Labour Leadership Latest

I finally catch up with the exciting news that our Oxford PPE mafia are to be challenged by two horny handed scions of the soil: Burham and Abbot, both of whom struggled up through the despised academic backwater of Cambridge. Now there's diversity in action for you.

Oh well, it probably doesn't matter as John Lanchester nailed the result back on May 6th:

As is well known, it was decided a long time ago that the new leader will be a Miliband. It is less well known that in addition to the two Milibands we know about and show no signs of warming to, the party has several other Milibands in reserve. Fenton Miliband is one. He worked for Goldman Sachs, made a lot of money then had a moment of moral revelation and went off to work for the World Bank, then founded a non-profit to study the work of other non-profits in the developing world. His strengths are compassion and maths but focus groups dislike his beard. Another strong choice is Sholto Miliband. He has a beautiful singing voice and was given his own think-tank as a christening present. His special area is Scandinavian health care, and he is so popular in Norway that they named a fjord after him. Foreigners and working-class people have been shown to be reassured by him in statistically measurable ways.

There are plenty more Milibands where they came from. They are made in a lab. It took a while to perfect the process and some of the early prototypes were hideous, unelectable mutants. Most of them were melted down and used for parts, but one escaped and by the time he had been caught he had already found a job working for Gordon Brown and was building a power base in the party, so it was too late. The prototype was called ‘Ed Balls’ but in private the Milibands refer to him as ‘Igor’.

An Election Defeat Won't Be the Nadir of Labour's Fortunes...That'll Come Afterwards

So the madness reaches its full flowering. The last 3 days of any election campaign bring forth the fiercest, best honed arguments of each party, the most outrageous slurs on opponents, the most shameless acts of self promotion - but also the strongest sense of self delusion.

The psychological mechanism underlying all this is actually quite simple: the campaign teams and candidates all refuse to believe they can have been working so hard and so long simply to lose. Almost everyone centrally involved in any election campaign is driven a tiny bit bonkers by the effort by the end.

I don't know what is going to happen on Thursday - except that, of all the possible outcomes, a Labour majority seems the most unlikely. This has immediate consequences: it means that Labour is going to be engaged in selecting a new Leader for several months to come. It is very hard to imagine it managing to hang together in public sufficiently during this process to meaningfully enter into negotiations with any other party. Already the Telegraph is carrying news of an incipient Mandelson-Harman post election feud. But there are deeper things to resolve than the personal enmities of two politicians of a generation whose time is passing. Any leadership election would have to be a postmortem on the whole New Labour project.

So Cameron might be able to govern on his own, even with a minority, for want of any effective opposition. Clegg is going to have relatively few negotiating options even if he holds the balance of power. Of course, something still depends on the precise balance of seats - broadly speaking the fewer Tories get elected the more of a breathing space Labour has to regroup.

But the cuts are coming after the election and there seems every prospect that the Labour Party will neither be in a position to carry them out as (part of) a government nor in a position to attempt to put itself at the head of opposition to to those cuts because of its internal distractions and ideological exhaustion.

Which does rather raise the question of what the Labour Party is actually going to be for in the next decade.

Thoughts on a Hung Parliament

In public, the Labour Party seems to be pretty sanguine about the polls suggesting a hung parliament. The much discussed vagaries of our FPTP system mean, I'm told, it would be quite possible for Labour to come third in the popular vote but still wake up on May 7th to discover they have the largest number of MPs in a hung parliament. It's even more likely that they would have the second largest number of seats. There would be an obvious attack narrative available to them: "the Conservatives haven't 'sealed the deal and are still not trusted'; the electorate has punished us for being in power too long,for sure, but the important thing now is a coalition for electoral reform before the inevitable second election we hope will produce a representative parliament to face the huge economic challenges facing the country." Result? The Tories locked out of power for another political generation.

Labour bloggers seem much less relaxed about this: Shuggy thinks the fight to avoid third place is a sign that they are done for, and Don is equally unequivocal:

It seems obvious to me that if Labour comes third in the popular vote, then that's it - they are out of government. ..... people would have made it quite unambiguously clear that they don't want Labour in government. I absolutely shudder to think what would happen if they tried to do a deal with the Lib Dems and stagger on while presiding over the massive cuts to public spending of the kind that Clegg and Cable have repeatedly said that they want.

