The decline of the steel industry raises real questions for the left?

“If L S Lowry was painting today he’d be painting [in Notting Hill], not Manchester. Because this area is the dormitory for the biggest factory in this country: the factory of finance.” These are the words of Henry Mayhew, a City employee and Notting Hill residence interviewed in the BBC documentary The Secret History of our Streets. Manchester was once been the driving force behind the industrial revolution, but today most of the economic activity of the country is generated in one square mile.

Whatever you think of the bankers of the City of London, they are the economic engine of the UK and generate most of the wealth in the UK. This wealth does not make it far out of the South East or through many social classes, but the fact remains that we have traded factories for financial models.

This is mainly because our economy has been pivoted toward the City, through decades of privatization and financial deregulation. The 2008 financial crash and the subsequent recession has only increased our relevance on the City to generate economic activity. Neo-liberal economists would argue that this is because we have a competitive advantage - literally an advantage that makes you better than the competition - in banking and financial services. In Lowry's day, our competitive advantage was in steelmaking or coal mining. Things have changed. Time marches on. However, we cannot all be bankers and move to London, so we should probably think about the jobs everyone else is going to do.

A thousand people currently employed in an industry where the UK does not have a competitive advantage are about to lose their jobs as the Teesside Steelworks in Redcar closes down. With the closure of Tata Steel as well, it is clear that the UK steel industry cannot compete in the global steel market - especially against cheap steel being produced in China. Only the coldest neoliberal economist would dismiss the problems of these thousand people, their families and communities. Clearly something has to be done for them but retraining unemployed workers in their 40s and over is not something we have been historically good at in the UK and no one is talking about how we can change this.

Faced with the mass closure of steel plants, the conventional free-market wisdom is to rebalance the economy towards an area where we have a competitive advantage. The idea is that the government invests in science, engineering and computing education, to train young people in work in the high tech industries of the future. This is writing off the steel workers losing their jobs, but offering them the chance that their children can work in new industries.

Put this in the wider context of decreasing social mobility and we see how empty this promise is. People from poor backgrounds with unemployed parents have not historically done well in a liberalised labour market. Even if we created thousands of high tech jobs in former steel towns then these jobs would not go to the children of steel workers, because by taking their parents jobs away we are giving these children a competitive disadvantage in the labour market. Given the current state of social mobility and the labour market, what is left for these people or their children? The only jobs being created in these areas are working in a distribution centre - in other words low paid and insecure. In the current labour market the future does not look good for the people of Redcar.

The closure of Teesside Steelworks and the Tory's recent agreement with China to build a new nuclear power plant are often mentioned in the same breath. Opening up our domestic markets to global completion has destroyed the steel industry. There is no shortage of demand for steel in the UK, however it is much cheaper to import it than to buy it from Tata Steel, the company which owns the Teesside Steelworks. The fact that the Tories need to make a deal with China to build a new nuclear power plant is because the twin snakes of deindustrialisation and globalisation has got rid of all the British firms that could have built the new power stations. Any jobs created by opening our construction industry up to China will be offset by the job losses caused by opening our steel industry up to China.

The aforementioned neo-liberal economist's solution to this issue would be to move the entire county up the supply chain. Rather than competing in making huge amounts of raw materials at a low price, focus on making more complex products that China does not produce. The only problem with this is that China also wants to move up the supply chain and in the future we will be competing against cheaper Chinese software or financial products. Even if China does change, none of this will help the newly unemployed steel workers or their children, for the reasons mentioned above.

Cameron and Osborne clearly have not thought this through. As they open the country up to increasing competition from globalisation more and more businesses will be forced to close. Cameron and Osborne, like the neo-liberal economist, insist that job losses are a temporary and are a necessary pain to pass through as we move to more prosperous future economy, much the same way that they justify their spending cuts. The problem with this approach to globalisation, like austerity, is that it is never Cameron or Osborne or anyone they know or anyone in their constituencies who loses their jobs or tax credits. Their set are always the one to benefit from globalisation but never the ones to pay for it.

Ignoring the problems of globalisation is not a trend which began with Cameron and Osborne. Since the 1980s the UK has moved away from manufacturing and towards financial services and job losses have been dismissed as the cost of structural readjustment. This dismissal of the problems of globalisation has led to under investment in our manufacturing, which has meant closures and job losses. The proof of all this is in the China power plant deal. No firm in Britain can build it, because we have no invested in these skills in the race towards our competitive advantage in finance.

Globalisation, deindustrialisation and the problems it has cerated for communities has been met with a shoulder shrug from society as a whole. In Britain we are more than willing to throw thousands of steelworkers under the bus to have cheaper smartphones and holidays abroad. When we choose to think about the poor people who lose out we shake our heads and say there is nothing to be done.

No one on the left has a solution to this problem. Corbyn is critical of the free market which created the problem but he does not have a solution. He talks about investing in infrastructure but you cannot talk about infrastructure without talking about industrial infrastructure. There is a difference between what we can produce and the economic capacity of the country, i.e. having roads and railways are pointless without factories or services to generate economic activity. Using state spending to give these declining industries a competitive advantage will not work either, the government already spent £1 billion on the Teesside Steelworks and could not make it produce steel at a competitive price.

So, we come back to the same problem. What are these communities supposed to do as their jobs disappear? Move to London? Clearly not an option for everyone. Invest in a Northern Powerhouse to create new employment outside London? Good idea and something I support, but there are four problems:

1. There is a lot of talk about this but nothing is actually happening.

2. It does not help the people who are losing their jobs today.

3. Making Manchester or Liverpool a bit more like London will not help Blackpool or Whitehaven or Workington. The brain drain will just have less far to travel

4. By the time all these new industries are established in the Northern Powerhouse they will have to close because China will have moved into these industries in a big way and the North will have gone from being unable to produce steel a competitive price to being unable to produce software or microcircuits at a competitive price.

Maybe the solution is an L S Lowry type figure taking pictures, or making films about these towns and their people, so that it becomes harder to dismiss them. We need to have more understanding and sympathy for the people who are losing their jobs. That is the best idea I have and calls of compassion have a poor track record at tackling economic problems.

We need to do something about the loss of these jobs, we cannot just leave these people and communities to slide into absolute poverty because it is what our neo-liberal, free market ideology demands. The left does not have an answers to this questions, these industries their workers and unions used to be the backbone of the labour movement, why is there not a left wing clamer to do something about these job losses? Corbyn's retro approach to politics will not work in this situation. We need new thinking.

The middle class should pay attention to what is happening in Redcar, as the twin snakes of globalisation and automation are coming for their jobs too. We can try and move up the supply chain to protect the jobs we still have but China is also doing so and competing against China in a liberalised global market has not gone well so far.

Putting up trade barriers is not the solution, that is the same as pretending the world economy has not become globalised. Retraining workers who lose their jobs under the current system is not a solution, not unless we redesign our education system and spend a lot more money on it. Shrugging your shoulders and saying there is nothing that can be done for these people is not a solution either. We need radical new thinking to tackle this problem. We need thinking that questions the established orthodoxies of the free market but also accept some of the aspects of globalisation that cannot be changed.

The lesson from what is happening at the Teesside Steelworks is that during the time of Lowry the work which sustained our economy was done by many people in unionised and relatively well paid and more secure jobs. Now the work is done by a few people and everyone has less secure jobs. We have gone from factory workers to bankers and cleaners. We need to tackle this issue of deindustrialisation, economic change and globalisation before we become a country with only a few highly specialised City jobs, which still make money in the one specific competitive nieche China has not priced us out of, while the rest of us work in low skilled, insecure and low paid jobs.

Spitting, shouting and bursting Tory bubbles: Conservative party conference

Last week in Manchester the Tories staged their annual festival of self-congratulation, also known as the party conference. This time they have been trying to keep the swagger to a minimum after their surprise election victory in May. Whatever your view on whether or not austerity is the best solution to our economic problems, it is clear that the Tories have not governed for everyone during the five years of the coalition. There have been cuts to unemployment benefit, the introduction of the bedroom tax, rising homelessness and now low paid workers are losing their tax credits. All of these have disproportionately affected the poor, so not everyone was pleased to see the Tories back in government.

Inevitably this displeasure led to a protest outside the party conference, a protest attended by over 60,000 people. It was a large protest, but Manchester Police commented on Twitter (??? link) that it was a well organised, and well behaved, protest with only 4 people arrested. Despite this commitment to public order from the protestors, the right wing media still called them yobs and tried to make it look like Genghis Khan's hordes had tried to invade the Tory conference. Some journalists were spat it, which is completely unacceptable, but we should not judge a largely peaceful protests but its worst members.

There was an attempt from the Tory sympathetic sections of the press to portray this a far left lynch mob, prevented from murdering the Tory party membership by only be a thin line of police officers. We were told that these people were anarchists and socialists who want to destroy the government and capitalism. I do not think this is fair. I think that many of these people were not anarchists, socialists or even trade unionists or Labour party supporters. In fact, many probably did not think of themselves as left wing.

These were the people hurt by five years of the Tory led coalition and the people who will be hurt by five years of a Tory government. The people hit by the bedroom tax, the people who are about to lose their tax credits. This protest was simply about the Tories acknowledging that these people exist. It was about the Tories recognising that last five years have not been "mending the roof" as George Osbon put it, but bringing it down onto a lot of peoples' heads. It was about the fact that yes unemployment down and GDP is up but there has been a human cost to this, primarily born by one section of society. If the Tories are going to have a huge festival of self-congratulation then they have to walk past the people who they have hurt.

The worst thing about the Tories is that they deny the hurt they have done. They talk about sacrifice and tough decisions, as if all that is needed to fix the country’s economic problems is for a few people to go without quite so many take-aways and trips to the pub. The Tories praise themselves for making difficult decisions but they are never the ones who have to make sacrifices because of them. They deny the deaths caused by benefit sanctions and they refuse to acknowledge that what they are doing is destroying communities and lives.

The most intense anger of the protest, the spitting and the shouting, was brought about by the Tories trying to avoid the protesters or walk away without acknowledging them. The crowd grew more angry and aggressive to get attention.

From the Tory's point of view, they refuse to engage with anyone who presents their criticisms in what they see as an unreasonable manner. They will not engage with what they see as a mob baying for blood. From the point of view of someone at the protest (or the millions of people hurt by Tory policy that they represent) there is no reasonable way to bring their suffering to the attention of the Tory Party.

I assume that the Prime Minister did not go into politics to make poor people worse off. He just lives in a posh Tory bubble, where the only people he meets are Tories, even those from less well off backgrounds. Trying to pierce this bubble is almost impossible. The protesters have no means to make their objections known other than to shout loudly. The Tories ignore them for being unreasonable, which makes them get angrier, so they shout louder. The net result is that politics feels increasingly distant and alien to the protesters, while those in power are made to feel that these are people to be governed and not engaged with.

Make no mistake that a political divide is growing between the victims of austerity and those who have not been touched by it, and the Tories winning an election has not changed this. Anyone who wants to reach any kind of political consensus needs to make these two groups talk, which currently they are not.

The main event of the conference was Prime Minister David Cameron's speech, which he primarily used to attack the new Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was also present in Manchester, but he was addressing the same protesters that the Tories refused to acknowledge. In many ways, Corbyn is the opposite of the protestors: quiet, impersonal, and from a mainstream political party.

Corbyn's election as Labour leader was because he engaged with this faction of society that the other mainstream politicians ignore, they flocked into the Labour Party to carry Corbyn into the leadership. Now Corbyn is trying to reasonably convoy the anger and hurt of these people to the establishment. However, the establishment are not listening to Corbyn either and would scare people by calling Corbyn a threat to national security.

When the angry try and engage with the political process in a constructive way, through political changes such as electing Corbyn, they told either that they are stupid, that their opinions are dangerous or that they are traitors. I am still not sure what the Tories believe is a reasonable way to object to their policies. Presumably it is as meekly as possible so that any objections can be ignored.

Questions remain of how well Corbyn will go down with the electorate as a whole, but so far he has done well at representing the views of this angry section of society that have been ignored for so long. Corbyn is trying to avoid a violent confrontation in the future by addressing the social problems of austerity. However the establishment do not want to listen to him.

If the Tories do not want to talk to the protesters about their objections then they can talk to Corbyn. If they do not want to talk to him either, then the divide will grow until something snaps and violence breaks out. The post-war consensus was supposed to the stop extreme politics of the left and right and the violent political uprisings that had dogged the first half the twenty century. If the Tories want to tear up the last remnants of the post-war consensus and silence any objection, then they invite a return to the extremes and violence of the past. This is what will happen if there is no constructive dialogue.

I would prefer engagement with the protesters through the established political channels as the best means to address the social problems of austerity. The choice of doing that directly, or through Corbyn, is left to the Tory party. The one thing which is certain is that pretending that no one is suffering under austerity and Cameron's leadership will not heal the growing social divide. Only constructive engagement can do this.

What is wrong with gentrification?

Last weekend a protest come street party descended on Brick Lane to protest against the gentrification of the area. Called the Fuck Parade and organised by anarchist group Class War, the crowd-funded protest turned its attention to the most obvious incarnation of the hipsterization of East London, the Cereal Killer. For those reading from outside London this is a cafe which only sells cereal.

