Mary Dejevsky in The Independent
If anything illustrates the desperate need for a reordering of British politics, it is the treatment, or rather mistreatment, of Jeremy Corbyn. Almost everyone with even the tiniest stake in the system as it stands has contributed; that includes the London-based media, as well as the Labour MPs and celebrity spokespeople who are theoretically on his own side. The Conservatives have hardly needed to deploy any of their assault forces, so keen have others been to do the job for them.
Don’t get me wrong. I am no Corbynista. His politics are not mine, but I understand his appeal. His arguments are coherent; they deserve to be heard, and every government needs a credible opposition. Alas, this is not what is happening
To his many enemies, Jeremy Corbyn is a pretender. He is a pied piper who has cast a spell over a deluded section of the young. He is incompetent. He was eviscerated by Theresa May at PMQs. He’s hopeless in Parliament generally. He can’t lead. He could never be elected prime minister. He is a stubborn egotist, who won’t acknowledge his failings. He is traducing the noble Labour cause and should stand down post haste for the sake of the party he loves.
Well, that is a point of view. The trouble is that, even in our land of free elections and free media, it is pretty much the only message that is finding its way out to the great British public. Part of the fault may lie with Corbyn’s own media operation, but a lot of it derives from the dominance of a self-serving establishment logic, according to which only “people like us” are entitled to a say.
Here is an alternative version. Let’s start with legitimacy of party leaders. It is little short of astonishing that Jeremy Corbyn, with the colossal mandate he received a year ago from party supporters, in a contest conducted entirely according to agreed rules, should be dismissed as somehow illegitimate and an aberration. The losers may not like the rules (retrospectively), but at least some of them were instrumental in setting them. When Corbyn resists calls for his resignation, citing his mandate, he is absolutely justified in so doing.
Compare this with the position on the benches opposite. Theresa May was on the losing side (if only nominally) in the EU referendum; she was one of several candidates to succeed David Cameron, all of whom fell – by fair means or foul – by the wayside, leaving her to be crowned party leader and prime minister without a contest.
It beggars belief that the Conservatives, as Cameron did in his valedictory PMQs, have hailed this as a triumph (of efficiency, rather than democracy?) and that there are no calls – as yet – for Theresa May to seek her own mandate at a general election. May herself demanded this of Gordon Brown in analogous circumstances, so what is different now? It is not good enough to hail the return of political stability and insist that the poor electorate is suddenly tired of voting.
And how incompetent is Jeremy Corbyn really? He has not been nearly as ineffective a parliamentary performer as his adversaries charge. If you take into account that a large number of his own MPs have set out to stymie, if not actually sabotage, his efforts, just hanging on in there is a feat. He may not be the best picker of people and he may not be a natural leader, but it is hard to judge his strengths (beyond an almost superhuman resilience) when you consider the obstacles placed in his path.
He had to sit through a speech by his foreign affairs spokesman in the Syria debate that argued the opposite of what he, as party leader, believed. Earlier this week, he had to watch as his MPs hand May a victory in the Trident vote, that was out of all proportion to public sentiment. His difficulty is that the Labour Party’s electoral system threw up a leader whose mandate came from the popular, rather than the still nostalgically Blairite parliamentary, party. How many leaders would look competent in such circumstances?
Consider other measures of political success and the picture changes. As Corbyn said yesterday in his opening bid to remain leader, the party under his tutelage has won every by-election it has fought and four mayoral races, including London. It has changed the terms of the economic debate – George Osborne’s demise and Theresa May’s first remarks as Prime Minister are the latest testimony to that. Party membership is higher than it has ever been, and Corbyn – improbable though it once seemed – has fired political enthusiasm into the supposedly apathetic young.
He has done this by reviving old Labour priorities and applying them in a way that speaks to a generation growing up in the shadow of the financial crisis and several disastrous wars. Nor does his brand of Labour speak just to the young. It appeals to many of those whose employment is precarious, who have seen huge mistakes (in finance and Iraq) go unpunished, who resent the stratospheric rewards the bosses reserve for themselves, and who ask whether Labour’s pursuit of electability in the 1990s was not at the price of their interests and the party’s soul.
The political centrism that prevailed in Parliament in the wake of Tony Blair’s landslide, left sections of the population essentially without a voice. The Iraq war, a touchstone now for mistrust of government, was supported by both major parties in Parliament, as was sweeping de-regulation, as – despite the Labour leader’s best efforts – was the Trident decision this week.
Jeremy Corbyn’s was a lone voice on all these issues, but he can claim in many ways to have been vindicated. His so-called “intransigence” has now won him a following in the country at large, where levels of discontent – largely disguised by the first-past-the-post electoral system – were spectacularly laid bare in the Brexit vote. Whether you agree with him or not, you must accept that Jeremy Corbyn represents a real opposition. If only the Labour elite could accept that, too.
Showing posts with label Blair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blair. Show all posts
Tuesday 13 September 2016
Friday 12 August 2016
Satire - Labour is using members’ money to ban them from voting
Mark Steel in The Independent
It’s marvellous how they manage it, but every week the people running the Labour Party election perform a stunt even more spectacular than the last.
Next week Margaret Hodge will kidnap John McDonnell, which she will claim is in accordance with the Labour Party Constitution, Rule 457. (Shadow Chancellor Chained to a Radiator in the Basement Clause (14 B iii).) Peter Mandelson will reveal he has met Vladimir Putin to request he cuts off the oil supply to Jeremy Corbyn’s office, and Hilary Benn will announce he has hired a fleet of Tornados to bomb a Momentum branch meeting in Exeter.
Labour must be bold and ambitious, and never before can an organisation have illegally banned its own members from voting in an election it promised them a vote in, then spent the money it took from those members on appealing to the High Court to try and keep the ban.
The argument of those who brought in the ban was that, although the new members were promised a vote in Labour elections, they didn’t mean the next election, but at some unspecified one in the future.
What a boost this method would be if it was adopted by British business. Comet would never have gone bankrupt if anyone buying a washing machine handed over their money and was then told they wouldn’t actually be given a washing machine, but the money they had paid would be used on appealing to the High Court for the company’s right to not hand over a washing machine.
And this is from the wing of the Labour Party that insists it can be trusted on the economy.
It would be entertaining if it ran the country like this: Angela Eagle would announce: “We’ve spent the education budget wisely, on an appeal to the High Court that no one in Wales should be allowed to eat bananas.”
Because Labour must be modern, and to prove how modern it is, the plotters are furious at how democratic they are ordered to be by High Court judges. Maybe this is how it plans to win a General Election – by appealing to the High Court to only allow someone to vote if they’re called Kinnock or Eagle.
But these extreme measures are essential because, as Tom Watson explained, the Labour election has been undermined by “Trotsky entryists twisting arms of young members”. This explains why Corbyn is expected to win again, because the 300,000 new members of Labour are powerless before the arm-twisting might of Britain’s 50 Trotsky entryists.
Some people may wonder why these arm-twisters never overturned Tony Blair during the 15 years he was leader. That is because the Trotsky entryists were living in a city under the ground guarded by men in yellow boiler suits, perfecting their evil arm-twisting machine, cackling “soon we will unleash our power on Ipswich Constituency Labour Party then nothing can stop us… mwahaha”.
Now the worry is what other votes they are influencing by arm-twisting. We should watch out for this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, when Will Young comes second to Alf Barnshaw, the central committee member of the Trotsky Entryist group the Revolutionary Movement for Extremely Violent Workers’ Anger.
The whole strategy of the anti-Corbyn plotters appears to be random fury. Every vote that goes against them is a result of “bullying”, and one MP, Conor McGinn, told the press that Corbyn “threatened to call my Dad”. This suggests their aim to win a general election is to go after the toddler vote. They are going to campaign for the voting age to be reduced to three, then issue a manifesto that goes: “It’s not faIr becoos I wozent doing anyfink and Treeza MAy kAlld my daD just like jErmY and thats wie I want to b pie minister.”
But they don’t appear to have any desire to work out what might be taking place. Because, like a married couple who scream at each other for hours about who left the ironing board in the wrong place, clearly there is something more to this disagreement than the rows they have about who sent a nasty message on Twitter.
The anti-Corbyn plotters complain Corbyn’s policies make him unelectable, so their strategy appears to be to have no policies at all. They make no effort to explain why the support for Corbyn is an English version of what has happened across Europe and America. Presumably they think Bernie Sanders won millions of supporters because he borrowed Corbyn’s arm-twisting machine, and the SNP won in Scotland because Nicola Sturgeon threatened to call Ed Miliband’s dad.
And none of them attempt to assess why thousands turn out to hear Corbyn in town centres. They must be the only people in political history to see huge crowds coming into the streets to support their party and think “We’ll ban that lot for a start”.
So Owen Smith’s campaign insists he will continue with many of Corbyn’s radical ideas but do it more competently. If you were cynical you might wonder how strongly he backs Corbyn’s ideas, when the people backing Smith most fervently are Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, and everyone else who hates everything Corbyn stands for. It is like standing for the General Synod of the Anglican Church when your campaign manager is Richard Dawkins.
The result is their campaign amounts to a series of unconnected exasperated attempts to force him to stand down, by all resigning or appealing to a High Court for the right to rig the vote, making them look like Wile E Coyote chasing the Road Runner.
Next week, at a Corbyn rally, Stephen Kinnock will hide above him waiting to drop an ACME piano, but the balcony he is on will collapse and he will land on Laura Kuenssberg.
Then Tom Watson will try to shoot him through a hole in a tree, but the gun will bend back through another hole and he will shoot himself in the face, so he will issue a statement that this proves Corbyn must stand down – he simply isn’t competent.
It’s marvellous how they manage it, but every week the people running the Labour Party election perform a stunt even more spectacular than the last.
Next week Margaret Hodge will kidnap John McDonnell, which she will claim is in accordance with the Labour Party Constitution, Rule 457. (Shadow Chancellor Chained to a Radiator in the Basement Clause (14 B iii).) Peter Mandelson will reveal he has met Vladimir Putin to request he cuts off the oil supply to Jeremy Corbyn’s office, and Hilary Benn will announce he has hired a fleet of Tornados to bomb a Momentum branch meeting in Exeter.
Labour must be bold and ambitious, and never before can an organisation have illegally banned its own members from voting in an election it promised them a vote in, then spent the money it took from those members on appealing to the High Court to try and keep the ban.
The argument of those who brought in the ban was that, although the new members were promised a vote in Labour elections, they didn’t mean the next election, but at some unspecified one in the future.
What a boost this method would be if it was adopted by British business. Comet would never have gone bankrupt if anyone buying a washing machine handed over their money and was then told they wouldn’t actually be given a washing machine, but the money they had paid would be used on appealing to the High Court for the company’s right to not hand over a washing machine.
And this is from the wing of the Labour Party that insists it can be trusted on the economy.
It would be entertaining if it ran the country like this: Angela Eagle would announce: “We’ve spent the education budget wisely, on an appeal to the High Court that no one in Wales should be allowed to eat bananas.”
Because Labour must be modern, and to prove how modern it is, the plotters are furious at how democratic they are ordered to be by High Court judges. Maybe this is how it plans to win a General Election – by appealing to the High Court to only allow someone to vote if they’re called Kinnock or Eagle.
But these extreme measures are essential because, as Tom Watson explained, the Labour election has been undermined by “Trotsky entryists twisting arms of young members”. This explains why Corbyn is expected to win again, because the 300,000 new members of Labour are powerless before the arm-twisting might of Britain’s 50 Trotsky entryists.
Some people may wonder why these arm-twisters never overturned Tony Blair during the 15 years he was leader. That is because the Trotsky entryists were living in a city under the ground guarded by men in yellow boiler suits, perfecting their evil arm-twisting machine, cackling “soon we will unleash our power on Ipswich Constituency Labour Party then nothing can stop us… mwahaha”.
Now the worry is what other votes they are influencing by arm-twisting. We should watch out for this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, when Will Young comes second to Alf Barnshaw, the central committee member of the Trotsky Entryist group the Revolutionary Movement for Extremely Violent Workers’ Anger.
The whole strategy of the anti-Corbyn plotters appears to be random fury. Every vote that goes against them is a result of “bullying”, and one MP, Conor McGinn, told the press that Corbyn “threatened to call my Dad”. This suggests their aim to win a general election is to go after the toddler vote. They are going to campaign for the voting age to be reduced to three, then issue a manifesto that goes: “It’s not faIr becoos I wozent doing anyfink and Treeza MAy kAlld my daD just like jErmY and thats wie I want to b pie minister.”
But they don’t appear to have any desire to work out what might be taking place. Because, like a married couple who scream at each other for hours about who left the ironing board in the wrong place, clearly there is something more to this disagreement than the rows they have about who sent a nasty message on Twitter.
The anti-Corbyn plotters complain Corbyn’s policies make him unelectable, so their strategy appears to be to have no policies at all. They make no effort to explain why the support for Corbyn is an English version of what has happened across Europe and America. Presumably they think Bernie Sanders won millions of supporters because he borrowed Corbyn’s arm-twisting machine, and the SNP won in Scotland because Nicola Sturgeon threatened to call Ed Miliband’s dad.