& this, I think, is the rub for both Labour and Tories - a hung parliament could well set off a vicious bout of in-fighting inside their parties even as their leaders suddenly started talking about co-operation and 'working together for the national interest'. I mean, shiny Dave has had everything going for him - surely a failure to pluck the lowest hanging fruit in recent electoral memory has got to raise questions about his leadership? (Both in his party and, perhaps more acutely, in the Murdoch camp)*. As for dour Gordon - well that nice Mr.Miliband stands ever ready to present a new face to the public.

Cameron, on balance, could probably survive until a 2nd election - but he'd certainly be toast if he failed to win that. But Brown? I don't think so. The knives will be out for him before the last constituency declares on May 7th. It might be difficult for the LibDems to even contemplate doing a deal with Labour if he stays because he is absolutely the epitome of 'no change'. So a gap would open up between the interests of the Labour Party and the interests of its leader. & we all know New Labour has a sparkling track record in dealing with that sort of situation, don't we?

Radio 4 this morning reported Moodys, the rating agency, as being pretty positive about a hung parliament on the grounds it might lead to a grand coalition to force through the 'necessary' cuts. Paul Mason reports that the City isn't especially worried about a hung parliament per se - what they're concerned about is :

"... a "chaotic" hung parliament where there's maybe one Green, two Respect and one or two BNP members of the Commons, with strong showing from Plaid and the SNP. Right now the political class is thinking Cleggmania might go away, or recede, leaving the old two-party slugging match to get back into business. ..... What they have not even begun to plan for is if Cleggmania begins to give the electorate "permission" to just break away from the whole mainstream party circus."

But a chaotic hung parliament is possible even without a further crumbling of the Tory and Labour votes. All it needs is a civil war within one or both of those parties. If I were a Lib Dem strategist, I'd be sparing some time to think about how I might help that prospect along.

But I'm not a LibDem strategist. I'm just someone who wants to see the re-emergence of a multiple voiced social democracy. I actually want a chaotic hung parliament. & here's how you can help.

*H/T to B&T for this link

Of Health and Social Care

The Observer leads to day with the – oh, so shocking – news that quite a few of the Tory front bench, including that nice Mr.Gove, have endorsed Daniel Hannan’s call for the NHS to be replaced by a new system of health provision in which people would pay money into personal health accounts, which they could then use to shop around for care from public and private providers. Those who could not afford to save enough would be funded by the state.

Which rather sets the stage for health being a central election issue, this time, no doubt, with Labour tying a big pink ribbon round the NHS and claiming to be the ‘patriotic’ party in defending it not like those horrible market obsessed US-wannabees in the Conservative Party. Oh no, no like them at all.

Except of course, in the small matter of social care, where Labour Ministers never miss an opportunity to big up their commitment to individual budgets and self directed care.It's basically the same idea, just transfered to a not-that-dissimilar sector.

Life Imitiates Art

From the Guardian:

"Instead, the rebels adopted a tactic favoured by organised criminals and bought an untraceable pay as you go mobile, encouraging sympathetic colleagues to get in touch that way."

Told you. Also interesting in the Wiki account is the emphasis on the ineptitude of the characters in the TV show. But the examples aren't as striking as the real life ineptitude pointed out by Hopi.

New Labour: the plot summarised

Purnell? Flint? Mandelson? Johnson? Darling? Brown? Blears?

This is not politics. This is like the final episode of the Sopranos. Tony S/Gordon is still standing, even if many of his lieutenants are not, but well...see what you make of the parallels in Wiki's summary of series 6:

"At the beginning of the sixth season, Tony is shot by the now senile and confused Uncle Junior. Rendered comatose, Tony dreams he is a salesman on a business trip, where he mistakenly exchanges his briefcase and identification with a man named Kevin Finnerty. Tony's recovery from the shooting changes his outlook, and he tries to mend his ways. However, he is faced with more problems in his business life. Vito Spatafore is outed as a homosexual and Tony is urged to deal with the problem by Phil Leotardo, now acting boss of New York with Johnny Sack in prison. When Tony fails to act, Phil intervenes and kills Spatafore. Tony's crime family commits a reprisal murder and once more it appears that the families are on the verge of all-out war.