Most people will instantly roll their eyes at the words "street party", "crowd-funding" and "anarchist group", then they will go back to eating their scrambled eggs with chorizo with all the superiority of a middle-class centrist. The more thoughtful individual will say that they may find the idea of a cafe that sells cereal for £4.40 a bowl slightly decadent but wider socio-economic problems cannot be blamed one group of people trying to earn a living. Protesting outside a small business a few streets away from the headquarters of RBS is choosing the wrong enemy if your goal really is "class war".

All this misses the point, which is that gentrification has done enormous damage to the communities of East London and the process shows no signs of stopping. You may disagree with the form the protest has taken but you cannot disagree with people wanting to express their anger at the way their communities have been hollowed out to make way for places which sell pulled pork and ever increasing numbers of luxury flats.

The process of gentrification drives people out of their homes by raising the rents in formerly affordable postcodes to astronomical levels. Through the same process, gentrification closes down small businesses. Just look at what has happened with the Brixton railway arches

Gentrification affects the poorest people in society. People who rent and cannot afford to get on the property ladder. These people are most affected by the rise in rents, especially at times when income has remained stagnant. Some of these people live in social housing, which mitigates some of the effect, but the depletion of the social housing stock has forced many of them into the private renting sector. Forced to move from affordable location to affordable location, the rising rents with gentrification means these people are running out of affordable places to live. These poor people have almost no one to speak for them and no means to signal their opposition to being priced out of their own homes.

Most of us see gentrification as positive thing. We say that this area used to be filled with betting shops and takeaways and now it has coffee shops and bars that sell craft lager from local breweries. There is an element of class snobbishness in this, it’s more middle class therefore it must be better. However is it what the people who live in the area there want? No one ever stops to ask them when the character of an area changes.

I live in Walthamstow where this process is thoroughly underway. In the three years I have lived here the places has changed almost beyond recognition. I admit that I am part of the problem, I was not born here and I like pulled pork and craft lager as much as the next iPhone owning middle-class lefty, but I can see another way of looking at gentrification. This area used to be filled with business local people could afford to use; now it is not. Pretty soon these people will leave because they cannot afford their rent and the middle-class colonisation of East London will march on.

What will happen when all the cleaners, carers and shop staff cannot afford to live anywhere in London? Do we want to send them all to Luton and then bus them in when needed? Is this the future for the poor people who need the jobs in London but cannot afford to live there? The problem of London's rising property prices is already spreading to the commuter belt. The future looks bleak for the urban poor in the South East.

So if gentrification is such a problem, why is nothing being done about it? For those who hold the majority of political power (the middle and upper classes), gentrification is seen as desirable. The more middle class an area becomes, the better it is. Capitalism will liberate the poor from their vulgar, misguided desires and deliver them to a more sophisticated world. It is just an unfortunate byproduct that this process also drives poor people of their homes.

Gentrification is also seen as desirable by the people who own property in an area. Again, generally these are the people who have more of a say in the political process. To challenge gentrification we need to challenge the idea that homes are financial assets and remind everyone that a home is a place to live. Economic security for the many is preferable than generating more wealth for the few.

We need to challenge the prevailing opinion that creating more wealth at the expense of communities and people's lives is a good thing. This cuts to the heart of how we see economics. Our society is becoming materially richer but emotionally poorer as all that has emotional value is swept away in favour what makes money. This is seen as a natural process, something we cannot control. Standing up to capitalism is like willing the Earth to stop turning.

Economic process are not inevitable and neither are they natural forces. They are the behaviour of people, and peoples’ behaviour has changed in the past and it will change in the future. This view, that forms and flows of capitalism is inevitable and beyond control is an ideological argument in favour of the status quo. It is an argument that benefits the people who already have wealth, who own property and who benefit from the constantly expanding reach of capitalism. Markets can be controlled, the process is not inevitable. To say otherwise is to support those who prosper from the process of gentrification at the expense of others.

Tackling the problems of gentrification cuts to the heart of how we see capitalism and society. What is seen as good in our society, or inevitable, is often what benefits the middle classes who hold all the political power. These assumptions need to be challenged if we are to stop the damage done to communities by gentrification.

Over the last few years economic growth has returned on the back of growing consumer debt and rapidly rising house prices. At the same time, the majority of people have had falling real wages, less stability in employment and rising costs of living. We have failed to build enough houses for sale and enough social housing, this has forced too many people into an overheated private rented sector and led to a housing crisis, which has affected the poorest the most. We could unlock brownfield land, build more houses, build taller to create more housing units, passes laws against land banking, tax under-occupied properties, pass laws to prevent the depletion of the social housing stock, build more social housing or taken any other number of steps to tackle the problems of gentrification, but there is no political will to do this.

There has been many polite requests to tackle the social problems of gentrification, from the poor and the middle class, this has led to nothing. The process marches invetiably on, people are still being driven from their homes by rising rents and local business are forced out in favour of places like Cereal Killer. This trend is not the fault of Cereal Killer’s owners nor is it the fault of those who sell pulled pork or craft lager, however society is sending clear message to the poor. “These things are wanted, you are not wanted here. Leave now. Any attempts to resist the invasion of our community will be severely dealt with.” No wonder people are angry.

Only the most selfish person would think that anarchist led riots are a sign of society functioning properly. Clearly there are problems of gentrification that need to be addressed, however, all forms of polite protest have been met with a shrug of the shoulder. So people have taken to the streets.

The problems of gentrification still damage people's lives and the process continues. Violence will follow unless we face the problem of the housing crisis and people being driven out of their community. It is not enough to dismiss this as inevitable or argue that it is desirable. We cannot allow the problem of gentrification to continue unchecked or else the form of protest that comes in the future will be much more destructive.

The migrant crisis requires leadership not pragmatism

"The voters are wrong, and what is required is a louder exposition of their wrongness." These were the sarcastic words written by Rafael Behr in his Guardian column and were meant to mock the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and their desire for Labour to challenge the prevailing Tory wisdom on the economy, welfare and immigration. The success of Corbyn has uncovered a divide in politics, especially left wing politics, between those who believe that we should give the voters what they want and those who want to change what voters want.

The former has been the dominant approach to politics from the mid-80s onwards. It took over when we abandoned grand narratives of changing society and settled for governments which make minor adjustments. The established economic doctrines have not been challenged since Thatcher and a cynical following of the established narrative has been embraced in order for left wing politicians to be "electable". The fact that other than Blair, all of these electable Labour platforms have failed to win elections is usually overlooked when arguing that Labour should give the voters what they want.

This cynical acceptance of right wing arguments is nothing short of tacit support for the establishment, but it is often packaged as being realistic or pragmatic. The pragmatists' argument usually goes thusly: "It's not that I am cynically pro-establishment or have a complete lack of will to change the status quo I am invested in, I am just being realistic about what we can achieve with politics being the way they are". This is the attitude which has allowed neo-liberalism to go unchallenged for over 30 years.

This acceptance of a timidly pragmatic approach to politics has dramatically reduced our belief in what politics can accomplish. The majority of the fault for this needs to be laid at the feet of spineless politicians who are more concerned by what spin doctors have to say than what people need. We now think that politics cannot change society or achieve great things, however we are still faced with enormous challenges that require radical solutions and not timidity. Climate change, growing inequality and decreasing social mobility are long term trends which need a radical solution. In the short term, a situation which right now needs a radical solution is the European migration crisis.

Tackling the crisis requires politicians to have vision and leadership, and at times it will mean telling the voters when they are wrong. Most people in the last election voted for a party which offered some form of controls on immigration; a pragmatist would say this shows there is no electoral will for helping migrants despite any obligations we may feel to those in need. The migrant crisis is an issue where we need politicians to tell the voters and the public what they may not want to hear want to hear. Right now the photographs from Turkey may have increased sympathy for the migrants, but helping these people in dire need will mean leadership from politicians in the long run, when the issue fades from the headlines and when it is not politically advantageous to appear sympathetic to migrants.

We need our leaders to show courage and fly in the face of public opinion if that opinion is against helping people who are suffering. We need politicians to give an exposition of voters wrongness. Little has been done to challenge the anti-immigration rhetoric and the public perception of immigrants is at an all time low. This has led to a humanitarian crisis across Europe from Greece to Italy, from Hungary to Calais. There is a lot of suffering by people who have lost their homes, their livelihoods and even their families. No one can deny the plight of these poor people the victims of war, failed states and totalitarian regimes. Political will is against helping these people because of this pragmatic acceptance that helping migrants is a vote loser.

We have a duty to help these poor people as we are able to help them. They are not asking for much, food, shelter, a place to work that is free from war and tyranny. This is not a lot and involves us giving up so little of our vast wealth to help some of the world's most unfortunate people. We also have a duty to help them as we caused their suffering. Through attacking Iraq and Libya we created the chaos which groups like ISIS have exploited to seize power, groups which many of these people are fleeing.

We are also responsible through our inability to help in the people who live under totalitarian regimes or in war zones like Eritrea and Syria. Our governments show huge ability to influence poorer nations when we want something from them (usually natural resources) but when it comes to helping the world's least fortunate people we shake our heads and say there is nothing to be done. Our inability to solve these problems has brought the victims of war and tyranny to our doorstep and we are obliged to help them here if we cannot help them in their country of origin.

It may be unpopular with small minded little Englanders, who thinks our duty of care extends as far as providing a fertile ground for business to prosper but goes no further - conveniently these people are often business owners and live in prosperous communities - but we need to stand up to these voters and give an exposition of their wrongness. The pragmatists will dislike this but because it requires challenging people's opinions (including opinions they are sympathetic to) but we need to stand up to the pragmatists as well. The migration crisis is a case when the voters are wrong and giving the voters what they want will lead to more suffering.

The pragmatists' arguments collapses when confronted with any situation where taking the easiest route out is not an opinion. On the issue of welfare these pragmatists get what they want a lot, because it is easier to cut benefits (or to allow the Tories to cut benefits if you support Labour) than to challenge the prevailing opinion on welfare. In regards to the migrant crisis, the pragmatists do not have a solution because there is no solution that involves giving the voters what they already want. The pragmatists' solution is to ignore the problem so that it goes away. This will clearly not work.

The reason why the pragmatists do not have a solution is because the solution is leadership and challenging the prevailing opinion. The time and the case for radical leadership has never been greater as we are faced with great challenges. Not just international problems like the migrant crisis or climate change, but the problems of the UK require radical leadership to tackle them. How do we rebalance our economy away from London? How do we provide a reasonable standard living for people across the entire country when even middle class jobs are threatened by automation? How do we care for the growing percentage of old people? How do we share the benefits of technological advancement? These are not problems with easy or pragmatic solutions. To face these challenges we need radical leadership, the challenges are great but I am confident that together we can rise to them.

The Corbyn train wreck

Something which no one anticipated has happened – there has been a major shake up in the Labour leadership contest, and it looks likely that Jeremy Corbyn will win a landslide victory. This has come as a shock to everyone, including Corbyn himself, but on some level it was inevitable. The surge in support for the Greens, the SNP and UKIP over the last parliament shows that voters are fed up with carefully-tailored, spin-doctor-managed politicians who talk a lot and say nothing of value.

Corbyn's success is partly because the other Labour leadership candidates are all so hopeless. However, Corbyn's success is also partly because he has a narrative that members have engaged with, a narrative that Labour can return to its traditional socialist values rather than drift to the right.

Having a successful narrative is essential to politics. Labour lost the election because the electorate did not trust them with the economy. This could be more accurately phrased as the electorate bought the Conservatives’ narrative that Labour over-spending caused the recession and the Tories are sorting the problem out. This is why, despite Labour's spending lock and commitment to austerity, voters still felt they were not economically credible.

Corbyn has given the party hope that politics can change society for the better. His narrative of what is wrong with the country has engaged people with Labour politics on a scale not seen since the halcyon days of Blair. I greatly admire the way in which Corbyn has engaged so many people alienated by politics in general and the Labour Party in particular.

Corbyn's narrative is a radical departure from what senior Labour Party figures have been saying for a long time, and it conflicts directly with the narrative which both the Blarities and the Conservatives are putting forward as to why Labour lost the general election. This is one reason why so many Labour bigwigs have lined up to warn party members not to support him in the leadership election.

A narrative of a return to socialist values speaks to a lot of people about what they think is wrong with society – namely, that there is too much focus on wealth creation and not enough on inequality, and there is too much privatisation driven by ideology and not enough public ownership. It appeals to people who think there are too many benefit cuts and too much blaming the poor for being poor. We are becoming a less caring, meaner and more selfish society under the Tory government, and a narrative that is counter to this is engaging many people.

Corbyn is the only candidate saying we should not blame all of our social problems on immigrants and benefit claimants. Corbyn is the only candidate saying we need to tackle our environmental problems and invest in infrastructure. Corbyn’s narrative is based on values Labour should remember and that the Blarities have tried their hardest to forget. It is a narrative that has changed the leadership election and could become the narrative of the Labour party as a whole.

