The Sincerity of Jeremy Corbyn

I felt compelled to call LBC this evening because of the way that Nigel Farage (who has his own show on weekday evenings) was trying to portray Jeremy Corbyn as some kind of charlatan for saying he would do whatever it took to stop a no-deal Brexit, and the fact that most of the callers appeared to agree with him that Corbyn could not be trusted, since he has a history of being deeply sceptical about the European Union, and must therefore - according to Nigel and some of his callers -  be trying to take advantage of the situation to gain political power for himself (as if any politician would behave in such a cynical and manipulative manner!)
Click here to hear my conversation with Nigel, which begins at 37:37.

On finding one's 'political home'

I listen to LBC Radio a lot, mainly to the shows of James O’Brien, Maajid Nawaz and Iain Dale. One thing I’ve noticed that crops up in a lot of calls lately is the idea of people searching for a political home. Many callers are essentially socially or economically conservative but are not comfortable with the Tories’ approach to Brexit, or feel that austerity has ‘gone too far’. Others may be of a centre left political stance but might not feel very enamoured of Jeremy Corbyn or the more ‘hard left’ elements which seem now to have become the mainstream of the Labour party. Then there are the hard core Brexiteers who are angry at the perceived dithering of the government over the issue of the UK leaving the European Union. And, equally, the unrepentant Remainers who don’t feel that the Labour party, as the official opposition, are doing enough to fight for the pro-EU position. These people often say that they feel they have no political home. But, sometimes, a caller will announce, like an enthusiastic religious convert, that he or she has, at last, found his/her political home, perhaps in the Liberal Democrat party or, more often, as a member or supporter of UKIP.
This idea of needing to find one’s political home seems rather pointless and, to be honest, somewhat self-indulgent to me. Political parties exist essentially for the purpose of gaining power in order to enact the policies that they promote. I don’t see the point in joining a political party in order to be amongst people who have views that are as near as possible to one’s own, if there is no real prospect of getting a chance to put those views into practice. For some people, it even seems as if their party affiliation is worn as a kind of intellectual fashion accessory, in order to let people know at a glance - particularly on social media - what type of views they hold and what viewpoints they disdain, which politicians they feel an affinity for and which ones they hold in contempt.
I am a member of the Labour party, not because I believe in everything that party stands for - in fact they are not even the party whose basic views are most similar to my own at the moment – but because, of the two parties which have any real chance of coming to power in Britain at the moment, they are the one I would most like to see in government. Their policies in regard to funding the NHS and lifting the public sector pay cap, and their concerns about the cost of living and, in particular, of housing, are more in accord with my own, and relevant to the life circumstances of myself and my family, than those of the Conservatives. But politics is not sport and should not operate on the basis of tribal loyalties. Should the day come when it makes more sense to vote, say, Liberal Democrat (as I have done in more than one general election in the past) in order for more of the policies that I believe in to have a better chance of being implemented, then I will gladly jump ship and support the Lib Dems. That is the only way in which the idea of finding one’s ‘political home’ makes any sense to me.

Leaving Labour? My plans regarding party membership

For some weeks now, I have been on the verge of leaving the Labour party. I became a registered Labour supporter through Unison in 2015, before the general election and rejoined the party (I had previously been a member in the late 80s/early 90s) as a full member at the beginning of 2016. I got involved with the party again because I felt that they were the only party that had a chance of defeating the Conservatives – who, in my opinion, were guilty of unfair and unnecessary systematic and ideologically based underfunding of essential public services - and until fairly recently I still believed Labour were the only party that could stop the Tories in the next general election, whether it comes in 2020 or sooner. However, it is now pretty clear that Labour have no chance of winning the next general election under Jeremy Corbyn who, while very good at Labour leadership campaigns, seems to be quite inept at being leader of the opposition. Labour have consistently been a long way behind the Tories in the polls (the two most recent ones, here and here, put them 18 percentage points behind, with the one on 29th March putting Corbyn’s personal popularity 40 points behind that of Theresa May).
Rather than leave now, however, I have decided to remain in the party and to take part in the campaigning for the County Council elections which are due to take place on 4th May. If Labour defy expectations and do well in these elections then I shall take it as a sign that the tide is turning and that Labour still stand a chance of clawing their way back to a position of being able to mount a serious challenge to the Tories by the time the next general election comes around. If, however, as seems much more likely, Labour suffer serious losses then, unless Mr Corbyn resigns his position as leader, I shall resign from the party. Corbyn failing to stand aside after a disastrous performance in these elections will be, to my mind, a clear sign that he puts his loyalty to that large majority of Labour members and registered supporters who twice elected him as leader of the party, before his loyalty to that far larger number of people who rely on the Labour Party to be in a position to effectively oppose the Conservative government and to be able to take power themselves at the soonest available opportunity.
If Jeremy Corbyn does stand down in the wake of a drubbing on 4th May then I shall, for the time being, remain a member of the Labour Party. His most likely replacement, according to most commentators, will be either Clive Lewis or Keir Starmer. I would prefer Starmer, but even if Clive Lewis takes over I will stick around and see how things go under his leadership. It’s hard to imagine that the situation for the party can get much worse than it is now. Should Labour’s share of the vote tank in the elections next month and Mr Corbyn do the decent thing and resign then hopefully, whoever succeeds him, to quote a song once popular with a previous Labour leader, "things can only get better!"