Tony considers killing several of his associates for relatively minor infractions. Christopher is unable to leave the mob, deflecting his problems by relapsing into drug addiction and kills his friend from Narcotics Anonymous. He is then seriously injured in a car accident that he causes while driving under the influence of narcotics. Tony, the sole passenger, is not badly hurt, and suffocates Christopher to death. A.J. is dumped by his fiancée and slips into depression, culminating in a failed suicide attempt in the backyard pool. Dr. Melfi is convinced by friends that Tony is making no progress and may even be using talking therapy for his own sociopathic benefit. She drops him as a patient.

Johnny Sack dies from lung cancer while imprisoned and Leotardo consolidates his position in the Lupertazzi family. He has his opposition for leadership killed and then officially takes over. In a resumption of their past feud Phil will not compromise with Tony on a garbage deal. When Tony assaults a Lupertazzi soldier for harassing Meadow while she is out on a date, Phil seizes a chance for revenge. Phil orders the executions of Bobby Baccalieri, who is shot to death, Silvio, who ends up comatose, and Tony, who goes into hiding. A deal is brokered where the rest of the Lupertazzi family agree to ignore the order to kill Tony, and give Tony an opportunity to go after Phil. An FBI agent informs Tony of Phil's location and Tony has him killed. With Phil’s death, the threat from New York is presumably extinguished and Tony, Carmela, Meadow, and A.J. meet for a casual dinner. The show then suddenly smash cuts to black and the credits roll in silence."

P.S. Jim points out that in Cambridgeshire the Monster Raving Looney Party beat Labour in one election...

Remember, Remember.....

I sat down at the keyboard this morning to give the world the benefit of my take on the shenanigans going on at Westminster. But then I found that Rob had said exactly what I wanted to say, so go read him.

Or you could just, ahem, 'blow up' this image I've nicked from the Guardian.

Pot Noodle Politics

Back in the day there used to be a series of TV adverts for Pot Noodles aimed at the student/New Lad market which basically sold them on the idea they were 'dirty' - i.e. something which everyone know was unpleasant and naff, sordid even, but hugely secretly desirable in an almost quasi sexual way.

I never liked Pot Noodles - but I have to admit that attempted Leadership coups affect me in exactly the way as those old ads attempted to stimulate their target audience. I know they're dirty and no good for me - they're not what I prefer to think of as the real politics of clashing ideas - but there is a horrible fascination. Especially when insiders like Hopi conclude that they're basically really, really badly organised and unprofessional.*

I have no idea whether the attempted coup will succeed in unseating Brown. But I'm fairly certain that it is the formal death of this government one way or another. If he survives the world knows he will be left looking out over the wreckage of PLP unity with a cabinet of restricted moral stature. If he falls Johnson or whoever will be faced with a surely irresistible demand for a swift general election plus the glowering presence of Balls and all the other Brown loyalists quietly awaiting their moment of revenge on the backbenches.

The dynamics of this remind me strangely of Gorbachev's overthrow: the party hardliners (read Byers, Milburn et al if the allegations of who's behind all this are correct) could mount a coup to unseat him but didn't have the cohesion or support to maintain themselves. Yeltsin (read Cameron, I suppose) sobered up enough to stand on a tank amidst a cheering crowd and that was that.

Ach. On reflection this stuff really does make me feel dirty. Why don't you go and read Boffy's crystal clear defense of the Labour Theory of Value - the first article on this to make me reconsider my rejection of it in almost thirty years - as a means of cleansing your palette.

Update: But, a-ha, Finkelstein says there are rumours that Brown stories are being embargoed till after the polls close at 10pm - and that a Minister is scheduled to resign at 10.01pm. So perhaps not quite so unprofessional after all? Or perhaps you simply can't mount a coup in a 'professional' way, as you really don't know who will react how in the critical moments....& that unpredictability, of course, extends to us poor bloody voters. I mean, my heart bleeds for Squirrel Nutkin:

" Ms Blears must have been shocked by the reaction to her decision to step down. Constituents lined up to bark uncomplimentary things on local television news programmes. Even party activists spoke of being stunned by the sudden turn of events...Portrayed as Gordon Brown’s ’smiling assassin’, it could well be Hazel Blears who is facing the firing squad. She now has to go before a meeting of her constituency party later this month to explain herself. There is already talk of a vote of no confidence."

