Red and Black ELECTION SPECIAL

 
 Martin Wright is always worth having a listen to. You don't have to agree with his take on the general election but you can be sure of one thing - the man is not tailoring his politics in order to feather his own nest. A rare achievement in 2015.

Amjad Bashire. Home at last.

Less than a hundred days to go before what could turn out to be the dirtiest General Election in years and the parties are manoeuvring to outflank each other by recruiting each others members. But it can all go terribly wrong and overburdened A&E departments end up with shed loads bullet wounds to the feet to deal with. Take the Tories and their latest UKIP "prize" the odious curry house mogul Amjad Bashire. One moment Cameron is lambasting the likes of Bashir for being "swivel eyed loons" and the next all is forgiven and it's welcome to the party. But the Bashires of this world  come with some baggage. Have a look at the man's views on the minimum wage, maternity leave, sick pay and such like impediments to a thriving economy.

Syriza UK? Ohi efharisto.

Say what you like about the bubbles, they don't mess about when it comes to politics and it looks likely that the Greek people will throw in their lot with Syriza in today's general election. Appalling levels of corruption have combined with very painful austerity measures to make for some tough times for ordinary folk and whatever the outcome of the election we can but wish them well. If Syriza do win leftist groups throughout the rest of Europe will be cock a hoop and no doubt we will see a re-launch of Left (dis) Unity etc. Only when you take a close look at the constituent parties that make up Syriza do you realise how desperate Greek people must be. Every kind of Euro-Stalinist, Trotskyist, Eco - Leninist and well meaning lefty dreamer seem to have joined forces. It would be nice to think that all of those super rich shipowners are shaking in their boots - but somehow I doubt it.
No gods no masters. Not even left ones.

Grey vote. Foreward to the past?

If the pundits are to be believed the coming General Election will be all about the grey vote. Greytop coffin dodgers are the most likely section of society to bother voting so from the point of view of politicians with no other interest but the preservation of their own power it makes sense to suck up to the zimmer fusiliers. At last I feel as though I count for something. Mind you, even demented, soup stained has beens such as myself can see that not only does this bode ill for the young (serve them right for getting all that sex) but is probably not in the best interest of the nation. Now, where did I put my dentures? Oh yes. Her Indoors was using them to crimp the edges of a scrag end pie. I suppose that we should just be grateful that the dead, as well as the undead, can't vote.

Of course there is another way……….

IDS. The Mr Nasty of a very nasty party.

Ten or so years back, when Theresa May suggested that many people thought of the Tories as the Nasty Party, the end result was much earnest, wide eyed proclamations of liberal decency from the party.  Gay marriage? Yes. Hug a tree, or for that matter hug a fucking hoodie?  Bring it on.  But truth be told there really is "something of the night" about not just Micheal Howard but the whole party. The loathsome IDS is just the most public example of a very unpleasant current in politics. We don't need the Guardianistas to explain all this to us but to be fair, Polly Toynbee has a thoughtful and provocative  piece here.

Image from Islington.

So what do we know about Emily Thornberry? Classic middle-class Labour party background. Father was a UN Assistant Secretary General who once stood for parliament on a Labour ticket. Mother a teacher and Labour Councillor. Parents divorced, brought up on an estate on the outskirts of Guildford. Secondary Modern education but made it to university and a career as a barrister. Married to High Court judge. Lives in posh bit of Islington. There are thousands of women like Emily all over the country but mainly in the South East of course.  They would certainly claim to be "left wing" and do hold strong views on gender and racial equality. What these people really struggle with is the working class, white principally but working class in general really, once you strip away the condescending patronage for blacks and Asians.  The idea of fat, peelhead blokes who support the England Team, like a pint and can be a bit loud is enough to send shivers down the spine of the likes of Emily Thornberry. Shame really. If they bothered to get to know each other they would probably rub along alright.
You would think by now that politicians would be wise to the pitfalls of social media. Oh look! White van man with England flags. I'll take a photo and send it to my mates so we can all have a snigger. Just like we used to do at school about girls with the wrong length skirts or boys with the wrong width trousers. Who will be the first politician to post a picture of a black kid eating a watermelon and label it "View from South London"?
 Let me put you in the picture Emily. You can have contempt for what you consider to be the archetypal white working class. Fill your boots as far as I'm concerned. But just don't expect them to vote for you.