And none of them attempt to assess why thousands turn out to hear Corbyn in town centres. They must be the only people in political history to see huge crowds coming into the streets to support their party and think “We’ll ban that lot for a start”.
So Owen Smith’s campaign insists he will continue with many of Corbyn’s radical ideas but do it more competently. If you were cynical you might wonder how strongly he backs Corbyn’s ideas, when the people backing Smith most fervently are Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, and everyone else who hates everything Corbyn stands for. It is like standing for the General Synod of the Anglican Church when your campaign manager is Richard Dawkins.
The result is their campaign amounts to a series of unconnected exasperated attempts to force him to stand down, by all resigning or appealing to a High Court for the right to rig the vote, making them look like Wile E Coyote chasing the Road Runner.
Next week, at a Corbyn rally, Stephen Kinnock will hide above him waiting to drop an ACME piano, but the balcony he is on will collapse and he will land on Laura Kuenssberg.
Then Tom Watson will try to shoot him through a hole in a tree, but the gun will bend back through another hole and he will shoot himself in the face, so he will issue a statement that this proves Corbyn must stand down – he simply isn’t competent.
Thursday 30 June 2016
Jeremy Corbyn is the only man who can solve Britain’s post-Brexit problems
Youssef El-Gingihy in The Independent
The Brexit vote has precipitated the deepest political crisis in Britain in a generation. The nation is divided and the climate is lurching dangerously towards the far right. At this critical moment for the future of the country, the Blairites have opportunistically mounted an anti-Corbyn coup. They have been incubating this coup from day one despite Corbyn's overwhelming mandate.
They talk of Corbyn as an aberration. It is, in fact, the other way round. It is the Blairites, who represent a deviation in the history of the Labour party away from its values and eponymous constituency. The biggest threat to the Conservatives would be an alternative, viable anti-austerity manifesto.
Fortunately, the Blairites are outnumbered, in the wider party, by the massive influx of new members joining since the general election. This new membership alone is greater than the entire membership of the Conservative party. Contrary to the media narrative, Corbyn's victory has galvanised whole swathes of the electorate, particularly amongst young voters.
Blair may have won three elections, but in so doing he nearly destroyed his own party. In Scotland, millions felt they had been abandoned by New Labour's policies including the Iraq war and the embrace of neoliberalism. The same pattern has been repeated in the North of England with traditional working class voters in Labour heartlands defecting to UKIP. The UKIP vote went up from under a million in 2010 to nearly 4 million in 2015.
Labour did not just lose the election. It lost the previous five years by acquiescing to a bogus Tory narrative of excessive public spending as causing or exacerbating the crisis despite the IMF clearly rebutting this. Miliband tried to appease his base with attacks on predatory capitalism but, at the same time, he tried to out-tough the Tories on immigration and cuts. This schizoid approach did not convince voters. Why vote for austerity-lite when you can have the real thing?
The idea that Corbyn is unelectable or cannot be sold to the media is a strange one. Real politics and real leadership is about creating a vision for the country rather than merely chasing votes according to what is perceived to be flavour of the month. The post-war Labour government pursued its monumental achievements by being bold and radical. It set the agenda for a social democratic settlement, which shaped the future of Britain for decades, forcing the Tories to accommodate. When the neoliberals started out, they were in the political wilderness. They gradually transformed politics with the backing of powerful allies. For the worse admittedly. But Thatcher never asked the media or the political establishment for permission.
The notion that a return to Blairism would rescue Labour is completely out of touch. And dangerously so. Neoliberal economics is broken and we are in an era of perpetual economic stagnation and crisis. If the left does not offer a convincing, progressive alternative then UKIP and the far right will capitalise.
This is a battle for the soul of the Labour party between neoliberal Blairism and the progressive left. Certainly a split now looks almost inevitable. If that is what is needed to save the party then so be it.
The Conservatives are offering up a prospectus of more of the same - privatisation, financialisation, dismantling the public sector all in the guise of austerity. Now more than ever, we need a strong left with transformative policies to counter the dominance of the right and the framing of politics in the reactionary discourse of nationalism and racism. Only progressive forces can steer Britain away from the dangers of far-right fascism and offer working class people a better future.
The Brexit vote has precipitated the deepest political crisis in Britain in a generation. The nation is divided and the climate is lurching dangerously towards the far right. At this critical moment for the future of the country, the Blairites have opportunistically mounted an anti-Corbyn coup. They have been incubating this coup from day one despite Corbyn's overwhelming mandate.
They talk of Corbyn as an aberration. It is, in fact, the other way round. It is the Blairites, who represent a deviation in the history of the Labour party away from its values and eponymous constituency. The biggest threat to the Conservatives would be an alternative, viable anti-austerity manifesto.
Fortunately, the Blairites are outnumbered, in the wider party, by the massive influx of new members joining since the general election. This new membership alone is greater than the entire membership of the Conservative party. Contrary to the media narrative, Corbyn's victory has galvanised whole swathes of the electorate, particularly amongst young voters.
Blair may have won three elections, but in so doing he nearly destroyed his own party. In Scotland, millions felt they had been abandoned by New Labour's policies including the Iraq war and the embrace of neoliberalism. The same pattern has been repeated in the North of England with traditional working class voters in Labour heartlands defecting to UKIP. The UKIP vote went up from under a million in 2010 to nearly 4 million in 2015.
Labour did not just lose the election. It lost the previous five years by acquiescing to a bogus Tory narrative of excessive public spending as causing or exacerbating the crisis despite the IMF clearly rebutting this. Miliband tried to appease his base with attacks on predatory capitalism but, at the same time, he tried to out-tough the Tories on immigration and cuts. This schizoid approach did not convince voters. Why vote for austerity-lite when you can have the real thing?
The idea that Corbyn is unelectable or cannot be sold to the media is a strange one. Real politics and real leadership is about creating a vision for the country rather than merely chasing votes according to what is perceived to be flavour of the month. The post-war Labour government pursued its monumental achievements by being bold and radical. It set the agenda for a social democratic settlement, which shaped the future of Britain for decades, forcing the Tories to accommodate. When the neoliberals started out, they were in the political wilderness. They gradually transformed politics with the backing of powerful allies. For the worse admittedly. But Thatcher never asked the media or the political establishment for permission.
The notion that a return to Blairism would rescue Labour is completely out of touch. And dangerously so. Neoliberal economics is broken and we are in an era of perpetual economic stagnation and crisis. If the left does not offer a convincing, progressive alternative then UKIP and the far right will capitalise.
This is a battle for the soul of the Labour party between neoliberal Blairism and the progressive left. Certainly a split now looks almost inevitable. If that is what is needed to save the party then so be it.
The Conservatives are offering up a prospectus of more of the same - privatisation, financialisation, dismantling the public sector all in the guise of austerity. Now more than ever, we need a strong left with transformative policies to counter the dominance of the right and the framing of politics in the reactionary discourse of nationalism and racism. Only progressive forces can steer Britain away from the dangers of far-right fascism and offer working class people a better future.
Monday 27 June 2016
Perilous times for progressives
Opinion of The Guardian
Britain’s 27 erstwhile European partners will meet next week to discuss the UK’s future with the country itself locked outside the room. The constitutional ground-rules of our democracy are in contention as never before, with arguments raging about whether or not Westminster can block Nicola Sturgeon’s mooted Scottish referendum, or Ms Sturgeon can deploy procedural weaponry at Holyrood to frustrate the UK-wide referendum decision. Meanwhile the grave economic consequences are coming into view, with the Institute of Directors suggesting that a quarter of companies will cease hiring and a fifth may shift operations overseas.
What is so damaging for the orderly conduct of business is not only the prospect of a messy divorce from the continent, but an immediate political crisis. After David Cameron’s post-dated resignation, nobody knows who is in charge, still less what happens next. The Brexit brigade stormed to victory without a manifesto, or even agreement on what “leaving the EU” involves. Some, including Michael Gove, would cut loose from the single market, and damn the vast economic cost; others now concede the UK will have to stay in the market, even though that would betray the campaign promise to “take control” of regulation and migration. Wider pre-election promises have turned to dust at great speed. At sunrise on Friday, while the final few votes were still being counted, Nigel Farage conceded that it had been “a mistake” for Vote Leave to pretend that there would be an extra £350m a week for the NHS; at sundown, leading leaver Daniel Hannan MEP killed the other central campaign promise by conceding free movement of labourmight continue. Lesser gimmicks, such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove’s promise to scrap VAT on energy bills, were always going to be hard to honour with an economy that is set to slow; they seem entirely irrelevant when we don’t know who will be presenting the next budget.
A country in peril, without a functioning government, needs an office-ready opposition – to ask the awkward questions, warn against wild swerves, and force somebody on the government side to explain what is going on. Britain, however, is saddled with a second party so beset by schisms, that – even as the union strains, the government crumbles, and the economy teeters – the thing making the headlines is Labour’s disintergation. Hilary Benn’s “sacking”, a dubious description seeing as the shadow foreign secretary constructed his own dismissal, was followed by the self-sacrifice of no fewer than 11 shadow cabinet ministers by late evening on 26 June, a run of career suicide bombs all detonated with the single aim of forcing Jeremy Corbyn out, just nine months after the leftwinger secured an almighty mandate from party members, taking more than thrice the votes of any of his three rivals, from the party’s centre and right.
This is a dismal pass that Labour was always likely to reach, because the overwhelming bulk of MPs have, from the off, been convinced that Mr Corbyn would drive them off a cliff. Many members are understandably furious with parliamentarians who never allowed him a chance. But there is no escaping that the day-to-day work of a party leader is fronting the efforts of a team of MPs. And when he was initially backed by fewer than one in 10 of that team, and not much interested in compromises to win more over, it was a job he was always going to struggle to do effectively. After the attempted coup, Mr Corbyn may attempt to fill his top team with other MPs. But there is now a real question about whether he can function in the job at all.
The PLP putsch looks shoddy for various reasons. For those MPs who have done nothing but plot since September, moving against him now is opportunism pure and simple. For others, it is an emotional spasm, made in rage against the painful loss of Britain’s place in Europe. But Mr Corbyn did not ask for this referendum, and it seems perverse to blame him for David Cameron’s loss. While Labour’s pro-Europeans were convinced they would win, many rather admired his qualified call for a remain vote, hoping that it might win do more to win over Eurosceptics than EU cheerleading. Even now, they should pause and ask whether a smooth-talking Europhile would have done more harm or good in Newport and Barnsley last week. One can argue that either way, but now – with the votes counted – anything that looks like pro-European regime change could appear disdainful of the public. Even more fundamentally, third-way social democracy has been in crisis ever since the crash. After the spectacular failure of the “mainstream” candidates last year, Labour’s centre-right should have earned its way back into contention with a fundamental rethink. Sadly, it hasn’t done that.
Set against this is the continuing failure of Jeremy Corbyn to look serious about becoming prime minister. There are fair-minded MPs who despair at the fact that so many constituents can never envisage their leader in No 10. It becomes harder to ignore such concerns after the Brexit vote, amid speculation that the next general election, which had not been scheduled until 2020, may now be brought forward to this autumn. This is the context in which deputy leader Tom Watson, who has his own mandate, is demanding talks about “the way forward”.
These are perilous times for progressive politics, perhaps the most perilous since the 1930s. It is incumbent on everybody to think before acting. Jeremy Corbyn needs to look into his soul and ask himself if he really wants to be PM, and get out of the way if not. His critics need to get on the phone and establish whether or not they can build the strength in the grassroots to topple him. Some say members are moving post-referendum; others dispute this. If the members remain loyal, then the mutineers could wound but not kill. The result would be to split the parliamentary party and the movement asunder, which would give the Tories a free run on a Brexit plaform.
Make the wrong call, and the results could be as ruinous as in 1931, when Ramsay MacDonald clung to office by giving up on the Labour movement, and a party of government was reduced to a rump of 52 seats. A half-complete coup would be worse than a clean defenestration or uniting behind Mr Corbyn. If the activists have moved, his time is up; if not, it is the MPs who must back off. Labour has sometimes failed dismally at moments of national crisis, as in 1931. But at others – think 1940 – it has proved equal to the hour. With an intolerant right wing on the rise, every progressive must be hoping that, whoever prevails in the left’s faction fighting, it will be finished soon.
Britain’s 27 erstwhile European partners will meet next week to discuss the UK’s future with the country itself locked outside the room. The constitutional ground-rules of our democracy are in contention as never before, with arguments raging about whether or not Westminster can block Nicola Sturgeon’s mooted Scottish referendum, or Ms Sturgeon can deploy procedural weaponry at Holyrood to frustrate the UK-wide referendum decision. Meanwhile the grave economic consequences are coming into view, with the Institute of Directors suggesting that a quarter of companies will cease hiring and a fifth may shift operations overseas.