Things Could Only Get Better I Was Assured

Dave Osler's absolutely right:

"In percentage point terms, the blunt truth is that enthusiasm for New Labour has been reduced to a low single figure of the adult population. And given the evisceration of party democracy over the last 15 years, there are no Bennite bogeymen, trade union barons scoffing beer and sandwiches in smoke-filled rooms or evil entrist bedsit Trots to blame. This is the public’s verdict on 12 years of New Labour and New Labour alone in power."

B&T is funnier tho':

"This is a case of a party aggressively, and now successfully, trying to liquidate itself, its vote base, its entire existence as one of the great political tribes of Britain, one of the lodestars of mass democracy – with the whole project starting just as it had the chance to regain power in the mid 1990s. And now we’re in terminal dissolution.

A while back, a wooden statue of a squirrel nibbling a nut suddenly appeared in Crumpsall Park. It was seated on a plinth engraved with the words: “I will do my bit.” I now see that it was the tomb of the far too widely known Hazel, erected in advance. "

Ah well. It's down to that nice Ms. Lucas and fatboy Salmond to save the honour of mildly social democratic liberal politics now.

Mind you, If only I could find a Babelfish equivalent that translate into the Cymraeg I'd put out a last minute email to Plaid asking if they'll stand in the Lambeth seats in the general election, just as a special favour like.

Night of the Long Knives? More Like 'Will The Last Person to Leave Please Turn Off the Lights..'

Blimey, can it really be less than three weeks ago when I asked if it was technically possible for a government to actually die of shame? It felt a bold-bordering-on-silly question when I asked it. After all it has never happened in my lifetime.

But, tell me, how else would you describe a situation where a Home Secretary signals a resignation to preempt being reshuffled due to her husband's predilection for porn and the bloody Chancellor has to repay taxpayers money prior to his own widely expected dismissal? Hoon's under pressure to do the same, Blears has long been soiled goods and I see the Mail has now got it in for Mandelson and his old chum from that famous yacht who seems likely to gain a big interest in the carcass of Vauxhall. Backbench Labour MPs are dropping like ninepins. Things have got so bad that I even feel a twinge of pity for poor Harriet Harman as she is constantly wheeled out to defend the current example of indefensibility - and get slaughtered by Paxman or Humphrys or whoever it might be.

So let me offer an appropriate quote to the diminishing number of New Labour politicos who might be still standing next week when Gordon carries out his reshuffle and could be approached to join the Cabinet.

"I had only 50 days to change things — most politicians get at least 100 … I realised the way of politics was not working, but what could I do? You have the feeling something is very wrong, but cannot fix it." Egon Krenz.

You remember Egon Krenz. No really, you do.

The Virtues of Old Fashioned Class Resentment

The Times has a new poll today - with Labour on 16%, three points behind UKIP. That's specifically for next week's Euro elections - but they're only on 21% for the subsequent general election. Electoral Calculus says the Tories would double their seats in the Commons, and both Labour and Lib Dems lose over half of theirs, if the Times general election poll proves accurate.

Just for comparison: Labour got 30.8% of the vote and 52 seats in 1931, and 27.6% of the vote and 208 seats in 1983. On these figures, Electoral Calculus suggests, they'd end up with 163 seats.

The legitimacy crisis is far from fully played out as yet. There are likely to be other twists and turns. But it seems obvious that it a crisis of the legitimacy of politics, not of individual venality by this or that MP. So any government is likely to suffer more than any opposition - but particularly a Labour government, as the Tories have the age-old persona of being the 'natural' party of leadership, untainted by the exercise of crude 'politics', to fall back on. This remains true, duck ponds, moat cleaning and extensions for servants quarters not withstanding.

I am increasingly of the view that there is only one way out of this for the Left - and the Labour Party is certainly welcome to join us if it feels it can stomach the somersault. It's got absolutely sod all to do with state funding of parties, Alternative Voting schema or the hurried coronation of a former postman.

It is simply to generalise the widespread public disgust at the behaviour of our masters from MPs to bankers. Old fashioned class resentment. Might not work, I quite agree. But nothing else seems to be working either so let's give it try...

From The Banks of The River Irwell...

"The qualities of Salford men and women shine through the adversity of their everyday lives. They were, and still are, people with courage, determination, wit and compassion, and they have an unrivalled ability to see through falseness and to expose insincerity."

From Squirrel Nutkin's maiden speech in the Commons (via).

