Another leader falls (2007)

From the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The men in grey suits take care that their message in not misunderstood and after they had been in touch with Sir Walter Menzies Campbell Privy Counsellor, Chancellor of St. Andrews University, MP, CBE, QC he felt the only course open to him was to compose a curt letter of resignation as Liberal leader and, in a huff, get on the first flight back to Edinburgh, indicating that no one should waste their time chasing him because he would not be holding any press conference or make any further comment.

As he is a politician nobody was expected to take that seriously so it was not a surprise that the very next day he allowed himself to be interviewed at his posh home, under the chandelier in a room described by one correspondent as having walls decorated in “ruling class red”. In fact Campbell’s resignation was itself a complete reversal of his most recent declaration in the matter: for example on the day before he assured his party’s eastern regional conference that he considered himself to have the “the energy, the ideas and the determination to lead the party into the next election and beyond”. He might also have offered, as another qualification, that he was untroubled by any doubts about being inconsistent.

Much the same could be said about two of the likely candidates to succeed to the leadership. Nick Clegg might have stood when Charles Kennedy was ousted last year but he held back in favour of Campbell – which did not deter him from going on to undermine Campbell by letting it be known at this year’s party conference that he was ready to stand “in the future” – which came rather sooner than had been expected. Chris Huhne is Clegg’s bitter rival – which began when Huhne persuaded Clegg not to contest the succession to Kennedy by assuring Campbell of his support and then himself standing, running a close second to Campbell. Both of these candidates are a lot younger than Campbell, who fumes that he is “irritated” by the media concentration on his age, which he says is only a “temporary condition” – whatever he means by that. It seems to have escaped him that any preoccupation with youth as energising and progressive stems from its elevation into the kind of lucrative, ever regenerating, market so exciting to capitalism’s commodity based structure. Whatever “irritation” Campbell may feel will be familiar to the many workers who are condemned to a deeper level of poverty through being classified as unemployable through age, accentuated by the reduction of their hoped-for pension on the grounds of their employers’ financial priorities.

As Campbell stormed off into the sulky skies, his friends and enemies were in competition to embellish the distasteful episode with abject descriptions of him: “a man of honesty, decency and integrity…unique integrity and courage” It was as if they needed to forget his part in the execution of Charles Kennedy, enthusiastic enough to earn him the soubriquet “Ming the Merciless”. The episode illuminated how the political parties of capitalism owe their nature to the very style of the system, so that they purvey a cynicism born of inherent stress and exclusion, making a contradiction of the words Liberal and Democratic.

Voice From The Back: The madness of capitalism (2010)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The madness of capitalism

Capitalism is an insane society. Millions die with easily prevented or curable diseases whilst millions of dollars, pounds, euros and yens are spent on new ways to destroy human beings with ingenious methods of military mayhem, but surely capitalism has reached the epitome of madness when some children are trying to exist on less than £1 a day and we can read of the following insanity. “It’s simple, but no less appealing for that. Celine’s classic box bag may cost a pretty penny but its sleek lines make it among the most wanted bags of the season. Price: £2,150″ (The Independent, 20 September). Yes, the equivalent of years of nourishment for a child spent by some parasite as a gift of a handbag to his latest girlfriend. Mad, mad, mad.

Pay cheque to pay cheque

The media constantly reminds us how lucky we are to live in an advanced capitalist economy. We should be grateful to our masters that we don’t live in a backward third-world economy. The United Kingdom, the USA and Canada must surely be free from the poverty of those third-world nations according to the media – but what is the reality? “The recession may be officially over, but six in 10 Canadians are still surviving from paycheque to paycheque, a national survey showed Monday. Fifty-nine per cent of Canadian workers say they would be in financial trouble if their paycheque was delayed by just a week – the same proportion as last year when the economy was still mired in a downturn, according to a poll of 2,766 people by the Canadian Payroll Association. The survey comes as the OECD today warned that record high debt levels have left many Canadians vulnerable to any future adverse shocks” (Globe and Mail, 13 September). Like our fellow workers in Canada and the USA we in the UK live from pay day to pay day. That is how capitalism operates.

Dollars and democracy

One of the illusions that supporters of capitalism like to boast of is the notion that whatever the failings of the profit system at least it is thoroughly democratic. This is a complete fabrication as by the expenditure of million of dollars, euros and yen the owning class completely distort any pretence to democracy that capitalism may possess. A recent example of this manipulation by the power of money has emerged in the USA. “It likes to present itself as a grassroots insurgency made up of hundreds of local groups intent on toppling the Washington elite. But the Tea Party movement, which is threatening to cause an upset in next month’s midterm elections, would not be where it is today without the backing of that most traditional of US political supporters – Big Oil. The billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, a private company with 70,000 employees and annual revenues of $100bn (£62bn), used to joke that they controlled the biggest company nobody had ever heard of. Not any more. After decades during which their fortune grew exponentially and they channelled millions of dollars to rightwing causes, Charles and David Koch are finally getting noticed for their part in the extraordinary growth of the Tea Party movement. The two, 74-year-old Charles and David, 70, have invested widely in the outcome of the 2 November elections. One Koch subsidiary has pumped $1m into the campaign to repeal California’s global warming law, according to state records” (Guardian, 14 October). Like Bob Dylan once wrote “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”

Behind the rhetoric

Politicians’ stock in trade is pretending to represent the whole of society when in fact only representing the owning class. Thus we have Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats claiming that he is concerned about the poor and exploited at election time, but in power forced to declare his real aims. “Poor must accept benefit cuts: Clegg on collision course with own party by backing welfare axe. Nick Clegg has waded into the row over welfare reform by warning that benefits should not be there ‘to compensate the poor for their predicament’. On the eve of the Liberal Democrat conference, the Deputy Prime Minister backed the Coalition’s programme of welfare cuts and dramatically shifted his party’s policy on the subject” (Daily Mail, 16 September). If you represent the owning class, despite your glamour TV image, you sometimes have to tell the truth. You are poor? So what, we are not here to “compensate” you, declares this politician once in power.

Political whores trading (2010)

From the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Extract of MI5 recording, number XA4821S, Westminster, May 7. Principals in cross-Party coalition talks, House Speaker residing.

Chair: I must begin by asking you, gentlemen, if any here present are intending in disregard of honour or scruple to prostitute all their principles simply for the sake of power at any price?

All: Of course!

Chair: Oh. Ahem. Well, that’s alright then. Now, to business.

Clegg: Still think I’m a joke, Cameron?

Brown: I think you’re both bloody jokes.

Clegg: I’m not even speaking to you, Brown.