Tory Boy in blue funk.

I don't know what kind of turnout the political pundits are expecting for the impending Rochester and Strood by-election but latest polls show UKIP out in front with 44%, the Tories just hanging on in there with 32% while Labour, Greens and LibDems are trailing down the field with 17, 4 and 2 respectively. Cameron managed to find his way down to the Medway Towns today and called upon all good men and true to vote tactically in order to keep the Kippers out. Dream on Dave.

When will we ever learn.

Thirteen bloody years. 453 British deaths and who knows how many Afghan losses. This year alone the Afghan security forces have lost some four thousand and once again the Taliban are poised for victory. Since the time of the 1842 British retreat from Kabul through to the Soviet invasion and the American led occupation the message has been pretty clear; don't meddle in Afghanistan or you will end up with a bloody nose. Whatever the future holds for the Afghan people it is unlikely to be the kind of liberal  democracy that Western political elites are (let's be honest) such recent converts to. To paraphrase the old bloke with the beard, the emancipation of the Afghan masses is a task for them alone.

How do you prefer your Eurosceptics?

As if things were not bad enough for Cameron, now comes the news that Britain must pay an extra £1.7 bn into EU coffers as a result of the Tory's much publicised economic recovery. Over at UKIP Towers they must be cracking open the champers, doing cartwheels down the corridors and generally creaming their knickers. No such jollifications across the the other side of town at NO2EU HQ I imagine. The left-wing faction of the Eurosceptic world may have sent a junior comrade round to the bakers for cream cakes but that will be as far as celebrations go. Lack of funds, and possibly a lack of joie de vevre, will see to that. So how do you prefer your Eurosceptics? Flag waving, foreigner bashing, swivel eyed loons, or worthy but dull with a nostalgia for the old workers paradises of the East? Tough call.

The curse of the Kippers?

Have UKIP really broken the mold of British politics or will it all come to nothing after some initial success? The history of fringe parties in UK politics should not inspire confidence among the Kippers   but nothing is quite as optimistic as the party activist on a roll and every time that Farage's troops get a media mention party morale is given a boost.
Remember the Social Democrat Party. The Gang of Four? Remember the election pact between the SDP and the Liberals? The two Davids? There was Liberal leader David Steele and the other one. The SDP leader. Used to be a doctor. Child Foreign Secretary. Departed Labour due to a surfeit of socialism. What was his name? That's it! David Owen. The Two Davids were supposed to be breaking the mold but in the end the merging of the two parties and the re-branding of the Liberals as Liberal Democrats was just the Liberals hoovering up a small (but vocal) fringe party. Owen and a handful of diehards rejected the merger and soldiered on as a rump (real?) SDP until the final indignity of the Bootle by-election when they secured fewer votes than the Monster Raving Loonies. In all probability such will be the fate of UKIP. There will be much slinking off back to the Tories. Much disillusioned licking of wounds and many tears before bedtime.
What should be of concern is what UKIP are able to achieve between now and their probable peak at next years General Election. I don't just mean how well they do in electoral terms but how the party is able to reaffirm and give legitimacy to the long held belief of many people that everything would be OK if only there were fewer foreigners; in the world in general and in this country in particular.
UKIP will not break the grip that the major parties have on the levers of power. They may however, before they depart the stage of history, leave us a more xenophobic and mean spirited nation than we were before. That may prove to be the curse of the Kippers.

Scotland? Got a spot of bother up there have they?