Aye lass, 'appen they are. But t'question is, can they read chapter 5 of the Labour Party Rule book, t'one that's all about reselection?

Addendum: "In 2006, her constituency was one of three hacked down to two by local boundary changes - which led to a new seat of Salford and Eccles, and the current MP for the latter, Ian Stewart, challenging her for the nomination and losing by 174 votes to 79".

So I make that only about 48 people who need to change their minds.

Expenses: Further Thoughts & Petty Politics

Who seems the worse offender on all this in the shadow cabinet? Well, none other than little Alan Duncan and his remarkable £7,000 gardening bill. I think Cameron can afford to off load him to demonstrate the new found Tory commitment to clean government, don't you? It's a bit more problematic for him to sack Gove, Lansley or Maude who have been flipping their properties to exploit the system or, in Maude's case, just buying a new one. Then there's 'two brains' Willets who does seem to have had an awful lot of light bulbs popping at public expense - he'd be a loss as well. But, nonetheless, it may well be in Cameron's interest to ritually slaughter a sacrificial lamb or two. Why?

Well, then the pressure on Brown to do something similar would be pretty intense. & it's Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith who would have to be in the frame. Blears would be in the frame on a property flipping allegation, and Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the committee on standards in public life has already described Smith's claim as "near-fraudulent". Could Brown survive the loss of the two senior women in his cabinet? Because it would be really quite hard to sack one and not the other if the Tories had taken a strong lead. Could he survive the fall out of doing so after what looks like being a disastrous set of local government and European elections?

These are the petty political thoughts of a Guardian columnist manqué, I know. Indeed, Jacqui Ashley goes further this morning and openly speculates on the possibility of a leadership challenge - or a snap general election. This, you might say, is not real politics, but the superficial froth of Westminster's very own 'Spanish practices'. & normally I'd agree with you.

But I sense a deep, deep loathing of politicians around these revelations - and especially of New Labour politicians. They seem to be attracting some of the hostility originally directed at 'fat-cat' bankers that is still very strongly around in popular political sentiment. Not many people understand Derivatives or other complex financial instruments - but we've all got an idea of what a buckshee bath plug looks like. New Labour are going to bear the brunt of this because (a) they're the Government, after all; (b) they came in on a wave of disillusionment with Tory sleaze, promising 'clean hands'; (c) they're supposed to be the party of fairness for chrissake.

Could this be the end of New Labour - and the pebble which starts a landslide of events which end in a general election this summer ?

Tangentopoli UK ?

I've just heard Tristram Hunt, unlikely ex-new Labour biographer of Engels, on Radio 4 opining that if Britain wasn't a Monarchy this expenses farrago would lead to a collapse of the State and the foundation of a new Republic. I'd guess the Italian experience must have been in his mind. Tangentopoli was the word they gave their situation - 'bribesville'. It took the emergence of the magistrate - not politician -led Manu Pulite ('Clean Hands') anti-corruption campaign to bring it down, and bring down the so called 'First Republic' as well.

Now, despite the fact that the British situation seems far less organised and structural - its all about individual venality as far as I can see, not organisational corruption in the Italian sense - I do think Hunt is on to something. Perhaps because he is the son of a weatherman he can tell which way the wind is blowing.

Dave Osler - and in a different way, Paulie - worry that this is feeding into an anti-political mood in the country. I agree with Paulie that the big threat is not the BNP - although I expect them to made some electoral gains in the Euro elections - but some charismatic and telegenic charmer on the Berlusconi model. (Please God, don't let it be Richard Branson.)

In a way our default model of political leader has been evolving in this direction anyway- think of Blair, and our two current Blair-lites, Cameron and Clegg. Anyone of them might, if they had accidentally lost an election in mid career, have evolved into a TV sofa host on the lines of Jeremy Vine or Kilroy Silk. Even the viciously combative ex-politician Portillo now seems eminently charming and personable as an all purpose TV talking head. The stage is surely set for some movement in the opposite direction - a TV talking head who arrives on the electronic PR campaign equivalent of a white charger promising to sweep away all this nonsense.

Because this is Britain, not Italy, I don't think, as yet, conditions are far enough advanced for such a 'new politics' (sic) to be successful. But I'm prepared to bet someone is going to try.

