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Lapsed

Jun 27

Posted by Kirsty in Constitution, Ideology, Parties | 37 Comments

Sometimes it comes down to the simplest things.

I have struggled with holding my Labour Party membership ever since the Glasgow East by-election. To be confronted with the destitution I saw only five miles away from where I used to live while canvassing and leafleting shocked me to my core.

Maybe I’m just a naïve, privileged stupid girl, or perhaps I’m just a normal person, rightfully horrified by walking into a close with shit and graffiti smeared all over the walls and kids playing next to methadone tumblers and needles.

It was only one close, because the two activists and I decided to jettison our leaflet run after that, but it’s horrified me ever since.

Whenever I have campaigned for the Labour Party I have been able to justify seeing the more unpleasant parts of lots of places in Britain by truly believing the candidate I was working for and the wider cause were both doing good, or were going to do better, albeit perhaps slower than I would want to see. But in Glasgow East, a seat I knew Labour had held forever anon, I couldn’t in good faith console myself that this was an acceptable place which my party had abandoned people and children to live, within an hour’s walking distance of the contrast of my comfortable life surrounded by my university and West End lifestyle.

But I stayed in the party. I was able to pass off a sight that I still have nightmares about as an aberration, something the cause I was dedicated to would eventually solve.

I believe the Labour Party is still the best vehicle to solve poverty in Britain, but it’s not a journey I can take any longer. The children I witnessed in that close in Easterhouse that day were not there because immigrants had taken their parents’ jobs, but because a Thatcherite government strangled funds to a Labour-led council that had no hope to even begin to address those children’s needs.

I cancelled my Labour Party direct debit on Friday, because Ed Miliband’s intervention on immigration is to me the single, worst, most crappy-William Hague-era thing I have ever heard a Labour leader say. At a time of economic austerity, to even subtly posit that low wages, poor housing and lack of opportunities are caused by ‘them’, a foreign other, coming across from somewhere else, when the root of poverty in Britain is the fault of the political and economic system we continue to inhabit, is just the cheapest political posturing, and I cannot endorse it.

It is the final straw in a lapse that has been a long time coming. But it does come down to the simplest things.

I spent this weekend at the STUC’s youth conference, where policy for Scotland’s young trade unionists is debated and agreed for the year ahead. On behalf of the STUC’s youth committee I moved the motion for debate on the independence referendum, dedicating the STUC to convening events and debates for young trade union members to fully explore the pros and cons of independence, to receive input from both the Yes Scotland and Better Together campaigns, and to make their own minds up about what will almost certainly be the most decisive vote my generation will take part in.

I remain undecided about independence. I look at the Yes Scotland launch and am left cold by the unrepresentative panel and the clear SNP-only organization. But then I look at the Better Together launch on Monday and I’m left even colder.

It’s a simple thing, to believe an organization you value and even love, will value your own views back. Too simple, perhaps.

Independence, whatever your views, is too important an issue to be left to the politicians to decide. It’s certainly far too important a decision for us on the left to trust to a coalition between Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, who have already decided for us that the UK is the best possible political and economic system we can possibly have.

I’m a big fan of British democracy, but a walk around the east end of Glasgow a few years ago was enough to convince me that it wasn’t the best of all possible worlds.

It wasn’t enough for Labour to only consult with members on the timing, the number of questions, the electorate and the governance of an independence referendum.

As the party who delivered devolution for Scotland I’m angry that Labour have not seriously consulted party members on attitudes towards independence, or the devolution of further powers, and translated those attitudes into a less strident, pro-UK-as-it-is campaign. Sure, the attitudes of a party and activists who know they rely on a Scottish bloc vote to hold the balance of power in Westminster will be skewed. But I don’t believe there is mutual exclusivity in wanting every child in the UK to be lifted out of poverty, and in wanting economic powers to be closer to the communities they are meant to serve.

Until now I have always been able to stick with Labour because I believed my efforts served a greater cause. I know there are many, many Labour representatives who know this, and strive and work towards it every day. I’ve been incredibly privileged to know and work with a few of them, and I hope to continue to support them whenever I can. There is certainly no other political party I would consider joining.