Brown: Alright, I resign.

Chair: To order. The agenda is how to rake back £163bn without ending up with Greek fire in Whitehall.

Clegg: PR! AV plus! STD! No wait, I mean…

Cameron: I’m a liberal Tory, that means I’ll screw the poor and cut child tax credits but I won’t give the rich that huge inheritance tax bonus until next year.

Clegg: I want no tax for the 10k superpoor. And did I mention PR?

Chair: Do Labour wish to say anything?

Blunkett: Ok, we give in.

Cameron: What?

Reid: Who wants to be a coalition of losers?

Clegg: But you said you wanted PR!

Reid: Balls.

Chair: Come again?

Ed Balls: We’ve got what we want, Brown’s head on a pole, plus we won’t get blamed for the cuts we would have had to make in office. We’ll clean up next election. Cameron will be toast and Clegg will be cornflakes.

Chair: You mean you’re walking out on the negotiations?

Harman: Manning the lifeboats actually. Good luck with the deckchairs. The Titanic’s all yours.

Clegg: I knew they weren’t serious. Cameron, we’ve got to do something. The axeman cometh.

Cameron: You mean the IMF?

Clegg: No, I mean our rank and file. If I don’t screw a deal out of this hung parliament I’m hung, and if you don’t, your name will be down there with Ian Duncan Smith.

Cameron: Oh my god. But we’re diametrically opposed!

Clegg: No, that was yesterday. Today we’re liberals. Any deal will do. Now about PR…

Recording indistinct. Sounds of Miliband brothers scuffling and Alex Salmond singing ‘Whose bonny wee lassie am I?’)

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Political whores trading

We strongly suspect that the attached transcript (above) is a hoax, which is why we didn’t pay good money for it.

However, something like it probably did happen. Not for a generation has there been such an edge of the seat performance from all three main parties on a high turnout vote, with voters queuing up for hours to get in on the act and then being turned away by the jobsworths running the polling stations. All that drama for a holy grail they all knew was a poisoned chalice. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, had predicted that whoever formed the next government and made the required cuts in expenditure would be out of power for a generation afterwards. Perhaps this was why Labour apparatchiks like Blunkett and Reid were throwing in the towel even before the votes were all in, and all that warm Liberal friendly pillow-talk during the election rapidly cooled as the realisation dawned that sometimes it’s better to be outside the tent pissing in.

 An election which produced no clear winner did however produce three clear losers. All three leaders immediately faced the guillotine, Clegg for being the golden boy who lost seats, Cameron for his secretive, Blairlike reliance on an inner circle and disregard of anyone else, as well as his crap and meaningless ‘Big Society’ election message, and Brown just for being Brown when New Labour was supposed to be about Blair, flair and razzle dazzle. A shaky coalition forced to wield the machete on wages and public spending amid general public rage over fat cat corruption has got to be any politician’s worst nightmare, and as if that wasn’t enough, the spectre haunting Europe this season is one of Greeks burning down banks. Hanging over this new government, even before it’s got started, is a ghastly sense of foreboding.

 In the event, desperation has forced Cameron to marry Clegg, on the grounds of better a bad hand than no hand at all. Clegg in particular was in a hard bind. He would have been crucified for not making a deal, their first chance in 30 years, and given the Lib Dem ‘democracy’ mantra, no less crucified for hypocritically siding with Labour when they were in a clear elective minority with no mandate to govern. As it is, he will probably be crucified by his own party for this deal with the Tories. As one Liberal put it: “I think we could be wiped out for a generation by this decision. We will probably be annihilated at the next election” (Guardian, 12 May).

 A common assumption doing the rounds is that, regardless of Cameron’s plan to shore up the ConDem’d government with 5 year fixed term legislation and an increase in the majority requirement for a Parliamentary vote of no confidence, the whole show will probably collapse in disarray in a couple of years or so. Labour certainly are banking on a short period to regroup in opposition and another ‘97 like landslide. But coalitions only look shaky because they don’t happen often in Britain.

 In other EU countries where proportional representation is the norm, coalitions happen almost routinely and government still manages to function, insofar as governments can ever really be said to function.

 The socialist view of all this has been echoed by, of all people, Michael Portillo (see Editorial). Governments don’t control the money, the money controls governments, and when money says ‘Jump’, it is always the working class who are for the high jump. It is with some sadness that we predict that the poor will pay the bill, however the politicians work out their debt repayment schemes, while the rich will do alright, thanks very much. What’s not going to happen is that capitalism somehow falls flat on its face and dies of a seizure.

 Experience shows that capitalism is good at surviving, even though it may consume many of its supporters in the process. All governments are really coalitions of capitalist class interests against the working class, so if workers want something better than pain and oppression for themselves then they had better stop voting for its continuation. Were socialists ever to be in a parliamentary minority and faced with the Clegg dilemma, there’s no question what we would say: A plague on all your houses, you’ll get no deal from us.

Paddy Shannon

Greasy Pole: Wind At Daybreak For The New Politics (2011)

The Greasy Pole column from the June 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

As dawn broke on 6 May Danny Alexander, the fresh-faced Chief Secretary to the Treasury, sat alone in the Sky TV studio and, in what one seasoned observer called “a Facebook moment”, relieved himself of an explosive fart.

At the time he was composing himself to spout some predictably scripted excuses and evasions about the LibDem losses in the local elections and their disappointment at the result of the AV referendum. Somewhere outside the studio the Tories were gloating. He assumed he was unobserved but his contribution to the day’s entertainment was recorded on some 100 monitors. Well it was a change from the usual noxious emissions from the mouths of politicians but should we be worried about Alexander and his flatulence? Was it the only way for him to relieve his despair at the exposure of the LibDem’s deceit, their savaging by their supposed Tory allies and the crumbling of a generation of baseless ambitions? Was it heralding his guilt at his own part in provoking his party’s debacle?

He rose, after all, through the ranks as a personal assistant of the disastrous Nick Clegg. He was deeply involved in composing the LibDem election manifesto – including those pledges such as opposing any rise in tuition fees – and he was at the lead in negotiations to form the coalition, heedless of the disastrous effect on his party of previous such arrangements. Which did not affect his enthusiasm for the job of Chief Secretary and its work of “deficit reduction”, which entails reducing the incomes if masses of people who so meekly vote for a social system which brings them such misery and fear. Any examination of Alexander must reveal that his ailments are chronic and resistant to treatment.