What is so damaging for the orderly conduct of business is not only the prospect of a messy divorce from the continent, but an immediate political crisis. After David Cameron’s post-dated resignation, nobody knows who is in charge, still less what happens next. The Brexit brigade stormed to victory without a manifesto, or even agreement on what “leaving the EU” involves. Some, including Michael Gove, would cut loose from the single market, and damn the vast economic cost; others now concede the UK will have to stay in the market, even though that would betray the campaign promise to “take control” of regulation and migration. Wider pre-election promises have turned to dust at great speed. At sunrise on Friday, while the final few votes were still being counted, Nigel Farage conceded that it had been “a mistake” for Vote Leave to pretend that there would be an extra £350m a week for the NHS; at sundown, leading leaver Daniel Hannan MEP killed the other central campaign promise by conceding free movement of labourmight continue. Lesser gimmicks, such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove’s promise to scrap VAT on energy bills, were always going to be hard to honour with an economy that is set to slow; they seem entirely irrelevant when we don’t know who will be presenting the next budget.
A country in peril, without a functioning government, needs an office-ready opposition – to ask the awkward questions, warn against wild swerves, and force somebody on the government side to explain what is going on. Britain, however, is saddled with a second party so beset by schisms, that – even as the union strains, the government crumbles, and the economy teeters – the thing making the headlines is Labour’s disintergation. Hilary Benn’s “sacking”, a dubious description seeing as the shadow foreign secretary constructed his own dismissal, was followed by the self-sacrifice of no fewer than 11 shadow cabinet ministers by late evening on 26 June, a run of career suicide bombs all detonated with the single aim of forcing Jeremy Corbyn out, just nine months after the leftwinger secured an almighty mandate from party members, taking more than thrice the votes of any of his three rivals, from the party’s centre and right.
This is a dismal pass that Labour was always likely to reach, because the overwhelming bulk of MPs have, from the off, been convinced that Mr Corbyn would drive them off a cliff. Many members are understandably furious with parliamentarians who never allowed him a chance. But there is no escaping that the day-to-day work of a party leader is fronting the efforts of a team of MPs. And when he was initially backed by fewer than one in 10 of that team, and not much interested in compromises to win more over, it was a job he was always going to struggle to do effectively. After the attempted coup, Mr Corbyn may attempt to fill his top team with other MPs. But there is now a real question about whether he can function in the job at all.
The PLP putsch looks shoddy for various reasons. For those MPs who have done nothing but plot since September, moving against him now is opportunism pure and simple. For others, it is an emotional spasm, made in rage against the painful loss of Britain’s place in Europe. But Mr Corbyn did not ask for this referendum, and it seems perverse to blame him for David Cameron’s loss. While Labour’s pro-Europeans were convinced they would win, many rather admired his qualified call for a remain vote, hoping that it might win do more to win over Eurosceptics than EU cheerleading. Even now, they should pause and ask whether a smooth-talking Europhile would have done more harm or good in Newport and Barnsley last week. One can argue that either way, but now – with the votes counted – anything that looks like pro-European regime change could appear disdainful of the public. Even more fundamentally, third-way social democracy has been in crisis ever since the crash. After the spectacular failure of the “mainstream” candidates last year, Labour’s centre-right should have earned its way back into contention with a fundamental rethink. Sadly, it hasn’t done that.
Set against this is the continuing failure of Jeremy Corbyn to look serious about becoming prime minister. There are fair-minded MPs who despair at the fact that so many constituents can never envisage their leader in No 10. It becomes harder to ignore such concerns after the Brexit vote, amid speculation that the next general election, which had not been scheduled until 2020, may now be brought forward to this autumn. This is the context in which deputy leader Tom Watson, who has his own mandate, is demanding talks about “the way forward”.
These are perilous times for progressive politics, perhaps the most perilous since the 1930s. It is incumbent on everybody to think before acting. Jeremy Corbyn needs to look into his soul and ask himself if he really wants to be PM, and get out of the way if not. His critics need to get on the phone and establish whether or not they can build the strength in the grassroots to topple him. Some say members are moving post-referendum; others dispute this. If the members remain loyal, then the mutineers could wound but not kill. The result would be to split the parliamentary party and the movement asunder, which would give the Tories a free run on a Brexit plaform.
Make the wrong call, and the results could be as ruinous as in 1931, when Ramsay MacDonald clung to office by giving up on the Labour movement, and a party of government was reduced to a rump of 52 seats. A half-complete coup would be worse than a clean defenestration or uniting behind Mr Corbyn. If the activists have moved, his time is up; if not, it is the MPs who must back off. Labour has sometimes failed dismally at moments of national crisis, as in 1931. But at others – think 1940 – it has proved equal to the hour. With an intolerant right wing on the rise, every progressive must be hoping that, whoever prevails in the left’s faction fighting, it will be finished soon.
Friday 29 April 2016
Tony Blair: the former PM for hire
Randeep Ramesh in The Guardian
Emails show oil firm questioned complex structure of Blair’s company, and reveal his closeness to Chinese leadership
Tony Blair courted Chinese leaders for Saudi prince's oil firm
PetroSaudi executives warned in early September 2010 that they had “no contractual nexus with TB” and were anxious about “the lack of apparent employment or other involvement of TB in the corporate structure”.
To convince PetroSaudi that if it paid it would get Blair, his executives revealed for the first time how his complex web of companies worked. Blair’s businesses are split into two wings: Firerush, which was governed by the then City regulator the Financial Services Authority, and Windrush, which was not.
What bothered PetroSaudi was that it was paying roughly $55,000 to Firerush and about $10,000 to Windrush. Both firms trade as Tony Blair Associates (TBA).
From early on in their relationship PetroSaudi executives admitted they knew “very little” about Blair’s firms. In an email in August 2010, the company’s executives said they “would like to understand more about the structure and the relationship between Firerush, TB Associates and TB. In particular, the engagement letter mentions the provision of services by employees of Firerush which seems, like a number of concepts in the engagement letter, inappropriate given we are only looking to engage with TB.”
To allay concerns in November 2010, Varun Chandra, a former Lehman Brothers banker and director of TBA, told PetroSaudi that Blair was the “ultimate owner of all this and owns all the share capital” of all the companies. He told PetroSaudi it was not relevant which company got paid “given where the cash ultimately ends up”.
Chandra explained that Firerush executives handled the day-to-day conversations about “specific opportunities and making the arrangements to drive negotiations forward. Tony, procured by Windrush, is involved at higher level but on an ongoing basis, meeting with senior political leadership and business heads in order to discuss PetroSaudi at a strategic level and to speak highly of your management.”
PetroSaudi, he said, had already seen the benefit as “the man in charge of China’s economic policy is now supportive of working with PetroSaudi, and … he has spoken with CNPC [China National Petroleum Corporation] to ensure a proper working dialogue”.
By November 2010 TBA was hired and, according to the documents, Blair had found time to put PetroSaudi’s case to Lou Jiwei, the then chairman of the China Investment Corporation and now the nation’s finance minister.
Lou Jiwei, centre, arrives for a G20 finance ministers’ and central bank governors’ meeting at the IMF on 15 April. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Questions could be raised about why Blair was allowed to promote the interests of the son of the then ruler of Saudi Arabia in China while also working as the Middle East peace envoy for the Quartet – the US, UN, EU and Russia. Blair had also faced criticism for halting a Serious Fraud Office inquiry in 2006, while prime minister, into alleged corruption over a multibillion-pound arms deal with Saudi Arabia. He denies any conflict of interest.
PetroSaudi had made it clear it wanted to hire Blair. In an internal 2010 document entitled “story for Blair”, PetroSaudi sold itself as a “vehicle of the Saudi royal family” that could count on the “full support from the kingdom’s diplomatic corps” and was set up by Prince Turki bin Abdullah and Obaid, who hailed from a “prominent business family”.
PetroSaudi’s pitch in the document was that it claimed “many countries will get a company in but then bully it around once it is there and has sunk billions of dollars in the ground. This will not happen with [PetroSaudi] because these nations do not want to get on the wrong side of the Saudi royal family.”
But access to the legendary Blair contacts book does not come cheap. In July TBA’s then chief operating officer, Mark Labovitch, emailed Mahony to say he had “discussed your strategy and objectives with Tony and believe strongly that we can add value to PetroSaudi’s business development … We would propose a retainer fee of $100,000 per month.”
The documents reveal that even before Blair’s company was hired, he was already promoting the oil firm. In late July 2010 Blair was in Shanghai to celebrate the planting of 1m trees in north-west China to combat climate change. A few days later, Labovitch emailed the London-based oil firm to say: “Tony has just been in China and informally sounded out a number of people.”
Tarek Obaid and Blair did meet privately in early July 2010, and apparently discussed a working relationship. A month later Blair’s company was on a retainer fee of $65,000 and a “success fee equal to 2%” of any deal that TBA brought to the company – which PetroSaudi admitted could “potentially be a very large sum”.
In the following months a picture emerges of corporate bonhomie underwritten by spiky internal exchanges over the cost of hiring the former prime minister, his apparent obsession with privacy and a whirl of phone calls with global leaders.
By August 2010, according to documents, PetroSaudi raised concerns internally that TBA’s proposed contract was “more appropriate to an investment bank (eg they can record our phone calls)”. In an email, Mahony described the contract offered by Blair’s lieutenants as “a very aggressive first draft with almost total limitation of liability for TB”. He wrote: “I should note that the aggressive starting position of his engagement letter most probably is cynically reliant on counterparties taking a passive approach to secure his services.”
But at the end of the month Blair was in the Chinese capital for the signing of a partnership agreement between Peking University and his Faith Foundation, and managed to squeeze in some time with the Chinese oil giants CNPC and China National Offshore Oil Corporation, as well as China’s supreme economic council, the National Development and Reform Commission.
Emails show oil firm questioned complex structure of Blair’s company, and reveal his closeness to Chinese leadership
Tony Blair meets China’s then vice-premier, now premier, Li Keqiang in Beijing in 2011. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
When Jonathan Powell, the gatekeeper to the corporate empire of Tony Blair, sat down to lunch with the former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Faisal Al Turki in June 2010 he could not have known how lucrative it would turn out to be for the former British prime minister.
As the high-profile mediator of the stuttering peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Blair had to be careful not to mix business with pleasure. However, one of those lunching with Powell at the annual “global mediator’s retreat”, organised by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was looking to make a deal.
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Nawaf Obaid, a security analyst who accompanied Prince Faisal, emailed Powell a week later, according to documents seen by the Guardian, with a suggestion to work with his brother Tarek’s company, PetroSaudi, which he “co-founded and co-owns with Prince Turki bin Abdullah, son of King Abdullah”.
“They have several projects that [they] are working [on] and I think it would [give] a very interesting perspective to see if we could establish a strategic partnership with former PM Tony Blair and yourself,” he wrote.
When Jonathan Powell, the gatekeeper to the corporate empire of Tony Blair, sat down to lunch with the former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Faisal Al Turki in June 2010 he could not have known how lucrative it would turn out to be for the former British prime minister.
As the high-profile mediator of the stuttering peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Blair had to be careful not to mix business with pleasure. However, one of those lunching with Powell at the annual “global mediator’s retreat”, organised by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was looking to make a deal.
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Bird and Fortune on Blair's socialism
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Nawaf Obaid, a security analyst who accompanied Prince Faisal, emailed Powell a week later, according to documents seen by the Guardian, with a suggestion to work with his brother Tarek’s company, PetroSaudi, which he “co-founded and co-owns with Prince Turki bin Abdullah, son of King Abdullah”.
“They have several projects that [they] are working [on] and I think it would [give] a very interesting perspective to see if we could establish a strategic partnership with former PM Tony Blair and yourself,” he wrote.
Tarek Obaid
Tarek Obaid was a former banker who styled himself as an adviser to members of the Saudi royal family and a director of a joint venture with Malaysia’s multibillion-dollar development fund, 1MDB. This fund had put $300m through PetroSaudi and as the latter’s chief executive, Obaid was on the lookout for deals.
On paper PetroSaudi looked impressive: its chief investment officer was a former Goldman Sachs banker, Patrick Mahony. The chief operating officer was listed as Rick Haythornthwaite, a City insider who was also chairman of Network Rail and MasterCard.
Blair’s team sold the former prime minister as someone who could help “unlock situations which might otherwise be blocked by political factors” in places such as China and Africa. PetroSaudi was interested in Beijing’s appetite for oil and how Blair’s firm could help.
The role assumed by Blair shows his influence in one of the most important areas of global economic cooperation this century: between the oil sands of the Middle East and hydrocarbon-hungry China.
While in office, Blair oversaw the handover of Hong Kong to China, but visited the latter just five times. His sixth visit in 2007 – when he earned £200,000 for a speech in the industrial city of Dongguan – marked a turning point in how he viewed the rising power.
Since then Blair has been back two dozen times and has built a reputation for befriending the rising stars of Chinese politics. In March 2010 he secured a meeting with Li Keqiang, now China’s premier.
PetroSaudi signed up Blair’s team to lobby Beijing in the summer of 2010 and internal PetroSaudi correspondence reveals there were questions raised about the apparently opaque nature of Blair’s businesses and the role he could play.
Tarek Obaid was a former banker who styled himself as an adviser to members of the Saudi royal family and a director of a joint venture with Malaysia’s multibillion-dollar development fund, 1MDB. This fund had put $300m through PetroSaudi and as the latter’s chief executive, Obaid was on the lookout for deals.