But when Labour decides to blame immigrants, however subtly with one speech, and chooses to side with those whose economic policies cause the social ills we witness, by just deciding that there isn’t an alternative to the current system, it becomes a cause which no effort of mine can hope to change.

The A-ha Paradigm

Jun 25

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution, Parties | 20 Comments

A guest post today from Craig Gallagher. Craig is a PhD Student in History at Boston College and a Graduate Fellow of the Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy. He studies early modern Scottish imperialism, such as it was, with a particular focus on the Darién project and how it fits into the wider narrative of Scots and Empire, on which he has blogged at Better Nation before.

The A-ha Paradigm
At Edinburgh University on Friday night, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Mike Russell MSP, gave the keynote lecture to the first British Scholar Society conference to be staged in Scotland, which was entitled “Scotland Transformed: Cricket, Passports and the resilience of the social union”. The central theme was Russell’s own diverse British background, having been born in England to a Scottish mother and a Welsh-English father, before marrying a Gael and learning the language over 30 years, which he presented as an eloquent and thoughtful example to refute accusations that Britishness is rigidly defined and, crucially, can be taken away without your consent.

By common consent amongst the academics assembled from 21 countries across the world, from as far afield as the USA and the UAE, Russell gave an absorbing speech entirely befitting the questions being asked at this conference, about post-imperial Britain and the possible reconfiguration of the Union of Parliaments, which contained very little partisanship and instead embraced the word “political” in its analytical, rather than subjective sense. Yet it was the Q&A that followed which proved most revealing to many in the audience.

Following on from a roundtable on Scottish Independence the previous evening for conference attendees – which had featured Alan Taylor of the Herald chairing a discussion between Professors John Curtice and Owen Dudley-Edwards, Dr. Catriona MacDonald and Joyce McMillian of the Scotsman – many of the American audience were moved to ask about the distinctive Scottish educational spirit Russell championed, as well as engage in a series of enquiries about identity and its relevance to the debate we’re having. One young Englishman currently studying in Arkansas asked, in a deeply considered manner, why as a unionist he should accept having to stand by and watch his United Kingdom dissolve without having a say. Yours truly pressed the Education Secretary on Scottish Studies and the Curriculum for Excellence, and how he responds to accusations of parochialism generally.

On both counts, Mike Russell was assured. In response to my question, (I’m paraphrasing) he stressed his belief that to be an internationalist, you have to first be a nationalist; to take your place on the world stage, you have to first know what place it is you are taking. On response to the Arkansas scholar, he countered with his assertion that identity is a malleable concept, that it cannot be taken from you any more by a state anymore than one can be imposed upon you. You are what you are. My American colleagues had some pretty thoughtful things to say about this argument – not least the fact that they can simultaneously be, say, a Tennessean and an American – but what struck me was their complete lack of suspicion in how they framed their questions. They were asking honestly, even sceptically, for Russell to justify his claims, but there was no hint of the inherit narrowed-eyes scorn that I think infects the discourse levelled at the SNP.

This has led me to offer a theory about Scottish unionism that I believe isn’t totally skewed by my own ardent nationalism, and instead has some empirical basis. Many unionists are driven by what I will term the “A-ha! Paradigm”. By this, I mean they are consistently, determinedly, obsessively looking for the inherent cravenness in the SNP’s push for independence that they believe must be there. They see Alex Salmond’s discussion of devo-max and think, “Aye, he just wants to have a fall-back option”. They see Mike Russell discuss the social union and think, “Aye, they’re just trying to make it seem like they’re not anti-English”. They see Alex Neil talk about a community-based campaign and think “Aye, but they’re funded by millionaires, so that’s all a smokescreen”.

Some examples of the “A-ha! Paradigm” include Ken MacIntosh’s insistence that Scottish Studies being added to the curriculum was an attempt by the SNP to brainwash schoolchildren, while Johann Lamont’s attacks on Salmond over Rupert Murdoch make it clear for all to see that she believes this was the secret to the SNP’s obviously-anomalous win in May last year. It betrays an attitude in unionist ranks that if they can just find a way to puncture the rhetoric of independence, they’ll reveal an empty shell underneath. The fact that this hasn’t really happened, despite recent bloviating on the SNP’s “lack of detail” on a post-independence Scotland, is illustrative only of these politicians – and political commentators – own craven assumptions about how government should be conducted.