Clegg

However hapless his condition, Alexander cannot rely on any therapeutic example from his colleagues (and, of course, his rivals) in his party. Clegg, for one, persists in what might be called his optimism were it not so perilously separated from reality. On the first anniversary of those blissfully exciting days when the coalition came into being in the fragrance of the rose garden at Number Ten, he said: “There is a reason neither of the two bigger parties won last May. Neither of them were really trusted to deliver both a strong, dynamic economy and a fair society. We can be trusted on both counts…I am confident that showing we can combine economic soundness with social justice – competence with a conscience – will make us an even more formidable political force in the future.” Those words were breathtaking in their audacious refusal to acknowledge the real situation – for example the survey for ITV News which showed 49 percent regarding the Coalition as “bad for Britain” and 63 percent saying they do not trust Clegg.

Then there was his boss Cameron who made a contemptuously obstinate dismissal of LibDem claims to be able to smooth the crueller edges of Tory policies: “I don’t accept the whole idea that the role of one party is somehow to moderate the other. The Conservative Party, under my leadership, has changed. It is a new and different Conservative Party.” That statement is crammed with falsehood, paying no attention to the fact that the Liberal Party – whatever alliances it has embroiled itself in, however it has re-shaped its name – has not been a nationally considerable political force for some ninety years. Their typical response, when their real situation became too distasteful, was to gorge themselves on fantasy.

Steel

One notable addict of that variety of political narcosis was David Steel who was Liberal leader between July 1976 and July 1988 and who, perhaps as consolation for joining the ranks of failed leaders of his party, was in 1997 transformed into Baron Steel of Aikwood. During his time in charge he did a favour to James Callaghan’s ailing Labour government by joining a pact to keep them in power in return for being consulted on some aspects of policy. That arrangement fell apart with Thatcher’s 1979 victory but Steel became excited again by the scent of power in 1981 when the Gang of Four broke from the Labour Party and, in spite of his former gruesomely futile expedition into such territory, he felt encouraged to join a SDP/Liberal Alliance. Here, he thought, was at last a real chance of worming his way into a position of fame and influence which would get the cameras watching him striding along Downing Street smiling at the reporters’ cheeky questions, then emerging from the black door to issue some history-making declaration to the waiting world.

There was some encouragement in such dreams by the opinion polls which indicated that the despair about the previous Labour government was widespread and deep enough to give the Alliance a realistic hope of success. Steel was impressed enough by this to bellow at the 1981 Liberal Assembly that party members should “…go back to your constituencies and prepare for government”. And when the ecstatic uproar caused by that historically embarrassing, desperately forgettable, blunder had died away there was Thatcher and the war in the Falklands and a smashing win for the Tories in 1983 and the virtual death of the Alliance and all its dreams and nightmares.

Conservatives 

None of this, nor of the other such disasters, seems to have influenced Clegg – nor Alexander and the others – when Cameron offered them the chance of again living the dream denied to their party’s previous leaders. Indeed the early attitude of the likes of Vince Cable and David Laws gave the impression that they were satisfied they had made the right choice, working for policies which they knew would adversely affect the lives of masses of people – workers, children, the elderly and the sick… We know now that situation has changed; there is a dominant Conservative Party (now condemned by Cable as “…ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal”) which may calculate on being in power for a period comparable to Thatcher’s. During last year’s general election we were promised, especially by Clegg who was suffering from a kind of hysteria arising from his ecstatic TV ratings, a New Style of Politics. The elections this year exposed that lie but there is a way to go before the end of any politics, old or new, signalling the end of this entire rotten system in which reality is swamped in toxic fantasy.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Grow up and understand (2011)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

You can’t help feeling sorry for coalition ministers with their sleepless nights and restless days having to do something they call Taking Tough Decisions even when these lead to thousands of people catapulted into unemployment, agonising over whether to pay the rent or mortgage or buy food or try to keep warm in the winter. So it helps to know that, at any rate for those struggling ministers, there is another way. Some spin doctor in the deeper recesses of Westminster has come up with the idea that the victims of current policies might regard themselves as less repressed and impoverished if they could accept it all in a more mature and perceptive manner. One great advantage of this reasoning would be that it promises to be stunningly cheap to operate. Another is that any residual resentment by penurious benefit applicants and the like might well be stifled by their feelings of guilt at their own inadequacy in accepting reality.

Clegg

Here, for example, is Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, seemingly unshaken by his being abruptly transmogrified from the focus of a national mood of “Cleggmania” into “the most hated man in Britain”. The tension between the LibDems and their patient fans was aggravated by the fact that Clegg had led his party into the coalition along a path of dishonoured pledges and his excited complacency at holding so eminent a governmental post. Last November, before the Commons voted on the proposal to increase the university tuition fees, Clegg wrote to the President of the National Union of Students and, after asserting that the government’s intention was that graduates on lower incomes would be better off than now, stated that “I believe it is crucial that all of us are able to ensure that people know the true picture”. Take note of the use of words like “crucial…all of us…ensure…true picture…” designed to imply that anyone who does not fit into this compliant mould has defects which are – well, crucial. This argument might be more effective if it was not put by the same Nick Clegg who, when he was touting for votes during the general election, said that to raise tuition fees would be “a disaster”. So while we consider how to maintain a maturely informed attitude among the confusion, can we also settle where we place Clegg? Are we impressed that he eventually admitted the LibDems (including himself) should have thought more carefully before signing those flamboyantly reckless pledges? Or would it be more instructive to remember that this confession was a response to lost votes and the fact that Cleggmania had decayed into a septic memory of a disreputable past.

Cable 

Which brings us to the Deputy Prime Minister’s deputy who, while never embellished by Cablemania, has coincidentally been reduced from the world’s most immaculately insightful economist to piteously Vincible Vince. Among a procession of savaging blunders in early November Cable boasted to two undercover reporters from the Daily Telegraph who came to his constituency surgery pretending to need his advice that he had the power to scupper Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to completely take over BSkyB and that to get his own way in the coalition he could operate the “nuclear option” of threatening to resign from it. Although supposedly a hardened political operator, the terror of affluently bonused bankers, Cable seemed powerless of suspecting that he was being set up precisely to embarrass himself in such an unwise, almost terminal, style. An outraged David Cameron swiftly relieved him of these feverish delusions – and of some of his ministerial responsibilities. But he clung on as Business Secretary, in which post he had brushed aside the protests at the planned rise in tuition fees: “I think a lot of the people who are protesting actually don’t understand what’s being proposed. It doesn’t actually affect them – we’re talking about a system of graduate contribution that will only affect people who start going to university in a couple of years’ time”. There are however problems for anyone eager to give any weight to Cable’s views in this matter since he has himself demonstrated a distinct confusion in understanding – at times declaring himself to be in favour, then against, the rise in fees, then that he would abstain from voting (there are no prizes for guessing that, when he came to it, ambition overruled and he obediently supported the rise). But how are we to regard anyone so susceptible to trickery and confusion, who nevertheless tells us that we “don’t understand” our everyday problems?

