening presentation Tom Watson rehearsed much that was familiar to those who monitor the election, post-election and party political coverage in The Guardian.

Labour lost because it did badly in Scotland, because it lost the centre ground, because many traditional Labour voters voted for Ukip, and because it failed to answer the question about the deficit.

All of which is true, but is it the whole story?

I suspect that it lost the election long before May and it lost it because the public believed the Cameron/Osborne narrative rather than the Miliband/Balls narrative.

Certainly the discussion in the room reflected a general consensus around welfare cuts, immigration and the NHS.

One comment, that siding with the Tories over Scottish independence was a mistake and that in the debate about Europe it is crucial that Labour has a clear and distinctive story of its own to tell seemed to me to reflect much  more accurately the problem that Miliband had and that three of the current candidates for the leadership also reflect.

It is also clear that the centre ground has shifted to the right, so that rehearsing traditional Labour views about welfare, nationalisation and health sound dangerously left wing.

Which is of course why Jeremy Corbyn's success has engendered such panic amongst the former big beasts of the Labour Party.

Watson would not be drawn on who he supported for the leadership but he offered a 'job description' for the job of Deputy Leader that was essentially creating a bridge between strategy and delivery that ensured that the leadership could and would hear the concerns of party members and members would be in the loop as strategy was developed.

He made it clear that he could work with whoever was elected.

So what next?

Well the membership of the Labour Party has increased and it looks increasingly likely that Jeremy Corbyn could win in the first round.

Will this be the disaster that many predict?

My heart, and increasingly my head, tells me that this won't be the case.

As Yvette Cooper has said: 'the Tories lied to the electorate' and it is this fundamental dishonesty that places politics and election victories before policies that mean real and significant improvements in peoples lives, which needs challenging by the next leader of the Labour Party.

What is necessary, it seems to me, is for a programme to be developed that promotes a genuine living wage, rather than a renamed minimum wage, which will mean for businesses, customers who have more to spend and for the economy increased income tax revenue flowing into the Treasury.

Alongside this a home building programme that obviates the need for selling off social housing, that creates jobs and doesn't just mean huge bonuses for the bosses of building companies.

Again, the shift to a reliance on financial services which began under Thatcher needs to be re-balanced back towards manufacturing with emerging businesses supported by a public investment bank.

Add an investment in the public ownership of the railways and the country and the economy begins to appear balanced in favour of both poor and middle income families.

This it seems to me from the recent email I received from the Corbyn team is what we might expect if Corbyn wins.

His leadership of the Labour Party, anti austerity, anti Trident pro public ownership, pro higher education that doesn't result in graduating with debts of £50,000, seems to me to be offering more to the electorate than they have currently or are likely to get from the other candidates.

We will know in September and then the real debate will begin ...... imagine a new social movement transforming politics in Britain and resonating with similar anti austerity movements across Europe.

30th July 2015

One thing became clear when the financial crisis hit.

And that was exactly who got the pies!

Under Gordon Brown's premiership the losses incurred by the banks during the financial crisis were socialised whilst the bank's profits were privatised thereby allowing bonuses to continue to be paid whilst the necessary borrowing failed to happen.

So the bankers got the pies and businesses, who needed investment, were left with the crusts.

And still no-one has gone to jail, they just passed go and pocketed the money.

I find it amazing that during the life of the last parliament the Tory narrative continued to tell the same story, that Labour overspent, this narrative was so compelling that it featured dramatically in the Question Time debate where it was coupled with another false narrative that a national budget parallels a domestic budget, a false narrative that began with Margaret Thatcher and which continues to this day.

It is as though Keynes never lived.

In 1945 in the face of a financial crisis caused by the war effort, Keynes ensured that Government money was invested in rebuilding the necessary social and commercial infrastructures, from health, to  housing, to education to welfare, to investment in business.

Ensuring thereby that employment was created and that wealth was shared equitably.

The second great legacy of the war effort was that the war was won through the means of a planned effort and this led, through Harold Wilson in The Board of Trade that the peace was too important to be left to capitalism alone but that a planned economy would result in equity and justice.