Of course, this isn’t confined to unionists. Many nationalists – for example, Joan MacAlpine or James Kelly, in my opinion – also subscribe to this paradigm. Like most unionists, they present every tiny flaw in their opponents plans as somehow evident of a massive scam that is deceiving the Scottish people. But it’s definitely most prevalent in the Labour and Tory parties in Scotland, who seize on every little thing – from school dinners to the Dalai Lama – as the domino that, if toppled, will prove decisive. I mostly omit the Lib Dems because I see signs in Willie Rennie’s leadership that they’ve absorbed at least some of the lessons of 2011.

Mike Russell kiboshed a few of these on Friday, particular on the EU and on passports, questions asked by scholars from European nations, incidentally. But he made it clear his contempt for the constant, obsessive desire to find and expose the probably-there-if-we-shout-loudly-enough flaw in the independence argument. He instead insisted that it’s simply not credible to say independence wouldn’t work, that Scotland can’t do it, and that anyone who argues that should be treated derisively. I tend to agree, and would go further. There is no question that Scotland could be independent, and prosperously so. But there are questions as to whether it should, and definite flaws in some not-yet-fully-formed SNP positions on issues. Those should be fair game for critics, and treated as such. But it would be nice if such criticisms are devoid of the conspiratorial tenor of the “A-ha! Paradigm”.

From Walthamstow to Westminster: why I want to lead the Green Party of England and Wales

Jun 12

Posted by Guest Blog in Parties, Westminster | 9 Comments

An exclusive guest post today from Natalie Bennett. Natalie has announced she is standing to be leader of the Green Party following Caroline Lucas’s decision not to restand in September. Her website is here: http://www.natalie4leader.org/

In the 2001 general election, having just moved to Walthamstow, east London, I went to the polling station to vote Green. I was surprised, and disappointed, to find that there wasn’t a Green Party candidate. The moment came back to me five years later, when I decided it was past time to make doing something about the state of the world a personal priority.

Joining the Green Party of England and Wales – helping it stand in places like Walthamstow – seemed the natural step, but if you’d told me then that six and a half years later I would be standing for the leadership of the party south of the border, I would certainly have thought you’d been looking at the carbon emissions graphs for too long.

Yet in a way the path from Walthamstow to here is clear enough when I look back.

I’ve been through some great highs with the Green Party, and some pretty tough lows – a high in 2006 in the central London borough of Camden when we won our first two councillors, and a low in 2010 when we lost two of by then three councillors to the general election Labour swing.

I’ve learnt a lot about the party, and politics, since 2006. As an activist, candidate, and now chair, of Camden Green Party, and as founding chair of Green Party Women, I’ve seen how much there is to do, and how difficult it can be to shape lots of enthusiastic volunteers and minimal financial and physical resources into a high-functioning whole.

I’ve become utterly convinced that a Green political approach is the only appropriate response to the current economic and ecological crisis. It’s so screamingly obvious that we can’t continue to treat the world as a combined mine/rubbish tip, and can’t keep discarding to a life of poverty and fear millions of people, whether they are trapped in low-wage jobs or on inadequate benefit payments.

Yet it’s also clear that the Green Party itself is at a critical point. We’ve made the huge leap to our first MP. We’re now identifiably the third party in London following the mayoral/Assembly elections.

But still, for many people up and down the country who might like to vote Green – and we know that when presented with our policies, unbranded, they’re the most popular with voters — there’s no sunflower logo on their ballot paper. And for many others, the Greens have yet to establish themselves sufficiently locally to look like a viable choice.

This needs to change. Fast.

We need to work to ensure that by the end of the decade everyone has at least one Green rep, an MEP. We can certainly treble our number of MEPS in 2014 as a starting point, covering six regions.

Over the next decade we can put at least one local councillor in every major town and city around the country and have a spread of serious Westminster target seats around the country.