Cameron

From the other bit of the coalition David Cameron, in what seemed like a fit of exasperation, hit out at the opponents of the “reform” of what are called public services (in which this government is merely following Labour’s policy). Cameron’s complaint is that the critics need to grow up and realise that what counts is the standards of the service rather than which organisation – state, private, charity – delivers it. Well growing up – although not in the way Cameron means – is mostly a useful, not to say necessary, process from which a certain education is assumed to follow. But until that happens we must work with the outrageous fact that an Old Etonian, ex-member of the vandal Bullingdon Club such as Cameron can lecture us about maturity when he is unable – or perhaps reluctant – to confront the fact that the working class exist under continual pressures of survival in their everyday lives. Dependency on employment in order to survive is a vastly educative, maturing experience. For example the housing charity Shelter recently reported that some 3 million people have problems paying their rent or mortgage, which means that millions of people live under the persistent threat of being homeless. According to Shelter’s chief executive “thousands of people are hanging on to their homes by the skin of their teeth…”. That is the kind of experience which should be enough to result in such enlightenment about capitalism as to be mightily serious for the Tories, Labour, LibDems and all other supporters of this chaotic, degrading social system.

Ivan

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

After news that a man managed to survive for two months in a frozen car by hibernating, there has been a flurry of unconfirmed reports that some old people in parts of Scotland are managing to survive the winter on a state pension. “I can’t believe it’s true,” said Pensions minister Ian Duncan Smith, “but if it is, we will certainly be looking at making cuts.” A leading clinician explained that in certain unusual circumstances it may be possible for the elderly poor to stay alive when the state doesn’t want them to: “They might be doing it by setting fire to all their furniture and eating their slippers. And we shouldn’t rule out cannibalism. We would love to research this phenomenon more closely, but of course there’s no money.”

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Jeremy Clarkson’s remark that the 30 November public sector strikers should be executed in front of their families was not in breach of broadcasting rules, Ofcom has ruled. The remarks sparked 31,000 complaints to the BBC. “It’s a disgrace,” said one licence holder, “everybody knows that strikers’ families should be executed too. It’s the only language these Bolsheviks understand.” Mr Clarkson commented, “I’m sorry I used the word ‘executed’. What I meant to say was ‘hanged, disembowelled and boiled in lard’. Now everyone will think I’m a gay liberal.”

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The US commander in Afghanistan has apologised over reports that Nato troops had “improperly disposed” of copies of the Koran. In a statement he said, “We wish to reassure Moslems everywhere that it is our policy to murder them while showing their storybooks the utmost respect. We regret any offence caused. Normal toilet paper has now been restored to the latrines.”

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The Prince of Wales has admitted he was a failure as a schoolboy football captain at an event for his Prince’s Trust Football Initiative. Speaking to a group of famous footballers, the Prince told them his school team never won a game with him in charge. “It’s nice that he’s honest about it,” said Tottenham’s Jermain Tothepoint, “and it explains why he’s never been much cop as a prince either.” A spray of mixed wallflowers and antirrhinum sprang to the Prince’s defence: “He might not know much about architecture, but he knows how to water a plant, and he keeps us amused.”

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Firms and charities are to be invited to bid for a payment-by-results scheme to try to get MPs into work or training, in a project launched by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. “Many MPs are not in employment, education or training, and do nothing all day but sit in front of a computer looking at stock figures. Many of them have complex problems, including truancy, idleness, a lack of motivation and disengagement from the electorate. It’s crucial to help these people now before the next election and unemployment hits us all.”

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Many large retail stores have expressed concerns over another government work experience scheme which has been derided as “slave labour”. One chief executive blasted critics of the scheme: “It’s ridiculous to imply these trainees are worse off than our regular staff. This is making us look bad to our shareholders. Let’s get this straight, all our employees work in slave conditions, not just a few miserable trainees.”

Brief Reports (2012)

From the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nick Clegg has urged the Liberal Democrats to show “courage and vision” by not sacking him. The call comes after his apology for failing to fulfil his pre-election promise to fight any increase in university tuition fees. Mr Clegg also said there could be “no question” of further lowering the top income tax rate of 45%, which will come into force next April, “and you can take my word for it”. A spokesman for the CBI, the bosses’ union, reported that his members were ‘jubilant’ at the news, and many were already splashing out on extra yachts in anticipation of the further tax cuts.

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Ministers need to choose their special advisers carefully or they may end up in situations worthy of the BBC satire The Thick of It, MPs have said. The TV series, which is basically Yes Minister! with swearing, highlights the role of dodgy special advisors or Spads, temporary government employees who are not bound by the same rules of impartiality as civil servants and who may be following their own agenda. Recent scandals have shown spads to be deceitful, venal, corrupt and incompetent. Labour leader Ed Miliband and Prime Minister David Cameron are both former special advisers.

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In the wake of the Lance Armstrong drug scandal, the company Peddle-It.com has launched a new performance enhancer called Placebonite, which it says is guaranteed to be a top seller: ‘The industry dilemma is that none of the legal products work, while all the ones that do work are illegal. In fact, for a product to work would necessarily make it illegal. You can’t stop athletes pumping themselves with something, so we’re giving them the perfect product. It’s legal, and they think it works, so it does!’ Economics analysts are studying sales, with a view to applying the rationale to other areas, like economics.

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Unemployment fell by 50,000 to 2.53 million between June and August, official figures show, as more people died, left the country or went off benefit to become burglars. “It’s proof that the government’s policy is working’, said a spokesman for the DWP, “People would rather turn to crime than endure the abuse we dish out in the Work Programme.’ The figures follow the announcement of a new government scheme to employ disabled people as motorway bollards.

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The “worst may still be ahead” for the banking system, the Bank of England’s deputy governor has told a gathering of leading bankers. Paul Tucker said reserves held by banks were still not calibrated for the “end-of-the-world risks” that remained a possibility: ‘If you’re buying that yacht, now might be a good moment to fit it out for a long sea voyage. There are lots of islands going cheap in the Caribbean.’

Greasy Pole: Contrickery in Conference (2012)

The Greasy Pole Column from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Locked, bolted and barred with every spoken syllable and gesture weighed and scrutinised, the annual conferences of the big political parties are not what they used to be. There was a time when the attending members, taking pride in themselves as delegates, could have hoped that their agenda items, after being amended, composited and generally sanitised, might have borne some relation to the professed policy of their party, or when events scheduled as debates might have aroused some passion or indignation about world famine or dictatorships or devastating war. It is not like that now: “Borderline tedium” was how one observer put it.