Russia claims that the Scottish Independence Referendum failed to comply with international standards.
Meanwhile, according to Political Scrapbook, a referendum truther movement!!! is demanding a recount and claiming that the whole thing was rigged.  ISIS will probably declare Scotland kafir in the next day or two. That's the trouble with democracy - it does tend to get people worked up.

Who knows what the future holds for Scotland.

One thing is for sure. I can never remember a political issue that has motivated people to such an extent. If Scots genuinely feel that they will be better off outside the UK but inside the EU then of course they should go for it. Vote YES. But it's what will happen after the referendum that will be really interesting.  A resounding YES vote will mean months (perhaps years) of negotiation before independence is finally declared. On the other hand a NO vote will mean months (almost certainly years ) of bitter recrimination. There is a third possibility and it's one that no doubt has been thought about in the corridors of power in both London and Edinburgh. Just suppose that there is a YES vote but that Westminster maintains that there is no constitutional right to secession. That the Act Of Union cannot be repealed. What then?

Panic? No way.

Cameron, Clegg and Bernie Winters head north in an attempt, having failed with the purse strings, to tug at Scottish heart strings.  No doubt there will be much photo-op hesitant nibbling of stovies, mutton pies and haggis and chips. All washed town by tentative sips from pints of heavy. Pubs are offering YES or NO (Bitter Together) beer. A St Andrew's flag is hoisted over Number 10 only for the halyard to break and the whole shooting match flutter to the ground. John Major steps forward to fulfil his role as elder statesman and warn of the dire consequences of Jock Independence. Don't mention cricket, or Curry.
Alex Salmond has the look of a man who has lost a mickle and found a muckle. Only time will tell if the average Scot will be better served by an Edinburgh elite rather than a Westminster one but the question seems to be a live one all right. Unusually for politics - at least it's not boring.

The Green's Citizens Income is a winner.

There are many things about the Green Party, now ensconced in their annual conference, that give me the screaming abdabs but when it comes to their policy of a Citizens Income I reckon that they can't be faulted. Just think how a salary of £10,000 p.a. as a RIGHT OF CITIZENSHIP and regardless of any other income, would transform lives. At a stroke benefit fraud would disappear, as would the constant harassment of the disabled and unemployed. Those who wanted to work, and these would be in the overwhelming majority I suspect, would top up their Citizens Income by 100% or even 400%. Those who preferred not to be employed but rather to care for children, dig their allotments or master the tuba would be secure in the knowledge that, no matter what life might throw at them, impoverishment would be held at bay. A universal wage as a right would combine with free first rate health care and education to form the foundation of a just society. How would all this be paid for? Why, by a higher rate of tax on the wealthy of course. But might that not lead to a mass exodus of "talent" who would all decamp to Switzerland quicker than a rat up a pump? Ah yes! Switzerland. The richest country in Europe and the one with the highest wages and lowest rate of home ownership.

There's a row going on down Clacton way.

The defection of Douglas Carswell to UKIP and the resultant prospect of a Clacton by-election should put the cat among the pigeons and not only at CCHQ. Apparently UKIP's chosen son for Clacton was supposed to be former tory Roger Lord and he is not best pleased at being elbowed aside by Carswell. A return to the Conservative Party and "ripping out Carswell's throat" are apparently two of the options that Lord is contemplating.
Clacton is an interesting constituency, To the north east is the anal retentive Frinton. Designed as a small and refined resort for the haute bourgeoisie, it would cling on to delusions of grandeur long after the posh people had come to the conclusion that it was better to be seen dead than seen in Essex and the town would resist such horrors as pubs and fish and chip shops right into the 21st century.

South west lies the former plotland of Jaywick the place that lays unenviable claim to being the most deprived human settlement in England. Clacton itself was a busy, cheerful seaside resort and home to one of Billy Butlin's first holiday camps. How we laughed at the jokes about the Martello Tower on the perimeter being there to stop campers escaping. Well Clacton's heyday is long gone and nobody is laughing now.  Like so many formerly thriving resorts the place has never really found a new future for itself.