To do that, we have to transform how our party works. The Green Party believes in localism; we have local parties, not branches, who decide their own activities and direction. Lots of good in that – just look at the dreadful results of centralised diktats from other parties, from Tony Blair’s pager MPs downwards.

But we’ve also in general interpreted that as leaving local parties to their own devices, to sink or swim. Some have powered on confidently – Brighton, Norwich, Lancaster, more recently Solihull – but many, without targeted, organised support, have not. Under a first-past-the-post electoral system, it is hard to get a real foothold.

Local parties need to work together as teams. Regions need to act as a coordinated unit. The national party needs to bring it all together into a supportive, coherent whole.

And we need to stand up proudly with the courage of our convictions. We have a model for an entirely different kind of economy and society that the public is crying out for, yet we haven’t done enough to develop it and to put it into ordinary language, in mass circulation news outlets.

On many policies – drugs, nuclear weapons and prostitution to name just three — we have what the Daily Mail would call shocking ideas. Yet these are ideas that the majority of the public actually back – and sometimes we’re not brave enough in proclaiming them.

Neither of those points is a criticism of Greens working hard up and down the country. We don’t need them to work even harder – that would hardly be possible. But we do need to work smarter, and in a more coordinated way. And we need to make sure we’re telling the public about what we’re doing, convincing them to vote for us, to support us, to join us.

Then we can ensure that everyone not only has the chance to vote Green, but the opportunity to contact an elected Green rep with their concerns, at every level of government. And we can move confidently on to be the third party in the country, then beyond. And in doing that we’ll not only elect more Greens, but start to pull the centre of political gravity in Britain back from the hyper-capitalist neoliberalism that’s nearly shredded our economy and society.

Miliband and Narrow Nationalism

Jun 7

Posted by Kirsty in Constitution, Parties | 14 Comments

In the aftermath of the Jubilee and before the Olympics descends, Miliband is wringing out more flag waving, speaking at the site of the 1951 Festival of Britain to compel England to be a bit more interested in the break-up of the British state.

Singling out arch agent provocateur Jeremy Clarkson, who has likened Scotland leaving the UK to “waving goodbye to a much loved, if slightly violent, family pet”, Miliband criticises those in England for narrow nationalism and ignoring multiple identities and allegiances. He criticises the SNP too for the same crime of narrow nationalism, of making people choose to be Scottish over British.

It’s not the SNP who are making Scottish people choose to identify as Scottish instead of British: 14 years of polling data indicates only 19% of Scots choose to describe themselves as British first.

Likewise, I’m not convinced persuading the English of the need to take more of an interest in Scottish devolution and independence is a good strategy for Miliband either. I believe Scotland’s future should be a matter for people living in Scotland alone when it comes to voting in the independence referendum, but that said I remain interested in what people living in the other UK nations think, and how that affects their own attitudes to living on this island.

But I don’t think those attitudes are in the direction Ed Miliband wishes them to be facing in. According to the IPPR’s Future of England survey, published in January 2012, most people in England are decidedly relaxed about Scotland’s departure from the union. A relaxed position developed and strengthened by a simmering resentment at an increasing feeling that England herself gets a raw deal from the union.

As Slugger details today, British identity and English identity are no longer co-terminous. Miliband may have electoral interests in building a strong English identity among English voters, against the far right and to tackle Tory toffs unable to talk to common people, but I fail to see where such a feeling becoming fervour for retaining Britain translates into defending the union.

Whether the English are indifferent or passionate about retaining Scotland in the UK, their influence will always be minor on how Scots vote in the independence referendum. It’s nice to be wanted of course, but it’s equally nice to be respected to make up our own minds.

Miliband’s aides say he’s brave for not going for the obvious topic of addressing national identity in Scotland; but I’m not convinced trying to persuade the English about their identity instead is a show of strength.

For Scottish independence, much like Scottish nationalism, identity itself is only one factor. The desire for independence goes further and deeper than notions of whether one is a Scot or a Brit, but rather how we want to be governed and how we see our country and economy, schools and businesses, being run. It’s safe for Miliband to talk about identity, but it will have no impact on the referendum result. Perhaps, like Mr Clarkson, he too should ditch such a narrow outlook.