This new narrative does not fix all of the Labour Party's problems. The main issue with it is that it is a fundamentally backwards-looking narrative. Corbyn's policies are traditional old Labour socialism: nationalisation, higher taxes, more spending, re-opening the coalmines, and withdrawal from NATO. All of these, apart from the last one, are policies I support but they need to be accompanied by a narrative that looks to the future and not the past.

What the left needs right now is powerful narrative about the sort of society we want to create in the future. Ideas like redistribution, basic income, and solutions to the crises being faced in health, education and housing. The left needs to think about how capitalism will change, how to protect the environment and how to protect a minimum standard of living in a world where machines now threaten to take away middle class jobs. The left needs a narrative that brings old Labour values into a current context.

None of the other Labour leadership candidates have any form of narrative, which is one reason why Corbyn is so far ahead in the polls. The other candidates have no means to explain what is wrong with society and how they could change it for the better. Corbyn's narrative of going back to the past is better than the empty sound bites that the other candidates offer.

However, Corbyn’s narrative could cost Labour the 2020 election. Labour wins big when it has a vision for the future and is forward looking. What Labour needs right now is a "white heat of technology" moment, a narrative which describes current circumstances and how society will progress under a Labour government. Corbyn is not offering this.

There is another issue with the Corbyn campaign, and that is the messenger and not the message. Corbyn has supported a number of unpopular causes over the years, including the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah. Many of the groups he has supported have become legitimate political forces, such as the ANC, but some are still considered enemies of Britain by many voters. Regardless of how good his narrative is, it could fall on deaf ears because of his history and the hammering that he will get in the right wing press, In the end, Corbyn could alienate as many people from the Labour Party as he attracts.

Corbyn's opponents argue that his leadership could be a train wreck. The combination of a backward-looking narrative and a messenger who will be painted as a sympathizer of terrorists could alienate moderate voters and drive them straight to the Tories. If the Tories win in 2020, they will continue their plan to demolish the welfare state and privatize the NHS with a zeal we cannot imagine right now. The people who need an effective opposition the most will be the ones who lose out.

That is one possible train wreck narrative of the future. The other is the train wreck of signing up to the Tory narrative or of having no narrative – these are functionally the same, and are what the other candidates offer. Labour cannot help the people most hurt by the Conservative government by agreeing with benefit cuts, austerity and the mass transfer of assets from the poor to the rich. The Tories have the demographics locked down who support austerity and controls on immigration, and if Labour agrees with them it only makes the Tories look more credible to these people. The Tories could not win under Blair by matching his narrative of spending and Labour cannot win by agreeing with the Tory narrative – it needs to present an alternative.

I do not know which of these two outcomes is more likely. So far, Corbyn's narrative has worked very effectively for him. In just eight weeks he has gone from a no hope candidate to almost certain victory. Will he be able to repeat this on a larger scale over the next five years?

Personally, I feel that the greater trap is not having a narrative or accepting the Tory narrative, which is what cost Ed Miliband the election. A lot of voters want change from the direction the country has gone in over the last 30 years, and Corbyn's message of a return to traditional socialist values seems to be working.

The other candidates’ complete lack of a challenging narrative is a major problem. It will hand electoral victory to the Tories. Over Blair, Brown and Miliband years I have seen too many people of principal alienated by a Labour Party that is walked over by big business and the rich, while failing to stand up for the most disadvantaged people in society. Corbyn is offering a narrative that can change this. Will it be strong enough to counter the muck the right wing press will throw at him? That remains to be seen.

Maybe Corbyn can use his narrative to shift the support of the electorate in his favour. I hope he can. Make no mistake, the chances of a train wreck are high if he fails - but the chances of a train wreck are also high if we do not let him try.

Welcome to the new Tory Britain

NB: This blog post was written a while ago and not posted due to computer problems. The debate has changed since it was written, mainly because of Jeremy Corbyn, who will be the subject of the next blog post, but I felt it worth posting anyway. It was supposed to go up shortly after the budget was announced.

We were all surprised when the Tories won a majority in the general election earlier this year. Polls had showed Labour and the Tories neck and neck for weeks. No one expected what happened when the polling stations closed and the BBC announced its exit polls. The Tories were going to be the largest party in a hung parliament by quite a long way.

Paddy Ashdown's comments that he would "eat his hat" if the polls were right summed up the belief that this could not have happened. Over the next few hours, the results backed up the exit poll. The Tories would be the largest party and hold the balance of power. By the early hours of the next morning it was clear that even the exit poll was an under-estimate and that the Tories would form a majority government.

A taste of what the next five years would bring was immediately served in the form of July's emergency budget, the first purely Tory budget since Ken Clarke's 1996 budget 18 years before. The budget contained tax cuts for the rich in the forms of reductions in inheritance tax and corporation tax, the later to become lowest level in the G7 and joint lowest in the G20. The budget also contained £12bn worth of cuts to welfare, much of it for people in work but earning less than a living wage. The people who have insecure jobs, the people with low incomes, the people who have been suffering from years of stagnant wages, rising rents and high costs of living would bare the brunt of Tory austerity. We were told that it was essential to cut back aid to these hard working families in order to balance the books of the nation.

At the same time as those who work hard for a low wage were having money taken away from them, Chancellor George Osborne has announced the sale of the publicly-owned Royal Bank of Scotland at a cut down price. The net loss to the public purse of this sale is £13bn. The conflicting message is our society cannot afford to be generous to the poor but it is essential that we continue to be generous to the rich, if we do not then the entire mechanism of our society would ground to a hault. If we give the poor money they will not work, but if we stop giving the rich money they will not create wealth.

This cut to the poor and subsidy to the rich represents an enormous transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest. The welfare state is being bled dry out of a sense of necessity, a necessity that does not extend to selling the government's RBS shares at market price. This shows what the Tories really believe in and what we will get for the next five years: help for big business and the rich, punishment the poor for being poor.

Osborne has pushed back his deficit reduction plans. The national debt will now be paid off in 2019, and it will take longer to repay the deficit under Osborne's plan than it would have under the plans laid out by Labour Chancellor Alastair Darling in 2010 and Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls in 2015. Both of these alternatives, dismissed by the electorate, involved fewer cuts to public services. The Tory plan is not to rebalance the nation's finances but to rebalance society in favour of the “wealth creators”. This not a conspiracy organised by a public school elite, it is simply what the Tories believe will encourage economic growth that will eventually trickle down to everyone. The mass transfer of assets from the poor to the rich is supposed to benefit the poor at some later date. However, that day never arrives and we are becoming an increasingly unequal society.

Following their surprise defeat, Labour are searching for a new leader. This has not prevented interim leader Harriet Harman from endorsing the Tory welfare cuts. The electorate sent a clear signal that they did not trust Labour with the economy, that they completely accepted the Conservatives’ line on Labour overspending, and they wanted the deficit cut. Harman wants to regain some electoral credibility for Labour during her brief time in charge and her approach to this is to sign up to the Tories plan to hack away at the safety net the poor rely on.

By signing up to the Tories’ anti-welfare agenda, Labour have moved the middle ground of politics towards scaling back welfare. When Labour fails to offer an opposition to Tory cuts they become more acceptable to the electorate. This gives the Tories licence to cut welfare further than they initially planned.

It is not a coincidence that on the day that Labour agreed not to oppose the Tory welfare cuts, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has suggested that workers save for their own sickness and unemployment by paying into a private fund out of their wages. This is fundamental redrawing of the social contract and an attack on the basic premise that the state provides assistance to those who are unfortunate enough to be sick or unemployed.

This new assault on welfare is partly ideological: there are many Tories who would like to abolish welfare alltogether and move to system entirely based on self-reliance. That would be a system entirely based on how wealthy your family is, which suits the Tories perfectly. Another reason for this assault on welfare is the cut and thrust of politics. The Tories have a simple plan: to paint Labour as a party of the unemployed and themselves as a party of the hard workers, and this was one of the reasons why they won the election.

The Tories will keep hacking away at welfare until Labour stand up to them, at which point the Tories will accuse them of being on the side of the scroungers and against the strivers. If Labour try to avoid being accused of supporting scroungers by voting with the Tories, then the Tories will cut welfare further and further. While the two main parties play games of positioning over the issue of welfare, the people who rely on welfare are losing their livelihoods.

Labour, and other people on left, need to stand up to the mass transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich through welfare cuts and discount privatisation. However, the position faced by Labour after the surprise electoral defeat is a difficult one. They need to find a new way to present themselves, because the way that former leader Ed Miliband presented Labour completely failed to resonate with the electorate.

While Labour are going through this period of introspection, we should appreciate the size of the challenge. The electorate voted for the Tories and gave them a mandate, however slim, to cut further. The arguments of Miliband fell on deaf ears, the electorate is not interested in a Labour Party that offers a milder version of what the Tories are offering. The electorate would clearly just prefer the Tories.

If Labour and the left are going to start winning again, then we need a pursue new narrative about what has gone wrong in the past and what will go wrong in the future unless we change direction. This new narrative needs to be bold, radical, different from what the Tories argue, but it also needs to resonate with ordinary people and their experience of the world.

For my part, I intend to write articles looking into this question of a new left wing narrative and what shape it could take. Whatch this space for new ideas of how we change the political debate. The Tories are rolling out their vision for Britain for the next five years and it is a painful vision of welfare cuts for the poorest and the mass transfer of assets to the richest. The need for the left to express a narrative which could oppose the new Tory Britain has never been greater.

From the Eiffel Tower to the Burj Khalifa

You can tell a lot about a society's top priority from its largest buildings. Renaissance Florence built what was then the world's biggest dome to show the glory of the Catholic Church. The Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu built an enormous palace to show the power of the Communist Party. Throughout British history, we have used architecture to proclaim the power of feudal tyrants, the church and now the wealth of the financial sector. All over London, huge structures are rising up to proclaim the dominance of the financial elite over every aspect of our society.

London has been remade several times in its lifetime to suit contemporary values. In the late 19th century, the urban landscape changed dramatically as advancements in construction technology made building on a new scale possible. This was the heyday of the railway; Kings Cross and Pafddington Stations were built and the rail network was extended even to tiny seaside towns. People's lives were changed by new technology and new buildings, and isolated settlements were now joined in a great, single whole.

At the same time, across the Channel the same technological advancements were being used to build the Eiffel Tower. This was the largest man-made structure of all time when it was finished and it still dominates Paris today, showing how great our aspirations and accomplishments can be.

These urban changes, big and small, were aimed at remaking society entirely. The technological innovations that led to larger buildings, bridges and railways changed the urban landscape and the lives of the people who lived there. This was the birth of the modernist era, where the world could be made better by technology and collective endeavor.

The modernist era also gave us the new high rises and brutalist social housing estates, that were also constructed on a monumental scale. Again, these were a dramatic change to the urban landscape with the aim of improving people's lives through architecture. People believed that architecture could make the world a better place, and people believed in a future in which we all would lead fuller and more prosperous lives.

These plans of improving people through architecture failed, and the social housing that was built has become a symbol or urban decay, alienation, crime, drugs, family breakdown and social ills. Some of this reputation is not entirely deserved and has been propagated by those who are politically opposed to social housing. The valuable bits of social housing were sold off as the public property passed into private hands. Once again, the urban landscape changed from one of public spaces to private spaces. Housing, parks, streets and walkways which were once open to all were quickly closed off as private property.

Today our urban landscape is still changing, but now we do not aim to remake society or to improve people. The landscape is becoming dominated by the symbols of private financial wealth. This is most noticeable in the giant monuments to unrestrained capitalism that dominate the London skyline, and which are the largest objects in our society.

We still build on an epic scale and we still make structures which push the limit of the largest human-made objects. The world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, contains private offices, apartments, a luxury hotel and exclusive shops. We have come along way from the Eiffel Tower and Paddington Station, which showed how technological progress could change the lives of everyone, as these new buildings show how the benefits of recent technology advancements are confined to a privileged few.

Buildings like the Burj Khalifa - or its smaller London cousin, the Shard - are still built with the "monumental style" that the Eiffel Tower has, but they are closed to the public. They have become symbols of a global financial elite that lives in a different world to everyone else, like the medieval fortresses or the Palaces of Communist dictators.

The idea that we can can make the world new, that we can use architecture to improve people's lives and that the future can be better if we work together has been dismissed as so much misguided, wishful thinking. The social housing projects of the interwar and postwar period are looked back on as failures, never to be repeated. The result is the decline of the social housing stock and increased pressure on the private rental market. Now millions of people are forced to live in substandard accommodation and are being exploited by those lucky enough to benefit from the conversion of public space into private space. We urgently need to build more social homes, we need a movement to improve people's lives with architecture and we need to fix the social problems caused by the housing shortage.

Today, rather than building with aspirations to improve people's lives, we push the poor further and further away and enclose more and more of the public land as private space. The only thing we aspire to is to build is huge monuments to financial wealth and oil wealth. We need to aspire to be better before we turn back into a pre-modern society.

The living conditions of the poorest in society are getting worse as our building technology continues to improve. If we do not change, we will live in a world permanently divided between those who live in epic structures like the Burj Khalifa and those who live in slums worse than those of Victorian London.