This year Conservative Party members might have travelled home from their conference in a glow of satisfaction, under the impression that their doubts about the government had been noticed. As when Cameron defiantly laid it down that no one should feel bad about having been to Eton: “I say yes I went to a great school and I want every child to have a great education. I’m not here to defend privilege. I’m here to spread it”. Except that privilege is nothing if not exclusive – as comprehensive pupils will realise if they ever have to play in their school’s version of the Eton Wall Game. As when the new Justice Minister, Christopher Grayling, thumped his tub to announce the replacement of Ken Clarke’s Rehabilitation Revolution by Rougher Retribution. As when Eric Pickles paraded his plans to obstruct the union activities of local authority workers on the grounds that this will make the unions stronger.

Clumsy Clegg

The LibDems no longer alert us about global warming or the dangers of eating non-organic food, which, to anyone interested in political matters, was only mildly irritating. Now they are preoccupied with their agonised wrestling to keep their place on the same side of the Commons as Cameron’s Tories while plugging the gaps left by those infamously dishonoured election pledges. Their method has been to placate the outraged voters while avoiding the question of why any of their future promises should be believed. This wretched come-down dominated their conference, not alleviated by Nick Clegg and his fumbling efforts to divert attention from their exposure: “There is a better, more meaningful future waiting for us. Not as a third party, but as one of the parties of government… Stop looking in the rear-view mirror as we journey from the party of opposition that we were, to the party of government we are becoming”.

False Images

But those images in Clegg’s rear-view mirror could not have inspired the LibDems as examples for the future. Such as: “I see generations of Liberals marching towards the sound of gunfire” – a phrase first offered by the charmingly mannered Old Etonian, Jo Grimond, their leader from November 1956 to January 1967. Under Grimond the Liberals were on the rise, for example, winning the safe Tory seat of Orpington in 1958 but then declined. In July 1976 David Steel took over, offering the party some hope with his livelier style, and for a while this seemed to bear fruit, but in March 1977 Steel stuffed them into an uncomfortable alliance with Callaghan’s Labour government, and when this failed to keep Labour in power in 1988 he managed the merger with the discredited Gang of Four’s SDP. However, there was persistent enmity between Steel and the SDP’s leader David Owen, a symptom of which was Steel agreeing to a joint policy document without having read it. This year a triumphant Clegg told the conference that Paddy Ashdown will head the party’s general election team – the same Paddy Ashdown whose failure to improve the party’s prospects came to an end with his resignation in 1999. None of these men in the rear-view mirror succeeded in raising the Liberals to the point when they could be seen as an alternative government for British capitalism. When Clegg proclaimed to the conference that the LibDems stand for “a fair, free and open society,” he was offering just another pledge, to be judged by the party’s dismal history of failure.

Vote for Disraeli?

When it was time for Ed Miliband to stand at the rostrum he knew – because almost the entire British media had blanketed him with the advice – that this was his make or break time. He slaved at learning his lines off by heart so that as he boarded the train to Birmingham he was as word perfect as any Old Vic veteran. Although an eavesdropping fellow passenger heard him spurting in frustration “What am I doing? Who knows what I’m doing? Where’s my fucking diary?” he came through to make a speech arousing the massive satisfaction of party members and the media – which can be explained only by reference to their impoverished standards of expectation. Plunging into typical politicians’ gobbledygook, Miliband referred (no less than 44 times) to the concept of One-Nation, with an implied salute to Benjamin Disraeli whose name is forever linked to the phrase – which was also used by Tony Blair in Labour’s election winning 1997 manifesto: “I want a Britain that is one nation, with shared values and purpose…”  At a time of recession, with the promise of even fiercer pressure on our living standards, the best Miliband and his party can do is urge us to have regard to the words of a Victorian politician (whose concern for the effects of the class divide and its resultant problems did not endure into what might be called history) and of a recent leader with the reputation of a blatant liar. Meanwhile in the real world, the British Medical Journal, supported by the Samaritans, reports that as unemployment increases so does the rate of suicide.

Vacant Posturing

The Tories went to their conference this year desperate to hear that George Osborne and his magicians at the Treasury will soon have dissolved the recession into history. In a characteristically empty speech David Cameron was able to feed their appetite. For the LibDems Nick Clegg could do little more than console them for the angry likelihood of approaching doom and his own banishment to bitter memory. Ed Miliband showed that he has finally grasped the need for any aspirant political leader to compose a speech consisting of headlines and vacant posturing. None of them could suggest that for human society there should be something other, better or more hopeful. The case for us doing it for ourselves, for changing the way we order the world so that it is to the betterment of humans, remained intact and unchallenged.

Ivan

Snorts of derision (2019)

From the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the papers had a field day with Michael Gove’s scandalous confession (forced by a new tell-all book) that he had done multiple lines of coke while as a journalist writing an article demanding tougher laws to stop the cocaine trade. The sheer Class A hypocrisy of this got right up everybody’s nose, as you would expect, so it seemed like poetic justice that he should be hoist on his own petard. It is truly a shocking thing to discover that politicians say one thing and do another. Who would have guessed?

But soon it emerged that virtually all of the Tory leadership frontrunners had indulged in one or more illicit drugs. Bojo snorted coke, but said he thought it might be icing sugar (imagine having a Prime Minister with his hands on nuclear codes who can’t even tell cocaine from icing sugar). Matt Hancock, Esther McVey, Andrea Leadsom and Dominic Raab all smoked weed although presumably not all at the same orgy. Jeremy Hunt had a cannabis lassi (jeez, what Indian restaurant does he go to and how can we book?). Not to be outdone on the exotic stakes, Rory Stewart smoked opium at an Iranian wedding. Most people would have settled for a slice of cake, Rory.

The fact that to date eight out of ten Tory leadership candidates had done illicit drugs tells you everything you need to know about how the ‘war on drugs’ is really progressing. Nobody, not the press, not the police, not even the Tory bigwigs who have imposed it on the rest of us, takes it seriously anymore.

Of course they all swore they hated the experience and that it was a terrible mistake. But this is surely wrong. Taking a drug is just a lifestyle choice. Taking a drug and then turning into Boris Johnson, now that’s a mistake. But then again, just look at the politicians who (claim they) haven’t taken drugs. Mark Harper anyone? Who he, you ask? Exactly. Sajid Javid? Well, the mesmerizingly handsome Home Secretary will only admit to the odd cigarette, but nobody could be that urbane, charming and charismatic and not be on something. Nigel Farage? He’s enough to make you take drugs.