The Limitations of Gesture Politics

Say what you like about New Labour, it is intensely relaxed about people's sexual orientation.

Take that row a little while ago about Catholic Adoption Agencies having to toe the line and accept applications from gay folk who might want to adopt. They really stood up to the forces of darkness and reaction on that one, didn't they?

Except, of course, there was no recorded incident of any gay couple ever approaching a Catholic Adoption Agency anyway. It was all the politics of headline and gesture.

But there are almost 7,000 Christian schools in England. So protecting vulnerable gay kids - or children of gay and lesbian people - in these institutions might really matter. But these schools are free to preach against homosexuality, and sex outside marriage for that matter, under government proposals to introduce compulsory sex education.

Say what you like about New Labour, it is intensely relaxed about people's sexual orientation -except of course where it might cost them votes.

I Can’t Do Instant Commentary, but I Can Wonder What Age We’re Living In...

Those bloggers who, quite unlike me, don't have to take their socks off to count up to 20, are fast coming into the fray with instant budget commentary. I marvel at their ability to absorb and assess so much stuff so quickly. Duncan the Labour Fund Manager delivers a 'on the right lines but could do better' sort of end of term report, and then moves into a pragmatic defence of the 50% tax rate. Meanwhile Richard Murphy is moving from initially positive coverage to a series of critical, detailed notes on taxes, anti-tax avoidance measures and the limitations of the 'greenspray' Darling has slapped onto his plans.

Over on the right-hand side end of the playground, Alice tells us we're all doomed because of the size of the gap between tax take and spending; Chris Dillow says there's loads of money sloshing round the globe wanting to buy gilts to cover that gap; from the Left AVPS breaks into uncharacteristic purple prose to tell us that the ,"...twitching corpse of neoliberalism has been stitched together with the cadaverous remains of disinterred Keynesianism" with the aim of making the working class pay for the crisis.

I respect all of these bloggers a lot, but I can't help thinking that these are responses 'prepared earlier', like a half built Blue Peter project pulled from under the presenters table. But - hey, what do I know? I've still got both my socks on, after all...

But even as an economic ignoramus I have a hunch that two things are true, one to do with low down politics and one with our perceptions of the Age itself.

Firstly, this is a pre-election budget so it is voter friendly as it is possible to make it in the circumstances.(Just because the rest of us think the prospect of a Labour victory at the polls is vanishingly small doesn't mean that Darling and Brown have accepted the fact). So whoever wins the next election is going to introduce a more severe budget shortly after they move into Downing St.

Well, at least they will if we really are living through a crisis. From the unorthodox left, Boffy argues that not all of us actually are, and the effects of the credit crunch might be quite short lived, though severe in those age and geographical sectors most affected. But there's another view: the Keynesian Left have rediscovered both long waves and Schumpeter, now joyfully reunited by Carlota Perez,

"...growth in the world economy takes place by successive surges of about half a century, each driven by a technological revolution. The massive changes that this brings each time around... involve great behavioural upheavals in the economy and society. For that reason, the difficult process of unlearning the old and absorbing the new takes twenty or thirty turbulent years of "creative destruction." It is after the massive paradigm shift has been basically achieved, that the fruits of the new technologies in higher productivity and widespread innovation can be reaped and socially shared.

Historically, the first half of each surge -the Installation Period- has been the time when financial capital shapes the economy, while the ideology of laissez faire shapes the behaviour of governments. It is a grand experiment when unrestrained finance can override the power of the old production giants and fund the new entrepreneurs in testing the vast new potential. Finance then helps the new giants emerge, enables the modernization of the old industries with the new techno-economic paradigm and facilitates the necessary overinvestment in the new infrastructures (so coverage is enough for widespread usage). Thus the extreme "free market" ideology has a role to play in the early decades of each surge.

The Installation period has led each time to a major bubble followed by a major crash (canal and railway manias ending in panics, the roaring twenties ending in the crash of 1929). The collapse reveals the need for regulation to restrain financial excesses and to favour the real economy, usually under political pressure for reversing the income polarization and other negative consequences of the bubble times. If adequate policies are put in place to facilitate and develop the conditions for healthy market operation and social fairness, what follows is a Golden Age -the Deployment Period- when production (rather than finance) leads the expansion, the benefits of the new technological potential are fully realized across the economy and its social benefits better spread (the
Victorian Boom, the Belle Epoque, the Post War Golden Age)."

