Wacko off!

Overrated and unpleasant, what more can I say. I felt a bit sorry for Michael Jackson. It can't have been much fun.

The Jackson 5 were pretty good. Not really a great idea to force your kids onstage to make your living for you, so the abuse allegations are sad but were never surprising. I quite like Billie Jean as an actual song. But for the rest, just vacuous noise and flashing lights. Thrilled? Nope. I guess it's a matter of tastelessness.

Hazel Blears survives - oh dear

Hazel Blears survives deselection vote in Salford constituency | Politics | guardian.co.uk: "Former minister Hazel Blears has been backed by her party rank and file after a vote of no confidence to deselect her was defeated.

Blears faced deselection if she had lost the vote at the crunch meeting of her constituency Labour party."

Scottish battle lines are drawn - Morning Star - Thursday 18 June 2009

(Thursday 18 June 2009)

Malcolm Burns

Scottish battle lines are drawn

The Scottish political battle lines for the next two years have been drawn with this week's publication of the report from the Calman Commission on Scottish devolution.

The UK general election in Scotland due within the year and the Scottish Parliament election in May 2011 will both be fought between the SNP's independence prospectus and the Calman agenda of the pro-devolution parties, Labour, Lib Dems and Tories, against the backdrop of the ongoing recession.

Calman proposes a dose of fiscal autonomy for Scotland through a radical enhancement of Holyrood's existing but so far unused income tax power - and importantly would also for the first time give the Scottish Parliament the right to borrow for funding capital expenditure.

The headline proposal to give Holyrood the power to vary tax in Scotland by as much as 10p was a more radical step than many had expected.

In short, Westminster would levy 10p less on Scottish taxpayers in all bands and cut the annual Holyrood block grant pro rata.

Then Scotland would be free to make up as much, or more, of the difference as it chose, by levying its own flat rate.

So for a status quo outcome, the Scottish Parliament would have to set its new income tax rate at 10p, but it would be also free to increase or decrease the rate.

It would be obliged to actively set a rate each year at budget time. The political consequences of such fiscal liberation from Westminster strictures could be great.

One downside of this Calman proposal is that the Scottish Parliament could not alter the relationship between the higher and lower rates or alter bands, which means that it would be not be possible to increase tax on the higher bands only.

But it affords the prospect of increasing public funding for Scottish priorities rather than living within Westminster's limits.

The vital new borrowing powers would mean that the Scottish Parliament could look elsewhere than the hugely expensive PFI schemes favoured by both SNP and Labour-led administrations to fund public works.

The report proposes a number of extra powers for the Scottish Parliament - control over the running of its own elections and over airguns, drink driving and road speed limits.

There was support especially among trade unions for greater devolution of numerous other powers, for example on broadcasting, health and safety, migration and asylum and the housing benefit and council tax benefit systems.

Calman has made some proposals for limited joint working rather than transfer of power to Holyrood in these areas.

Calman makes recommendations on joining up government between Westminster and Holyrood in a way which has never happened before. Currently the two parliaments and especially the two governments often appear to exist in separate silos - sometimes lobbing missiles at each other.

Recommendations include better joint committees and consultative processes and ministerial appearances at committees of each parliament by ministers of the other - with annual appearances before committee at Westminster by the Scottish First Minister and at Holyrood by the Scottish Secretary.

More structured grown-up co-operation would be welcome and could be very productive.

No-one can accuse Calman of a failure to consult or to consider. Indeed, the breadth and depth of the Calman report completely blows the SNP government's thin National Conversation out of the water.

I don't know if Sir Kenneth Calman smokes, but he clearly doesn't have any use for a fag packet. The full Calman Commission report runs to several hundred pages across four documents - and that's after two sets of interim reports of similar size which were published last year.

And it is serious stuff.

In some respects, the Calman Commission has performed the role which the Scottish Constitutional Convention did in the 1990s.

The convention put in a good deal of detailed work then, just as Calman has now, to found the Scottish Parliament on a solid basis. Calman has engaged with the organs of "civic society" whereas the convention was actually led by the civic bodies themselves, notably the STUC under then general secretary Campbell Christie.

But both convention and commission managed to cajole and corral the warring political parties into some essential horse-trading and consensus-building.

Of course Alex Salmond's SNP removed itself from the convention process then, just as it has from Calman today, in the hope of gaining a pro-independence advantage.