On paper PetroSaudi looked impressive: its chief investment officer was a former Goldman Sachs banker, Patrick Mahony. The chief operating officer was listed as Rick Haythornthwaite, a City insider who was also chairman of Network Rail and MasterCard.
Blair’s team sold the former prime minister as someone who could help “unlock situations which might otherwise be blocked by political factors” in places such as China and Africa. PetroSaudi was interested in Beijing’s appetite for oil and how Blair’s firm could help.
The role assumed by Blair shows his influence in one of the most important areas of global economic cooperation this century: between the oil sands of the Middle East and hydrocarbon-hungry China.
While in office, Blair oversaw the handover of Hong Kong to China, but visited the latter just five times. His sixth visit in 2007 – when he earned £200,000 for a speech in the industrial city of Dongguan – marked a turning point in how he viewed the rising power.
Since then Blair has been back two dozen times and has built a reputation for befriending the rising stars of Chinese politics. In March 2010 he secured a meeting with Li Keqiang, now China’s premier.
PetroSaudi signed up Blair’s team to lobby Beijing in the summer of 2010 and internal PetroSaudi correspondence reveals there were questions raised about the apparently opaque nature of Blair’s businesses and the role he could play.
Tony Blair courted Chinese leaders for Saudi prince's oil firm
PetroSaudi executives warned in early September 2010 that they had “no contractual nexus with TB” and were anxious about “the lack of apparent employment or other involvement of TB in the corporate structure”.
To convince PetroSaudi that if it paid it would get Blair, his executives revealed for the first time how his complex web of companies worked. Blair’s businesses are split into two wings: Firerush, which was governed by the then City regulator the Financial Services Authority, and Windrush, which was not.
What bothered PetroSaudi was that it was paying roughly $55,000 to Firerush and about $10,000 to Windrush. Both firms trade as Tony Blair Associates (TBA).
From early on in their relationship PetroSaudi executives admitted they knew “very little” about Blair’s firms. In an email in August 2010, the company’s executives said they “would like to understand more about the structure and the relationship between Firerush, TB Associates and TB. In particular, the engagement letter mentions the provision of services by employees of Firerush which seems, like a number of concepts in the engagement letter, inappropriate given we are only looking to engage with TB.”
To allay concerns in November 2010, Varun Chandra, a former Lehman Brothers banker and director of TBA, told PetroSaudi that Blair was the “ultimate owner of all this and owns all the share capital” of all the companies. He told PetroSaudi it was not relevant which company got paid “given where the cash ultimately ends up”.
Chandra explained that Firerush executives handled the day-to-day conversations about “specific opportunities and making the arrangements to drive negotiations forward. Tony, procured by Windrush, is involved at higher level but on an ongoing basis, meeting with senior political leadership and business heads in order to discuss PetroSaudi at a strategic level and to speak highly of your management.”
PetroSaudi, he said, had already seen the benefit as “the man in charge of China’s economic policy is now supportive of working with PetroSaudi, and … he has spoken with CNPC [China National Petroleum Corporation] to ensure a proper working dialogue”.
By November 2010 TBA was hired and, according to the documents, Blair had found time to put PetroSaudi’s case to Lou Jiwei, the then chairman of the China Investment Corporation and now the nation’s finance minister.
Lou Jiwei, centre, arrives for a G20 finance ministers’ and central bank governors’ meeting at the IMF on 15 April. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Questions could be raised about why Blair was allowed to promote the interests of the son of the then ruler of Saudi Arabia in China while also working as the Middle East peace envoy for the Quartet – the US, UN, EU and Russia. Blair had also faced criticism for halting a Serious Fraud Office inquiry in 2006, while prime minister, into alleged corruption over a multibillion-pound arms deal with Saudi Arabia. He denies any conflict of interest.
PetroSaudi had made it clear it wanted to hire Blair. In an internal 2010 document entitled “story for Blair”, PetroSaudi sold itself as a “vehicle of the Saudi royal family” that could count on the “full support from the kingdom’s diplomatic corps” and was set up by Prince Turki bin Abdullah and Obaid, who hailed from a “prominent business family”.
PetroSaudi’s pitch in the document was that it claimed “many countries will get a company in but then bully it around once it is there and has sunk billions of dollars in the ground. This will not happen with [PetroSaudi] because these nations do not want to get on the wrong side of the Saudi royal family.”
But access to the legendary Blair contacts book does not come cheap. In July TBA’s then chief operating officer, Mark Labovitch, emailed Mahony to say he had “discussed your strategy and objectives with Tony and believe strongly that we can add value to PetroSaudi’s business development … We would propose a retainer fee of $100,000 per month.”
The documents reveal that even before Blair’s company was hired, he was already promoting the oil firm. In late July 2010 Blair was in Shanghai to celebrate the planting of 1m trees in north-west China to combat climate change. A few days later, Labovitch emailed the London-based oil firm to say: “Tony has just been in China and informally sounded out a number of people.”
Tarek Obaid and Blair did meet privately in early July 2010, and apparently discussed a working relationship. A month later Blair’s company was on a retainer fee of $65,000 and a “success fee equal to 2%” of any deal that TBA brought to the company – which PetroSaudi admitted could “potentially be a very large sum”.
In the following months a picture emerges of corporate bonhomie underwritten by spiky internal exchanges over the cost of hiring the former prime minister, his apparent obsession with privacy and a whirl of phone calls with global leaders.
By August 2010, according to documents, PetroSaudi raised concerns internally that TBA’s proposed contract was “more appropriate to an investment bank (eg they can record our phone calls)”. In an email, Mahony described the contract offered by Blair’s lieutenants as “a very aggressive first draft with almost total limitation of liability for TB”. He wrote: “I should note that the aggressive starting position of his engagement letter most probably is cynically reliant on counterparties taking a passive approach to secure his services.”
But at the end of the month Blair was in the Chinese capital for the signing of a partnership agreement between Peking University and his Faith Foundation, and managed to squeeze in some time with the Chinese oil giants CNPC and China National Offshore Oil Corporation, as well as China’s supreme economic council, the National Development and Reform Commission.
Tony Blair gives a speech at Peking University in Beijing in 2012. Photograph: China Daily/Reuters
“The latter effectively ‘blessed’ your engagement with Chinese companies, and the former were both very keen to meet you and work out how you might collaborate,” Blair’s then chief operating officer told PetroSaudi. “We clearly articulated the benefits of partnership with you to them, which they grasped immediately.”
In November, Blair was back in Beijing to give a speech for his Faith Foundation. He also had a meeting with China’s vice-premier, Wang Qishan, who Blair’s firm told PetroSaudi was “crucial – inter alia in order to highlight the wider benefits of a partnership with PetroSaudi in terms of putting Chinese companies in pole position for Saudi infrastructure tenders”. Wang is now a member of the Chinese Communist party’s politbureau, the country’s highest decision-making body.
Blair’s relationship with PetroSaudi appeared to give him access to the Saudi elite. In December 2010 an executive of PetroSaudi said the company could arrange a dinner for Blair with Prince Turki. Blair’s office say this never took place.
The next month Blair’s office emailed PetroSaudi because he was keen to meet the King of Saudi Arabia and Prince Bandar, the secretary general of the country’s national security council, before the February 2011 Quartet meeting to discuss Middle East peace after the Egyptian revolution.
“The latter effectively ‘blessed’ your engagement with Chinese companies, and the former were both very keen to meet you and work out how you might collaborate,” Blair’s then chief operating officer told PetroSaudi. “We clearly articulated the benefits of partnership with you to them, which they grasped immediately.”
In November, Blair was back in Beijing to give a speech for his Faith Foundation. He also had a meeting with China’s vice-premier, Wang Qishan, who Blair’s firm told PetroSaudi was “crucial – inter alia in order to highlight the wider benefits of a partnership with PetroSaudi in terms of putting Chinese companies in pole position for Saudi infrastructure tenders”. Wang is now a member of the Chinese Communist party’s politbureau, the country’s highest decision-making body.
Blair’s relationship with PetroSaudi appeared to give him access to the Saudi elite. In December 2010 an executive of PetroSaudi said the company could arrange a dinner for Blair with Prince Turki. Blair’s office say this never took place.
The next month Blair’s office emailed PetroSaudi because he was keen to meet the King of Saudi Arabia and Prince Bandar, the secretary general of the country’s national security council, before the February 2011 Quartet meeting to discuss Middle East peace after the Egyptian revolution.
Saturday 9 April 2016
David Cameron’s gift to the world: trickle-down tax-dodging
Marina Hyde in The Guardian
An intriguing approach to damage limitation by Panama prat David Cameron, particularly considering the prime minister’s only real life job ever was as a PR. The prime minister appears to have been the last person to realise what everyone else in Westminster could see on Monday. Namely, that he’d be sitting down for an awkward tell-all – or at least a tell-some – by Thursday.
My absolute favourite tale from Cameron’s era as press chief for the culturocidal Carlton Television comes courtesy of the Guardian’s then media correspondent, who rang him up on a story. Like all mediocre PRs, a large part of his strategy was ignoring calls, but having accidentally answered this one he was cornered – and consequently pretended to be his own cleaner. “I can’t prove it was him,” the journalist reflected later, “but it certainly sounded a lot like him.” Well, he does have that central casting cleaner’s voice, so perhaps we ought to leave the case file open. Even so, for the journalists who recall the barefaced whoppers Cameron was able to tell them back in those days, this week has not been an occasion to break out the smelling salts.
“I’ve never tried to be anything I’m not,” Cameron claimed to Robert Peston in his belated confession. What about a cleaner? Or a football fan? Evidently the PM judged it the wrong moment to bring up either impersonations of the help, or Aston Villa. Or, indeed, West Ham. Still, at some point, Fortune was always going to collect on the deal Cameron foolishly made when he called the comedian Jimmy Carr’s (also legal) tax arrangements “morally wrong”. Showbiz now joins football on the list of things upon which he ought never to comment again.
Explaining to Peston that “my dad was a man I love and miss every day”, Cameron admitted that he and his wife had in fact invested in Ian Cameron’s offshore firm Blairmore in 1997, then sold their stake in 2010 for “something like £30,000”. That Cameron’s shifty cover-up has been more damaging than his non-crime is almost too insultingly obvious to state. He will not be assisted by the subconscious dismissiveness in that styling – “something like £30,000”. There is a fine line between fastidious precision and sounding like something north of the average British salary is rather forgettable, and the PM fell on the wrong side of it.
Even so, despite the obvious temptations, it would be a destructive mistake for Cameron’s enemies to get too tribal about these things. For all that this story appears currently to concern the Conservatives, there is something rather more Labourish – New Labourish, particularly – to it. The history of British political scandal dictates that it is traditionally sex that gets the Tories in trouble, and money that lands Labour in hot water.
That the Camerons’ investment in Blairmore lasted from 1997 to 2010 – the precise era of New Labour government – feels like a bit of a signpost. Indeed, for a story featuring something called Blairmore, it is surprising that it is Blair-less. For my money – something like £30, for this bet – the saga this most closely resembles is “Cheriegate”. Back at the very end of 2002, you may remember, Cherie Blair unwittingly used a conman (the gentleman caller of her special-adviser-cum-aromatherapist) to assist her in the purchase of two £250,000 Bristol flats.
Just as it has with Cameron, it took Mrs Blair several days to realise she was going to have to tell the truth, but eventually she too was making an emotional speech explaining that she had only been trying to protect her family “particularly my son in his first term at university [sob] living away from home”. A cri de coeur that certainly put in perspective the worries of other mothers who were at that time sending their 18-year-olds off to her husband’s war in Afghanistan. Toughest game in the world, the university game.
That said, Cameron’s emotional citation of his father, though obviously relevant, does rather recall Gordon Brown when on a sticky wicket. A defensive mention of his dad was Brown’s poker tell, and one almost as inscrutable as Homer Simpson’s habit of dancing round the table shrieking in delight at having been dealt four jacks. Mr Brown was never delighted when he brought up the scrupulous honesty of his Presbyterian minister father, but felt the urgent need in order to bolster the fib he was about to tell. An absurd denial that he’d never contemplated sacking Alistair Darling, for instance, came with the giveaway mention that his father had taught him “always to be honest”.
“He’s a prime minister,” skills minister Nick Boles conceded of Cameron on Friday morning, “but he’s also a human being and he’s a son.” I think we can ignore Mr Boles on the father-son dynamic. His last public reference to it was when he accused the grieving father of a Tory activist who had killed himself of trying to “hound” the party chairman out of a job.
Even so, Labour should consider the bigger picture. There are – how to put this delicately? – certain big political names of the relatively recent era that have yet to feature in the tale of tax avoidance, but on whom you’d be unwise to bet against emerging in some future story, some later data leak. Then again, perhaps these persons unnamed have opened their umbrella firms even more carefully, and we shall never know on the record. But we shall know it in our hearts, with that epistemology made fashionable by Tony Blair. “I only know what I believe,” he once intoned. Don’t we all, Mr Blair. Don’t we all.