My reluctant conclusion: Jeremy must go

It's now been five months since Jeremy Corbyn won his second Labour leadership contest. The dissenters within the PLP have been pretty quiet, but still Labour's dire opinion poll rankings refuse to shift (at least not upwards) and Corbyn's personal ratings are even worse than the party's. I voted for him twice (pretty reluctantly the second time) and have tried to stay positive about his leadership (my post of 31st December was written more to try and convince myself than anyone else) but I have finally come to the conclusion that Jeremy Corbyn has to go, or Labour will have absolutely no chance of winning the next general election and we will be condemned to five more years of the Conservatives, this time with a vastly increased majority.

It's time to get behind the leader

In 2015 after Ed Miliband resigned following Labour's defeat in the general election, I had been planning on voting for Andy Burnham as the new leader. However, after watching Burnham's slickly produced campaign video, with cheesy music and liberal sprinklings of the latest focus group inspired buzzword, "aspiration" (Yvette Cooper was equally guilty of this) and comparing that to Corbyn's straightforward and guileless performances at the hustings, I was quickly won over to the Corbyn cause (I admit there was an element of Old Labour nostalgia involved as well) even though his views are further to the left than mine and I don't share his unilateralism or his republicanism.
By the time of the 2016 Labour leadership contest I was far less sure about whether to cast my vote for Corbyn again. Labour were tanking in the opinion polls but it was difficult to say how much of that was due to lack of support for the leadership among the parliamentary party. I dithered for a while and I actually voted for the pro-Owen Smith slate in the National Executive Committee elections. In the end, two things made me decide to give Jeremy another chance. Firstly, I disagreed with Owen Smith's policy of wanting to hold a second EU referendum, and believed this could potentially alienate a large number of voters in a forthcoming general election. Secondly, I felt that the outcome of the EU referendum and the inexorable rise of Donald Trump in America showed that we were in a period of 'anti-establishment' politics whereby large sections of the public - often those who hadn't previously taken much of an interest in politics - were intent on confounding the media and bucking the opinion polls by supporting positions that went against the perceived 'script'. I felt that, in this kind of political environment, Corbyn's unpolished style and consistent track record of conviction politics might just be what was needed to strike a chord with voters and, like Brexit and Trump, defy the expectations of the bookies and the pollsters.
Since the leadership election I have tried to remain positive about Mr Corbyn's leadership despite the fact that Labour have not made much headway in terms of opinion polls. He occasionally does a good interview and seems (sometimes, at least) to be getting better at Prime Minister's Questions. As for those reasons why I voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the last leadership election, well, neither of them seems to be quite so applicable any more. Firstly, I now believe we should have a second referendum - not on whether to leave the European Union but on whether or not to remain within the European Economic Area. I believe the result would show that there is no mandate for a so-called 'hard Brexit'. This is not really that different from Owen Smith's position that we should hold a second referendum on whether or not to accept whatever deal is on offer at the end of the government's Brexit negotiations.
Secondly, what I now realise is that the current anti-establishment mood among large sections of the public is a very specific form of anti-establishment politics; it has an anti-globalisation, anti-'elite' element which might chime in with some of what Corbyn stands for but it is also essentially very much a reaction against political correctness and mass immigration and it regards the left and those who, like Corbyn and those around him, call themselves socialists, as brainwashed stooges of the hated liberal 'political class'. This may be an era of anti-establishment politics but, unfortunately, in some ways at least, Jeremy Corbyn is simply the wrong kind of anti-establishment. (I'm not suggesting Labour should pander to this populist mood, it's just that I no longer think it's something that Jeremy Corbyn can necessarily benefit from significantly.)
With an unelected, authoritarian Prime Minister apparently intent on taking the UK out of the single market without a proper mandate, and NHS and social care services struggling simply to stay afloat, I can't help feeling that the Tories are getting far too easy a ride at the moment. It's essential for those of us who value the NHS, good quality state funded education and the welfare state in general that the Labour Party functions as a strong parliamemtary opposition to the current Tory regime. It's even more essential that, when the next general election is called, Labour is in a position to take votes from all sections of the public including a significant number of those who have previously voted Conservative or Liberal Democrat.
My intention, however, is not merely to be negative and I'm certainly not arguing that there should be another leadership challenge. Jeremy Corbyn may not be the finished article yet, and a leadership team made up of the likes of Corbyn, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott etc. is probably not best calculated to appeal to floating voters, but the blame for Labour's current predicament cannot be laid entirely at the feet of Corbyn and his supporters. Tony Benn once likened the Labour Party to a bird, pointing out that it relied on both its wings to be able to fly. If those on the centre left and the 'right' of the party would have another crack at working with Corbyn - however difficult he may be to work with - for the good of the party and, more importantly, the good of the country, then I believe the situation can be salvaged and the Labour Party could once again become both a formidable opponent to the current government and a viable, credible government in waiting.