The political trick of getting Labour, Tories and Lib Dems all on side without producing a banal report has been something of a coup for Calman.

His commission was a joint venture between the Scottish Parliament and the Westminster government. Its recommendations are unanimous.

Given that the political parties involved have a clear majority in the Scottish Parliament, and that in one permutation or another they will be in power at Westminster, it is reasonable to suppose that Calman's recommendations have every chance of being enacted in full.

Some of the recommendations can be put into place by the Scottish Parliament itself. Others will require legislation by Westminster.

For Labour, Ian Gray, the Scottish leader at Holyrood and Jim Murphy the Westminster Scottish Secretary have both welcomed the Calman report.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is quoted as saying: "It sets out the way forward for Scottish devolution."

It is entirely possible that Labour at Westminster will not be fully on board with everything proposed by Calman, even if the Prime Minister is.

There is a powerful cohort of Scottish MPs who are still not keen on or even reconciled to the Scottish Parliament. And English Labour MPs in general probably still do not quite get Scotland, in the way that the population as a whole south of the border often seems not to either.

To that extent there may be some jibbing and some delay over implementation. If that meant the Calman proposals were not enacted by Labour before the next election, Labour itself would almost certainly be the loser.

In that situation, an incoming Tory government may legislate for devolution plus as recommended by Calman. This bizarre scenario might cause consternation in the SNP bunker. Until now the SNP has been desperate for the Tories to win at Westminster.

That, and not the vacuous National Conversation, has been Alex Salmond's whole game plan for a referendum, on the basis that a Tory government would so alienate Scots that we would vote for independence to be rid of them again.

But for now, the political scene is weird enough. A cross-party group led by Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy and featuring Tory frontbenchers will meet imminently to consider how to bring the Calman recommendations forward. And Murphy has said that there could be legislation within months.

Enshrining Calman's recommendations in an updated Scotland Act would certainly sharpen up the independence versus devolution fight in the coming general election - long before any possible referendum.

Bring it on, as they say.

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Wishful thinking from Tehran

Wishful thinking from Tehran | Abbas Barzegar | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "observers would do us a favour by taking a deeper look into Iranian society, giving us a more accurate picture of the very organic religious structures of the country, and dispensing with the narrative of liberal inevitability"

Cassandra complex

Yes, I flip-flopped on Brown. And I hope I'm wrong again | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian:

"I continue to fear the worst, but will attempt to restrain Cassandra-like wails of doom."

Cassandra.

A little bit universal?

Obama outlines plan for universal healthcare system in US | World news | guardian.co.uk:

"To get his reforms through Congress, Obama will almost certainly have to compromise. He has already hinted that he might back down on some points, such as accepting that there are some individuals, who even with government help, will still be unable to afford to pay for health insurance."

The rebels without a coup - Morning Star - Tuesday 9 June 2009

(Tuesday 9 June 2009)

Malcolm Burns

The rebels without a coup

In the increasingly surreal nightmare that is our politics today, everything can seem like a game. The absurdity of Gordon Brown hiring reality TV gameshow star Sir Alan Sugar - soon to be made a lord - as a business "tsar" was almost the least bizarre incident of the past week.

The weirdest has been the attempted regicide in the Labour Party by a small crew of Blairite careerists. So far that has resembled a suicidal game of Cluedo - first to go was Hazel Blears in the study with the brooch pin, then it was James Purnell in the dark with the poison pen letter.

These are odd rebels. What are they rebelling against?

The Blairites' last stand is to campaign against a leader, Brown, who they claim cannot win an election - but not against the right-wing policies which have continued to drive voters away from Labour, with the disastrous results we saw in the local and European polls.

They are plotters for sure, but they have no agenda, no policies and no candidate. The rebels simply don't have a coup.

Do they really believe that changing the captain of the Titanic will stop the ship hitting the iceberg and sinking? It is the political direction of the Labour Party that needs to be changed, whoever is the leader.

The Blairites command support, but it is mainly among right-wing journalists.

Indeed, as Purnell and Blears, followed by John Hutton and Geoff Hoon defenestrated themselves from the Cabinet last week, cheers went up from ordinary members of the Labour Party and trade unionists.

I have heard from numerous Labour activists that the departure of this bunch is one of the best recruiting aids the party could have devised.

It was almost funny watching Blears and Purnell shoot themselves in public in the vague hope that this would somehow cause a tenacious and wily political fox like Brown to follow suit. In fact, they simply saved him some ammunition.