It is seventy years ago since the Kings Speech introduced the first Labour Programme for Government.

It made news then and it is still pertinent seventy years later.

'My Government will take up with energy the tasks of reconverting industry from the purposes of war to those of peace'.

'... by the extension of of public ownership our industries and services shall make their maximum contribution to the national well-being'.

'... effective planning of investment ... (bringing) the bank of England into public ownership'.

' a bill will be brought before you to nationalise the coal-mining industry as part of a concerted plan for the co-ordination of the fuel and power industries'.

' ... the distribution at fair prices of essential supplies and services'.

'... organise the resources of the building and manufacturing industries ..... to meet the housing requirements .... of the nation'.

'... promote the best use of land in the national interest'.

'... a comprehensive scheme of insurance against industrial injuries, extend the existing scheme of social insurance and establish a national health service'.


This Kings Speech was given on August 15th 1945.

Its impact was to transform and improve the lives of working people, I was three months old at  the time and took a further three years of debate, argument, resistance from GP's and Tory MP's before the National Health Service was introduced.

As the long slow ebbing of the tide continues so the public good is eroded, great inequality is experienced, capital continues to demonstrate that the pursuit of private profit is incompatible with the national interest, nevertheless the present Government remains committed to the power of the market, whether in financial services, manufacturing or healthcare and the effects of privatisation can be seen in the growth of food banks, the dismantling of the welfare state and increases in both child and elder poverty.

This bias towards the privatisation of profit and socialisation of  losses beginning with the Thatcher government and continuing through the new labour years has seen 'an increase in the economic, financial, political power of the financial sector which have created enormous distortions, and that the financial sector has come to control and influence the political decisions in a manner that is alarming'.  

Paulo Nogueira Batista, Executive Director of the IMF for Brazil.

Which leaves us with the answer to the question about who got the pies!

23rd July 2015

So Blair has returned to UK politics.

If your heart tells you to vote left, get a heart transplant. Thanks Tony!

When he invited me to join him for breakfast at No 10 he failed to appear and sent a video instead.

A Hologram of his Right Horrible Cheesiness greeted us as we entered the breakfast room to feast on fruit kebabs.

The first thing I did after the police escorted me from the premises was to stop and buy a bacon sandwich, which I ate more decorously than Red Ed I might say and without getting brown sauce on my tie.

Tie? You ask, who wears a tie nowadays?

Blair didn't wear one on TV last night and neither does JC, well all I can say is we did in those days.

So talking of JC (Jeremy Corbyn) the politician not the prophet, Mr Blair wants us not to vote for Jeremy.

The existential question facing Labour is does it want power or does it want principles.

It held power for thirteen years but the price of power was the loss of principle, tough on the causes of crime? Yes! ending Child Poverty? Yes! introducing Tax Credits? Yes!

But at ease with the filthy rich? Yes!  introducing PFI? Yes! extending the reach of external consultants, Serco, G4S? Yes! joining forces with Bush to wage war on Iraq? Oh Yes! Yes!

Now we are offered the choice to vote for principles over power.

I have never been very clubbable.

I was briefly in the Scouts, I audited the local youth club.

But I have never really been a joiner of clubs, groups, meetings, or political parties.

I am a member of the Co-op Party but I haven't attended many meetings and even though the indoor critic is member of the MS Society we don't attend local meetings.

But last week I joined the Labour Party, and it didn't even cost me £3 because I took advantage of the pensioners special deal.

Why did I join? Obviously in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn!

So if I vote with my existing heart and don't follow TB's advice and swap it for a heart of stone does it mean that I will have played my part in ensuring that the Labour Party spends long years in the wilderness?

Honestly I don't believe that will be the inevitable consequence of electing a leader from the left of the Party.

I watched the politics show on TV, admittedly with one eye closed because I have a detached retina, but it seemed to me that the only candidate who came across as possessing gravitas, who debated with courtesy, whose contributions were principled was Jeremy Corbyn.

My mind ran forward to the image of his appearing on PM's Question Time debating with David Cameron and I had the sense that Jeremy Corbyn, in that context, would have the effect of  Barium Meal in the body politic exposing the Tories sense of entitlement as falsely based.