One of the tenets of modernism was to question the narrative of continuous social progress. We need to question that narrative now as our world changes for the worse. We need to go back to that spirit of optimism about the future that the early modernist period encapsulated. The epic structures of the future, those which push the limits of what humans can achieve, need to be for all, not just a privileged few.

It isn’t the ‘80s anymore

It isn’t the ‘80s any more. I can tell because I’m not writing this whilst listening to a New Order LP and chain-smoking Player’s No. 6, not to mention that I’m doing so on a home computer connected to the internet. Oh, and politics might have changed a bit, as well. With that in mind, the endless comparisons of Jeremy Corbyn to ‘unelectable’ former Labour leader Michael Foot are tiresome and irrelevant.

If we must keep banging on about Labour’s catastrophic 1983 election defeat, at least let’s dispense with the selective memory. Yes, Labour were badly beaten and yes, alright, they did so whilst standing on a left-wing manifesto (albeit a manifesto which was, in some ways, a logical progression from the victorious 1945 one). But there was a lot more at play than that. Thatcher – deeply unpopular in Ghost-Town Britain only a couple of years before – was riding high on patriotic euphoria following the Falklands War. Not only that, but the Lab-SDP split had just occurred, with the breakaway party taking a chunk of Labour votes with them , Labour were lucky to avoid coming third in ’83.

Both of these things, I’d argue, had at least as much to do with the defeat as their manifesto. Whilst the Tories may yet be lucky enough to fight an opposition riven by an SDP-style split in 2020, they’re unlikely – given their currently tiny majority – to have the good fortune of a quick, victorious, popular war to draw votes.

Granted, Foot was an imperfect leader who had the misfortune to take the helm in the choppiest of waters. But he was also a kind, intelligent man, who was treated with appalling cruelty by the press (Milliband’s bacon sandwich episode doesn’t even compare). In the early ‘80s, the newspapers were at the height of their opinion-forming powers. But there’s no way they wield that level of influence now, in the era of the internet and 24-hour news. Social media in particular – for all its faults, not least its tendency to act as an echo chamber for opinions you already hold – has arguably democratised the way we consume news. Never again will that copy of The Sun someone left in the canteen be your sole source of current affairs coverage for the day, however casually you consume your news.

The other factor that’s changed since then is that inequality has increased along many lines, not least generationally. The apathy of the current generation of young people is being killed off in death by a thousand cuts. Already disadvantaged compared to their parents by university tuition fees (thanks to Blair), ridiculous housing costs and fewer job opportunities, they’re now – like a bloke who’s just been beaten up having his wallet nicked by a passing mugger – being deprived the same benefits and minimum wage that over-25s get. Is it any surprise that a major part of the surge in support for Corbyn is amongst young people?

Every generation can be said to live, to some degree, in the shadow of the previous one (or two). But it’s especially acute for the current generation of young people. Structurally disadvantaged and discriminated against in so many ways, they’re also being collectively told by their elders not to bother with all that idealistic, let’s change the world stuff. We already tried it, say the older generation, and take it from us, it doesn’t work. We learned to get with the programme (and create New Labour). Now, I don’t know about you, but that isn’t the most inspiring message to me. And if there’s one thing no-one likes, it’s being told to grow up and get real (least of all by Tony Blair).

These young people have no emotional affinity with the Labour Party. And why should they? The focus-group driven New Labour, with its slick PR, seemed to actively discourage a grass-roots movement. Whereas some old lefties may lament for a time when this wasn’t the case, today’s young people have never known it any different. They don’t give a toss what happened in the ‘80s. But they are getting fired up by Corbyn’s message. This is also why the accusations of ‘80s Militant Tendendy-style ‘entryism’ – an organised attempt to infiltrate, and change, the party - don’t ring true. If ‘entryism’ (if we must call it that) is indeed happening, in that people are signing up for the first time in order to vote Corbyn. I’d argue it’s primarily people who were previously too disengaged with mainstream parties to want to be involved.

Admittedly, some of Corbyn’s policies (unilateral nuclear disarmament, for example) have always been divisive, both within and outside of the Labour Party. But how have we been hoodwinked into believing that universal free education – in place for decades in Britain prior to Blair - is a radical, hard-left position? I think a lot of young people are wondering why, and finding the political establishment wanting.

The tuition fees issue is symptomatic, because the terms of the debate surrounding it all too often both contribute to, and reflect, the rampant, selfish individualism so prevalent and unchallenged in society. Someone has to pay for universities, the Right argue, and it’ll either have to be those who go – or those who don’t go. Whatever happened to the idea, once held on the right as well as the left, that wide access to higher education was beneficial to society as a whole?

Look at Corbyn, by contrast, and the way he talks to the public on the assumption that people care about how society gets on in general, care about other people. The other candidates talk to the public as separate, self-interested individuals, and play to their assumed individual aspirations for themselves. This, for me, is one of the clearest dividing lines between Corbyn and the other candidates, who indirectly seem to take for granted the Thatcherite myth that there really is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families. Only Corbyn is seriously challenging this. Without his presence in the race, there’d barely even be a debate.

On a personal note, after the last election, I’d begun to come to terms with the fact that a more compassionate, kinder politics simply wasn’t what most people wanted. But the unexpected rising tide of support for Corbyn – especially amongst young people, who’ve been given the message that the Left is beaten, marginalised and irrelevant their whole lives – gives me hope. Meanwhile, the Blairites tell us that electing Corbyn would consign Labour to merely becomming a protest movement to oppose Tory cuts. Well, as the old joke goes, it would be a start though, wouldn’t it? Perhaps it’s the necessary first step on the long road toward towards becoming relevant again, and rebuilding a movement that people can connect with and relate to.

Why Labour needs Corbyn to start winning again

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will have guessed that I am backing Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader. I am on the left of Labour Party and his views most accurate represent my own. I think it is time that Labour put forward a genuine left-wing alternative in mainstream politics.

At first the rest of the Labour Party dismissed Corbyn as either a dinosaur or a crank. Now there is a chance he might do well in the ballot, perhaps even coming top in terms of first preferences. Now the concerned voices are being raised in the Guardian, the Independent and by former leader Tony Blair, that he is too leftwing to win a general election.

The argument that these articles and others are putting forward is that choosing Corbyn as a leader would be a mistake as he would drive the centre of the electorate into the hands of the Tories. All these articles take it as read that Labour lost this year's general election because the platform they stood on was too leftwing. Personally I don’t think that a manifesto that contains austerity and controls on immigration can be described as especially leftwing. The commentators overlook this and claim that the election was an endorsement for the centre right.

These articles are quick to point out southern English voters did not trust Labour with the economy and thus voted Conservative. Although they never mention the voters Labour lost to the SNP, or the Greens, who stood on an anti-austerity platform similar to Corbyn's. These articles also seem to claim wide electoral support for austerity. The truth is that the voters were given little alternative to austerity, which is not endorsing it. Many chose to reject austerity, especially in Scotland, and these are the voters that Corbyn can win back to the Labour Party.

Articles which proclaim the unelectability of Corbyn also do not mention all the people who did not vote at all in the last election. The convergence of the two main parties on a narrower and narrower section of the centre have alienated many people whose views lie outside this thin section. Many of these people are poor or from monitories and are completely disaffected by mainstream politics. In the last election 34% of people did not vote, enough to profoundly alter the result. This represents a huge pool of voters a candidate of principle, whom a candidate outside the narrow centre ground of politics like Corbyn could appeal to.

Many voters are put off Labour because the party is seen as indistinguishable from the Tories, a problem which is not helped by Labour failing to stand up to Tory welfare cuts, their use of anti-immigration rhetoric and their support for austerity. As a Labour Party supporter I find it hard to see how an Andy Burnham or Liz Kendall government would be different from a David Cameron or George Osborne government is any meaningful way. Undoing Ed Miliband’s minuscule step to the left will not win back all the voters who are put off by how similar to the two main parties are. Having Corbyn as a leader will differentiate Labour, there is no point being an opposition if you are not seen as different.

The articles also fail to mention the significant UKIP vote in the general election. On paper Corbyn is unlikely to appeal to UKIP voters, however UKIP were effective at stealing voters from Labour with rhetoric against the "Westminster bubble". Burnham or Yvette Cooper will not be able to connect to the voters alienated by how distant Westminster politics appears from their lives. Corbyn talks with conviction about the problems people are facing in their lives. He is also clearly outside the Westminster bubble and not another cardboard cut out politician. Corbyn's politics are very different to that of UKIP, but he could win over people who distrust mainstream politicians.

The reason Labour lost the election was because they tried to retake the centre ground of politics which the Tories occupy. Supporting austerity, benefit cuts and controls on immigration do not make you appealing to centre voters if they Tories are offering the same thing and are already in a position to deliver it. The centre does not like change, so if they are satisfied with their government it will not change.

The Tories are unlikely to lose this centre ground over the next five years and it is clear that Labour needs to change direction if they want to win in 2020. Running the same campaign as Miliband ran with some minor adjustments, as Burnham will most likely do, will result in another Tory victory.

Corbyn offers a genuine change in direction and thus a chance of winning in 2020. Kendall does offer a change of direction but it is towards the centre which the Tories will most likely keep control off. If Labour want to win then they need to start thinking about the voters they lost to the SNP and the Greens and the people who voted UKIP or did not vote at all because of their dissatisfaction with mainstream politics.

The chance of Corbyn winning in 2020 is small, but the chances of Burnham, Cooper or Kendall winning in 2020 are also small. There is not a winning candidate amongst the alternatives to Corbyn; this is why he is ahead in the polls. If Labour cannot win then they should at least offer a genuine alternative to the Tories, which will attract more support for the future.

A change of direction towards those disaffected by Labour offers the only chance of success in 2020 or post 2020. Aiming for the centre again will only repeat the 2015 outcome. Labour need to broaden their appeal to those put off mainstream politics, the marginalised and the angry; Corbyn can achieve this. It may not be what the centre of the party wants but if we listen to the centre of the party we will lose in 2020.

One of the reasons I support Corbyn is the way the political establishment has their knickers in a twist over him. They are shocked to see a leftwing politician speaking his mind and applled that people are actually agreeing with him. It makes them question all the certainties the Labour establishment thinks it learned in the 2015 defeat. It shows that 2015 was not the triumph of the centre right. The Labour establishment and their centrism have not been threatened like this in a long time. They genuinely frightened that the left of the party might get what they want and might be popular, all those compromises of Blair will be for nothing.

Chasing the centre, following austerity, being bland, none of this will help Labour win in 2020. Being different will help Labour win, reaching out to new people will help Labour win, showing they care will help. Not being like every other party will help. Corbyn can do all of these things; Corbyn can expand the appeal of the Labour Patrty. The other leadership candidates cannot. That is why we need Corbyn as a party leader if we are going to start winning again.

Mayor of London

The rein of the tyrant King Lol Bojo is coming to an end. There was abuse hurled at taxi drivers. There was millions wasted on the dangleway. There was an endorsement for Gordon Gekko. There was a plan to immortalise him with his own airport on and island and. Next year it all comes to an end, which means we have to choose a new mayor.

This leads me to ask: what do we want from a Mayor of London? We want someone who will focus on the issues that are specific to London. Someone who will keep alive that magic, which makes it special, and not package it up and selling it off to Qatari princes. Someone who will look after ordinary Londoners and protect them from the demands that the central government places on the capital, from supporting the Olympics to being the national cash cow.

It will surprise no one that I think that having a Labour Mayor is in the best interests of the people of London. Yet, what should the Mayor actually do, from a left-wing point of view? I can sum it up four key policy areas. Tackle the housing crisis by bring down house prices for ordinary people. Prevent the exploitation of huge numbers private renters. Tackle the rising problem of homelessness, up 37% in the last year. Improve the capital's council housing stock. Fortunately Labour has six candidates putting themselves forward for job and took the opportunity to evaluate their ideas against these four policy areas.

The main issues in London is lack of affordable housing and all six Labour candidates are infavour of more affordable housing, but how is it best to go about getting more affordable housing? Many developers use the viability studies, engaged in before a site is developed, to avoid their legal rights to build affordable homes. Sadiq Khan and Christian Wolmar are in favour of tightening the rules around viability studies to do achieve this. Diane Abbot has raised the issue of what does affordable actually means, £250,000 for a one bedroom flat maybe affordable by London's standards but it is still out of the reach of most ordinary people.

David Lammy has advocated building homes on the green belt, pointing out that 1 million homes could be build on 3.6% of the green belt. He claims that there is not enough space to build decent homes on brownfield sites (unless we build a lot of high rises) and that we need industrial land for business to prosper. The other candidates oppose building on the green belt and Khan was the most vocal in his regard, calling them the "lungs of London".

In my opinion we do need to build on the green belt if we are build the houses that London needs in the volume it needs and at a reasonable size. Tackling the way developers use viability studies to get around their obligation to building affordable homes is essential but we need genuinely affordable homes and not relatively affordable homes. We also need to build a lot more council homes, as well as affordable homes, to relieve the pressure of the private rental market.