How Nigel Farage and Donald Trump persuaded me to vote for Jeremy Corbyn

I've been flipping backwards and forwards on the question of who to vote for in the Labour Leadership election ever since Owen Smith threw his hat into the ring but today my vote finally arrived and it was burning a hole in my email server, so I decided that today would be decision day. I would finally choose which side I am on. And, for a couple of reasons, I have found myself swinging back towards Jeremy Corbyn lately.
Firstly, as a member of the Labour Party I intend to help with campaigning in the run-up to the next General Election. That means that if Owen Smith becomes leader I would find myself campaigning on a manifesto which includes the staging of a second referendum on EU membership, something I am opposed to on principle as I believe to hold another EU referendum without ever implementing the decision of the first one would seriously undermine many people's faith in the democratic process in this country. Such a policy might well also alienate a lot of so-called 'traditional Labour voters'.
Secondly, while the main reason I have been seriously tempted to vote for Owen Smith is the belief that he's more likely to beat the Tories in a general election - a belief largely generated and fostered by the media and backed up by opinion polls - I can't escape the nagging feeling that maybe I'm allowing myself to be misled. After all, neither the media nor the pollsters foresaw a Tory majority in the 2015 general election and the polling companies and even the bookies were confident that the Remain campaign would win the EU referendum. Last night, in fact, Nigel Farage was in America giving a speech about "the Brexit story" to a rally of Donald Trump supporters - another politician who was initially given very little chance of success by the media, in his bid to win the Republican Party presidential nomination. 'Anti-establishment' politicians (of which, surely, Corbyn is one) seem to be doing better than expected at the moment. Perhaps the type of people who vote for such candidates and causes are less likely than others to respond to opinion polls. Jeremy hasn't been given much of a chance yet and I think he probably deserves at least one decent crack at a general election.
Maybe I'm guilty of letting my heart overrule my head, but - taking all the above points into consideration - at 9.40pm this evening I cast my vote for Jeremy Corbyn to remain as leader of the Labour Party.

Why I'll (probably) be voting for Owen Smith

I don't agree with all of Jeremy Corbyn's views and policies. I am not a Republican (at least not in the British context), I'm not sure about unilateral disarmament and I'm certainly dubious of his (past?) support for organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Nor do I agree with all of Owen Smith's proposed policies. I don't, for example, support a second referendum on the U.K.'s membership of the European Union. But, although I haven't made up my mind 100 percent yet (there are still over three weeks to go), I am increasingly coming to the view that in the Labour leadership election I am going to vote for Owen Smith. This is for one reason and one reason only. I think he is more likely to win a general election than Jeremy Corbyn is. That belief is based partly on intuition about who is more likely to win over vital swing voters, and partly on evidence such as this poll.
As a low paid, public sector worker and council tenant with children, some of whom are unemployed (between zero hour contracts) and some in state education, perhaps one day to go on to university, and various family members who suffer from chronic illness and are dependent on the NHS and social care, I need there to be a Labour government. I have worked for the National Health Service for 15 years and I have never seen it as on its knees as it is right now in terms of staffing levels. The NHS badly needs there to be a Labour government ASAP.
Corbyn may have a more ideologically pure political history but that counts for nothing if Labour cannot win power. Whatever happens, there will be a mountain to climb but I increasingly believe that Owen Smith is Labour's best hope of winning the next General Election.
At one of the recent hustings, the candidates were asked what they listened to on their iPods. Owen Smith mentioned some pop or rock group whose name I can't even remember. Corbyn (who I like to think doesn't own an iPod) professed to be a lover of classical and folk music. Clearly Jeremy Corbyn has much better taste in music than Owen Smith (in my opinion, anyway). Sadly, however, if, as a musician, you want to get to number one in the charts you're probably going to be better off with a catchy, slickly produced and well marketed pop song. That's just the nature of reality.