It also is worth remembering, as we see Purnell and Blears being canonised by the right-wing media for trying to put the boot into Brown, that both of them still have some pretty searching questions to answer about their own expenses. People like these could hardly lead a clean up of British politics.

Brown saw off the initial attempt on his leadership last week with some ease - and the dubious aid of Peter Mandelson, who supports the Prime Minister like the proverbial rope.

Labour's massacre in the European elections provoked a further froth of media speculation that there would be a fresh coup attempt.

So what do the Euro election results show?

Basically, that Labour's vote collapsed. Labour voters have effectively gone on strike. The headline figure is that Labour managed less than 16 per cent of the vote. And that itself was on a turnout of only 34 per cent across Britain.

The problem Labour faced was replicated for socialist and social democratic parties across Europe - though none managed to implode quite so spectacularly.

It is hard evidence that voters on the left everywhere are increasingly disengaged from European politics.

That is dangerous for the obvious reason that far-right parties like the BNP can get parliamentary seats. But it also lets the mainstream right in Europe off without serious challenge.

Here in Britain, that's a problem for the Labour voters who stayed at home, and for the rest of us too.

Brown and Mandelson are right about one thing - changing the Labour leader and precipitating an early general election would only hand an easier victory to the Tories.

The logic of that position means Labour needs to change direction in order to improve the chances of defeating the Tories next year.

That's not a new prescription, but it's long overdue. Labour MPs, affiliated unions and ordinary members need to now put massive pressure on the leadership of the party to bring the striking Labour voters back on board.

Across the country, Labour voters are withholding their support and standing back expectantly, like millions of Sonic the Hedgehogs during a pause in the video game, arms folded and tapping their feet, waiting for the party they want to back come up with some policies they can actually support.There are plenty of policies like that.

Labour could ditch Trident. Labour could ditch the plan to privatise Royal Mail. Labour could ditch ID cards. All hugely unpopular and expensive mistakes.

Labour could ditch the Purnell assault on the welfare state and add some more tax burden to the wealthy.

If he wants a legacy before he is finished as Prime Minister, Brown could promote a swathe of historic constitutional reforms.

This could include not just cleaning out the Westminster stable regarding expenses, which is essential of course, but a written constitution and bill of rights, an elected House of Lords, and - why not - electoral reform for the House of Commons.

The EU election results offer Labour's leaders an opportunity to say that at last they will listen to the voters and recognise that there is massive concern about the direction of European politics.

So let's put the Lisbon Treaty to the people in a British referendum. I think the turnout for that would be somewhat greater than 34 per cent.

And Labour should simply ditch Britain's opt-out on working hours, which many Labour MEPs actually campaigned to get rid of in a historic vote in the European Parliament in December.

If he is to have a chance of re-engaging enough voters to win, Brown - or any Labour leader - must be persuaded to adopt sensible policies like these.

A Tory victory in the next general election is not a forgone conclusion. The Tories have a thin, right-wing and actually unpopular platform of massive destruction of public services and jobs.

The talk of Westminster and the media is not about how unpopular Tory policies are or why Labour voters are on strike. It is all about whether Brown can hold on as leader of the Labour Party.

I might be completely wrong, but I doubt he will be defenestrated in short order by the Blairite coup which the Westminster journalists are breathlessly egging on.

But Brown still has a problem. The prospect of Labour winning by adopting elements of a popular left platform might be too much for his erstwhile ally Mandelson, who may decide to fatally end his support.

In Cluedo terms, Brown is not likely to be done in by the MP with the lead pipe in the kitchen.

There isn't an MP in or out of the Cabinet who could lift the lead pipe necessary to deal the blow. And none of them has a lead pipe anyway.

If Brown is going to be done in this side of a general election, I think I can tell you for sure who will have done it.

It will be Mandelson, in the billiard room, with the rope. On TV.

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Flush out the Tories and fight them on the beaches

Comment on John McDonnell article in Guardian: What have they done to our party:
also posted on John's blog: Blogger: Another World Is Possible - Post a Comment:

John wrote that: "Ambition and self-interest have become more important to many in the Labour hierarchy than the struggles of Britain's people"

"Malky x said...

John's right in his analysis - the current attempt to unseat Brown is all about a bunch of self interested careerists.

They are rebels without a coup. No policy, no agenda and no candidate.

On this occasion Brown is right about something too - don't precipitate an election now, and start getting things in place to improve the chances of defeating the Tories next year.