Sadly the outcome of the last election was not the fiasco of Ed eating a bacon sandwich or the politics of envy or indeed the Ed Stone.

It was I believe a lack of gravitas, a failure to debate principles and some sense that the electorate believed Cameron and Osborne rather than Milliband and Balls.

The four candidates for the Labour leadership are all good people, I have no doubt about that, but in politics simply winning is not enough it is essential that the principles of the Labour Movement are seen to differentiate it from the Tories, otherwise the electorate will inevitably choose the devil they know.

The political programme for the next five years will constantly seek to expose the Labour Party and its response must be to challenge again and again the transparently threadbare rhetoric employed by Osborne and Cameron.

If the country wants to see a genuine Living Wage rather than a falsely described minimum wage it will not get it from Osborne, if the country wants a low tax economy then it will not get it from a policy of raising tax thresholds which always benefit higher tax payers rather than those who are not paying tax now, and if the country wants a low welfare economy then it will ultimately only come at the cost of education, health and support in old age, which are the essential pillars of the welfare economy as part of the post war settlement under the 1945 Labour Government.

So yes, I will vote for Jeremy Corbyn and will defer the heart transplant for another day!

8th July 2015

Some things never change.

I'm almost glad about that.

Over the years I have been told that when I grew older I would become more conservative, more right wing, that I might even vote Tory.

Well I'm pleased to report that hasn't happened.

And today as we prepare ourselves for a Tory budget I found myself dreaming of what might have been .....

What might have been if the two Ed's were about to announce the first Labour budget in five years.

What might be, if five years from now, Jeremy Corbyn is introducing the first Labour budget in Ten years.

The  broad theme of the Chancellor's budget speech will, I am sure, reinforce the privatisation of public goods to ensure that money continues to run uphill into the pockets of the already wealthy.

Two 'public goods' that are in the firing line in today's budget are the BBC and social housing.

Compare the broadcasters, Sky TV costs around £60 a month, £720 a year, ITV is funded via advertising revenue so it is free to air if not actually free the BBC costs £145 a year, £12 a month and is committed to ensuring that what it broadcasts is independent, fair and entertaining.

It is a 'public good' in the best sense of the concept and it is under threat from both its competitors who complain that the playing field is not even and from the Government which argues that its news coverage is biased.

So it will be trimmed, the licence fee reviewed and for now well if granny wants free telly then the telly can pay for it because treasury won't.

I have been involved in Social Housing since the early seventies. I ran a hostel for young homeless people in Bolton from 1972 to 1974, I was invited to become a staff Member of Salford Family Housing, I joined the Board of Church Army Housing in the early 1980's as it changed its name to English Churches, I was also a regional and national board member of Hanover Housing.

Housing Associations took much of the strain of social housing provision as Local Authority housing was sold under right to buy legislation and not replaced.

Now the Government intends to extend right to buy to housing association tenants even though the ownership of the housing stock resides with the associations and houses sold will be replaced by Local Authorities selling their residual stock so for every house sold two houses will be lost.

The attack on welfare has already been well trailed, a two tier benefit cap, further reductions in housing benefit, the introduction of universal credit, a reduction in Tax Credits and as yet unspecified changes to support for the disabled. The aim is to reduce the welfare bill by £12 Billion by the end of this parliament.

It may be that Tax Credits have become over complex and it may appear that welfare support is simply recycled as people pay tax on low incomes and then have the money repaid as a benefit. So the Tory line is why not just take the low paid out of tax? Which is fine in principle but not fine if you are earning so little as to not pay tax at all in which case raising the tax threshold is of no benefit at all.

Two former advisers to the Prime Minister are arguing publicly for the living wage to become the norm and that employers should be required to pay the higher wage because it is a conservative principle first articulated by that great Conservative Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Mmm ...

An independent broadcaster is an essential asset to ensure that the public conversation is well informed and unbiased otherwise the left/right confrontation will simply continue to drown out the voice of reason.