The gravest danger of casting the tax debate as some tribal battle between the same old foes is to us – the little people who pay taxes, as Leona Helmsley once deathlessly observed. A tit-for-tat between parties does society in which we all have a stake no favours. Down that path, the path where ordinary people conclude that politicians and companies are all in it together, lies a corrupted society like Greece, where top-tier tax dodging eventually trickled down to dentists and doctors and beyond.
The idea that Britain – where people traditionally paid tax relatively willingly – could ever end up anything like this was unthinkable only a few years ago. It is now rather more thinkable, with the accretion of endless stories about Google, Amazon, the Panama Papers names … Never mind the details. Over time, overall impressions are taken. In the end, ordinary people will only know what they believe, and the fear for society is that they will begin to act accordingly.
An intriguing approach to damage limitation by Panama prat David Cameron, particularly considering the prime minister’s only real life job ever was as a PR. The prime minister appears to have been the last person to realise what everyone else in Westminster could see on Monday. Namely, that he’d be sitting down for an awkward tell-all – or at least a tell-some – by Thursday.
My absolute favourite tale from Cameron’s era as press chief for the culturocidal Carlton Television comes courtesy of the Guardian’s then media correspondent, who rang him up on a story. Like all mediocre PRs, a large part of his strategy was ignoring calls, but having accidentally answered this one he was cornered – and consequently pretended to be his own cleaner. “I can’t prove it was him,” the journalist reflected later, “but it certainly sounded a lot like him.” Well, he does have that central casting cleaner’s voice, so perhaps we ought to leave the case file open. Even so, for the journalists who recall the barefaced whoppers Cameron was able to tell them back in those days, this week has not been an occasion to break out the smelling salts.
“I’ve never tried to be anything I’m not,” Cameron claimed to Robert Peston in his belated confession. What about a cleaner? Or a football fan? Evidently the PM judged it the wrong moment to bring up either impersonations of the help, or Aston Villa. Or, indeed, West Ham. Still, at some point, Fortune was always going to collect on the deal Cameron foolishly made when he called the comedian Jimmy Carr’s (also legal) tax arrangements “morally wrong”. Showbiz now joins football on the list of things upon which he ought never to comment again.
Explaining to Peston that “my dad was a man I love and miss every day”, Cameron admitted that he and his wife had in fact invested in Ian Cameron’s offshore firm Blairmore in 1997, then sold their stake in 2010 for “something like £30,000”. That Cameron’s shifty cover-up has been more damaging than his non-crime is almost too insultingly obvious to state. He will not be assisted by the subconscious dismissiveness in that styling – “something like £30,000”. There is a fine line between fastidious precision and sounding like something north of the average British salary is rather forgettable, and the PM fell on the wrong side of it.
Even so, despite the obvious temptations, it would be a destructive mistake for Cameron’s enemies to get too tribal about these things. For all that this story appears currently to concern the Conservatives, there is something rather more Labourish – New Labourish, particularly – to it. The history of British political scandal dictates that it is traditionally sex that gets the Tories in trouble, and money that lands Labour in hot water.
That the Camerons’ investment in Blairmore lasted from 1997 to 2010 – the precise era of New Labour government – feels like a bit of a signpost. Indeed, for a story featuring something called Blairmore, it is surprising that it is Blair-less. For my money – something like £30, for this bet – the saga this most closely resembles is “Cheriegate”. Back at the very end of 2002, you may remember, Cherie Blair unwittingly used a conman (the gentleman caller of her special-adviser-cum-aromatherapist) to assist her in the purchase of two £250,000 Bristol flats.
Just as it has with Cameron, it took Mrs Blair several days to realise she was going to have to tell the truth, but eventually she too was making an emotional speech explaining that she had only been trying to protect her family “particularly my son in his first term at university [sob] living away from home”. A cri de coeur that certainly put in perspective the worries of other mothers who were at that time sending their 18-year-olds off to her husband’s war in Afghanistan. Toughest game in the world, the university game.
That said, Cameron’s emotional citation of his father, though obviously relevant, does rather recall Gordon Brown when on a sticky wicket. A defensive mention of his dad was Brown’s poker tell, and one almost as inscrutable as Homer Simpson’s habit of dancing round the table shrieking in delight at having been dealt four jacks. Mr Brown was never delighted when he brought up the scrupulous honesty of his Presbyterian minister father, but felt the urgent need in order to bolster the fib he was about to tell. An absurd denial that he’d never contemplated sacking Alistair Darling, for instance, came with the giveaway mention that his father had taught him “always to be honest”.
“He’s a prime minister,” skills minister Nick Boles conceded of Cameron on Friday morning, “but he’s also a human being and he’s a son.” I think we can ignore Mr Boles on the father-son dynamic. His last public reference to it was when he accused the grieving father of a Tory activist who had killed himself of trying to “hound” the party chairman out of a job.
Even so, Labour should consider the bigger picture. There are – how to put this delicately? – certain big political names of the relatively recent era that have yet to feature in the tale of tax avoidance, but on whom you’d be unwise to bet against emerging in some future story, some later data leak. Then again, perhaps these persons unnamed have opened their umbrella firms even more carefully, and we shall never know on the record. But we shall know it in our hearts, with that epistemology made fashionable by Tony Blair. “I only know what I believe,” he once intoned. Don’t we all, Mr Blair. Don’t we all.
The gravest danger of casting the tax debate as some tribal battle between the same old foes is to us – the little people who pay taxes, as Leona Helmsley once deathlessly observed. A tit-for-tat between parties does society in which we all have a stake no favours. Down that path, the path where ordinary people conclude that politicians and companies are all in it together, lies a corrupted society like Greece, where top-tier tax dodging eventually trickled down to dentists and doctors and beyond.
The idea that Britain – where people traditionally paid tax relatively willingly – could ever end up anything like this was unthinkable only a few years ago. It is now rather more thinkable, with the accretion of endless stories about Google, Amazon, the Panama Papers names … Never mind the details. Over time, overall impressions are taken. In the end, ordinary people will only know what they believe, and the fear for society is that they will begin to act accordingly.
Friday 25 September 2015
Bomb both sides in Syria and we’ll fix the country in a jiffy
We could also bomb Hell, and within a month the residents would say ‘We were better off under Satan’
Mark Steel in The Independent
Some people get confused by events in Syria, but they’re not that complicated. Quite simply, we need to bomb somewhere or other out there, like we should have done two years ago. Back then we should have dropped bombs to support the Isis rebels fighting against the evil Assad. But as we didn’t bother, we now need to put that right by bombing the Isis rebels, and protecting Assad.
Because if only we had bombed Assad back then, it would be much easier to bomb Isis and their allies now, as we would be one of their allies so we could bomb ourselves. And we could do that without the fuss of going all the way to Syria, which would cut down on carbon emissions as well.
Also, we could ask Isis if they had any bombs left over that we had given them, “as we need them back to bomb you please”.
The change has happened because back then, you may recall, Assad was so unspeakably evil he had gassed his own people. But now we have decided we support Assad so I suppose we have found out the gas wasn’t so much a chemical weapon as a Syrian version of Febreze, that has left Aleppo with an alluring scent of lemon.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned against bombing, saying “Syria is not Libya, it won’t implode but explode beyond its borders.” So that might not be too cheery, if he is saying things will not necessarily go as smoothly as they have turned out in Libya.
If you were really fussy, you could look for another example of a western invasion in the Syria/Iraq region in the recent past, and find out how well that went. But where we went wrong in Libya and Iraq, is we only bombed one side.
This is the sort of pacifist behaviour that causes the trouble. We should have bombed all the different sides, to make sure we annihilate the right people.
Sometimes we have tried this to a certain extent, so at different times we have armed Assad and Gaddafi and Saddam and Bin Laden and then bombed them for using the bombs we had sold them. But it is not organised properly and leaves the poor sods confused.
Instead of supporting Arab dictators for 20 years, then opposing them for three, and then supporting them again, we should arrange it on a rota system. We could bomb them on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, bomb their opponents on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and leave Sundays for US construction companies to make some money rebuilding the stuff we have bombed, so there is something new to bomb.
Otherwise we are left with the predicament Tony Blair finds himself in. He complains that we didn’t bomb Assad two years ago. But, in 2002, Blair invited Assad to stay at Buckingham Palace and praised his modernising outlook. If he had used my suggested system, he could have grovelled to him on Thursday, then bombed him in his bedroom on Friday. I’m sure the Queen wouldn’t have minded sleeping on a mate’s settee for a couple of weeks while builders repaired the damage.
The silly thing is, it’s now claimed there are secret units of the IRA – who have kept their weapons against the rules of the peace process. It would have kept them out of mischief if they had been asked to bomb Blair’s pals such as Assad and Gaddafi, as long as they did it on one of the agreed days, and it would have strengthened the Northern Ireland peace process as well.
There could also be a surprise element to which side we bomb, with vast commercial potential. Instead of the same predictable places popping up, there should be an international body that chooses the venue, with Sepp Blatter opening an envelope to reveal “next year the place we have to bomb as we can’t just do nothing is… Finland”.
Then, whenever someone suggests bombing Finland will make things worse, columnists and politicians and blokes in pubs can shout “well, we can’t do NOTHING”.
This argument, that we can’t do NOTHING, is powerful and well thought through, because it’s clear from Western military interventions in the Middle East that no matter how bad the situation is before we go there, we manage to make it worse. This must have taken immense planning in Libya, but was worth it because everyone seems to agree that most of the country looks back on their days under the foul, despotic, murderous tyranny of Gaddafi with a dreamy nostalgic affection.
We could bomb Hell, and within a month the residents would say “We were better off under Satan. At least he kept the demons under some sort of control.”
Maybe the problem is we are not entirely trusted. This goes to show what a touchy people they are out there. We do all we can to support the spread of democracy by arming the royal family of Saudi Arabia and the Amir of Kuwait and the honourable folk who rule Qatar, and go out of our way to support people with titles such as “Mighty Wizard of Eternal Vengeance and Holy uber-King who can make up laws as he goes along, Divinely Grand Swisher of the Majestic Whip and his Million Wives of Bahrain”, and the little sods still doubt our honourable intentions.
But now there is an even more urgent reason to back the bombing of somewhere or other, which is we must do it for the refugees. The Sun newspaper, in particular, has been running a campaign that we “Do it for Aylan”, the three-year-old lad who was drowned as his family fled from the horrors of Isis.
I suppose they must have spoken to Aylan’s family, who would have told The Sun that bombing somewhere or other is exactly what he would have wanted.
Mark Steel in The Independent
Some people get confused by events in Syria, but they’re not that complicated. Quite simply, we need to bomb somewhere or other out there, like we should have done two years ago. Back then we should have dropped bombs to support the Isis rebels fighting against the evil Assad. But as we didn’t bother, we now need to put that right by bombing the Isis rebels, and protecting Assad.
Because if only we had bombed Assad back then, it would be much easier to bomb Isis and their allies now, as we would be one of their allies so we could bomb ourselves. And we could do that without the fuss of going all the way to Syria, which would cut down on carbon emissions as well.
Also, we could ask Isis if they had any bombs left over that we had given them, “as we need them back to bomb you please”.
The change has happened because back then, you may recall, Assad was so unspeakably evil he had gassed his own people. But now we have decided we support Assad so I suppose we have found out the gas wasn’t so much a chemical weapon as a Syrian version of Febreze, that has left Aleppo with an alluring scent of lemon.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned against bombing, saying “Syria is not Libya, it won’t implode but explode beyond its borders.” So that might not be too cheery, if he is saying things will not necessarily go as smoothly as they have turned out in Libya.
If you were really fussy, you could look for another example of a western invasion in the Syria/Iraq region in the recent past, and find out how well that went. But where we went wrong in Libya and Iraq, is we only bombed one side.
This is the sort of pacifist behaviour that causes the trouble. We should have bombed all the different sides, to make sure we annihilate the right people.
Sometimes we have tried this to a certain extent, so at different times we have armed Assad and Gaddafi and Saddam and Bin Laden and then bombed them for using the bombs we had sold them. But it is not organised properly and leaves the poor sods confused.
Instead of supporting Arab dictators for 20 years, then opposing them for three, and then supporting them again, we should arrange it on a rota system. We could bomb them on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, bomb their opponents on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and leave Sundays for US construction companies to make some money rebuilding the stuff we have bombed, so there is something new to bomb.
Otherwise we are left with the predicament Tony Blair finds himself in. He complains that we didn’t bomb Assad two years ago. But, in 2002, Blair invited Assad to stay at Buckingham Palace and praised his modernising outlook. If he had used my suggested system, he could have grovelled to him on Thursday, then bombed him in his bedroom on Friday. I’m sure the Queen wouldn’t have minded sleeping on a mate’s settee for a couple of weeks while builders repaired the damage.
The silly thing is, it’s now claimed there are secret units of the IRA – who have kept their weapons against the rules of the peace process. It would have kept them out of mischief if they had been asked to bomb Blair’s pals such as Assad and Gaddafi, as long as they did it on one of the agreed days, and it would have strengthened the Northern Ireland peace process as well.
