Syriza stood up to the money men – the UK left must do the same

Just imagine: if Labour wasn’t so in thrall to economic bodies and their predictions, we might have a radical left of our own

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • The Guardian, Sunday 25 January 2015 18.57 GMT

‘A leftwing party that cannot face down the risks raised by investors will never be credible.’ Illustration: Robert G Fresson

‘When you study the successful experiences of transformative movements,” said Pablo Iglesias of Podemos, the new party of the Spanish left, “you realise that the key to success is to achieve a connection between the reality you have diagnosed and what the majority actually feels.”

This statement is more than bleedin’ obvious. It is crying out for a response that includes an expletive and Sherlock Holmes. Yet that’s what Iglesias has built: a successful, transformative movement. And in Greece, that’s what Syriza has built too, as demonstrated on Sunday, when a country that only a few years ago saw the rise of the fascist Golden Dawn party, went to the polls with a majority supporting the radical left. That, to a degree, is also what the yes campaign built in Scotland. So we know it is possible, to diagnose a reality that so many people actually feel. It should be possible, also, to decipher how these movements did it.

What they and others like them – the successful German campaign for free higher education, for example – have in common, first of all, is that they reject the prevailing economic verities. Conventional political debate in the UK has parties thrashing out positions, which they then justify and defend with reference to the International Monetary Fund or the Office for Budget Responsibility or the Bank of England. Economic projections, or rather the bodies who make them, stand as the final authority on what constitutes a good decision.

Grant Shapps, the Tory party chairman, provided a bland but elegant example of this on Sunday, when touting the election message – “Conservatives or chaos” – around the BBC. “The IMF says we can be the biggest economy in Europe in 15 years, but only if we stay on the road to growth.” Here, the IMF is presented as authority, godhead and visionary. It can see into the future. It cannot be questioned. In this worldview, party differences are simply practical, problem-solving ones: who can best do what the IMF wants? Who understands growth and how to deliver it? It is ironic that this has become the burning question for democracy, when history shows that growth is pretty unrelated to which party is in government.

Politicians are cast in a fairly minor role by this rationale. They take on a sort of valet position, there to arrange things the way the economy needs them. It is extremely difficult as this kind of politician to make any diagnosis of reality that people might recognise. The last thing you want to do when your hands are tied is to describe a situation – low wages for instance, high housing costs, unliveable lives – that demands action.

One of the fascinating things about the Greek election campaign has been listening to Syriza candidates reply to questions about what to do if the European Central Bank (ECB) becomes angry, or the markets panic. Miranda Xafa, a former IMF board member and supporter of the centrist Potami party, said in an emollient voice (in a Radio 5 Live interview), “I am sure the ECB will be patient.” The gulf between Syriza and all the other parties was suddenly, dramatically clear: the leftwing party no longer thinks of the ECB as its dad. It does not seek its patience. It will not take its terms at any price. This is the necessary precondition for credible leftism: a rejection of the bodies, mostly central banks and attendant forecasting agencies, currently in charge. You can’t build a new game to their rules.

The backstop position for centrists (I call it the centre, but many of its assumptions are what we once called hard right) is that any change invites instability, which is enough to undo the prosperity that all the sensible people are working towards. Whatever happens, money must not be frightened away; investors must not be threatened; job creators must remain secure. During the Scottish referendum this argument took the form of CEOs, standing in front of HQs, proclaiming their intention to leave Scotland forever should it fall into the wrong hands. A leftwing party that cannot face down the risks raised by investors will never be able to make a believable case for anything; their argument is a tinderbox, ready to ignite at the first fiery word from Alan Sugar.

PFI is a classic example of the failings of the UK left: every party agrees these contracts were a rip-off – the coalition is still signing them, while fulminating about Labour’s track record; Labour thinks radicalism means admitting that perhaps they weren’t a good idea. Nigel Farage (again on Radio 5) said to my face that Ukip would “get hospitals out from under the yoke of PFI”. This means tearing up the contracts, doesn’t it? What else could it mean? There is only one other group in the country with an idea so radical, and that’s The People vs PFI.

Why would Labour never dare? Because when people call it anti-business, it hasn’t got the apparatus to cope. Farage dares partly, I think, because he has no intention of carrying it out; but also because, in a bizarre twist to the new multiparty politics, Ukip is often saying something similar to the Greens: business interests aren’t everything. That’s a reality that the majority feels, but that you never hear described; that’s how the Greens overtook the Liberal Democrats, while all eyes were on Ukip.