Why progressive taxation is better than 'People's Quantitative Easing'

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell and their economic guru Richard Murphy have spoken frequently of their plan to use quantitative easing (increasing the supply of money in the economy) to help fund projects such as housing construction, green energy production, digital infrastructure etc, as a way of creating jobs, getting the economy moving and solving some of the social and environmental problems that we currently face.
While I agree that these are laudible aims, I am not sure that quantitative easing (QE) is the best way for a future Labour government to go about raising revenue.  My reason for this is as follows:
Any increase in the supply of money inevitably decreases the value of money that people already hold, and this affects everyone in equal proportion, eg. a 2% increase in the supply of money means that, all things being equal, the value of all previously existing money decreases by exactly 2%.  In other words, QE operates as if it were a flat tax on everyone, including the low paid and those on benefits.  And since those with low incomes spend a higher proportion of their earnings on essential goods, they are more detrimentally affected by a decrease in the value of their money than those who have more of the stuff. QE, therefore, like VAT, is effectively a form of regressive taxation.
There is an argument, which may well be correct, that as long as there is excess capacity in the economy then increasing the money supply to fund investment should not cause inflation - the increase in available goods and services should counteract it (because the more products that are vying to be bought by those that have money, the greater the demand for money, thus increasing the value of money relative to those products).  However, even if this is the case, it means that, to the extent that the increase in goods and services were to be funded by some other method  - one which did not impact on the low paid - those at the lower end of the economic scale would benefit from an increase in purchasing power, which QE denies them.
For these reasons, I think that a better way to fund necessary and beneficial infrastructure projects would be to use some form of progressive taxation - rather than QE which, as explained above, is effectively a flat tax - so that the real cost of investment is distributed in a way that does not impact disproportionately on the low paid.

The Fiscal Charter: Damned if you support, damned if you oppose

I think John McDonnell and the Labour leadership were right to oppose George Osborne's Fiscal Charter yesterday. It is not the job of the current government to try to impose it's will on future governments. It is for future electorates to decide what kind of government they wish to install in 2020 and beyond, and to decide what type of economic policies to oppose or support.
The Fiscal Charter is clearly nothing more than a publicity stunt designed to either undermine Labour's credibility as an anti-austerity party (had they supported it) or to make them appear economically irresponsible in the eyes of the general public in the event that - as was the case - they opposed it.
Perhaps the best approach would have been a mass abstention on the part of the parliamentary Labour party. This would have avoided disunity in the party ranks while treating the Fiscal Charter with the contempt it deserves.

Labour Leadership Limerick

When a Labour MP named Corbyn
Whose views were a trifle left wing
Joined the leadership race, many laughed in his face
Now it seems he may actually win!

Labour should have the confidence to be itself!

Yesterday, at the behest of their acting leader, Harriet Harman, the majority of Labour MPs chose not to oppose the government's Welfare Reform Bill aimed at reducing welfare spending through such measures as lowering the cap on Housing Benefit and completely doing away with Child Tax Credits for any but the first two children of a household. Harman's objective in not opposing this bill was to reassure the public that Labour is the party of the workers and not the party of welfare claimants.
In my opinion, the Labour Party is so busy trying to please all those people who didn't vote for it in the general election that it is forgetting it's real job - that of Her Majesty's loyal opposition.
Swing voters are, by definition, capable of having their minds changed by the policies, arguments and record of the parties between whom they have been asked to choose. In my view, rather than trying to belatedly conform to the wishes expressed by such voters at the last election, Labour needs to come up with positions and policies that reflect its traditional values of egalitarianism and social solidarity and offer a clear and credible alternative to the anti-public sector/benefit claimant/immigrant stance of the current government and then set about the business of persuading the potential swing-voters of 2020 that such policies are worth endorsing at the ballot box.
As for the committed Labour voters, such an approach would surely be welcomed by many of them, too - especially considering the amount of grass roots support their seems to be for the most left wing of the current leadership candidates.