When rapper Professor Green went to the House of Commons for a BBC documentary and asked former LibDem leader Nick Clegg why politicians never wanted to discuss drugs and legalisation, Clegg responded that the matter wasn’t deemed important enough (LINK). Doubtless the LibDems didn’t think it was important either but, desperate for any stray votes, Clegg happily spoke in favour of legalisation. Now that they’ve had something of a renaissance in the Euroelections owing to being the worst major political party in the UK apart from all the others, they might decide to roll back on that particular commitment.

Nowadays you can hardly walk through any inner-city street in the UK and not smell weed blowing in the wind. This will be all the young people trying to get high and forget how their future is being wrecked before their very eyes. Or else it’s young people doing what it takes to be the next local Tory candidate. Skin up, anyone?

PJS

Greasy Pole: Calamity . . . Calamity (2013)

Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce

The Greasy Pole column from the April 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘No more broken promises!’ bellowed Nick Clegg as the peroration to one of his contributions to the leaders’ TV debates during the 2010 general election. It sounded pretty good – a politician who could be trusted to do as he said he would. Except that it must also have started a lot of unconvinced voters asking some questions, like – ‘No More Broken Promises’? So had there been some in the past? When? Why? How many? What about? Who made them? Who broke them? And what were Clegg and his party offering to make us trust them now? Like when he was saying about Brown and Cameron that as they attacked each other ‘…the more they sound the same…I know many of you think that all politicians are just the same. I hope I’ve tried to show you that that just isn’t true.’

Huhne

Well, we had some help in dealing with this last point last month, when two recently prominent providers of media-satisfying scandal in Clegg’s party were sent to prison, each for eight months, for the offence of perverting the course of justice. There was Chris Huhne, until recently the Minister for Energy and MP for the Hampshire constituency of Eastleigh. And there was Vicky Pryce who was his wife until their divorce. This distinguished couple were in court because in 2003  Chris Huhne, when he was an MEP travelling from Stansted Airport to his home, was clocked driving along a motorway above the speed limit, an offence for which his driving licence would be endorsed with three penalty points, leading to his being banned from driving. This happens to a lot of drivers, but Huhne’s problem was that his motoring performances (Pryce talked about him ‘driving like a maniac’) would undermine his ambition eventually to get into the House of Commons. At his request, Pryce agreed to sign the necessary form stating that she had been behind the wheel at the time.

The affair might have continued in this way, tense as it must have been for the participants, if the press had not heard rumours that Huhne was having an affair with Carina Trimingham who had been his press officer. Huhne decided he would be wise to tell Pryce about this, adding that he was leaving her that very day – and then dashing off to claim his place at the gym. In the circumstances it was hardly surprising that Pryce should look for revenge and approach the press about her taking Huhne’s speeding points. The rest, as they say, is history, except that in this case it is a history flavoured by some disturbing events relevant to Huhne and his drive to get to the top and to Clegg’s ravings about keeping promises.

Affair

Huhne had emerged into public attention in 2006 when he stood for election to the LibDem leadership in succession to Charles Kennedy, who had resigned because of his drink problem. The victor in that contest was Menzies Campbell, but he could not present the youthfully vigorous image the party felt it needed. So a year later he also resigned and the way was open for a contest between Clegg and Huhne. The campaign got lively with a complaint from Clegg about a press release from Huhne. After listing some criticisms, the release dubbed him ‘Calamity Clegg.’ Huhne responded that although he agreed with the content of the piece, he did not approve of the title which was the work of some ‘overzealous young researcher.’ In fact the author of the offending phrase was Huhne’s future partner Carina Trimingham.

Clegg won by 511 votes, but there were 1,300 votes which went astray in the post and which, when checked later, would probably have given victory to Huhne. In spite of such passing matters Huhne’s background as a money-making operator in the City (he is a multi-millionaire) and his triumph in the 2010 general election at Eastleigh, where he increased the LibDem majority from 568 to 3,864, made him a clear case for promotion. During his election campaign he successfully contained the affair with Trimingham, preferring to use the image of a devoted father of three, with photographs to prove it: ‘Family matters to me so much – where would we be without them?’ one of his leaflets told the local voters.

Later, in charge as Minister of Energy and Climate Change in the coalition government (reckoned to be the tenth most powerful in the Cabinet) Huhne managed to modify his former opinion that nuclear energy was a system which was ‘tried, tested and failed’ and instead argued that there were ‘issues’ (a favourite word for anyone trying to avoid an uncomfortable reality) ‘outside of the realm of nuclear safety, particularly that of the economics of it and the costs in capital to the nuclear operator.’

Pryce

And in all this, where does Vicky Pryce stand? There has been a lot of sympathy for her: an article in the Sunday Times said she is ‘…for all her career success and steely public face … a surprisingly fragile soul…’ Which about covers the fact that to protect her then husband’s rocky standing she engaged in a conspiracy to condone his potential for driving dangerously. As she well knew, and as we saw in the scandals of David Laws, Lord Rennard and others, such tactics are commonly used in capitalism’s political jungles. Apart from that, Pryce is an economist, generously qualified and widely regarded for her readiness to grapple – no more effectively than the others – with capitalism’s tsunamis of crises. To some she is, as an economist, not able to claim to be entirely free of all responsibility over the present chaos, which serves as another exposure of Clegg’s clamorous assertion that the LibDems are better – more reliable and honest – than the others. And along with this, the system grinds on with its wars, poverty, disease, misery – Calamity Clegg if you like. Calamity Capitalism is more to the point. 

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Doing the Hokey Cokey (2013)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

If that's what you want there is some Good News: in spite of his past, Nick Clegg now thinks that '...politics is not perfect'. But then the Bad News is he also thinks '...if you want to improve something, get stuck in and get your hands dirty'. These comments were a response to Jeremy Paxman when he recently hinted at some sympathy with Russell Brand over his disillusionment with politics and his refusal to join in what he sees as '...a political hokey cokey where every four years we get to choose what colour tie the liar who leads us wears'.