The private rental marketing in London is dangerously inflated. Rents are astronomical and people are forced to live in tiny squalid homes not fit for animals. Abbot and Tessa Jowell advocate the establishment of a London wide landlord enforcement team to tackle landlords who are exploitative. Lammy went a step further to argue for expanding the landlord licensing scheme that, currently operates in, Newham across the rest of the capital.

Introducing a rent control scheme, similar to those in Paris, New York and Berlin was endorses by Abbot and Wolmar would help stop the inflation of the private rental market. Wolmar also favours greater stability in private tenure and more protection for private renting tenants. Khan endorses the idea of a London living rent, pegging rents to a third of the London mean salary.

I believe that the landlord enforcement team is a good idea and more rights are needed for private renting tenants. Rent controls are also a very good idea for stopping the run away growth in rents.

The candidates agreed that the main issue facing the homeless was the criminalisation of rough sleeping in some London boroughs. They also agreed that Tory cuts to homeless shelters and housing services was partly to blame. However no candidate identified the key issue that one of the fastest rising cause of homelessness is eviction from a private renting property. The issue of homelessness is linked to the issue of housing, namely that high house prices and the depletion of the council housing stock has placed too much pressure on the private renting sector.

The lack of social housing in London is a key issue affecting the least fortunate. Too many vulnerable people are being pushed into a private renting sector that cannot accommodate their needs. We need more social housing, which all the candidates are committed to. However what we do with the existing stock of social housing is key, particular the buildings that are deliberated. Jowell is invafour of regenerating estates and letting the original tenants move back into them. Lammy was concerned that estate generation is often a cover for social cleansing as poor people are driven out of valuable property areas so that rents can be raised. Garth Thomas has argued that any estate regeneration should be consented to by the current tenants.

For me the key issue is quality of social housing. Social housing has to be a vial option for people who need it. That means it must exist in sufficient quality and quantity. A lot of the estates that are pulled down as part of regeneration programs are better quality and have larger homes than what is being put up to replace them. A lot these builds need care and repair instead of being demolished. A lot of it does not meet current tastes in ascetics but that does not prevent them being quality social housing - or indeed beautiful in their individual way.

Other issues, outside these four I have discussed are important. Transport is a key issue and Thomas has suggested flattening fairs for the outer London transport zones is a good way to tackle the problem of rising transport fees. He also wants devolution to London. Although I am sure all the candidates would like the Mayor to have more powers, I feel that Thomas's plan is not achievable. Regional devolution is a great idea, not just for London, but the Mayoral debate needs to be on the issues the Mayor can affect.

London primarily voted Labour in general election and we now have an excellent opportunity to take back city hall from the Tories. The journey that led the Tories to a majority government started when Bojo became Mayor of London. What is important that Labour chooses the right candidate, who has ideas that can help improve lives once he or she is Mayor. After looking at their ideas I feel that the right man for the job is Christian Wolmar. However we will have to wait and see who the party chooses.

What if Spider-Man was a neo-liberal?

"With great power comes great responsibility." That is the takeaway lesson from Spider-Man. That and the fact that New York is a great place to live if you have an easy way of avoiding the traffic.

The lesson is completely true, Spider-Man has huge abilities beyond that of most people and he could easily use these powers to enrich himself at the expense of others. So what is stopping him? It is that sense of social responsibility (impressed on him by his uncle) and his own internal moral compass, shaped by experiences such as seeing close friends and colleagues corrupted by power (Harry Osborn, Dr Octavius, etc).

However, if Spider-Man was to meet a neo-liberal economist, the economist would argue against Uncle Ben's advice and claim that Spider-Man does not have any responsibility to anyone other than himself. The neo-liberal would argue that Spider-Man is a rational individual and he should act in his own rational self-interest. This is the central belief of neo-liberal economics: if everyone acted this way then we would all be more prosperous.

The only flaw in this argument is that a world with someone as powerful as Spider-Man in it, who acted only in their own self-interest, would be a terrifying place for everyone who was not Spider-Man.

If we extend his logic to all superheroes then the world gets even darker. Should the Avengers act in their own rational self-interest and ignore all their social obligations? Neo-liberal economists would argue that they should, however if they did then there would be no power on earth that could stop them. The Avengers could hurt many people in the process of enriching themselves and it would be perfectly rational to do so.

There is no wider social organisation made up of the people they would exploit that could hold the Avengers to account for their actions, that is how great their collective power is. We have seen Thor, Hulk Iron Man, et al face down entire armies. If the Avengers acted only out of rational self-interest then world would clearly be much worse off, not better off as the neo-liberal economists argue.

This is because of the asymmetric power relationships in the world of the Avengers. The Avengers are more powerful than everyone else in the world combined, which removes any element of accountability for their actions. We are dependent on the Avengers choosing to honour social obligations, but neo-liberals argue that they should act with rational self-interest and enrich themselves. No global system with asymmetric power relationship whose gulfs of power are as large as the difference between Thor and a baseline human could work based around complete individual freedom because the Avengers would exploit us all.

Superheroes work as a metaphor for the neo-liberal view of the individual. In their world, it is wrong to constrain the individualism of heroes. Their accomplishments are entirely individual and not the product of wider social factors. They stand apart from the society that created them and are not beholden to it. Thor has little regard for the rules of his own society, as he seeks personal glory from attacking the Frost Giants, and the Hulk’s destruction of vital infrastructure shows no regard for the wider needs of the people dependent on such infrastructure. This view of the individual is based on a reading of history where only individuals achieve anything and on the idea that we need to put our trust in great individuals and not institutions.

If you think about it, a world with superheroes in it has the sameproblems as a world with neo-liberal economics in it. Superheroes show the dominance of the free neo-liberal individual. Only rational individuals can wield the power necessary to save the world and collective action is, at best, ineffective and, at worst, directly opposed to individual freedom. The army is constantly trying to constrain the individual freedom of the Hulk. In V for Vendetta we see how only an individual with complete freedom can stop a society which oppresses individual freedom.

The problem with complete individual freedom is that there is nothing to stop people hurting each other, either deliberately or out of selfishness. Again the Hulk is a great example of this, it is accepted that there must be some limits on personal freedom where an individual can do as much damage as the Hulk can, given complete freedom to act in any way they feel.

Superheroes are a lot like big companies and the ultra rich of our world. They act in their own rational self-interest and there is no power left on Earth which can hold them to account for their actions. Like with Spider-Man, we are dependent on them choosing to follow their social obligations, but they are constantly being told by neo-liberal economists that we would all be better off if they ignore their social obligations and behave with rational self-interest.

It is true that with great power comes great responsibility. Like superheroes, large companies and the ultra-rich have a great responsibility. We need a system made up of the people they oppress to make sure they do not oppress us, a system with the power to hold them to account. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we can trust superheroes’ internal moral compass to honour their social obligations, but in our world we cannot rely on good intentions to prevail. There has to be a mechanism to protect the less powerful from asymmetrical power relationships.

Any system that constrains the absolute freedom of the individual sounds oppressive, but superheroes show how dangerous complete individual freedom is in a world of rational individuals acting in their own self-interest who cannot be held back from exploiting others to enrich themselves.

It is interesting that Captain America is the Marvel hero who has the strongest internal moral compass and is the most willing to act against rational self-interest by risking himself to help the less powerful. This this because he comes from a time before the advent of neo-liberalism. Contrast his behaviour to Iron Man who refuses to acknowledge the authority of his own government and believes he is beholden to no one other than himself.

Great responsibility does come hand in hand with great power. Superheroes show the best and worst the human race is capable of. The huge power that superheroes have means that we cannot rely on them choosing to be good. Rational individuals acting in their own self-interest can only work when there is equal power between parties and not the asymmetric power relationships between superheroes and regular people. This lesson applies equally to the powerful in our world as it does to the powerful in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

If Spiderman was too meet a neo-liberal economist, I hope that he would remember Uncle Ben’s advice about our social obligations and not act in his own rational self-interest.

The devil takes the hindmost

It was 2am, I was drunk and in the back of a taxi heading home after a punk gig. None of these things are particularly remarkable. While I ranted, probably incoherently, to the driver I remember saying:

"What is important is that we look after the people who need help, the least fortunate in society."

"Yeah, you're right." The taxi driver agreed. "But what's also important is that we stop helping those who don’t need it."

My memory of this exchange is hazy but I got the sense that the driver agreed with me in the need for there to be a safety net but that she was concerned that is was currently being taken advantage of. Benefit fraud is not something that especially concerns me. The tiny amount claimed fraudulently is nothing compared to the amount of tax that is avoided and it seems ridiculous that we are so concerned about one and not about the other. Social obligations seem to only apply to the poor.

Benefit reforms will end the “something-for-nothing culture,” Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has claimed in the past. Variations on this statement are constantly being uttered by top Tory politicians. It is a popular line, no one believes that the government you should give you something for nothing, especially in the age of austerity. The Tories claim they are ending the “something-for-nothing culture”, then they cut benefits. Then later they are claim the same again and cut further. It is as if the “something-for-nothing culture” cannot be ended while we still have a welfare state.

July's emergency budget is likely to contain £12bn in further cuts to the Duncan Smith’s DWP budget which means further cuts to welfare. As always the justification for this is that it will encourage the workshy to finally turn off daytime TV, get off their sofa and find a job. Apparently, the billion in welfare cuts so far have not achieved this but this time it will be different.

There is only one slight flaw in this argument, most people claiming benefits are in work. This will not encourage the lazy to be productive, but will instead punish millions of cleaners, check out staff, call centre workers and other low earners. Some of the country’s hardest grafters are about to be punished for having a low paid job.

The reason why most people claiming benefits are in work is that wages are low and the cost of living is high. This is mainly due to our lack of regulation of the energy, housing and labour market. State subsidies are needed to top up millions of low paid workers' basic income. How will cutting benefits encourages these people to reduce their energy bills, be paid more or have cheaper housing remains to be explained.

David Cameron publicly admitted that low wages and high cost of living are the main cause for the large benefits bill. Cameron identified the problem but his motivation in solving it is to reduce the national debt and not to raise living standards for low earners. He said we need to move from a "low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, low tax, low welfare society".

Cameron's proposed solution will not improve the situations for those with low wages. His plan is to remove the tax subsidies which top up low earners income but not put any pressure on employers to pay more. There is no plan to raise wages, for example by raising the minimum wage to be the living wage. In fact is removal of the tax subsides means that the target living wage will increase, as wages will have to rise to cover the income lost from benefit cuts. No one expects a Tory government to put pressure on big business to pay their staff more.

I want to know the logic behind how this will make people better off? How will cutting tax subsidies to low earners when wages are stagnant and the cost of living is high help anyone? This cut will hurt Cameron's precious “hard working families” the most. The people in work, on low wages, who work hard but still do not earn a living wage. These people will be made worse off.

Many of these people want to earn more but cannot because wage growth is low and because underemployment is a major economic barrier. Many of these people want to work more hours to raise their income but the jobs are not available for them to go it. They are trapped in low paying jobs and now their living standards will fall. The only effect this will have is to drive some people to work harder and be exploited more by their employers who are still not paying them a living wage.

This is the devil takes the hindmost approach to capitalism, taking away the safety net from those who fall behind. These reforms serve only to punish people in low paid work for being in low paid work. It is a policy conceived by the wealthy and it says: “I am okay. What is the problem? Surely anyone can earn more money if they want to”. The simple truth is that many people cannot earn more and now will be worse off.

The sad thing is that these reforms will be greeted with cheers in the press and in the streets. Many of those who support the cuts will be on low wages because the Tories are once again bringing an end to the “something-for-nothing culture” of benefits and encouraging people to work harder.

If we are worried about the benefits bill then we need higher wages and lower cost of living. We needs laws to ensure employees pay their staff a living wage. We need better regulation of the energy and private property market to reduce costs of living for those on low wages. We also need to understand that people claiming benefits are not getting “something-for-nothing” they are exercising a human right. They need compassion, not jibes.

Many people still believe that welfare is paid to the people who can work but simply choose not to and that the only solution is to cut benefits so that these people will finally get off the sofa and get a job. It will be a difficult journey to change this attitude but we can start by focusing on one basic fact: most people claiming benefits are already in work. If we approach the benefits bill from this angle then then government's policy makes no sense and will clearly hurt the working poor.

Diet is political

I can tell that you are rolling your eyes already, but bear with me. This is not an article about being vegan or animal rights, although those are interesting topics of discussion. This is also not an article about the fact that women's diets are surveyed and commented on more than men's, although this is clearly a political issue. This is an article about the way we talk about diet and what assumptions underpin these discussions.

Diet has a lot in common with politics; there are competing, sometimes radically different, ideologies fighting for dominance. What you eat says a lot about how you view yourself and the rest of the world. Not caring about diet is itself a statement about diet.

The people who hold the political opinion that we would be better off if we raised or lowered taxes want their views to be more widely adopted. Similarly people who endorse one diet or another have an agenda, an opinion they think would improve humanity if it were more widely adopted.