Changing gears but not drivers

Jun 2

Posted by Kirsty in Economy, Parties, Westminster | 5 Comments

The coalition’s got problems, but Tory government can still survive, albeit perhaps with a different, older head.

The end of this week sees George Osborne retreat on three high-profile sections of his 2012 Budget, with the cap on charity tax relief (previously blogged here) joining u-turns on the VAT status of pasties and static caravans.

To negate embarrassment, the Treasury made these announcements in the true tradition of choosing good days to bury bad news, with pasties and caravans being announced just prior to recess and thus avoiding any awkward parliamentary questions, and the charity tax cap, despite the promise of a summer consultation, being ditched just as Jeremy Hunt gave evidence to Leveson on Thursday.

According to the Financial Times, Osborne has sacrificed these measures in order to avoid the politicking: “Mr Osborne presented the retreats as a sensible piece of housekeeping – defusing awkward and relatively trivial political rows to allow him to focus on his role as the country’s economic helmsman: ‘Keeping Britain safe in the gathering storm.’”

Nonetheless, this embarrassing muddle does nothing to diffuse the growing perception that Cameron’s government are out of touch toffs. Denying the plebs the pleasures of sausage rolls and a week by the sea in a caravan. Not realising that those wealthy benefactors don’t just magically appear at the appeals of charities and arts organisations in need, but require cajoling.

Like a stopped clock, Nadine Dorries is, occasionally, right. Or she was at least once last month when she called Cameron and Osborne “two arrogant posh boys” with “no passion to understand the lives of others”. While Osborne is beset by Budget troubles, Cameron is increasingly suffused by the omnishambles generated by Leveson, from the arrest of his mates Rebekah and Andy, to having to defend Hunt.

It’s no surprise that recent elections to the 1922 Committee saw backbenchers like Priti Patel, Guto Bebb and Simon Kirby elected, all part of the 301 Group loyal to the leadership and less likely than the 1922 Committee old guard to criticise government policy. The lack of coincidence is reaffirmed by Nick Pritchard, who complained that Downing Street “should spend more time trying to fix the economy and less time trying to fix the 1922 elections” as he stood down as one of its secretaries.

So the wagons are circling, as we approach Westminster’s mid-term. The Tories’  hope is that current controversies become chip paper, the economy starts to recover and grow, and that those 301 Conservative MPs (hence the name of the faction) are elected in 2015 for a full Tory government.

Labour, of course, revel in each and every crisis plaguing the coalition, whether condemning the budget u-turns as a shambles, or forcing a vote on Jeremy Hunt. But whether these issues will lead to any electoral benefit to Labour is yet to be seen.

Despite shoring up the 1922 Committee with supporters, the Tories do have a streak for being ruthless when their leaders let them down. If Cameron and Osborne can’t get the coalition show back on the road, the knives will be drawn by their backbenchers.

Any obvious successors? Osborne is right that the focus has to be on steering the economy – the foremost issue in voters’ minds. -So it needs a good, calm pair of hands. Possibly someone already tried and tested, known by voters.

Despite claiming he has no ambition to lead his party for a second time, William Hague seems an obvious choice. A competent Foreign Secretary, with a Yorkshire accent and comprehensive schooling to boot, just to get rid of all those Tory toff jibes.

This week Hague and Miliband look like leaders, while Cameron looks like anything but. Hague is promising that military action on Syria is not being ruled out, and launching campaigns against sexual violence in war zones with Angelina Jolie. Meanwhile Ed Miliband is visiting troops in Afghanistan and calling for action to protect soldiers from abuse back home. Meanwhile 1 in 10 people apparently think David Cameron is an alien.

Hague now seems a lifetime away from his aborted leadership during Tony Blair’s heyday. Where once was naivety and bluster there is parliamentary oration and political instinct. He would be a far more difficult, heavy-weight opponent than Cameron for Miliband to take on at a General Election. I doubt a Conservative Party, led again by Hague, could be beaten.

Nobody wants to join Peter Bone, in his morbid fascination with who gets to run Britain should Cameron be killed, but I think his preference for that person to be Hague is telling. Should the present omnishambles not clear any time soon, Hague’s definitely the one to watch.