There could also be a surprise element to which side we bomb, with vast commercial potential. Instead of the same predictable places popping up, there should be an international body that chooses the venue, with Sepp Blatter opening an envelope to reveal “next year the place we have to bomb as we can’t just do nothing is… Finland”.
Then, whenever someone suggests bombing Finland will make things worse, columnists and politicians and blokes in pubs can shout “well, we can’t do NOTHING”.
This argument, that we can’t do NOTHING, is powerful and well thought through, because it’s clear from Western military interventions in the Middle East that no matter how bad the situation is before we go there, we manage to make it worse. This must have taken immense planning in Libya, but was worth it because everyone seems to agree that most of the country looks back on their days under the foul, despotic, murderous tyranny of Gaddafi with a dreamy nostalgic affection.
We could bomb Hell, and within a month the residents would say “We were better off under Satan. At least he kept the demons under some sort of control.”
Maybe the problem is we are not entirely trusted. This goes to show what a touchy people they are out there. We do all we can to support the spread of democracy by arming the royal family of Saudi Arabia and the Amir of Kuwait and the honourable folk who rule Qatar, and go out of our way to support people with titles such as “Mighty Wizard of Eternal Vengeance and Holy uber-King who can make up laws as he goes along, Divinely Grand Swisher of the Majestic Whip and his Million Wives of Bahrain”, and the little sods still doubt our honourable intentions.
But now there is an even more urgent reason to back the bombing of somewhere or other, which is we must do it for the refugees. The Sun newspaper, in particular, has been running a campaign that we “Do it for Aylan”, the three-year-old lad who was drowned as his family fled from the horrors of Isis.
I suppose they must have spoken to Aylan’s family, who would have told The Sun that bombing somewhere or other is exactly what he would have wanted.
Wednesday 19 August 2015
Jeremy Corbyn is the curator of the future. His rivals are chasing an impossible dream
‘To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is magical and despairing.’ Photograph: H Armstrong Roberts/Getty Images
GeorgeMonbiot in The Guardian
On one point I agree with his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn has little chance of winning the 2020 general election. But the same applies to the other three candidates. Either Labour must win back the seats it once held in Scotland (surely impossible without veering to the left) or it must beat the Conservatives by 12 points in England and Wales to form an overall majority. The impending boundary changes could mean that it has to win back 106 seats. If you think that is likely, I respectfully suggest that you are living in a dreamworld.
In fact, in this contest of improbabilities, Corbyn might stand the better chance. Only a disruptive political movement, that can ignite, mesmerise and mobilise, that can raise an army of volunteers – as the SNP did in Scotland – could smash the political concrete.
To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is simultaneously magical and despairing. Such dreamers argue that Labour has to recapture the middle ground. But there is no such place; no fixed political geography. The middle ground is a magic mountain that retreats as you approach. The more you chase it from the left, the further to the right it moves.
As the social philosopher Karl Polanyi pointed out towards the end of the second world war, when politics offers little choice and little prospect of solving their problems, people seek extreme solutions. Labour’s inability to provide a loud and proud alternative to Conservative policies explains why so much of its base switched to Ukip at the last election. Corbyn’s political clarity explains why the same people are flocking back to him.
Are they returning because he has tailored his policies to appeal to the hard right? Certainly not. They are returning because he stands for something, something that could help them, something that was not devised by a row of spadbot mannikins in suits, consulting their clipboards on Douglas Alexander’s sofa.
Nothing was more politically inept than Labour’s attempt before the election to win back Ukip supporters by hardening its stance on immigration. Why vote for the echo when you can vote for the shout? What is attractive about a party prepared to abandon its core values for the prospect of electoral gain? What is inspiring about a party that grovels, offering itself as a political doormat for any powerful interest or passing fad to wipe its feet on?
In an openDemocracy article, Ian Sinclair compares Labour’s attempts to stop Corbyn with those by the Tories in 1974-75 to stop Margaret Thatcher. Divisive, hated by the press, seen by her own party as an extremist, she was widely dismissed as unelectable. The Tory establishment, convinced that the party could win only from the centre, did everything it could to stop her.
GeorgeMonbiot in The Guardian
On one point I agree with his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn has little chance of winning the 2020 general election. But the same applies to the other three candidates. Either Labour must win back the seats it once held in Scotland (surely impossible without veering to the left) or it must beat the Conservatives by 12 points in England and Wales to form an overall majority. The impending boundary changes could mean that it has to win back 106 seats. If you think that is likely, I respectfully suggest that you are living in a dreamworld.
In fact, in this contest of improbabilities, Corbyn might stand the better chance. Only a disruptive political movement, that can ignite, mesmerise and mobilise, that can raise an army of volunteers – as the SNP did in Scotland – could smash the political concrete.
To imagine that Labour could overcome such odds by becoming bland, blurred and craven is to succumb to thinking that is simultaneously magical and despairing. Such dreamers argue that Labour has to recapture the middle ground. But there is no such place; no fixed political geography. The middle ground is a magic mountain that retreats as you approach. The more you chase it from the left, the further to the right it moves.
As the social philosopher Karl Polanyi pointed out towards the end of the second world war, when politics offers little choice and little prospect of solving their problems, people seek extreme solutions. Labour’s inability to provide a loud and proud alternative to Conservative policies explains why so much of its base switched to Ukip at the last election. Corbyn’s political clarity explains why the same people are flocking back to him.
Are they returning because he has tailored his policies to appeal to the hard right? Certainly not. They are returning because he stands for something, something that could help them, something that was not devised by a row of spadbot mannikins in suits, consulting their clipboards on Douglas Alexander’s sofa.
Nothing was more politically inept than Labour’s attempt before the election to win back Ukip supporters by hardening its stance on immigration. Why vote for the echo when you can vote for the shout? What is attractive about a party prepared to abandon its core values for the prospect of electoral gain? What is inspiring about a party that grovels, offering itself as a political doormat for any powerful interest or passing fad to wipe its feet on?
In an openDemocracy article, Ian Sinclair compares Labour’s attempts to stop Corbyn with those by the Tories in 1974-75 to stop Margaret Thatcher. Divisive, hated by the press, seen by her own party as an extremist, she was widely dismissed as unelectable. The Tory establishment, convinced that the party could win only from the centre, did everything it could to stop her.
Who should I vote for in the Labour leadership election?
Across three decades New Labour strategists have overlooked a crucial reality: politicians reinforce the values they espouse. The harder you try to win by adopting your opponents’ values, the more you legitimise and promote them, making your task – and that of your successors – more difficult. Tony Blair won three elections, but in doing so he made future Labour victories less likely. By adopting conservative values, conservative framing and conservative language, he shifted the nation to the right, even when he pursued leftwing policies such as the minimum wage, tax credits and freedom of information. You can sustain policies without values for a while but then, like plants without soil, the movement wilts and dies.
The Labour mainstream likes to pretend that Blair’s only breach of faith was the Iraq war. The marketisation of the NHS, the private finance initiative, the criminalisation of peaceful protest, collusion in the kidnap and torture of dissidents from other nations, the collapse of social housing – I could fill this page with a list of such capitulations to greed and tyranny. Blair’s purges, stripping all but courtiers from the lists of potential candidates, explain why the party now struggles to find anyone under 50 who looks like a leader.
The capitulations continued under Ed Miliband, who allowed the Conservative obsession with the deficit and austerity to frame Labour politics. As Paul Krugman explains, austerity is a con that does nothing but harm to the wealth of this nation. It has been discredited everywhere else: only in Britain do we cling to the myth. Yet Miliband walked willingly into the trap. His manifesto promised to “cut the deficit every year” and to adopt such cruel Tory policies as the household benefits cap.
You can choose, if you wish, to believe that this clapped-out, alienating politics – compounded by such gobsmacking acts of cowardice as the failure to oppose the welfare bill – can capture the mood of the nation, reverse Labour’s decline and secure an extra hundred seats. But please stop calling yourself a realist.
Rebuilding a political movement means espousing what is desirable, then finding ways to make it feasible. The hopeless realists propose the opposite. They assemble a threadbare list of policies they consider feasible, then seek to persuade us that this package is desirable. If they retain core values, they’ve become so muddled by tacking and triangulation as to be almost indecipherable.
So great has the damage been to a party lost for 21 years in Blair’s Bermuda triangulation that it might take many years until it becomes electable again. That is a frightening prospect, but the longer Labour keeps repeating the same mistakes – reinforcing the values it should be contesting – the further to the right it will push the nation, and the more remote its chances of election will become. The task is to rebuild the party’s values, reclaim the democratic debate, pull the centre back towards the left and change – as Clement Attlee and Thatcher did in different ways – the soul of the nation.
Because Labour’s immediate prospects are so remote, regardless of who wins this contest, the successful candidate is likely to be a caretaker, a curator of the future. His or her task must be to breathe life back into politics, to recharge democracy with choice, to ignite the hope that will make Labour electable again. Only one candidate proposes to do that.
Friday 14 August 2015
With hundreds of thousands of new supporters, Labour is on the verge of something big – what a complete disaster!
Mark Steel in The Independent
It’s easy to see why those in charge of the Labour Party are so depressed. They must sit in their office crying: “Hundreds of thousands of people want to join us. It’s a disaster. And loads of them are young, and full of energy, and they’re really enthusiastic. Oh my God, why has it all gone so miserably wrong?”
Every organisation would be the same. If a local brass band is down to its last five members, unsure whether it can ever put on another performance, the last thing it needs is young excited people arriving with trombones to boost numbers and raise money and attract large audiences. The sensible response is to tell them they’re idiots, and announce to the press that they are infiltrators from the Workers’ Revolutionary Party.
The Labour Party in recent years has insisted that it’s a party that understands business. But if it were running Apple, it would employ a novel approach. A report could come in that a new product was so successful that customers were queuing up to see it, and the sales staff were having to stand on fire engines to address the crowds eager to buy it. So Labour would say: “We’ll scrap that for a start. Let’s promote our other models that have initiated no interest from anyone whatsoever, such as a digital table mat. That’s how to make money.”
The fervour around Jeremy Corbyn is extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be fair to suggest he’s the only Labour politician who can bring large crowds on to the streets to greet him. Tony Blair is just as capable. In his case the crowds are there to scream that he should be arrested for war crimes and to throw things at him, but that’s being pernickety; he can certainly draw an audience.
Blair made another contribution to the leadership debate this week, and his prose is worth quoting. It goes: “The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched, over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below. This is not a moment to refrain from disturbing the serenity of the walk on the basis it causes 'disunity'. It is a moment for a rugby tackle if that were possible.”
It’s fitting this was published on the day that A-level results were announced, as it’s hard to imagine how any examiner would have marked this. It’s possible he didn’t even write it himself, and he’s stolen it from the lyrics of an obscure prog rock band from 1975. Maybe there’s another verse: “As we float across Narnia in a bubble of tadpoles, an iguana with a beard threatens to make us anti-business by renationalising the railways, and we cry in a golden canoe that no one will vote for us in Nuneaton.”
Or he was simply trying to convey the scale of apocalypse that will result from Labour electing a leader who stands for something. Tomorrow he’ll add: “Our great party is literally climbing into the mouth of a lion, as it stands unaware of an American dentist poised behind, dozing as it climbs into a ride at Alton Towers that hasn’t been checked since 2008, placing our economy in a shopping mall in America just before a teenager goes berserk with a machine gun. Is THAT what you WANT?”
His accomplice of old, Alastair Campbell, has been just as coherent, insisting Jeremy Corbyn would lead the party to disaster beyond imagination. Maybe there’s still time for Alastair to prove his point by compiling a dossier explaining in detail exactly how Jeremy Corbyn would cause this disaster, showing beyond doubt that the disaster would be caused within 45 minutes, so that the only rational response is to invade Jeremy Corbyn.
This week, I was lucky enough to enjoy at first hand this calm approach of Labour’s leaders, when my application to register as a supporter was turned down on the grounds that: “We have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party.” I suppose it’s encouraging that they’re being so thorough, although it could be argued that leading your country into a disastrous invasion, having justified it with a set of premises it turns out you made up, is also slightly at odds with the aims and values of the Labour Party. So, presumably, Blair and Campbell and their supporters will have received the same email as me?
Or there’s Simon Danczuk, the MP who has pledged to do all he can to overthrow Jeremy Corbyn from day one of his leadership. I wonder if publicly committing yourself to bringing down the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party could give someone a reason to believe you didn’t support the aims and values of the Labour Party?
If not, this could lead to a whole new way of running organisations. When someone joins the Scouts they should have to pledge to bring down the Scouts from day one, otherwise they’re not allowed to join. If a new member applies to join a bowls club, they should be asked if they’re prepared to abide by the rules of the elected committee, and if they are, they should be told to sod off and never come back.
Then there’s John McTernan, the former adviser to Jim Murphy, who insists that Corbyn will be a catastrophe, and that the party should continue with the strategy he devised in Scotland, which took the party’s MPs from 41 to a much more manageable one, making it far easier to deal with admin.
These are the types you want to make a party successful, not crowds of young enthusiastic people eager to change society. Isn’t it obvious?