Whether Clegg can properly claim that during his time as Deputy Prime Minister he has actually 'improved' anything – other than perhaps the colour of his tie – is very much in dispute. Whether he himself is confident on the matter may be judged by the recent appointment, as his Director of Communications, of Emma Gilpin-Jacobs. Anyone responding 'Emma Gilpin-Who?' should be aware that during some twenty years she has acquired what one observer noted as a 'stellar' reputation in the rituals which lurk behind such arcana as 'Brand Communications', 'Corporate Reputations', 'Public Profiling...' If these activities caused her to get her hands dirty it will have been through working to reconcile those who are obsessively known as 'ordinary people' to their position on the scale of social poverty. Now she is committed to cleansing the blemished reputation of the LibDem Party– which will test the reward, after her spell as Global Communications Director at the Financial Times, of a place among the ranks of the Power Mums.

Controversy

Another woman in Russell Brand's hokey cokey, of a similar age to Gilpin-Jacobs but with a record in a different sector of the 'communications' business is Esther McVey, Conservative MP for Wirral West. She made her name as a producer/presenter for Children's TV and programmes such as Nothing But The Truth, The Heaven And Earth Show. At another level there was also an appearance at the Liverpool Empire Theatre in The Vagina Monologues. And during 1999 a flood of publicity photographs – the work of an anonymous cameraman who remembered her as 'charm personified' – drawing attention to parts of her anatomy which are not usually considered essential for exposure on TV. A career change seemed to be advisable and in the 2005 election McVey, now robed more suitably for a constituency such as West Wirral, was narrowly beaten by Labour's Stephen Hesford but she did better in 2010, winning by 2436 votes. From the beginning she was, apart from those other matters, a subject of controversy; she had to pay Hesford￡6500 in damages and costs after her team had copied a blog about him going on a 'junket' test match tour in Australia and New Zealand. After a couple of early scrabbles up the Greasy Pole she got lucky in one of Cameron's re-shuffles, finding herself as Minister for Welfare at the Department of Work and Pensions under Iain Duncan Smith (IDS).

Tears

This was an intriguing combination. A long-standing rumour has it that in 2002, when he was in opposition, IDS was reduced to tears by what he saw of the ghastly decay in the Easterhouse estate in Glasgow. So much so that he accepted an invitation to address Labour's 2005 conference and told the delegates that their treatment for poverty was inadequate because 'everyone should have enough money to live properly in their community' (he did not discuss how this applied to the Cameron family in their 'community' at Chipping Norton). But since then IDS has had to undergo a change of heart, as an important minister in a government devoted to imposing cuts which ensure that thousands of families have barely 'enough' of that money to get by.

One of the government's measures is the 'bedroom tax', so called because it is imposed on those living in social housing which has more rooms than they strictly need. This has led to many people having problems paying their rent; in a recent debate on the issue Labour MP Steve Pound told of his brother who is threatened with eviction because he has a 'spare' room which is used to accommodate his dialysis equipment. In October McVey was unwise enough to propose that the homes in question should be modified to reduce the number of rooms – a 'solution' which was greeted with a mixture of bewilderment and scorn.

Chaos

Presumably because she is a practised TV operator, McVey was put up to defend the plans for Universal Credit, which IDS introduced to the 2010 Tory conference as a 'vital reform' which would simplify the benefits system and reduce its cost by merging six of the available benefits. The situation at present is that the measure is a hugely expensive chaos showing little prospect of changing anything let alone making it cheaper. The Commons Public Accounts Committee has said that much of the £425 million spent so far may have to be written off. McVey's 'defence' was little more than empty assurances that all was well with the scheme, which was working within the time scale as planned. It was not a convincing performance among the 'considerable challenges' facing the scheme – not to mention for those whose everyday life is so crucially dependent on those 'benefits' and how they are allowed to 'claim' them.

Liars

Jacobs and McVey each had a long and detailed training in their chosen sphere, followed by years of experience, which provided them with an opportunity to show how effective it had all been. In the event they have qualified for nothing more noteworthy than a place in that hokey-cokey where at the closing of a ballroom dance revellers are too far gone to continue with the rituals of waltz, quickstep...But as applied by Russell Brand the words could have some relevance for voters hesitating at the door of the polling booth. Which is not to argue that anyone with such insight should refuse to vote. To express our anger and contempt for those liars on that same ballot paper can be the start of something big.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Woolas – another fine mess (2010)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are limits. As Phil Woolas, until recently the MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, was confronted when the Election Court found that during his campaign in May 2010 he lied about his Liberal Democrat opponent. Rather more complicated and exciting, if the Court judgement stands there will be a succulently fascinating by-election which promises to expose the ruthless assassinatory tactics of the participating parties, including the fact that, for all their mock indignation at Woolas' methods, the LibDems are not noted for having any more scruples than the rest. It will also provide the LibDems with an opportunity to explain to their angry, bewildered supporters why, in their euphoria at being part of the Coalition, they betrayed the election pledges they made – such as on child benefit and university tuition fees. It is likely to be an ugly, if entertaining, experience in which it has to be borne in mind that the whole process, for example Woolas and his mangling of truth, happens in order to transform one of the mendacious, grovelling candidates into an Honourable Member who, for example, cannot henceforth be denounced as a liar because the worst that is allowed to be said about anyone who gets to sit on those benches is that they suffer from some confusion over reality. Those are the kinds of limits which Woolas is said to have offended against.

Lumley
There are some significant differences of opinion about Woolas' conduct of his career as an MP and a Minister. On the one hand a Labour Party member who contested for the candidature in the 1995 by-election saw him as “...a hard-working member and a decent and conscientious person”. But a political correspondent prefers “a political bruiser, not universally liked, whom some colleagues think got what he deserved at the election court...” And in the Guardian Julian Glover weighs in with “...an unpleasant authoritarian and parliament will be better off without him...” That first election campaign in 1995 was notable for the rancour of Labour's personal attacks on the LibDem candidate as being “high on tax and soft on drugs”. This designed exploitation of some nasty, deep-rooted prejudices impressed even Peter Mandelson, who admitted “...not only our opponents but some in Labour would denounce our 'negative' tactics...For tactical reasons, I felt we had little choice”. Woolas won the re-arranged seat in 1997 and thereafter rose steadily up the greasy pole until in October 2008 he became minister responsible for Borders and Immigration. It was then, in May 2009, that he was trapped into a confrontation, before a horde of ravenous TV cameras, with the popular actor Joanna Lumley to answer for the Labour government effectively refusing Gurkha ex-soldiers to settle in this country. Woolas wordlessly squirmed in embarrassment – Lumley breathes rather than speaks and was using hazy concepts like fairness and gratitude while he had to have regard for his budgets – and agreed to re-open the matter.