The Left is, and has always been correct about what needs to be done: put in place popular and effective policies which people will vote for.

John McDonnell has consistently identified a platform of such policies - Another World is Possible; the Alternative Queen's Speech; countless speeches and articles - and we have the People's Charter which can focus cross party left support.

To the extent that Brown can be persuaded to adopt the sensible, and largely democratically agreed measures in these programmes, there is the chance of beating Cameron. The Tories have a thin, right wing and actually unpopular platform of massive destruction of public services and jobs.

We could ditch Trident.
We could ditch the plan to privatise Royal Mail.
We could ditch ID cards.
All hugely unpopular and expensive mistakes.

We could ditch the Purnell assault on the Welfare State, and instead add some more tax burden to the wealthy.

If he wants a legacy, Brown could promote historic constitutional reforms: not just cleaning out the Westminster stable regarding expenses, which is essential of course - but a written constitution and bill of rights; an elected Hourse of Lords; and - why not - electoral reform for the House of Commons.

The EU election results due out tonight will be another drubbing - but also an opportunity to say Labour will listen to the voters.

Let's have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
And ditch the UK opt-out on working hours.

Using a raft of policies like these Brown could lead Labour in flushing out the Tories and fighting them on the beaches.

We could even win.

Malky
x"

Keep your eyes on Mandy

Misery. It's Gordon Brown as Kathy Bates. And Westminster as Lilliput | Marina Hyde | Comment is free | The Guardian:

"Should you wish to give yourself the most despairing of laughs, do consider that Hazel Blears probably regards herself heir to Barbara Castle.For more than a decade, people have cringed at the chasm in ability between those towering political figures who sat in Harold Wilson's cabinet and the pygmies who clustered like competition winners around Blair's table on the odd occasion he needed their rubber stamp. It was a contrast that has been endlessly underlined, most recently this week when Blears was pictured smirking knowingly while sporting a "Rocking the boat" brooch. What an absolute card she is. Doubtless Hazel will now claim back the cost of the brooch on her expenses, on the basis that it was necessary for her to perform her public duties.

We are witnessing the final self-destruction of what those who ­created New Labour were given to calling "the Project", apparently oblivious to the Orwellian overtones of the phrase. Then again, perhaps they weren't ­oblivious – after all, the Project appeared to be closely modelled on the Party, which, you will recall, "seeks power entirely for its own sake".

The peculiar irony of New Labour's endgame is that it was all foretold by an accidental prophet named Tony Blair. "My project will be complete," he once declared, "when the Labour party learns to love Peter Mandelson."

And lo, it has come to pass. As the Hazel Blearses of this world appear to be communicating messages of infinite fatuity via their accessories, virtually the only senior politician of any stature is Peter Mandelson. And yes, just typing those words is such a dementedly ­surreal feeling that I'm shaking my head in laughter as I do so."

When putsch comes to shove

When putsch comes to shove | Seumas Milne | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:
The Blairite coup against Brown may have misfired, but beyond the plotting the very direction of the Labour party is at stake...

...Of course, the net result of the half-cocked coup is also to weaken Brown's ability to reshuffle his cabinet and strengthen the hand of Mandelson, now effectively deputy prime minister, with all the dangers that brings, such as a greater likelihood of confrontation over plans for part-privatisation of Royal Mail.

Some will, meanwhile, argue that whole Blairite-Brownite split is meaningless nonsense: that they are two sides of a New Labour coin with barely a cigarette paper of difference between them. That has been largely true in the past. But events, and the crisis of neoliberalism unleashed by economic crisis in particular, have begun to create more significant differences.

As the government has begun to inch crab-like in a more recognisably social-democratic direction, the Blairite rump remains unashamedly wedded to accelerated privatisation of public services, corporate feather-bedding and low taxes on the rich (as Alan Milburn's recent warning against any shift to the left highlighted). The battle for Downing Street is about more than just the fate of Gordon Brown.

Rebels without a coup

Labour in crisis: the Hotmail conspiracy | Politics | The Guardian: "The chief whip, not averse to a bit of plotting in his day, said the ringleaders are former Blairites, joined by 'eccentric individualists'.

The plotters are said to have a list of up to 60 names of ­people prepared to sign the letter. The wording of that letter emerged tonight: 'We are writing now because we believe that in the current political circumstances you can best serve the interests of the Labour party by stepping down as party leader and prime minister, and so allowing the party to find a new leader to take us into the next ge.'"