People who endorse one diet or another wish to alter the behaviour of others to help them and to help all of society, which in itself is noble. However there is an air of judgement when we talk about other people's food that is often cloaked by claiming that we want to help them. We do not make the same judgements when talking about other aspects of a person's behaviour, or health. Diet seems to be special in this regard. It is seen as more socially acceptable to comment on someone's diet than their appearance or body odour.

There is an expressly political aspect to the way we talk about diet. This arises when we talk about the obese using too much of the NHS’s resources. Using more than your fair share of health resources is seen as very bad in an age when we have a limited NHS - mainly due to Tory austerity. This overlooks the fact that not everyone is issued with the same set amount of health care, some people will need more and some will need less and the taxes of the people who need less will pay for the healthcare of the people who need more. This is the only fair way to run a health service. Despite this we still talk about the obese selfishly using more of the NHS than they are entitled to and there is even talk of the obese people being denied basic rights of free healthcare.

The way we talk about the obese as a society is similar to the way we talk about benefit claimants. Most people agree with the idea of benefits but a lot of people say that those on benefits are taking more than they deserve because of lifestyle choices. The same air of judgement is used in both cases. We talk of unemployment as if it is a lifestyle choice, much the same way we talk about obesity as if it is a lifestyle choice. Underpinning both these beliefs is the cold view that other people are lazy and society should not allow laziness to go unpunished.

If you hold this view that a lifestyle choice has entitled someone else to a greater share of society's scarce resources then this changes how you view other people’s behaviour. It changes other people's personal choices into social issues, which is what makes people feel entitled to comment someone else's diet. Talking about someone’s body odour is rude, but talking about someone’s diet is good for all of society because it could prevent someone from getting more of their fair share of scarce resources.

This is the language of the deserving and undeserving poor, and is linked in the mind of those who believe that bad diet and unemployment are solely the preserve of lazy poor people. People with this opinion generally do not mind rich obese people, it is poor obese people they object to. Incidentally unemployment is seen as a lifestyle choice based around laziness whereas wealth is not seen as a different lifestyle choice but a superior state of being, which we should all aspire too. This is the same way we talk about being thin and healthy.

This view is based on a classist assumptions that poor people are lazy and do not look after themselves. They sit around, not working, drinking lager, eating badly and then expect all this to be paid for by other people's hard work. In reality most benefits are claimed by people with jobs but on low wages. People who work hard jobs and are raising a family on a low income do not always have the time and the money to eat well. Bad diet and benefits are often not a factor of being lazy but of working hard and being paid little money.

Rather than saying that the poor should change their behaviour, we need to change their circumstances through better wages and working conditions. It is not enough for middle class people to say "I eat well so what is the problem?" This is based on the assumptions that poor people are lazy and it refuses to acknowledge the difficult circumstances other people face. It implies that poor people need to be forced to change, for the good of themselves, whereas in reality society needs to change to better accommodate the needs of the less well off.

Telling someone what you think their diet should be assumes that everyone else is in control of their own lives the way that a wealthy middle class person is. A lot of people are not, they are dependent on irregular work, they depend on benefits due to their low wages and increasingly they are dependent on the charity of others because of benefit cuts. If we want to make a positive difference in the lives of the less well off, and thus the health of the nation, then we need higher wages, more benefits and greater taxes on the well off to pay for all of this.

This is not an argument I hear people making very often, an argument for more government and more welfare, but it is the best solution to the problems caused by people not being on control of their lives – problems like obesity.

If, when we talk about other people’s diet, we really have their best interests at heart then we need to make an argument for better living standards and not just changing an individual's behaviour. Diet is political and my politics is about helping the less well-off and not just assuming they are lazy.

What can Mad Max: Fury Road teach us about the free market?

Mad Max: Fury Road is fast paced, vibrant and bloody. It is a colourful explosion of carnage and vehicular combat. On first inspection it comes across as a visually stunning but shallow movie of wall to wall action and little character development. However underneath the explosions and car crashes Max Max makes some subtle points about how we see ourselves as individuals.

The Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang said Mad Max is a vision of the neoliberal economist’s perfectly free market. Granted he was referring to the Mel Gibson starring original but it applies equally to the Tom Hardy starring remake.

Neoliberal economics, often referred to as free-market economics, is a school of thought which believes that unregulated markets are preferable to regulated markets. They believe the government should get out of the way of private business to allow private business to create as much wealth and job as possible.

Neoliberalism is based on the liberal (liberal as in Adam Smith not George Clooney) principle of individualism and that society is made of rational individuals making decisions in their own interest. It is best for society when governments do not curtail this individualism, as what is best for society is rational individuals making decisions in their own interest. Individual freedom is at the core of neoliberalism, neoliberals often oppose programs aimed specifically at gender or racial equality claiming that group rights oppressed individual rights.

That is enough theory, we should look at the film. Mad Max: Fury Road takes place in a future where society as we know it was destroyed in a nuclear war. Most of the action takes place in a desert where vicious cultists follow bloodthirsty messiahs, who use their military power take what they need and kill anyone who opposes them.

In the world of Mad Max there is no government and no laws. Mad Max has is the neoliberal vision of a perfectly free market, with no state intervention and complete personal freedom. Why then is it so violent and chaotic and not a neoliberal paradise of plenty and economic efficiency?

Certainly environmental factors are at play here. Scarce resources has led to intense completion, which is manifesting itself as violence. Yet there are clearly enough resources to sustain a sizeable population and some individuals are clearly resource rich which indicates that the issue is not the lack of resources but an unequal distribution of resources. In Mad Max monopoly power has risen in an unregulated market, this takes the form of the film's villain, Immortan Joe, who hoards all the water for himself. What this says about the perfect neoliberal world is that rational individuals who possess social status (in this case being the leader of a militarised cult) will horded all the resources and created private monopolies. In the complete free market our intelligence or hard work is not a factor of success, it is the social status of an individual which determines success.

Mad Max is a world with complete individual freedom and no group rights, there are no affirmative action programs or governments holding back individuals. It is also a world entirely based on competition with no welfare, those who cannot compete in this violent desert die. In order to survive in such a world individuals must band together to form mutually supporting collectives. This is what the main characters of Max (Tom Hardy), Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and the wives of Immortan Joe, which Furiosa has liberated from his cult, do. These characters form a mutually supporting collective to protect themselves against individual freedom run amok. The individual freedom takes the form of the lawless bandits roaming the desert and the bloody thirsty war boys which Immortan Joe sends to retrieve his wife.

We see this in real life examples of environmental catastrophes, individual needs are set aside as people work together for the good of everyone affected by the disaster. In Mad Max no individual can stand up to the private monopoly of Immortan Joe backed up by his cultists and military power so it is necessary for individuals to form a collective. These collectives operate along Communist, not neoliberal, lines with equality of resources and mutual aid along the principal of "each unto their need and each unto their ability". (This is good loose definition of Communism laid out by David Graeber in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years.)

The individuals in the collective are less effective when the unspoken rules of the collective are broken, in other words when they do not work along the principal of each according to their needs and abilities. When Max tries to use a sniper rifle to stop a vehicle crewed by Immortan Joe’s followers, Max turns out to be a bad sniper. Mad Max has reverted to neoliberal individual self reliance acting as rational individual who believes he is the best shot. The safety of the collective is threatened as Max cannot shoot the incoming vehicle and has to voluntarily give up his rifle to the shooter of greater ability, Furiosa, who is able to protect the collective. It is telling that Max does not have the rifle taken from him by force, but has to voluntarily admit that his best chance of survival is trusting in someone else and not acting as a rational individual.

The neoliberal world of Mad Max is completely male dominated, with women related to childcare roles. The purpose of Immortan Joe many wives is simply to produce more male offspring to expand his private monopoly, this shows that existing oppressive social structures would get worse in a neoliberal world without state intervention to counter them. The focus on individual rights in reality is rights for the dominant class as an equal society can only be achieved through pursuing the rights of oppressed groups.

By forming a collective against individualism, group rights can be asserted and male dominance challenged. Again this is what happens in the band led by Furiosa and Max. This collective is against the male dominated private monopoly and offers a range of roles for women, not just related to children. The collective is led by a woman, women take part in all roles including fighting and is expressly opposed to the male dominated world of individualism which seeks to oppress them.

The same metaphor about the neoliberal view of individual freedom in a chaotic or post apocalyptic world is explored in other works such as the move and film The Road and and the video game Borderlands. Both emphasise the point that a complete free market and world based entirely on individual freedom without border social structures is violent, chaotic, oppressive and prone to the domination of individuals with social status. Stylistically Mad Max: Fury Road is very much influenced by Borderlands, although the game in turn is clear aesthetically influenced by the earlier Mad Max films.

Obviously, Mad Max: Fury Road can be read differently if you have different political views. It can be interpreted the other way around with Max and Furiosa representing individuals fighting back against Immortan Joe, who in this reading represents an oppressive government determined to stamp out their individual freedom. This is possible but that would make Immortan Joe some form of Communist dictator and there is clearly no sharing of resources in his society.

There is also nothing to stop the cultists leaving his army. If Immortan Joe represents the government then why are there no laws or civic institutions, something even primitive societies have? Immortan Joe’s followers are all rational individuals with their own freedom who choose to remain part of his monopoly because they dependant on it to survive due of the lack of social safety network. The reading of Immortan Joe as the government leaves more questions unanswered than the reading of him as rational individual using his social status to amass a private monopoly of society's scarce resources which he can because nothing can stop him in a perfectly free market.

Mad Max can be viewed as a simply a piece of entertainment, a silence of visual spectacle, but what entertains us makes subtly points about our hops, aspirations and fears. Mad Max speaks volumes about our fear of complete individualism, where nothing can hold back greed or violence. It speaks about our needs to band together against individuals who will do us harm. If the future is the neoliberal view of complete individual freedom then the future really does belong to the mad.

Why Labour need to resist the urge to go blue

Only minutes after Ed Miliband resigned two weeks ago, the traditional period of party soul searching was declared. Almost immediately there were comments and commentaries saying Labour lost because of the EdStone, because of UKIP, because of fear of the SNP or the ghost of Tony Blair. There have been points and counterpoints (our own can be found here but I want to focus on specific school of thought that is likely to become more prominent in the near future and that is Blue Labour.

Blue Labour is the brainchild of Maurice Glasman, a former adviser to Ed Miliband. The central tenet of Blue Labour is a return to a 19th century vision of socialism and refocusing the Labour Party as a social movement and not a political party. It focuses heavily on localism, workers co-operatives, and the involvement of religious organisations and community groups in the business of government.

I disagree with some of the core principles of Blue Labour for a few reasons. Localism, a focus on co-operatives and faith groups, empowering people in their communities and giving them more of a say in government are certainly policies I support. In fact, a more regional and local focus in politics will be essential moving forwards. However, behind this misty eyed reverence for 19th century Romanticism lies an at best misguided, or at worst dangerously outdated, view of what Labour’s future should be.

My first criticism of Blue Labour is that high minded and academic conference rhetoric about empowering communities and localism are fascinating and produce great material for Guardian articles and politics blog posts, but what do they mean in application? Blue Labour has at its heart a mistrust of the metropolitan liberalism, which is viewed as leading the party away from its core white working class support. I am worried that Blue Labour is likely to be translated into UKIP baiting rhetoric on immigration and social justice. It is worth noting that Glasman was forced to resign as an adviser after making comments that he would support a total ban on immigration.

The urge to become UKIP-lite or nice-UKIP in order to regain the support of working class Northerners must be resisted by the Labour Party as it only plays into the hands of UKIP. It is also somewhat patronising to assume that the best way to win back Northern working class voters is to adopt a tougher stance on immigration. Policies on employment, housing, the NHS and regionalism are more likely to win back lost support than simply assuming that everyone north of Watford is against immigration. On a more practical note, socially liberal metropolitans are the only supporters Labour seems to have left and it cannot afford to alienate them.

The small c conservatism at the heart of Blue Labour comes with their desire to return to a 19th century vision of socialism in small communities. This might seem appealing if you are a white, hetero-sexual male but it is unappealing to women, ethnic minorities or members of the LQBTQ community. It is telling that when Glasman mentioned the local movements Labour should connect with he did not mention grassroots feminist campaigns - the most successful grass roots left wing movement of recent years. Labour must not adopt a strategy of empowering local groups at the expense of hard won liberties. Rowenna Davis put it better than me in an open letter she wrote critical of Blue Labour:

“liberal rights and the role of the state has done a lot to help women – and many other groups for that matter – break out of community bonds that have often been oppressive, unaccountable and male dominated” – Rowenna Davis in The Guardian

Undoubtedly Labour has lost the support of a lot of people, especially Northern working class people, and steps need to be done to rectify this if the party is ever going to win a majority in the future. However a small c conservative approach will alienate women, ethnic minorities and members of the LGTBQ communities as well as their allies many of which are Northern, white and working class but still recognise the importance of solidarity with other oppressed groups. Solidarity is a core value of Labour and small c conservatism is opposed to solidarity.

The white working class Northerners have been alienated by Labour because of the Blair year's complete acceptance of globalisation and governments' failure to counter its negative side effects. Namely that those who are "uncompetitive" in the new globalised economy are pushed to the side. It these people who now vote UKIP, but they are fuelled by a dislike of globalisation and the professional political class which support it more than Farage's anti-immigration rhetoric.