Back in Greece, exit polls suggest Syriza is on course to form a majority government. We don’t yet know whether or not this spells Grexit, or what it all means for the eurozone. But we do now know, before anybody starts diagnosing anything, the most important thing about building a successful transformative movement: that it is possible. Eminently.

Injection drug which claims to help people lose more weight than they would by dieting or exercising could soon be available through the NHS

by Patrick Sawer in The Telegraph

A treatment of injections that can help people lost a stone more than they normally would by dieting or exercising more has been approved by health watchdogs.

Liraglutide, which has been described by doctors as life-changing, could be available on prescription in months.

Slimmers typically lose almost a stone more than they would by simply watching how many calories they consume and doing more exercise.

Trials showed that some severely obese patients lost so much weight they were able to abandon their wheelchairs and walk normally for the first time in years.

Liraglutide also lowers blood pressure, raises good cholesterol and prevents diabetes. 

According to its makers, Novo Nordisk of Denmark, the drug even produces a 'feel-good factor', making dieting a pleasure.

But some experts have already warned it does not provide a long-term solution to the growing problem of obesity in Britain.

Novo Nordisk will apply for it to be prescribed on the NHS after Friday’s ruling by the European drugs regulator that it is safe and effective.

There are fears however that Nice – Britain’s drugs rationing body – will judge it too expensive for routine use on the NHS.

Liraglutide costs from £2.25 a day, which is roughly double the price of Orlistat, the only other prescription diet drug.

Patients inject the drug into their stomach before breakfast every day. It works by suppressing appetite.

Liraglutide, which will be given the brand name Saxenda, is already used at a lower dose to treat diabetes. It is based on a hormone found in the gut and sends signals to the brain that trick it into feeling full.

As a result, people eat 10 per cent less food than normal.

Trials of Liraglutide found that men and women who injected themselves daily lost an average of 19lb in 12 months. This is almost a stone more than they would lose by being on a diet and increasing the amount they exercise.

Furthermore one third or those who took part in the trials shed 23lb – more than a stone and a half. For a 14 stone woman that kind of weight loss would usually mean dropping two dress sizes.

The drug which, like insulin, comes in an injectable pen, also has such a significant effect on blood pressure that patients can dispense with the drugs they use to keep it under control.

Like Orlistat, its prescription is likely to be limited to those who are obese or who are overweight and have another health problem such as high blood pressure.

Mike Lean, professor of human nutrition at Glasgow University, told the Mail: "Liraglutide is absolutely life-changing for many of our most difficult-to-manage patients. Most do well, and some amazingly well. And it is extraordinarily safe, at least over the two to three years for which we have good evidence, with no signals to suggest serious side-effects.

"The only real downside is that it is jolly expensive."

Professor Jason Halford, former president of the UK Association for the Study of Obesity, said: "It is potentially very exciting. The real benefit of it is that it is targeting appetite. It strengthens the effects of satiety."

Obesity levels have doubled over the past two decades, making the UK the second-fattest nation in Europe.

Extensive research has found that being obese can lessen person's lifespan by as much as nine years and raise the risk of a host of health problems including diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Tests have shown that dieters taking liraglutide lose almost twice as much weight as those on Orlistat.

However, Professor Iain Broom, director of the Centre for Obesity Research at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, said that drugs were never going to provide a long term answer to obesity.

He said: "Until society changes and the Government’s relationship with the food industry changes and the food industry itself changes, we are not going to get anywhere very fast."

The European Commission is expected to approve the drug’s licence within the next two months, paving the way for it to go on sale. Novo Nordisk says it could be launched in Europe, including the UK, this year.

Why don’t abused women just leave their partners? Why don’t poor people just spend less? Why do people in positions of power ask so many stupid questions?

Lucy Mangan in The Guardian

Last week, I took part in a comedy night to raise money for the charity Refuge, which supports women and children who have experienced domestic violence. It was a great night: partly because it raised several thousands of pounds for the cause; partly because it was sponsored by Benefit cosmetics, and the idea of a benefit being sponsored by Benefit pleased me greatly; and partly because standup comedian Bridget Christie finished her act with a plea for all laydeez to stop waxing, spraying, deodorising, strimming and surgically trimming their – well, let’s call it “that part of ourselves historically judged to be the seat of all our femininity and womanly powers” – and instead celebrate our individuality by thinking of those parts as “unique, special – like snowflakes. Made of gammon”, which was both a new thought and a new image, neither of which has left my mind since.