Why Labour lost

The accepted narrative about why Labour did so badly in the General Election seems to be that they failed to appeal to the aspirations of the 'squeezed middle' or to inspire confidence in their ability to manage the economy. I am not convinced by this. I have no solid evidence so my own 'analysis' is purely anecdotal and based largely on conversations (both participated in and overheard) with friends and work colleagues.
I believe that in the last week or so before the vote, scare tactics employed by the Conservative Party and the media around the possibility of a coalition between Labour and the SNP began to have the effect of convincing 'undecideds' that a vote for Labour would be a bad idea (I certainly heard people express the view that the SNP 'only care about Scotland' and that they would somehow use any power they might have in government to benefit Scotland at the expense of the rest of the UK) and, realising that it was working, the purveyors of this narrative concentrated very hard on getting their message out as powerfully as possible, particularly via the tabloid press.
I believe Ed Miliband's response to this development was mistaken and actually exacerbated the effect of the scare. What he did was to make increasingly shrill declarations of his determination never to do any deals with the SNP, which I believe had three (inter-related) negative effects. Firstly it confirmed in people's minds that the SNP were to be feared, secondly it was very difficult to believe since the prevailing view was that Labour would not win enough seats to be in a position to govern alone and thirdly, if he was telling the truth then what was the point in voting for a Labour party that wasn't prepared to do what was apparently going to be necessary in order to form a viable government and keep the Tories out of power?
In my opinion, Miliband should have embraced the idea of an anti-Tory coalition involving Labour as the dominant partner with support from the SNP and others and made the case for the SNP as having a valuable contribution to make to the politics of the UK as a whole. This could have taken the sting out of the Tory and right-wing media scare tactics.
When asked by Jeremy Paxman, earlier in the campaign, whether he was tough enough to stand up to the likes of Vladimir Putin, Ed Miliband's response was a strident "Hell, yes!" Surely, then, he should have been able to convince middle England's swing voters that he was strong enough to be in coalition without being dominated or manipulated by Nicola Sturgeon or any other potential coalition partner.

Brown bottles it (again)

Geert Wilders called Gordon Brown the most cowardly man in Europe today, after the UK government refused to let the Dutch MP and film-maker into the country for a screening at the House of Lords of his film, Fitna, about what Mr Wilders sees as the connection between certain verses in the Quran and the violence and terrorism of some Islamic extremists.
I have no interest in defending Mr Wilders' views, but I think it is a shame that the government of a country such as Britain, with its tradition of free speech and political freedom in general, should be intimidated by the prospect of controversy and divisive debate and afraid of the possibility of protests and demonstrations, to the point where it would rather try to suppress the debate altogether.
Not only that, but, by using the excuse that Mr Wilders presence would potentially incite racial hatred, the government are, presumably, saying that criticism of Islam is to be construed as an attack on those races amongst whom Islam is the predominant faith. And by taking this stance the government are, by implication, making it clear that certain races are to be accorded the privilege of freedom from having their religious traditions criticised.
This government failed in it's attempt (a year or two ago) to get its proposed legislation against incitement to religious hatred passed through parliament. In true New Labour style, however, it seems to be pressing on regardless with the enforcement of policies for which it has no democratic mandate.

Update: 10:49pm
Just watched a discussion of this issue on Question Time. I was genuinely shocked by the fact that most of the panel (the Labour minister Liam Byrne - okay, I suppose he had to back the decision - the Tory shadow minister Justine Greening and even the Sun columnist Kelvin MacKenzie) while all claiming to believe in freedom of speech, believed that the government were right to ban Geert Wilders from entering the UK because his views were "unhelpful" and "offensive". Liam Byrne even said that, while he believed in free speech, this film was too "divisive" at a time when the country should be "all pulling together".
The celebrity gardener (Monty Don) very hesitantly suggested that probably "censorship doesn't really work" but the only panel-member who seemed to have any grasp of what freedom of speech is for and why it is so important was Salma Yaqoob, the leader of the left-wing Respect Party and, ironically, an adherent of the very faith that the government, with this latest ban, are so keen not to offend. Perhaps she is more able than the other panellists to think clearly about this issue because, as a non-white non-Christian, she has not allowed herself to be so distracted by the requirements of political correctness.