It’s easy to see why those in charge of the Labour Party are so depressed. They must sit in their office crying: “Hundreds of thousands of people want to join us. It’s a disaster. And loads of them are young, and full of energy, and they’re really enthusiastic. Oh my God, why has it all gone so miserably wrong?”
Every organisation would be the same. If a local brass band is down to its last five members, unsure whether it can ever put on another performance, the last thing it needs is young excited people arriving with trombones to boost numbers and raise money and attract large audiences. The sensible response is to tell them they’re idiots, and announce to the press that they are infiltrators from the Workers’ Revolutionary Party.
The Labour Party in recent years has insisted that it’s a party that understands business. But if it were running Apple, it would employ a novel approach. A report could come in that a new product was so successful that customers were queuing up to see it, and the sales staff were having to stand on fire engines to address the crowds eager to buy it. So Labour would say: “We’ll scrap that for a start. Let’s promote our other models that have initiated no interest from anyone whatsoever, such as a digital table mat. That’s how to make money.”
The fervour around Jeremy Corbyn is extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be fair to suggest he’s the only Labour politician who can bring large crowds on to the streets to greet him. Tony Blair is just as capable. In his case the crowds are there to scream that he should be arrested for war crimes and to throw things at him, but that’s being pernickety; he can certainly draw an audience.
Blair made another contribution to the leadership debate this week, and his prose is worth quoting. It goes: “The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched, over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below. This is not a moment to refrain from disturbing the serenity of the walk on the basis it causes 'disunity'. It is a moment for a rugby tackle if that were possible.”
It’s fitting this was published on the day that A-level results were announced, as it’s hard to imagine how any examiner would have marked this. It’s possible he didn’t even write it himself, and he’s stolen it from the lyrics of an obscure prog rock band from 1975. Maybe there’s another verse: “As we float across Narnia in a bubble of tadpoles, an iguana with a beard threatens to make us anti-business by renationalising the railways, and we cry in a golden canoe that no one will vote for us in Nuneaton.”
Or he was simply trying to convey the scale of apocalypse that will result from Labour electing a leader who stands for something. Tomorrow he’ll add: “Our great party is literally climbing into the mouth of a lion, as it stands unaware of an American dentist poised behind, dozing as it climbs into a ride at Alton Towers that hasn’t been checked since 2008, placing our economy in a shopping mall in America just before a teenager goes berserk with a machine gun. Is THAT what you WANT?”
His accomplice of old, Alastair Campbell, has been just as coherent, insisting Jeremy Corbyn would lead the party to disaster beyond imagination. Maybe there’s still time for Alastair to prove his point by compiling a dossier explaining in detail exactly how Jeremy Corbyn would cause this disaster, showing beyond doubt that the disaster would be caused within 45 minutes, so that the only rational response is to invade Jeremy Corbyn.
This week, I was lucky enough to enjoy at first hand this calm approach of Labour’s leaders, when my application to register as a supporter was turned down on the grounds that: “We have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party.” I suppose it’s encouraging that they’re being so thorough, although it could be argued that leading your country into a disastrous invasion, having justified it with a set of premises it turns out you made up, is also slightly at odds with the aims and values of the Labour Party. So, presumably, Blair and Campbell and their supporters will have received the same email as me?
Or there’s Simon Danczuk, the MP who has pledged to do all he can to overthrow Jeremy Corbyn from day one of his leadership. I wonder if publicly committing yourself to bringing down the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party could give someone a reason to believe you didn’t support the aims and values of the Labour Party?
If not, this could lead to a whole new way of running organisations. When someone joins the Scouts they should have to pledge to bring down the Scouts from day one, otherwise they’re not allowed to join. If a new member applies to join a bowls club, they should be asked if they’re prepared to abide by the rules of the elected committee, and if they are, they should be told to sod off and never come back.
Then there’s John McTernan, the former adviser to Jim Murphy, who insists that Corbyn will be a catastrophe, and that the party should continue with the strategy he devised in Scotland, which took the party’s MPs from 41 to a much more manageable one, making it far easier to deal with admin.
These are the types you want to make a party successful, not crowds of young enthusiastic people eager to change society. Isn’t it obvious?
Wednesday 29 July 2015
Jeremy Corbyn: The Jose Mourinho of politics is playing in the Premier League at last
Simon Kelner in The Independent
When he narrows his eyes and stares into the camera, there is something of Jose Mourhino about Jeremy Corbyn. “The Special One” of Labour’s left wing may be a bit older and have less of a confident swagger, but he has the tousled grey hair, the deep-set eyes and the craggy, unshaven look of the all-conquering Chelsea manager.
There the similarity may end, because Corbyn is not a natural born winner. It is true that he has lived much of his political life on the fringes of the Labour Party, the vocal champion of special interest groups like the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
He’s never played in the Premier League of politics, and the sense is that he rather enjoyed his position as something of a provocateur, a man who, when the occasion demanded, could act as Labour’s conscience, reminding his colleagues that this is the party that should look after the poor and the disadvantaged, not the rich and the privileged.
He’s “a romantic idiot who wants high taxes”, according to Labour peer Lord Sewel, although the opinion of a 69-year-old man wearing an orange brassiere while snorting coke off a prostitute’s bosom might be considered inadmissible.
Nevertheless, it’s true that Mr Corbyn is a romantic, and not just because the thrice-married MP seems to find it quite easy to fall in love. He’s a conviction politician, a man who has the rather old-fashioned notion that his ideals shouldn’t be compromised in the pursuit of power. And now he stands, almost accidentally, on the brink of the leadership of the Labour Party and people are suddenly asking: How the hell did that happen?
For the past few weeks, Labour stalwarts have been trying to discredit Mr Corbyn and his wild, left-wing views, like his wanting the railways to be renationalised or saying the wealthiest in society should pay higher taxes or campaigning against tuition fees. Tony Blair has warned that the election of Mr Corbyn as leader would be a gift to the Tories, while others have said that moving the party to the left would make it unelectable (they seem to have forgotten that there is recent evidence that Labour is pretty unelectable as it is).
Now, however, a new narrative is getting traction. Jeremy Corbyn is ahead in the race because he believes in something, and is consistent in those beliefs. Andy Burnham, one of his rivals, has acknowledged this by saying that Labour “has become a purveyor of retail politics, trading in the devalued currency of policy gimmicks designed to grab a quick headline”. He added: “It is in this context that we need to judge the current leadership race and ask why Jeremy Corbyn is having such an impact.”
Mr Corbyn, like Nigel Farage, is unafraid to say the unpopular, and both are brave enough to eschew middle-ground politics because it’s not where their heart is. Tony Blair gives the game away somewhat when he talks about politics in terms of winning and losing. “Personally, I prefer winning,” Blair said.
The irony is that because Jeremy Corbyn is a principled man (a legendary paltry expenses claimer) and is true to his values and beliefs, he might – in this election, at least – end up being a winner, too.
When he narrows his eyes and stares into the camera, there is something of Jose Mourhino about Jeremy Corbyn. “The Special One” of Labour’s left wing may be a bit older and have less of a confident swagger, but he has the tousled grey hair, the deep-set eyes and the craggy, unshaven look of the all-conquering Chelsea manager.
There the similarity may end, because Corbyn is not a natural born winner. It is true that he has lived much of his political life on the fringes of the Labour Party, the vocal champion of special interest groups like the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
He’s never played in the Premier League of politics, and the sense is that he rather enjoyed his position as something of a provocateur, a man who, when the occasion demanded, could act as Labour’s conscience, reminding his colleagues that this is the party that should look after the poor and the disadvantaged, not the rich and the privileged.
He’s “a romantic idiot who wants high taxes”, according to Labour peer Lord Sewel, although the opinion of a 69-year-old man wearing an orange brassiere while snorting coke off a prostitute’s bosom might be considered inadmissible.
Nevertheless, it’s true that Mr Corbyn is a romantic, and not just because the thrice-married MP seems to find it quite easy to fall in love. He’s a conviction politician, a man who has the rather old-fashioned notion that his ideals shouldn’t be compromised in the pursuit of power. And now he stands, almost accidentally, on the brink of the leadership of the Labour Party and people are suddenly asking: How the hell did that happen?
For the past few weeks, Labour stalwarts have been trying to discredit Mr Corbyn and his wild, left-wing views, like his wanting the railways to be renationalised or saying the wealthiest in society should pay higher taxes or campaigning against tuition fees. Tony Blair has warned that the election of Mr Corbyn as leader would be a gift to the Tories, while others have said that moving the party to the left would make it unelectable (they seem to have forgotten that there is recent evidence that Labour is pretty unelectable as it is).
Now, however, a new narrative is getting traction. Jeremy Corbyn is ahead in the race because he believes in something, and is consistent in those beliefs. Andy Burnham, one of his rivals, has acknowledged this by saying that Labour “has become a purveyor of retail politics, trading in the devalued currency of policy gimmicks designed to grab a quick headline”. He added: “It is in this context that we need to judge the current leadership race and ask why Jeremy Corbyn is having such an impact.”
Mr Corbyn, like Nigel Farage, is unafraid to say the unpopular, and both are brave enough to eschew middle-ground politics because it’s not where their heart is. Tony Blair gives the game away somewhat when he talks about politics in terms of winning and losing. “Personally, I prefer winning,” Blair said.
The irony is that because Jeremy Corbyn is a principled man (a legendary paltry expenses claimer) and is true to his values and beliefs, he might – in this election, at least – end up being a winner, too.
Saturday 25 July 2015
The last thing Labour needs is a leader like Jeremy Corbyn who people want to vote for
Mark Steel in The Independent
At last sensible Labour politicians are injecting some maturity into the leadership debate. To start with, Tony Blair’s aide John McTernan called anyone who nominated Jeremy Corbyn a “moron”, which is such a refreshing change from the divisive and childish approach of the Left.
His next statement will be that Jeremy Corbyn smells like a poo-poo and anyone who votes for him has a tiny willy, because John McTernan understands the importance of Labour appearing grown up and united.
Now Blair himself has informed us Corbyn would be a disaster. This could cause a problem, because for giving his views in a speech Blair usually charges at least £200,000, and Labour’s finances are stretched enough as it is. Normally he’s advising the government of Kazakhstan or a Saudi Arabian oil company, or shaking hands with characters like Colonel Gaddafi so it’s surprising he didn’t suggest cancelling the election and putting the army in charge of the party, and sentencing Diane Abbott to 500 lashes. Even so it’s sweet of him to take time out from his busy schedule.
He said that if your heart is telling you to vote for Corbyn, you need a heart transplant. You can see how he thinks this, because the first word anyone thinks of when they see Blair is “heart”. Tony Heart Blair is what his friends President Assad of Syria and ex-military ruler Mubarak of Egypt call him.
When you’re responsible for all the heartfelt warmth and sunshine that resulted from invading Iraq, it’s understandable if you get angry with heartless types such as Jeremy Corbyn who opposed it all along, but not everyone can live up to Blair’s standards.
Blair’s supporters point out that although his current image is tarnished, we should remember he was hugely popular in 1997.
The Blair viewpoint has clearly affected Margaret Beckett, as she’s one of the MPs who nominated Corbyn, and her response to being called a moron was to agree. She regrets helping him to stand for the election, she says, as she never guessed he would win as much support as he has. This is a novel attitude towards democracy, that the worst thing you can do in an election is allow someone to stand if they might win.
Maybe Labour should change its rules for elections again, so that anyone who disagrees with Blair is only allowed to stand if they sign a pledge to get fewer than eight votes.
Luckily, Corbyn’s opponents are making a persuasive case for their own bids. Andy Burnham is especially clear that he’s opposed to the Tory’s Welfare Bill, as it will “Hit working families” and “hit children particularly badly”. Indeed he’s so opposed to it that he was determined not to vote against it. The most effective way to oppose it, he insisted, was to abstain rather than vote against it, because that way he can unite the party against it.
It’s so rare that a politician speaks clearly like that, in a language we can all understand. Presumably he’ll be telling all his supporters not to vote for him in the leadership election, but to abstain as that way he can win by even more.
Burnham is known as an Everton fan, so when he’s at their games he must try and persuade the Everton supporters to sing “Spurs and Everton, Spurs and Everton, we’ll abstain on this one evermore, we’ll abstain on this one ever-more”, rather than fall into the trap of supporting the team he supports by supporting them.
Maybe his plan is to make Labour electable again by supporting all the different policies. If he becomes leader, Labour will support the cuts and oppose them, and oppose fox-hunting but support it as well, and that way the party can win votes from everyone.
At last sensible Labour politicians are injecting some maturity into the leadership debate. To start with, Tony Blair’s aide John McTernan called anyone who nominated Jeremy Corbyn a “moron”, which is such a refreshing change from the divisive and childish approach of the Left.
His next statement will be that Jeremy Corbyn smells like a poo-poo and anyone who votes for him has a tiny willy, because John McTernan understands the importance of Labour appearing grown up and united.