Less uplifting, however, was the number of times I heard, when I mentioned Refuge to people, some variant of: “But what I don’t understand is – why don’t these women just leave?”

We don’t need, I think – I hope – to detail too extensively here the exact answer to that question. Bullet points: an immediate fear of being punched, kicked, bitten, gouged or killed, and of the same happening to your children, preceded by months or years of exploitation of the weakest points in your psyche by a master of the art; an erosion of your self-confidence, liberty, agency and financial independence (if you had any to begin with), coupled with a sense of shame and stigma and a lack of practical options; no money, no supportive family or friends, nowhere to run.

So, let’s concentrate instead on the lack of imagination, the lack of empathy inherent in that question. Because it shapes a lot of questions, and particularly those that animate government policy and the political discourse that will start filling the airwaves more and more as we move towards the election.

Politicians, for example, are apparently completely baffled by Poor People’s propensity to do harmful things, often expensively, to themselves. (That’s politicians of all stripes – it’s just that the left wing wrings its hands and feels helplessly sorry for Them, while Tories are pretty sure They are just animals in need of better training.) The underclass eats fast food, drinks and smokes, and some of its more unruly members even take drugs. Why? Why?

Listen, I always want to say, if you’re genuinely mystified, answer me this: have you never had a really bad day and really wanted – nay, needed – an extra glass of Montrachet on the roof terrace in the evening? Or such a chaotic, miserable week that you’ve ended up with a takeaway five nights out of seven instead of delving into Nigella’s latest?

You have? Why, splendid. Now imagine if your whole life were not just like that one bad day, but even worse. All the time. No let-up. No end in sight. No, you can’t go on holiday. No, you can’t cash anything in and retire. No. How would you react? No, you’ve not got a marketable skills set. You don’t know anyone who can give you a job. No. No.

And on we’d go. “Why do the poor not always take the very cheapest option – in food, travel, rent, utilities or a hundred other things you can find if you or an obliging Spad or unpaid intern trawl and filter case studies for long enough – and stop being so, y’know, poor that way?” someone will ask. And some kind soul – not me, I’d be off for a lie down and some pills by this time – would ask if the questioner had ever been under so much pressure that he’d had to throw money at a problem to secure an immediate answer, to get something rather than nothing, even if it meant paying over the odds, perhaps because someone was exploiting your desperation?

Oh, you have? Well, that bond issue you missed because you had a cashflow crisis after buying the villa in Amalfi, and that box at Glyndebourne for your parents’ wedding anniversary you forgot about till almost too late, have their parallels with furniture for a council flat or with a child’s present bought on punitively interest-rated credit … and so on, until somewhere along the line our boy would have to admit that he shared the same irrational impulses as people all along the socioeconomic scale, differing only in degree of consequences, not in kind.

I don’t understand how the people in charge of us all don’t understand. If you are genuinely unable to apply your imagination and extend your empathy far enough – and you don’t have to do it all at once; little by little will suffice, but you must get there – then you are a sociopath, and we should all be protected from your actions. If you are in fact able and choose not to, then you’re something quite a lot worse.

So, these are the questions I’d like to see pursued once the televised prime ministerial debates begin (if enough speakers agree to turn up, natch): have you ever had a bad day? Have you ever been really, really tired? Have you ever been alone, or frightened, or not had a choice about something? If yes, was your response unique among man? If no, are you a madman or a liar? Do tell. Do tell.

BCCI - Time for an overhaul

Sambit Bal in Cricinfo

To grasp the true significance of the seminal verdict handed down by India's Supreme Court in the IPL spot-fixing case, we need to look beyond the immediate. Beyond N Srinivasan, who has grabbed the headlines; beyond the improprieties, both alleged and proven, that were under scrutiny; and beyond the turf wars within and surrounding the BCCI, which resulted in this case being filed.

The central message delivered by the court is a simple but powerful one: sport, cricket in this case, is sustained by the faith of the fans, and administrators are only custodians of that faith. It's a principle the BCCI has observed mostly in the breach, and the highest court of the land has started a process of redressal.

Over the last few years the BCCI has been presented, through a series of controversies and scandals, several opportunities for course correction and institutional reform but each of these has been spurned due to a combination of hubris and self-interest. The Supreme Court has now decided that the BCCI is neither capable of cleaning up its own act, nor can it be trusted with the job.

The cloud over Srinivasan's re-election as BCCI president has dominated the immediate news agenda but the most consequential part of the judgement is that the board has now been brought within the ambit of judicial scrutiny that public and state bodies are subjected to. Simply put, the BCCI can no longer be a law unto itself under the guise of being a private organisation.