Building new homes is a more efficient and effective way of encouraging home ownership, whilst creating skilled jobs and reducing waiting lists, than simply selling off social housing in a mis-conceived rummage sale.

The living wage simply makes sense because it effectively enriches the whole of society, businesses benefit because their customers can afford their goods and the treasury benefits as more people become tax payers.

Sadly some things never change and I am sure that on the news tonight and on Question Time tomorrow we will hear that the long term economic plan is the same tired old rehearsal of the need for continued austerity.

18th June 2015

I became a student at Salisbury Theological College in 1966.

On one occasion I remember Canon Paul Oestreicher being invited to address the students and as part of his talk he mentioned the importance of reading newspapers, both as an aid to prayer but also to preaching and my memory of that occasion is that we were encouraged to read one of the broadsheets, possibly The Times and The Daily Mirror.

It was important we were told to have a sense of not only what was happening in the world but how that news was being reported.

'I read the news today, Oh Boy
40, 000 hole in Blackburn Lancashire'

By the time that I arrived at Salisbury aged twenty two, I had been working for five years and had spent time in Durham at The Bernard Gilpin Society undertaking what today would be described as an access course.

I left school at he invitation of the Headmaster of my secondary school earlier than planned clutching my one certificate for an 'O' Level in Woodwork.

School ended on Friday and on the way home I saw an advert in the window of the Normeir Tyre Company I called in and applied, interviewed and started my first job working as a tyre fitter/trainee salesman on the Monday following.

It has become clear to me that, whilst I didn't realise it at the time, this was possibly the most responsible job I would have. 

Fitting tyres safely is crucially important and I always tried to make sure that if the were accidents that it was not due to the tyres that I had fitted.

But whilst the job had its rewards I decided to move on after a year and apply for the open competition for entry into the Civil Service as a Clerical Assistant.

It was at this point that I was advised that if I wished to succeed in the examination that I should read The Times Newspaper, especially the editorials, and seek to replicate the style of the leader writers in my answers to the questions posed in the examination.

So I started to read The Times aged 16 or so and have continued to read it for the past 54 years until the recent election.

I had always thought of The Times as a balanced newspaper but I became so appalled by the views expressed in the leaders and indeed in certain of the opinion pieces that I stopped reading the paper altogether and turned instead to The Guardian.

However I soon realised that having your prejudices reinforced by a left leaning newspaper whilst somewhat less stressful than raging at the prejudices presented as news, opinion or editorial comment in The Times was not entirely helpful in making an informed and considered response to the events that were unfolding not only nationally but internationally.

I needed another view point.

As a curate in Hatfield, South Yorkshire in the late sixties I used to call on an elderly, retired miner I rather think that we enjoyed each others company, I certainly enjoyed his, he was a socialist, he had been a deputy at the Hatfield Main Colliery and had some interesting and robust views on Church, Politics and the industry from which he had retired.

I happened to call on him one morning only to find him, with his morning coffee on the side table, reading The Telegraph.

I was astonished and challenged him, why read the 'torygraph'?' I asked.

Well, he calmly answered, if you want to know what they are thinking, how they are planning to undermine everything that we have fought for, worked towards and value, then it helps to know their thinking and analyse their prejudices.

I found myself thinking about Mr Lawrence recently as I pondered what my Newspaper choice to partner The Guardian, should be.

In Hatfield I used to take The Times and The Morning Star to achieve the kind of considered balance I felt I needed, as Paul Oestreicher had encouraged us, to inform both my prayers and my preaching.

Today, there is less preaching but nevertheless I felt that I should be reading another newspaper alongside The Guardian so I took out a free subscription to The Telegraph.

Fifty years of prejudice are now being challenged by a series of forthright articles most of which, as is only to be expected, applaud the dubious policies being promoted by the current minority conservative government.

But there are other article and features which are challenging the thinking that is being articulated, The Telegraph, I discovered to my amazement, is not a simple, biased, cheerleader for the Tory Party.

In some ways I now realise that is only to  be expected.

If you are in the political mix with a Government chasing austerity and shifting wealth to the wealthiest and debt to the poorest, then because you occupy the same political space as The Telegraph does, then you can engage in the kind of warm. generous disagreements that can happen in families and serve to make them stronger.