In Frinton, Jaywick, Clacton and in the rest of the constituency people know that something is wrong. They can't quite put their finger on it but are pretty sure that none of this is their fault. An interesting place. Interesting times.

Public school/Oxbridge elite rule country shock.

The stats of inequality always make for sobering and sometimes shocking reading. Ever since I first started to take an interest in politics I have been digesting statistics about the percentage of global wealth owned by a tiny minority of the population. Now the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission have published a report detailing the social and financial advantages of attending private school and Oxbridge. 71% of senior judges, 62% of top army posts, 47% of newspaper columnists, 44% of the Sunday Times Rich List, 35% of Cameron's Cabinet, were all educated privately. But surely this is not a surprise. If there were not such huge advantages to a private education no one would pay the fees.  What is surprising is the numbers of working class people who by hard work and determination manage to break through and reach high standards of personal academic achievement. Some remember where they came from and devote much energy to giving others a hand up - others do not. At the end of the day inequality of opportunity means the loss to society of a huge reservoir of talent and the sad loss of personal fulfilment for countless millions. But we all know this. What we need is not the likes of Owen Jones foaming at the mouth and jerking himself off over the stats of inequality but a vision of what an alternative might look like and how to get to there from here.

Covert insertions and tangled webs.

Some Kurdish factions are claiming that the jihadist fighters of Islamic State are being secretly trained by the Turkish Army in the hope that IS will act as a buffer to Kurdish national aspirations. It might seem unlikely that the Turkish government would want to fund a force that could well bite the hand that feeds it but when discussing this with "The Man Who Knows" he was quick to point out that it's no more unlikely then the Israelis setting up Hamas as a counter to the PLO or the CIA being patron to mujahadeen/Al-Qaeda. Such are the machinations of realpolitik.

Oh dear!

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Every day is an inspiration when you live at One Commercial Street.

Have you heard, it's in the stars……….

In these difficult times with the NHS groaning under the strain of budget cuts, an ageing population and  every kind of neo-con privatisation project under the sun, it's good to hear of at least one politician who is not short of a helpful idea or two. Old Etonian Tory MP David Tredinnick is a hard act to follow and no mistake. Treddinick reckons that in some way that is clearly beyond my ken,  astrology could shave millions of pounds from NHS expenditure. You might wonder what someone who has previously come out strongly in support of reflexology, astral projection, cranial osteopathy, aromatherapy  and homoeopathy is doing sitting on both the Health Committee and the Science and Technology Committee but such are the wonders of the Westminster Village.
………….next July we collide with Mars. Well did you ever! What swell party this is.

You can't do that there 'ere. Oh yes we can.

"You can't just take people's property away from them", is the stock answer to any suggestion that London's housing shortage could, in part at least, be solved by the expropriation of all of the empty "investment properties" that are a blight on the capital. But of course it is perfectly possible for property to be requisitioned in times of greater need. During the war when the toffs fled to their country retreats to escape the bombing they found that bombed out Londoners were being housed in their empty town houses and there was not a thing that they could do about it. Nor were the stately homes of England safe from requisition and many were taken over for military use. No doubt many of the owners saw it as their patriotic duty to comply, others will have squealed like stuck pigs but it made no difference. Selfishness had become, if only superficially and for a short time, unfashionable.
It's a common misconception that the European upper class disliked Bolshevism due to fears about the loss of individual liberty and freedom of speech. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were perfectly happy with putting a stop to all this free speech nonsense, what was really putting the shits up them was the prospect of loosing all their vast estates and accumulated wealth. Such fears would prove to be well founded. But as the case of wartime requisitioning in good old liberal democratic Britain shows, you don't need a revolutionary situation to expropriate private property. Just the political will and a modicum of gumption.