The tenor of the judgement is unequivocal and unambiguous: with governance must come accountability and propriety, and responsibility doesn't end with protecting the bottom line; the fiduciary obligation of a sports organisation extends beyond the bottom line to protecting the integrity and credibility of the game.

For these alone, it is a profoundly groundbreaking judgement. To quote:

"[The] BCCI's commercial plans for its own benefit and the benefit of the players are bound to blow up in smoke if the people who watch and support the game were to lose interest or be indifferent because they get to know that some business interests have hijacked the game for their own ends or that the game is no longer the game they know or love because of frauds on and off the field. There is no manner of doubt whatsoever that the game enjoys its popularity and raises passions only because of what it stands for and because the people who watch the sport believe that it is being played in the true spirit of the game without letting any corrupting influence come anywhere near the principles and fundamental imperatives considered sacrosanct and inviolable."

The immediate fallout of the judgement will be felt most severely by Srinivasan, who has remained cricket's most powerful figure despite being off the BCCI throne. He has been given the clear option of choosing between the BCCI presidency, a position he dearly covets, and ownership of Chennai Super Kings, the highly successful IPL franchise that he has assiduously nurtured.

It's a decision he ought to have taken months ago when it became demonstrably apparent - in case it hadn't been at the time of his acquiring the franchise - that his two hats were irredeemably incompatible. It wasn't so much a matter of his complicity in the wrongdoings of his son-in-law as it was the mere perception of him being in a position of influence when matters relating to his own franchise came up for adjudication.

In striking down the controversial amendment to the BCCI's constitution that allowed Srinivasan to buy CSK, the court said it violated "a fundamental tenet of law that no one can be a judge in his own cause''.

But while Srinivasan's adversaries in the BCCI publicly rejoiced in his discomfiture once the judgement was delivered, few of them can escape culpability. The truth is that the judgement is an indictment of the system. That includes those - Sharad Pawar, Shashank Manohar, IS Bindra and Lalit Modi included - who were party to the constitutional amendment that institutionalised conflict of interest, and then there has been the majority, who have been complicit through their acquiescence. It bears noting that Srinivasan was re-elected unopposed and unanimously even while this case was being heard.

And it can also be argued that while Srinivasan sought and obtained the organisation's sanction for acquiring a commercial interest in the IPL, it is not the first or only instance of a conflict of interest in the BCCI. The father-in-law of Pawar's daughter had a stake in Multi Screen Media, which owned broadcast rights to the IPL; and an affidavit filed by Srinivasan in April 2014, during the hearing of this case, pointed out that Bindra's son had been an employee of Nimbus, the company that owned BCCI television rights between 2006 and 2014, while the company negotiated, and obtained, a discount of nearly US$50 million from a BCCI committee on which Bindra was a member.

The judgement is, however, the beginning of a process that will be now be taken forward by the three-member committee entrusted with the critical task of deciding the punishment for Gurunath Meiyappan - who, it has now been established, was a Super Kings official for all purposes, and who was found to have been betting for and against his own team, and chillingly, in one instance, bet on his team scoring within a range that was one run off the eventual total - and Raj Kundra, a shareholder in Rajasthan Royals. The committee is also tasked with examining the allegations against the conduct of Sundar Raman, the chief operating officer of the IPL, and with overseeing the forthcoming BCCI elections.

But potentially the most far-reaching part of its job will be to examine and recommend institutional reforms for the BCCI. Prima facie, the mandate seems all-encompassing: it covers the role and eligibility of administrators, regulations to resolve issues of conflict of interest, amendments that might be necessary to carry out the recommendations of the Mudgal Committee, and this open-ended mandate:

"Any other recommendation with or without suitable amendment of the relevant Rules and Regulations, which the Committee may consider necessary to make with a view to preventing sporting frauds, conflict of interests, streamlining the working of BCCI to make it more responsive to the expectations of the public at large and to bring transparency in practices and procedures followed by BCCI."

Shortly after the judgement was delivered, the BCCI released a statement welcoming the end of the uncertainty and offering its "unstinted co-operation" to the committee. It must now match its words in both deed and spirit. A combination of circumstances and entrepreneurship have handed it the leadership of world cricket through financial might. But real leadership can only be earned through credibility.

For the BCCI, all the battles outside have been won; the world has been conquered; past slights, real and perceived, have been avenged. It's time to look within.

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