Fascinating – but shot through with technological determinism, if the quote above is typical. Schumpeter himself had a rather brilliant protégé who would have dismissed this with a snort: Paul Sweezy. He might, plausibly, have accepted a lot of Perez's analysis, but he would have insisted on the importance of the relations of production as well as the forces of production. & it is Sweezy's own protégés who, to my mind at least, have produced the most interesting analysis of the crisis from the Marxist Left so far. They say there is a systematic crisis, and that socialism is the answer- but Perez's analysis points to the possibility of a kinder, gentler capitalism. So what is the nature of this crisis, and of the Age we're living through?

Virtues of a Social Democratic State Re-Discovered...

From a guest post on the, ahem, Naked Capitalism blog:

Most people cannot deal with the stress of investing their own money or selecting between funds that are offered to them...... the reality is that most individuals cannot handle these responsibilities.

This is why I recommend we scrap private pensions altogether and create several large public defined-benefit plans that are capped at a certain size. These funds would follow the highest standards of governance and they would be managed by professional money managers whose interests are aligned with their stakeholders and pension beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, Willem Buiter makes a strong technical case for the proposition that banks should never be too big to fail and, in any event, should always be regulated by the host nation which must have the ability to tell them what to do.

The ideological supporting props of Thatcherism rot away, one at a time. I await the sudden shift of comprehensive education back into fashion, and the quiet junking of the 'choice agenda' in public services.

But there's a problem here: we lack a social democratic party. I don't just mean that Labour has long since ceased to have any recognisably social democratic policies, though that is clearly true. I mean it is now extremely vulnerable - as its more honest supporters like Paulie recognise - to the charge of astroturfing. It's membership has fallen dramatically, and the social composition of that membership has changed significantly. I have a real sense that it now barely connects into most working class communities except in its role as government. It speaks to, not from, the mass of the people. 'Social Democracy' purely and simply from above, unconnected to any mass cultural or sociological segment of the population is a weird prospect.

Public Sector Blues & New Labour as a Personal Development Cult

It's almost always a mistake to believe that people who say stupid things are stupid. Generally they're not. Generally they're just incapable of seeing why they're so wrong because to do so would involve examining some deeply held, perhaps even unconsciously held, set of assumptions.

I take as my case in point David Blunkett who today tackles the phenomenon of opinion polls shows public sector workers preferring to vote Tory. How can this be he asks, when Labour have poured so many millions into the public sector? Briefly he considers whether this can be put down to,

".. the uncertainty arising out of radical reform of public services; a feeling of insecurity about whether the workforce is valued; and the general instability that comes with rapid change."

But, no, this doesn't make sense to the sage of Sheffield: privatisation worries might be ten fold more pertinent under the Tories. So Blunkett thinks it's because they're they're simple, frightened folk who don't really understand what is going on:

"The pressure to improve services and to overcome outdated practices has led to workers feeling that the devil they don't know is better than the devil they do. ....The simple fact is that they are expressing an instinctive opposition to those who are currently in charge - the present "establishment". It's not possible to believe that rational men and women would want to vote away their jobs, to undermine the public services to which they have devoted their lives. It has, therefore, to be much more about lashing out, expressing a feeling of insecurity and of fear."

Insecurity? Fear?I shall resist the temptation to refer Mr.Blunkett to the title of a book expressing the traditional Labour creed called, ahem, in Place of Fear. Because I don't believe that is the real reason why Labour are losing the loyalty of the public sector.

Quite apart from the fact many public sector workers can see that much of the so called 'massive' investment in public services has flowed straight out again in the form of exploitative PFI contracts, I think the real reason is that the Blairite 'modernisation' of public service has done the exact opposite of what it set out to do. In theory, it is all about dismantling unhelpful bureaucracy, focusing on the service user and breaking from 'provider capture'. In practice it has been experienced as the crushing of a strong, if inchoate, older ethos of public service, the imposition of huge new bureaucracies (especially around procurement and 'joint working') to achieve more and more marketisation of public services and a top down target driven regime. In short it has been about not trusting the public sector.

Thanks to the Fatman, I see some in academia are comparing this to Stalinism. & Mark Harrison, a genuine expert on Soviet economics, writes extremely entertainingly on this theme.