Around Scotland - Thursday 4 June 2009

(Thursday 4 June 2009)

Malcolm Burns

Britain's got problems...

It's a hard heart that can't feel a little sorry for a shy and introverted would-be diva from a small town in Scotland who dreamed furiously of playing the lead role on the London stage.

And who after many years won the chance to perform for the top prize of approval by the voting public, but then saw that expected triumph vanish in the chaos of despair.

No, I am not asking you to feel sorry for Gordon Brown.

Save your sympathy for Susan Boyle, who apparently became the most downloaded woman in history and had been tipped to win Britain's Got Talent. She is now in The Priory clinic being treated for "exhaustion."

Brown, though, is about to replicate Boyle's implosion.

The European elections are slated to deliver Labour's worst-ever election result.

Assuming Brown survives as Labour leader until the general election - which must happen within the next year - it seems he is doomed, with much bigger consequences for us all.

Instead of leaving the nation with some songs nicely sung, he'll be leaving us with a Tory government the likes of which made us collectively say "never again" in 1997.

I never bought into the Blairist myth that it was Blair who won the 1997 election for Labour. John Smith, had he lived, would certainly have won that election. Almost anyone would have.

In 1997 people would have voted for any Labour leader because they were voting against 18 years of dismal Tory misrule. They were voting against clear Tory sleaze in government. And they were saying never again.

The problem we have today is that they are now about to vote against 13 years of Labour misrule.

Despite an increase in public spending - and we owe some thanks to Brown as chancellor for that at least - we have seen growing inequality, privatisation, deregulation and disastrous wars on the basis of lies and deceit.

We can catalogue these disasters of new Labour, which we as socialists fought against, and wish that the outcomes had been different. But we still face the harsh truth now - if not Labour, then the Tories.

There isn't a left party out there which can challenge for government. There isn't, despite the collapse and even nationalisation of capitalist institutions, a revolutionary situation.

However, there is a huge appetite for democratic change.

I did actually almost feel a little sorry for Brown was this week when he came out of the bunker to say he was planning to set up a national council for democratic renewal - only to find that Alistair Darling's expenses was the story, and that front-bench ministers were hitting the deck faster that you could look up who they were on Wikipedia.

The Brown plan for democratic renewal, if it were to be taken seriously and make a difference, would have to be not just about the rules of the House of Commons. It would have to take on the system of elections and government in Britain.

A written constitution and bill of rights would be great - an elected House of Lords even more so.

But the electoral system is the crucial point. If Brown's national council for democratic renewal is going to work, it needs to meet two objectives.

First, it has to be open to - and preferably led by - the representative bodies of civic society, just like the Scottish constitutional convention in the 1990s, which achieved our democratic settlement and the Holyrood Parliament, which now command wide support.

More recently the Calman commission has shown a good example of how to conduct cross-party and broadly based consultation in its work on extending the powers on the Scottish Parliament.

Second, and like the Scottish constitutional convention, it has to confront the issue of proportional representation.

I am an agnostic about electoral systems, although I do know that the current one is probably the worst.

First past the post can only be fair and just if there are two parties contending. One wins a majority and that's that. As soon as there are more than two parties, it doesn't give fair results.

Worse, it leads to the kind of dismal relationship between government and governed which has characterised the last 30 years, since 1979.

Neither Margaret Thatcher nor Blair ever commanded a majority among the people - never more than 44 per cent - but they wielded almost absolute power, with disastrous consequences.

There is already a plan for PR in Britain. The Jenkins commission set up by Labour in 1997 recommended a form of alternative vote system, with additional top-up from party lists to get closer to proportionality.

Blair decided to kick it into the long grass, not just because he didn't need to worry as he had a huge majority but because Labour MPs have traditionally been hostile to PR, and he didn't fancy a fight over it.

There will be a fight in the Labour Party for sure if Brown proposes PR.

But Donald Dewar, then Scottish Labour leader, didn't propose PR in the 1990s. It was brokered by the convention in order to achieve consensus. The outcome proved very popular.

To the extent that a national council for democratic renewal can replicate the success of the Scottish constitutional convention, it may offer Brown's last chance to rescue his failing leadership, and also save us from more Thatcherite or Blairite misrule under David Cameron.

The problem for Brown - and all of us - is that he doesn't have much time left to make history.

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