This anti-globalisation has taken the form of UKIP style English nationalism, across the border in Scotland those who are opposed to globalisation are supporting the SNP and Scottish nationalism. Blue Labour overlooks the rise of nationalism, it says nothing about the votes for the Tories which were votes against Scottish nationalism and their influence in a future Labour government.

The rise in English and Scottish nationalism is the same as any other nationalist rising in that it has the three common principles that all nationalist believe:

1. They believe they are different from other nationalist risings.

2. They believe they are restoring a natural order or the way things should be.

3. They believe they are settling a historic injustice.

This is why we have Scottish nationalism directed against London and English nationalism directed against Brussels, but there is no East Midlands nationalism directed against London because it does not seem natural that the East Midlands should govern itself or that the East Midlands is particularly oppressed by London.

Rising nationalism is troubling and I am worried that Blue Labour would do nothing to stop this but would instead support it as a means of connecting with “ordinary people”. Labour should challenge our assumptions and not accept them out of a fear of looking like a “metropolitan elite”. The other reason why I am opposed to nationalism (both English and Scottish) is because there are things we need from a large government from, both in London and in Brussels. In short there is an argument for statism.

Statism is unpopular with traditional liberals and small c conservatives for ideological reasons, and with everyone else because the state is dogged with scandals and is viewed as inefficient. Leaving aside the point that an efficient state is a tyrannical one, localism is seen as the solution to both the problems of individual liberty and efficiency that statism throws up.

Localism and supporting community groups are great ideas, especially when central government is dominated by unpopular “grey suits”, but there are things we need a national government for. Organising transport planning cannot be done at a local level, for example, everyone agrees we need motorways but no one wants to live near them so a localised government would never be able to build them. It sounds callous, but there are some things which need to be imposed on us by a central government and most of these are unglamorous but essential things like power stations and sewage works.

Another thing we need imposed on us is taxes. If communities set their own taxes no one will pay tax as every community will think the burden should fall elsewhere. Also local communities have no power to stand up to large corporations, Blue Labour may draw inspiration from the socialism of the 19th century, but we did not have trans-national corporations in the same way back then, and certainly they did not involve themselves with every aspect of people’s lives.

This is why our modern globalised economy needs institutions like the EU and other trans-national organisations to reign in the power of multinational companies, ensure they pay their taxes and that the money is used to benefit those who are disproportionately affected by globalisation. Clearly there are problems with governments not doing this, especially the EU, but they are the only group capable of doing it and Blue Labour threatens to shrink the central government to the point where it cannot carry out this role. A strong central government can stand up to big companies, that is my argument for statism.

It is obvious that Labour needs to change direction to be in government again and radical new ideas are needed but as a party we need to look to future and not the past. Our new vision cannot be based on what the Labour was like in the 19th century, it has to respond to 20th century changes, globalisation, the need for statism and the civil liberties movement. Statist socialists like myself are as bad as Blue Labour for idealising the past, but we need to think about how socialism will operate in the 21st century and not be overcome by a misty eyed view of the past. The Labour party needs new ideas, informed by the past but not made of it.

The Party’s Over

The party’s over, and along with it, our hopes for a more progressive Britain. As we clear away the emptied bottles and filled ashtrays, as the dust settles, there’s one opinion we’re going to hear a lot of: Labour lost because they were too left-wing. From the usual pundits, naturally, but from within the Labour Party as well. You can almost hear the steely scrape of Blairite knives being sharpened, (like here, for example).

It’ll come as no surprise that Red Train disagrees with this reactionary interpretation. But, as Labour’s right-wing is so fond of reminding us, the party hasn’t won an election without Tony Blair since 1974. So how the hell can we justify our position?

Looking back, Labour has had a rather bi-polar election campaign, lurching about from issue to issue almost as much as the Tories - at least until the latter lighted upon the electoral goldmine of fear of the SNP. Attacked by the Tories from their right, they’ve also had to fend off – not very effectively, as it turns out – attacks from the left in Scotland. The party’s response to the rise of the SNP was to put arch-Blairite Jim Murphy in charge, for the party to be quickly and memorably dismissed as ‘red Tories’.

The SNP’s success cannot be easily dismissed as just about nationalism. Of the thousands who voted SNP on Thursday, not all of them can have voted for independence a few months ago. This was about Scotland, having been presented with a viable alternative, thoroughly rejecting the neo-liberal consensus of the main parties. Who’s to say that England, given a genuine alternative, might not have done the same? As discussed here before, the Green Party are neither consistently left-wing enough, nor diverse enough, to be that real alternative. The SNP, conversely, look and sound like their own voters.

My argument for a left-wing Labour leadership actually has very little to do with left-wing ideology, and more to do with my interpretation of the political game itself. If you’ve watched any news channel in the past few weeks, I’ll bet that I know what’s the most common criticism of party politics you’ve heard: the three main parties are so similar, you can’t even fit a cigarette paper between them. You hear it equally from people on both extremes. From potential Green Party voters. From potential UKIP voters. From potential non-voters. And it isn’t popular. It turns people off not only the Labour Party, but off party politics in general.

To me, the answer is simple. It isn’t about starting a new left-wing movement, or supporting a different party like the Greens or whoever. It’s about the whole flawed premise under which all of the main parties struggle along: electoral success is to be found exclusively in chasing the centre ground. In painstakingly ascertaining the public’s opinion, and then reflecting it back at them.

Problem is, it isn’t true. The public find themselves surrounded by yes men, and they hate it. Like third-world politicians who universally claim to be ‘for the poor’, without ever explaining what this might entail, focus-group chasing only angers and disengages people. Labour believe it hook, line and sinker, of course, and have done for ages. It’s this, rather than any policy decision, that kept the wind out of Miliband’s sails. Having taken a tiny, tentative step to the left under his tenure, the party cowers in fear of what the tabloids might have to say about it, backing off from any opportunity to actually put forward his views. We’re left, then, with the mostly unchallenged discourse about ‘Red Ed’, a dangerous radical who wants to take Britain back to the seventies.

In contrast, I think that the job of political parties shouldn’t be to obsess over what the electorate thinks, and then tell them what they already know. It ought to be to present a compelling vision of what kind of society they think we should live in – and then to do their best to convince us that it’s the right one. To finish every speech with ‘...well, this is what we think. If you agree with it, vote for us. If you don’t, vote for someone else.’ Now, how refreshing would that be? Moaning about the Miliband leadership’s lurch to the left completely misses the point. Like socialism itself, it’s impossible to say how this would have actually turned out, because it hasn’t really been tried yet.

When they haven’t been doing their best to sound exactly like each other, the parties have been shouldering each other out of the way to tell us how their plans have been meticulously costed, independently audited, checked and double checked by the economists. I don’t think I can imagine anything more depressing. Of course it’s important to be able to prove that you can afford to do what you say you’re going to do. But running a national economy isn’t as precisely similar to managing a household budget as the Tories would like you to think.

In buying into this narrative, Labour have confused vision with strategy. Vision ought to be about what kind of society you’re aiming for. Strategy is merely about how you’ll realise it. If you cannot convince people about the destination you want to set out for, it’s irrelevant whether you can persuade them about the cost of the train fare. Strategy without an underpinning vision, a moral vision, is surely redundant in an organisation like Labour.

Finally, to respond to a point that’s already been made a mind-numbing amount of times since Ed MIliband stepped down. Yes, it’s true that Labour won three elections under a right-wing, ‘business-friendly’ leadership from 1997 onwards. But – leaving aside the fact that a terrier clutching a Labour Party rosette between its teeth could have beaten John Major in ‘97 – the context’s completely different these days.

Back then, there was the feel-good factor. Life felt pretty good if you were in the middle of the economic sandwich; perhaps most voters were indeed, to paraphrase a New Labour grandee, intensely relaxed about people getting super-rich as long as things were basically OK for everyone else too. But times have changed so much since then it hurts. The ideology-free politics of those retrospectively golden, easy years simply cannot be applied to today. The electorate may not have wanted whatever it was that they believed Ed Miliband was offering. But what they also certainly don’t want is three parties who sound almost exactly the same as each other.

UKIP, as much as the SNP, are the manifest lesson in this. Abhorrent though I find their opinions, I do at least respect them for this: they became popular, to the extent of becoming decisively the third party in English politics, by speaking their mind, rather than blustering around trying to convert the latest opinion poll results into policies. More than any of the three main parties, UKIP were successful in projecting a compelling vision of what they wanted Britain to be, and what it shouldn’t be.

Now, doing this is relatively easy for parties of the right, because they prey upon peoples’ worst instincts. On their prejudices, their worries, their fears. To do this as a left-wing party is much more difficult, because it involves appealing instead to peoples’ better instincts. To the inherent belief in fairness, compassion and equality of opportunity that most people hold dear. To make this vision listened to is going to be difficult, for sure. But when it comes to the conversation about the future of the Labour Party we’ll inevitably soon be having, I can’t think of anything more worthwhile.

Why I am voting for Labour

Before I talk about voting Labour in 2015, I want to talk about the people who voted Tory in 2010, specifically the people who voted Tory because of David Cameron. Many people voted Tory because they believed in Cameron's plan to modernise the Tory Party, to move it away from its nasty party image, and his pro-business agenda. However some of these showed their support for Cameron by voting for a right-wing Eurosceptic local Tory candidate. These backbench MPs have dragged the Tory party to the right and now threaten to take Britain out of the EU. Whatever you think about the EU, most people agree leaving would be bad for business. Pro-business Cameron supporters damaged the policies they believed in by supporting right wing Eurosceptic candidates. The lesson from this? Who your local candidate is matters.

Many of the above people did not know they were voting against what the wanted. Most likely they had not researched what their local Tory candidate actually stood for. They agreed with Cameron so they voted Tory. Ironically these people would have been better off voting Lib Dem.

This election campaign has focused on the party leaders and personality politics but what your local party candidates believe is just as important. They say that all politics is local; this is especially true with coalition governments. Supporters of a Labour/SNP or Tory/Lib Dem coalition may bring these governments down by voting for the rebellious backbench MPs whose rebellions will eventually unravel a coalition agreement.

I want to avoid this by focusing on who my local candidates are. I want a local MP I can trust to represent the values I believe in. This is why I am voting Labour: because of my local MP Stella Creasy.

The Labour party may be struggling to find its ideology but Creasy certainly is not. She is a socialist, a feminist and a supporter of the co-operative movement. She has spearheaded campaigns against predatory payday loans companies and the harassment of women online. She is committed to defending the NHS and repealing the hated Health and Social Care act. All this I am very much in favour of.

Creasy is an MP who is passionate about Walthamstow, which sounds cheesy but it is true. She supports the campaign for our local EMD cinema and she frequently tweets about Walthamstow. She shows the same interest for the area as the people who live here, which is the first time I can say that about my local MP. Creasy is someone who represents all of Walthamstow, not just the well off gentrifiers who have moved to the area recently but also the less well off who have lived in the area for longer.

To a degree, the national campaign is a factory in my decision to vote Labour. Under Ed Miliband Labour have moved further left than they were in the Blair/Brown years and I want to reward this move with my electoral support. This is mainly because if Miliband does not become the Prime Minister, this slight shift the left will be blamed and the next Labour leader will move the party to the right. Perhaps further to the right than Blair. As a Labour socialist, this must be opposed. It is difficult for me to argue for moving the Labour party to the left if I do not vote for them when they do move to the left, even if it is only a small drift in that direction.

One thing which is inspiring about the Labour party are some of the younger MPs and candidates who have solid left wing credentials. Not just Creasy, another example is Cat Smith, standing in Lancaster and Fleetwood, who is an outspoken feminist. It is inspiring to see Labour’s radical roots alive in this younger generation.

The Green Party do have a lot of passion and a lot of good policies, which is encouraging to a radical lefty like myself, however they are untested in government and I am wary of falling into the same trap I did with the Lib Dems in 2010. The Greens are also not as diverse as Labour and a true left wing movement for change would be made up of the people it is trying to help.

I am willing to trust Labour once more to be a decent party of the left. This is mainly because of new generation of left-wing MPs emerging like Stella Creasy, but also because I know that Labour can be a powerful force for making society better for all and not just the wealthy. I want to continue supporting Labour because I have faith in the roots from which the party came, I have faith in what the party has stood for during most of its life and I have that they can help the poor and disenfranchised.

Our society is dangerously divided and dangerously unequal. We blame the poor and immigrants for the problems caused by the wealthy. However Labour activists and Labour candidates are standing for the most needy in our society and they need our electoral support to be able to help the poor. In the worlds of Billy Bragg’s Between The Wars, “ I kept the faith, and I kept voting, not for the iron fist, but for the helping hand.” Don't let me down, Labour. I am trusting you.

Are the Green Party playing the game or changing the game?

The Green Party are likely to do better in this coming general election than the have done in previous general elections. Despite this the campaigning itself is not going especially well for them. Natalie Bennett’s media gaffes aside, the general theme of the current political debate is not around climate change or social welfare, which is where the Greens are strongest. The debate is focused on economic competence and deficit reductions, where they’re weak.