But for me it's the wrong analogy. New Labour aren't so much Stalinist as like one of those creepy Californian personal development cults: when they face criticism from public sector employees one can almost hear them muttering 'get with the programme' under their breathe. Change on the preset lines offered by the 'personal development' is self evidently good and resistance to change is obviously a sign of a lack of responsibility for one's own failings. The idea that the preset objectives of the course itself might be open for discussion is simply unthinkable. To raise such a possibility is threatening - after all, if these objectives are questionable why have so many people paid so much money to sit in a room doing the course in the first place?

I think what the opinion polls are saying is that the public sector workforce are silently slipping from the seminar room without waiting for the motivational personal development speaker to finish. Cult devotees like Blunkett may pursue them down the corridor haranguing them to come back and 'have the courage to change' but there is a grim determination in the stride of the staff as they head away from that softly intimidating atmosphere.

Almost Over

First Jacqui Smith and now McNulty remind me of a completely unscientific theory I hold.

When political parties decompose, something is revealed about the nature of their fundamental sociological appeal. Most politicians of all parties are basically honest – but each party attracts a penumbra of character types to whom the particular party's presentation is fundamentally in tune with their personal psychic nature and self conceived sociological position.

So when the Tories were decomposing in the nineties we had Hamilton and Aitken et al- basically grubby men taking money in brown envelopes from the rich and powerful. This is 'Rotary Club' level corruption writ large. The nod, the wink, the funny handshake – 'it's only business' after all. The political culture set in place by Alderman Roberts' daughter trailed a small town shopkeeper brand of corruption.

Others will judge whether Smith or McNulty have broken any rules. But their offences, if that is what they are, are the offences of the middle manager: the bloated expenses claim, the 'second jacket on the back of the office chair' to convince the higher-ups that work is being down. The cultural underbelly of a successful PowerPoint presentation. &, of course, the game playing indulged by all in large organisations driven by bureaucratic rules and targets.

Once reduced to such stereotypes no party can sustain itself in office. The base is too narrow. Hegemony has collapsed in the eyes of the vast mass of apolitical people. I think Labour is teetering on the brink of that now.

Ross McKibbin is right:

"Who would care if the Labour Party, politically and morally decrepit as it is, lost the next election? Would anyone lose a night's sleep knowing that the present government was no longer in charge of our futures?"

Polly Getting Desperate

Polly T has upped her game from nose pegs to smelling salts today. She's switched from a kind of genteel version of the old SWP mantra of 'vote Labour with no illusions' to an analysis which seems to call for root and branch restructuring on an almost Italian scale:

"The moribund party structure now serves mainly to put down political enthusiasm. Fifty years ago one in 11 people joined parties: now it is only one in 88. These are roadblocks to democratic engagement. If you don't start a political career as a party researcher straight out of university, forget becoming an MP. If you want to start a new movement, don't expect to elect any MPs: the system is stitched up."

Well, seems to call for that: actually she's just supporting the rather under-powered-but-probably-necessary attempts by Compass to begin the process of organising an anti-Tory, pro-social democratic popular front before the expected election defeat. Polly, as befits an ex-SDP member, believes that it must all rest on the rock of PR.

But, in the British context, PR is a solution to a losers' problem - which is why Labour became tentative interested in it during the 1990s. Winners tend not to be so interested. Which is why Labour immediately forgot about it once it had had its own landslide in 1997. In any event, it certainly isn't clear that PR alone breaks the power of the professionalised party machines. As a glance at the governments of Israel or even Ireland makes clear. I support PR, but it is absurd to imagine it can save us from the ills she delineates.

Funnily enough I wonder if one way of allow popular voices to break into the 'magic policy circle' is to actually give political parties more power, not less. I'm slowly coming round to Paul Evans' idea that allowing incoming administrations to appoint their own senior civil servants on the American model might help. It seems, in America, to allow for a whole strata of talented people to have portfolio careers based partly in government, partly in academia and partly actually developing an expertise in specific areas. So incoming Minster don't just have 'straight outta Oxbridge' policy wonks or Mandelsonian PR oriented minions to advise them but solid, 'domain competent' experts who share their political objectives and might be expected to be able to counter the usual arguments from lobby groups and a sometimes supine civil service.

But we're still going to need that popular front. Especially if Mr.Salmond wins his independence referendum shortly after a Cameron government comes to power.