Now Blair himself has informed us Corbyn would be a disaster. This could cause a problem, because for giving his views in a speech Blair usually charges at least £200,000, and Labour’s finances are stretched enough as it is. Normally he’s advising the government of Kazakhstan or a Saudi Arabian oil company, or shaking hands with characters like Colonel Gaddafi so it’s surprising he didn’t suggest cancelling the election and putting the army in charge of the party, and sentencing Diane Abbott to 500 lashes. Even so it’s sweet of him to take time out from his busy schedule.
He said that if your heart is telling you to vote for Corbyn, you need a heart transplant. You can see how he thinks this, because the first word anyone thinks of when they see Blair is “heart”. Tony Heart Blair is what his friends President Assad of Syria and ex-military ruler Mubarak of Egypt call him.
When you’re responsible for all the heartfelt warmth and sunshine that resulted from invading Iraq, it’s understandable if you get angry with heartless types such as Jeremy Corbyn who opposed it all along, but not everyone can live up to Blair’s standards.
Blair’s supporters point out that although his current image is tarnished, we should remember he was hugely popular in 1997.
The Blair viewpoint has clearly affected Margaret Beckett, as she’s one of the MPs who nominated Corbyn, and her response to being called a moron was to agree. She regrets helping him to stand for the election, she says, as she never guessed he would win as much support as he has. This is a novel attitude towards democracy, that the worst thing you can do in an election is allow someone to stand if they might win.
Maybe Labour should change its rules for elections again, so that anyone who disagrees with Blair is only allowed to stand if they sign a pledge to get fewer than eight votes.
Luckily, Corbyn’s opponents are making a persuasive case for their own bids. Andy Burnham is especially clear that he’s opposed to the Tory’s Welfare Bill, as it will “Hit working families” and “hit children particularly badly”. Indeed he’s so opposed to it that he was determined not to vote against it. The most effective way to oppose it, he insisted, was to abstain rather than vote against it, because that way he can unite the party against it.
It’s so rare that a politician speaks clearly like that, in a language we can all understand. Presumably he’ll be telling all his supporters not to vote for him in the leadership election, but to abstain as that way he can win by even more.
Burnham is known as an Everton fan, so when he’s at their games he must try and persuade the Everton supporters to sing “Spurs and Everton, Spurs and Everton, we’ll abstain on this one evermore, we’ll abstain on this one ever-more”, rather than fall into the trap of supporting the team he supports by supporting them.
Maybe his plan is to make Labour electable again by supporting all the different policies. If he becomes leader, Labour will support the cuts and oppose them, and oppose fox-hunting but support it as well, and that way the party can win votes from everyone.
Labour Leadership cadidates, from left to right: Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn, Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham
It could be that the reason three of the candidates are struggling to make an impact is they don’t seem capable of expressing what they stand for.
Whenever they’re asked what they believe in they make grand replies such as “I want a Britain not of down but of up, for the always and not the never, that reaches out to all of us, not only people on the 133 bus, a Britain not just of the liver but also the kidney, a Britain that can care, can share, be debonair, fair, abstain on the austere, and say a prayer like Tony Blair.”
Liz Kendall makes some effort to stand for something definite, which is to be like Blair but more so, and next week she’ll probably criticise Blair for only invading Iraq once when he should have done it twice.
There are reports that Kendall has asked Yvette Cooper to drop out, as Liz stands the best chance of beating Corbyn. As every survey shows Kendall is by some distance last, that’s impressive and I might try this myself. I’ll suggest to Mo Farah that he drops out of the 5,000m in next year’s Olympics, as my time of two hours is the only one that stands a chance of beating the Kenyans.
All three are now squabbling, not about ideas or policies or even their favourite type of biscuit, but over which one has the best chance to beat Corbyn. And they must beat him, because by being capable of expressing his ideas clearly and simply, for example by voting against welfare cuts, he makes himself unelectable.
If you look at Corbyn’s record it’s clear he just can’t win elections. In his constituency of Islington North he inherited a majority of 4,456, which is now 21,194. He’s one of the few Labour MPs whose vote increased between 2005 and 2010, when he added 5,685 to his majority. This is typical of the man, defying the official Labour policy of losing votes and getting more of them instead, just to be a rebel.
So let’s hope one of the others triumphs, and at least wins back the votes Labour lost in Scotland, where so many people at the last election said “I canna vote Labour, they don’t abstain enough for me, the wee morons.”
It could be that the reason three of the candidates are struggling to make an impact is they don’t seem capable of expressing what they stand for.
Whenever they’re asked what they believe in they make grand replies such as “I want a Britain not of down but of up, for the always and not the never, that reaches out to all of us, not only people on the 133 bus, a Britain not just of the liver but also the kidney, a Britain that can care, can share, be debonair, fair, abstain on the austere, and say a prayer like Tony Blair.”
Liz Kendall makes some effort to stand for something definite, which is to be like Blair but more so, and next week she’ll probably criticise Blair for only invading Iraq once when he should have done it twice.
There are reports that Kendall has asked Yvette Cooper to drop out, as Liz stands the best chance of beating Corbyn. As every survey shows Kendall is by some distance last, that’s impressive and I might try this myself. I’ll suggest to Mo Farah that he drops out of the 5,000m in next year’s Olympics, as my time of two hours is the only one that stands a chance of beating the Kenyans.
All three are now squabbling, not about ideas or policies or even their favourite type of biscuit, but over which one has the best chance to beat Corbyn. And they must beat him, because by being capable of expressing his ideas clearly and simply, for example by voting against welfare cuts, he makes himself unelectable.
If you look at Corbyn’s record it’s clear he just can’t win elections. In his constituency of Islington North he inherited a majority of 4,456, which is now 21,194. He’s one of the few Labour MPs whose vote increased between 2005 and 2010, when he added 5,685 to his majority. This is typical of the man, defying the official Labour policy of losing votes and getting more of them instead, just to be a rebel.
So let’s hope one of the others triumphs, and at least wins back the votes Labour lost in Scotland, where so many people at the last election said “I canna vote Labour, they don’t abstain enough for me, the wee morons.”
Tuesday 16 June 2015
Perhaps the world's conspiracy theorists have been right all along
Alex Proud in The Telegraph
We used to laugh at conspiracy theorists, but from Fifa to banking scandals and the Iraq War, it seems they might have been on to something after all, says Alex Proud
'I want to believe': Mulder and Scully (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) in The X Files Photo: 20th Century Fox
Conspiracy theories used to be so easy.
You’d have your mate who, after a few beers, would tell you that the moon landings were faked or that the Illuminati controlled everything or that the US government was holding alien autopsies in Area 51. And you’d be able to dismiss this because it was all rubbish.
Look, you’d say, we have moon rock samples and pictures and we left laser reflectors on the surface and... basically you still don’t believe me but that’s because you’re mad and no proof on earth (or the moon) would satisfy you.
It’s true that there was always the big one which wasn’t quite so easily dismissed. This was the Kennedy assassination - but here you could be fairly sure that the whole thing was a terrible, impenetrable murky morass. You knew that some things never would be known (or would be released, partially redacted by the CIA, 200 years in the future). And you knew that whatever the truth was it was probably a bit dull compared to your mate’s flights of fantasy involving the KGB, the Mafia and the military-industrial complex. Besides, it all made for a lot of very entertaining films and books.
Photo: Reuters
This nice, cozy state of affairs lasted until the early 2000s. But then something changed. These days conspiracy theories don’t look so crazy and conspiracy theorists don’t look like crackpots. In fact, today’s conspiracy theory is tomorrow’s news headlines. It’s tempting, I suppose, to say we live in a golden age of conspiracy theories, although it’s only really golden for the architects of the conspiracies. From the Iraq war to Fifa to the banking crisis, the truth is not only out there, but it’s more outlandish than anything we could have made up.
Of course, our real-life conspiracies aren’t much like The X-Files – they’re disappointingly short on aliens and the supernatural. Rather, they’re more like John Le Carre books. Shady dealings by powerful people who want nothing more than to line their profits at the expense of others. The abuse of power. Crazy ideologues who try and create their own facts for fun and profit. Corporations supplanting governments via regulatory capture.
So, what are some of our biggest conspiracies?
The Iraq War
The most disgusting abuse of power in a generation and a moral quagmire that never ends. America is attacked by terrorists and so, declares war on a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks, while ignoring an oil rich ally which had everything to do with them. The justification for war is based on some witches’ brew of faulty intelligence, concocted intelligence and ignored good intelligence. Decent people are forced to lie on an international stage. All sensible advice is ignored and rabid neo-con draft dodgers hold sway on military matters. The UK joins this fool’s errand for no good reason. Blood is spilled and treasure is spent.
The result is a disaster that was predicted only by Middle Eastern experts, post-conflict planners and several million members of the public. Thousands of allied troops and hundreds of thousands of blameless Iraqis are killed, although plenty of companies and individuals benefit from the US dollars that were shipped out, literally, by the ton. More recently, Iraq, now in a far worse state than it ever was under any dictator, has become an incubator for more terrorists, which is a special kind of geopolitical irony lost entirely on the war’s supporters.
And yet, we can’t really bring ourselves to hold anyone accountable. Apportioning responsibility would be difficult, painful and inconvenient, so we shrug as the men behind all this enjoy their well-upholstered retirements despite being directly and personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of wasted dollars. And the slow drip, drip of revelations continues, largely ignored by the public, despite the horrendous costs which (in the UK) could have been spent on things like the NHS or properly equipping our armed forces.
Fifa
The conspiracy du jour. We always knew Fifa was shonky and bribey, but most of us thought the more outlandish claims were just that. Not so. As it turns out, Fifa is a giant corruption machine and it now looks like every World Cup in the last three decades, even the ones we were cool about, like South Africa, could have been fixes.
Photo: AFP
On the plus side, it seems that something may be done, but it’ll be far too late to help honest footballing nations who missed their moment in the sun. For those who say "it’s only a stupid sport", well, recently we’ve heard accusations of arms deals for votes involving... wait for it... Saudi Arabia. The Saudi connection makes me wonder if, soon, we’ll be looking a grand unified conspiracy theory which brings together lots of other conspiracy theories under one corrupt, grubby roof.
The banking crisis
A nice financial counterpoint to Iraq. Virtually destroy the western financial system in the name of greed. Get bailed out by the taxpayers who you’ve been ripping off. And then carry on as if nothing whatsoever has happened. No jail, no meaningful extra regulation, the idea of being too big to fail as much of a joke as it was in 2005. Not even an apology. In fact, since the crisis you caused, things have got much better for you – and worse for everyone else. Much like Iraq, no-one has been held responsible or even acknowledged any wrongdoing. Again, this is partially because it’s so complicated and hard – but mainly because those who caused the crisis are so well represented in the governments of the countries who bailed them out. Oh, and while we’re at it, the banks played a part in the Fifa scandal. As conspiracy theorists will tell you, everything is connected.
Paedophiles
This one seems like a particularly dark and grisly thriller. At first it was just a few rubbish light entertainers. Then it was a lot more entertainers. Then we had people muttering about the political establishment – and others counter-muttering don’t be ridiculous, that’s a conspiracy theory. But it wasn’t. Now,it’s a slow-motion train crash and an endless series of glacial government inquiries. The conspiracy theorists point out that a lot of real stuff only seems to come out after the alleged perpetrators are dead or so senile it no longer matters. It’s hard to disagree with them. It’s also hard to imagine what kind of person would be so in thrall to power that they’d cover up child abuse.
And the rest
Where do you start? We could look at the EU and pick anything from its rarely signed-off accounts to the giant sham that let Greece join the Euro in the first place. We could look at UK defence procurement – and how we get so much less bang for our buck than France. We could peer at the cloying, incestuous relationship between the UK’s political class and its media moguls and how our leaders still fawn over a man whose poisonous control over so much of our media dates back to dodgy deal in 1981 that was denied for 30 years. We could look at the NSA and its intimate/ bullying relationship with tech companies. And we could go on and on and on.
But actually what we should be thinking is that a lot of this is what happens what you dismantle regulatory frameworks. This is what happens when you let money run riot and you allow industries to police themselves. This is what happens when the rich and powerful are endlessly granted special privileges, celebrated and permitted or even encouraged to place themselves above the law. And this is what happens when ordinary people feel bored by and excluded from politics, largely because their voices matter so little for the reasons above. Effectively, we are all living in Italy under Silvio Berlusconi. What’s the point in anything?
But actually, there is some hope. While the number of rich and powerful people who think they can get away with anything has undoubtedly grown, technology has made leaking much easier. Wikileaks may not be perfect, but it’s a lot better than no leaks at all. The other thing that gives me succour is the public’s view of the bankers. We still hate them, which is absolutely as it should be. And slowly this contempt is starting to hurt the masters of the universe. It’s notable that, recently, banking has started tumbling down the down the list of desirable careers. So, I suppose the solution is simple: we need more regulation, we need more transparency and we need more public shame and disgust. We might even get the last two; I’m less hopeful about the first.
In the X-Files, Fox Mulder’s famous catchphrase was, “I want to believe” but that’s because the conspiracy theories he dealt with were rather good fun. Ours, by contrast, tend to involve an endless procession of wealthy old men abusing their power. So I don’t want to believe any more. I want my kids to grow up in a world where conspiracy theories are something you laugh at.
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