Elections are not won or lost based on how good your answer to the voters’ questions are; they are won when the voters ask the questions to which you have the best answer. The election is a battle to change the topic of political conversation in a party's favour, something the Green Party is not doing especially well. This is mainly because they are a small party and have less sympathetic friends in the media, but it is also because they are not connecting with enough voters.

When I mentioned this in discussion with a friend and Green Party supporter, she replied that what I described was "playing the game" and that the appeal of the Green Party is that they do not behave like the other parties, made up of career politicians and spin doctors. The Greens want to change the game of politics to something more accessible to ordinary people. This got me thinking, are the Green Party playing the game of politics or changing the game? Are they different from the other, more established parties, or they are just politicians of a different stripe?

The Green Party certainly do not make arguments like any other party. They are the only party openly challenging the neo-liberal consensus that has gripped politics for the last 30 years. They argue for benefits, in favour of immigration and for taxing the wealthy. The Labour Party do not openly endorse these policies, and the cabal of right-wing parties are completely against them. In terms of policy the Greens do seem to be genuinely different from the other Westminster parties – the regional independence parties are a different case.

Politics is all about establishing a narrative, the Tories have done this very effectively with their “Labour's borrowing caused the financial crisis and austerity will restore prosperity” narrative. The other Westminster parties are following this narrative to a greater or lesser degree; Labour have promised spending cuts if they are returned to government. The Greens are the main Westminster party that is challenging this narrative. However the new narrative laid out by the Green Party is a more radical change to politics.

The Green Party are challenging all of our established ideas on benefits, on spending and even on economic growth itself. They are the only Westminster Party making a strong case for benefits as a safety net for the less fortunate. They are the only Westminster Party making a case for public spending as the driving engine of not only prosperity but also equality. They are also challenging the idea of economic growth as a goal in itself and attempting to assert a new narrative about preserving our natural environment.

Such a radical change to our political narrative cannot be considered to be "playing the game". Labour are playing the game by signing up to the Tories narrative on spending cuts and deficit reeducation. The Greens are refusing to play this game and are attempting to assert a radical new narrative of their own.

A new narrative could also be considered “playing the game of politics”, changing the game would involve being a party that is different to the Westminster parties. A party made up of people disenfranchised from the game of politics. Westminster politics is dominated by white, male, middle-class, career politicians from public schools. A party changing the game would ne the opposite of this.

So how diverse are the Greens? On the surface they are very diverse they have a female leader and their only MP is a woman, which is certainly different from the other four Westminster parties. However their candidates, activists and supporters are mainly white and mainly middle class, this is true even of the their leader. One of the key problems the Green Party face is lack of working class support despite a raft of policies aimed at those with low incomes. They are incapable of shaking their middle-class Guardian reading, organic yogurt eating image and this is partly because of their lack of diversity from an ethnic and class point of view.

This Guardian video shows how undiverse in terms of race and class the Green Party activists in Bristol West are. It also shows the problems they are having in reaching out to voters who are not white and middle class. The Greens maybe trying to change the game of politics but from many disenfranchised voters point of view, they look the other Westminster parties.

Despite the Green Party’s lack of diversity they do have a lot of policies that could benefit disenfranchised voters abandoned by other parties. However the Greens still have a problem connecting with the people who stand the most to benefit from their policies. One reason for this is that they couched their radical vision in the language the other parties use. Bennett is quick to use phrases such as “fully costed”; to disenfranchised voters this makes them look the same as the other parties. The Greens have a different way of doing politics, but by using the language of the other Westminster parties they are not changing the game of politics and not differentiating themselves enough to disenfranchised voters.

The Green Party called for a peaceful revolution against the established order of Westminster but their revolution looks very white and middle class. From my point of view, a real revolution against the political establishment would both represent and appeal to the poor, the disenfranchised and members of ethic and social minorities.

The Greens are not popular enough with the poor and ethnic monitories which are overlooked by the other Westminster Parties to be changing the game of politics, nor do they adequately represent these groups - which would be necessary to change the game of politics.

The Green Party may not be leading a revolution, but they are challenging the established political narrative, which is a welcome change. The Greens are not changing the game of politics but they are playing it in a new and interesting way.

TV Debate

I watched the TV debate as a potential swing voter. I am currently leaning towards voting Labour but the party’s proposed policies are a lot less radical than my own views. I feel a lot of sympathy for the Greens, who are genuinely passionate about radical change to our society. I watched the debates wanting to be convinced by Ed Miliband, but strangely found Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru and Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP more convincing.

Wood passionately defended the NHS in a section where she talked about how it had begun in Wales and needed to be funded by general taxation - something I very much believe in. Despite Miliband's best attempts to gain ground on the NHS, he failed to sound as passionate about the institution as Wood did. Wood also mentioned the skill gap which immigration fills, particular in the NHS, when the main party leaders were falling over themselves trying to appeal to the slightly xenophobic middle-Englander, something I found especially repugnant.

Wood received the first applause of the evening when she stood up to Nigel Farage’s scapegoating of immigrants and scaremongering over HIV. I cheered when she told Farage that "he should be ashamed of himself" whilst defending immigration and the role immigrants play in society. I wanted Miliband to stand up to the embodiment of self-entitled English bigotry, but all he managed were a few hesitant points about peoples’ concerns, which did nothing to win me over and nothing to convince swing voters that Labour is "tough on immigration". The fact that Labour want to appear tough on immigration disappointments me, they should not be allowing the right to dominate this issue so much as it only benefits the Conservatives and UKIP, and Labour will never be viewed as credible on this issue.

Sturgeon also voiced her opposition to austerity and talked about the need to raise government spending to invest and create jobs. I was disappointed that Miliband is determined to emphasise that a Labour government would cut more from the budget, during a time when unemployment is still high, there is underinvestment in infrastructure, and inequality is very significant. Five years of Tory austerity has made us a harsher, meaner, less equal, more money focused society, governed by small-minded bean counters who would propagate suffering if it was cost effective.

We have come through the first recession in history where the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. The vast accumulation of wealth and opportunity by a small fraction of society threatens the re-emergence of the class system and has broken the mantra that hard work is rewarded; this concept remains only as a political sound-bite. The Labour Party should be whole-heartedly opposed to this, however it fell to Sturgeon to defend the role of government spending.

We can fight inequality and self-interest through the government spending Sturgeon defended, through the NHS, through investing in homes, through welfare spending. Miliband appears to prefer a holding pattern above the point where the Victorian social structure would return, instead of defending the role of government. This is presumably so that a future Tory government can push us over the edge. I was disappointed by the Labour leader, but encouraged by the SNP leader’s arguments.

Sturgeon stood up to Cameron's plans for future welfare cuts. A Labour leader I could be proud of would have stood up to Cameron's plans to balance the nation's books on the back of the poorest whilst cutting taxes for the rich, but he did not. Most likely out of fear of offending the above mentioned small minded bean counters who will never think Labour are credible economically anyway. Labour do best electorally when they capture a spirit of optimism about the future, not trepidation.

I do not seem to be along in thinking that Sturgeon did well that night, she topped 3 out of 4 snap polls asking who had won the debate, one third of Labour and Lib Dem voters support Sturgeon and the most Googled phrase after the debate was whether a non-resident of Scotland can vote SNP. Clearly a significant section of the public, even the English public, agree with Sturgeon’s arguments, so why is Labour so keen to be out flanked on the left by Plaid and the SNP? Is it to gain the vote of the cynical self-interested centrist? I would prefer a Labour Party that appeals to our aspirations (as the SNP does and has Labour did when it won big in the past) rather than a Labour party that appeals to cynical self-interest. I am disappointed by how uninspiring Miliband's arguments are and those of Wood and Sturgeon pleasantly surprised me.

Miliband did have some good moments during the debate. I agree with his dismissal of trickle-down economics, which has only succeeded in creating one of the most unequal societies in history – even if he demonstrated little belief in an alternative. I also agreed with Miliband when he talked about the pressures on private renters and the exploitation of immigrants. These were good moments when he showed some genuine compassion.

Miliband was certainly not the biggest loser of the last debate. That was Farage who at best came across as a broken record and at worst as a dripping xenophobic imbecile, which will no doubt please his core demographic but is unlikely to sway anyone else. Miliband did well but failed to inspire me the way that Wood and Sturgeon did. I want a Labour leader who leads on left wing issues and inspires people to vote for them with a positive vision of a fairer, more equal future. I saw this from Wood and Sturgeon; I did not see this from Miliband.

Green Surge

The Green Party has been in the news, but this time it isn’t because they had a surge in membership or been invited to the leaders’ debates, it is because their policies were actually being discussed. On LBC they had a chance to put their housing policy directly to voters and the outcome was not good. Faced with some simple questions on financing their leader Natalie Bennett completely collapsed. The phrase train wreck does not begin to cover how badly it went - you can hear the interview and read the transcript here.

The story quickly became about how bad her performance was, which is a shame as we do urgently need more council homes to alleviate pressure on the private housing market, and no other party has seriously suggesting tackling the problem. Bennett also made a good point about how much of the housing benefit bill ends up in the pockets of private landlords, something I have been pointing out for years. The lack of a living wage means that benefits are used to subsidise both private landlords and the low wage offered by employers. If you are concerned about the cost of housing benefits, then look at who it really goes to: buy-to-let landlords, and not low income workers.

Increasing the stock of council housing, coupled with other Green policies like a living wage, would reduce the housing benefit bill, move vulnerable people out of the private rented sector, increase standards of living for the lowest earners, reduce inflationary pressure on rents in the private housing market and provide more home security for those in need.

All of these benefits, which would help the Greens electorally, were overlooked because the story became about Bennett’s performance. The Greens do need to get better at pitching themselves, or else they will not be able to expand their electoral support. The fact that their leader fell completely apart during an interview that was not particularly difficult or pressing is not encouraging this close to the election. It looked like they were not expecting their policies to come under the same level of scrutiny that every other party gets.

Those posters asking "the boys" what they are afraid of look childishly overconfident now, especially as one of the “boys” Bennett will be up against is Nicola Sturgeon who is a very good debater and will make short work on Bennett if she cannot answer simple questions about figures without tripping over her own feet. That's without taking into account Farage's bolshie style of public oratory, Cameron and Clegg who have done this before and Miliband who has been able to held his own against Cameron during PMQs. The Greens could end up looking like amateurs playing in the professional party's league.

This home spun, ordinary-people, lack of professionalism is part of the draw of the Greens - up until the point when it stops them appealing to ordinary people who have little tolerance of politicians with a lack of media savvy– case in point, look at what happened to Gordon Brown five years ago.

This, and other, recent media gaffs are symptoms of a wider problem with the Green Party - and I write this as someone who is tempted to vote Green in the general election. The Greens appeared to have assumed that everyone would support their policies if they knew what they were. However this is because there policies have had little scrutiny outside the ranks of their supporters or people who are likely to vote for them. Appealing to a wide cross section of the general public is more difficult, and does not necessarily require changing of policies but it does involve expressing them properly.

Expressing them properly does not mean becoming the slick PR machine that the Tories are or raising the huge ground swell of volunteers that Labour have, it means framing their policies as the answers to the questions voters are asking and, where possible, changing the national debate to questions to which the Green Party are the answer. UKIP, remember, have only become relevant by making sure every question on every issue can be answered with ‘Europe’, ‘immigration’ or ‘political correctness’ – whatever you think about their worldview, they’re good at it, and they’ve been successful in getting these issues onto the agenda, largely against the wishes of the established parties.

It also means having a consistent message on policy areas such as the economy, health, housing, etc. Which are areas where it is possible to make gains from Labour among left learning people. They are doing some of this already, which is why left learning people like myself are inclined to vote for them, but they need to be better at it.

They also have to phrase their policies in a way which voters can clearly understand what the party as a whole stands for. A recent example, pointed out to me, is that the Greens want to legalise membership of groups like IS (who want to destroy our society) but will make criminals of small business owners who do not want women to breast feed on their premises. I think these are both good policies but when put together they seem very contradictory and are likely to alienate people who would otherwise support the Greens.

As a country we need the Greens to do well, they are the only party that is challenging the status quo - with the possible exception of the SNP. From safe guarding the environment, to protecting the NHS, to ending the scapegoating of those on benefits and immigrants, there are many reasons to support the Green Party, but the Greens themselves need to start acting more professionally or this Green Surge will not translate into electoral results.

The main piece of advice I would give to the Greens are to stop focusing on the details like the minutia of how policies will be funded and leave that the other grey suited politicians fighting it out to be accountant-in-chief. By focusing on the cost of policies the Greens are playing the other party’s game, a game they cannot win. A sustainable future and a fairer society is not something which can be subjected to cost benefit analysis.

To appeal to voters the Greens need a simple and consistent narrative of hope and change. They need to be the breath of fresh air that will clear away the old establishment and vested interesting and usher in a fairer, cleaner, greener future. They need a message of hope and change and not one of small-minded bean counting. This will engage people who want change and believe that the Greens can deliver it.