So I have overturned some 50 years of prejudice, and whilst The Telegraph challenges my prejudices and The Guardian reinforces them, I find that my daily diet of news is both balanced and enriched by the opinions I read, whether agreeing or disagreeing, I am challenged to think more logically using both my heart and my head.

And, as a bonus, I now have two crosswords to complete rather than six (or more) impossible things to believe, before breakfast.

2nd June 2015

Like Ed and Nick I wasn't elected.

It wasn't the unfairness of the electoral system because the election used the single transferable vote but the boundaries were redrawn to the disadvantage of anyone living in the constituency for which I was standing.

Cumbria doesn't fit neatly into anyone's constituency.

The south of the county looks to Manchester, the North of the county looks to Newcastle.

So in the previous dispensation the Co-op had South Cumbria firmly in the North West and North Cumbria in the North East.

In local government terms this makes sense, just, but in terms of where our TV comes from and where our NHS is located Cumbria splits, unevenly and raggedly, into North West and North East.

The Co-op in its infinite wisdom has decided that Cumbria is in the North West so immediately those standing for election to the new Membership Council were disadvantaged as both unknown and far away and with a total unbalance in terms of population spread.

So like Ed and Nick (and Nigel) I wasn't elected.

So far so sad.

But there are bigger issues lurking in these muddy waters.

I had always thought that Lord Myners was right in his analysis. The democracy of the Co-op was flawed, although I suspect his view that one member one vote was critical to his analysis was somewhat biased.

But the deed is done and the newly elected membership council will have its work cut out even if it was elected by members with one single transferable vote they did not elect the board and it is the board that has the power and the membership council will find itself constantly playing catch up as the board moves not only the goal posts, but the rules of engagement and what it means to be a co-operative.

I was told by one observer that the new chairman was an excellent choice because his father was a co-op store manager.

I pointed out that my father was a Manchester Corporation Bus Driver but that didn't qualify me for the role of chairman of Stagecoach.

The co-op already feels diminished, much of the business has been disposed of, 'pharms' and 'farmacies' have gone and it seems to me that the big American Funeral businesses are watching closely to see whether the funeral business is also offered 'to the market'.

The new Chair made his reputation with Asda, he made it a more valuable business and then sold it Walmart, his chairmanship of the Post Office had the same result with the business privatised.

One can only hope that the Co-op which is in fact owned by its members now has the robustness to resist what I can only see as inevitable drift to market privatisation, if you want to weaken something, to make it malleable, the thing to do is hack away at the flawed democratic structure and then replace it with an unwieldy group a hundred strong trying to make sense of and understand change and control a board that has been hand chosen and may well appear even more self selecting in a few years.

What is happening to the Co-op seems to me to be symptomatic of what is happening to our current social and political settlement.

The tectonic plates of our social polity are drifting right wards just as the great stones in Carlisle's Rickerby Park carry the legend of when Carlisle was on the equator and the sediment was laid down and compressed, limestone, gritstone and granite slowly shifting over time to where they now rest.

So the post war settlement with its homes for heroes, its education reform and welfare reform a product of both liberal and labour aspiration for men like Attlee, Beveridge and Keynes is slowly slipping away from us as the market is invoked as the only true arbiter of value.

The vision of the Co-op's founders known as the pioneers after the title they chose for their co-op society, the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, was the creation of a store in, in response to the poverty created by the industrial revolution, to allow members to buy unadulterated food that they otherwise could no afford.

The store opened in 1844 with a meagre stock of butter, flour, oatmeal and a few candles, within three months they had added tea and tobacco and established a reputation for price and quality.

As the last election demonstrated and as the Electoral Reform Society has reported the rightward drift of our politics is sanctioned by a voting system that is essentially unbalanced, my only hope is that under its new governance, which despite assurances to the contrary is every bit as flawed as the system it replaces, the new Membership council even with its hands tied, will be able to channel the spirit of the Rochdale Pioneers and keep the Co-op, co-operative under the ownership of its members.