Cable
One inconvenient outcome of Woolas' electoral misdemeanour was the stimulus it gave to the pressing question of why similar penalties are not unvaryingly applied to any MP who employs false promises to smooth their way to Westminster (although if that were the case there would be very, very few bottoms on the green benches). The actual response has been worked to exhaustion by LibDems fearfully insecure of their place in the Coalition. Here, for one, is Vince Cable in the House of Commons on 12 October: “Yes I signed the pledge (on university tuition fees). But the current financial situation is appalling, truly appalling. All pledges have to be re-examined from first principles”. But this is the man who was promoted to us by his party as not just an agile ballroom dancer but an economist so deeply learned as to be able to see beyond the economic horizon to what is approaching and to take the necessary steps to avert any crisis such as the one which is now gripping the world. So it is necessary to ask: are there any other disasters which Cable has failed to see? And from the prolix depths of this ignorance did he offer any other pledges, attractive to a spellbound electorate, which he is now about to renege on?

Clegg
And what about the LibDem leader who, smugly satisfied at having outsmarted all rivals – including Cable – for the top job, felt able to patronise him as the most hopeful therapist for British capitalism? Since the LibDems slithered into partnership with the Tories Clegg has been under the most severe pressure about the party's disowned promises. This is how on 23 October he referred to child benefits and tuition fees: “I feel very bad. I have had to eat those words...this is not capricious, it is not ideological, it is not happening overnight, it is thoughtful and it is a plan over four years...” And in the Commons on 10 November: “I of course acknowledge that this is an extraordinarily difficult issue ... Because of the financial situation we have had to put forward a different policy...” But Clegg has been touted around the political scene as a hugely knowledgeable, clever operator. With such a glowing reputation how could he have been so insensitive to the gathering storm that he not only made those pledges but allowed the rest of his party to do likewise? Why should we have any confidence that he will become any more hopeful over the next four years?

Clegg and Cable now pose as serious politicians, relieved and grateful to have been put right about the election pledges which, they now admit, were recklessly ill-informed. Are their excuses really the best they can offer to cover their impotence and dishonesty? Are there any other pledges which they will betray in the hope of nurturing their sleazy ambitions? Should we, in other words, believe anything they and their like say? Is it not preferable to treat then all with the contempt they deserve while we work on for the revolutionary change in society.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Marshmallows are not the only sweet (2010)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is to be hoped that while some people may damn the Coalition as repressive and impoverishing there will be others who happily acknowledge its vital role in educating us about human behaviour and responses. In particular government ministers have been consistently eager, in justifying themselves to us, to examine how we score in the matter of Deferred Gratification, a concept once so absorbing to sociologists, child psychologists, criminologists and others similarly seeking to explain the need for us to endure so many blemishes on what could be our enduringly fulfilling lives.

For example here is our Deputy Prime Minister outlining a most recent concept of official policy: “…this Government is committed to the long term – to making decisions today that will promote a better future: a more prosperous economy, and a fairer society. Our determination to fix the deficit is matched by our determination to create a more socially mobile society…But in five years’ time we want to be able to look back and say that the children born in 2015 are less constrained by the circumstances of their birth…that true progress was made in making opportunity a right of the many, rather than a privilege of the few”. (It is worth noting that this kind of empty drivel is not spouted exclusively by Liberals and Tories; in his campaign for the Labour leadership David Miliband assured us that he would bring about “…the redistribution of power in Britain, an assault on inequality of life chances…”)

Marshmallows
It would have been better – nearer the truth – if Clegg and Miliband had said that if we behave ourselves for the present, in the sense of controlling our urges to achieve a less perilous living standard we shall, in due course, come by our reward in the form of a society which through its social mobility is a model of fairness. This arouses memories of what has gone down in history as the Marshmallow Experiment. At Stanford University in the 1960s a group of four-year-old children were each given a marshmallow and promised that if they waited twenty minutes before eating it they would be allowed to have another. Some of them waited; the others quickly ate the marshmallow. Some years later, when they were 18, they were assessed as to their degree of social adjustment and dependability – the extent of their economic advantage against disadvantage. (It would have been more accurate to call this being profitably exploited in a job against being underemployed). The results showed the children who had stifled their impulse to scoff the marshmallow scoring significantly higher than the others. (Although more than one response doggedly pointed out that it needed only someone averse to marshmallows to score highly enough to invalidate the whole exercise). Perhaps Nick Clegg and his gang might reflect on this, while nursing their confidence about the uncritical acceptance of their pledges for “fairness” and “social mobility”.

Cameron
To forestall any impetuous celebrations at Job Centres where the staff are flooded under the current influx of claimants or on council housing estates where dilapidations lie undisturbed after financial cutbacks at the local town hall, it must be made clear that, whatever Nick Clegg may imply, social mobility is not a universally available opportunity. David Cameron, for example, would not be eligible for this benefit because his status is already high enough to disqualify him. His late father was born into a family where affluence was ingrained enough for him to describe himself as “a nepotistic heir”. The advantages in this – for Cameron Senior and for his children including the Prime Minister – were in spite of his being born with a physical handicap which would have been crucially restrictive to the ambitions of a disadvantaged family for their children's social improvement. Whatever Clegg's glib mouthing about social mobility – the opportunity for a family or group to improve their material situation and prospects – it is only rarely that they can be immune to pressures which are out of their control by being built into the fabric of this property society.

Poverty
And of these the most powerful and persistent is poverty; in this country no other factor has so devastating an effect on the life chances of people – on the likelihood of them being able to benefit from Clegg's Social Mobility. For a long time this has figured prominently in the meaningless manifestos of the capitalist parties. This was the Labour Party, asking for a second term in 2001: “A single aim drives our policy programme: to liberate people's potential, by spreading power, wealth and opportunity more widely, breaking down the barriers that hold people back.” And this was Michael Howard, then leader of the Conservative Party, in the 2005 election: “For me the heart of politics is all about people – their hopes and aspirations. People want the freedom, security and opportunity to get on in life.” Fine words for anyone who allows themselves to be so easily impressed. What has happened since then? Among the mass of evidence, a report published in January this year by the National Equality Panel (a brainchild of Harriet Harman) stated that by the years 2007-2008 income inequality had reached the most extreme level since the Second World War, with the top one percent of the population each owning household wealth of £2.6 million while the poorest had £8,800. Being poor inflicts enduring, accumulative damage to a child's education, to where they live and to their life chances: “…people's occupational and economic destinations in early adulthood depend to an important degree on their origins”.

In other words the promises about social mobility, about yet another policy to spirit away the inequality and its social damage inextricably linked to capitalist society are the empty pleadings of political leaders with nothing more original or effective to offer. So let us not be influenced by Nick Clegg and his attempts to persuade us to behave like the good kids with the marshmallows. The need for us to change society is as urgent as it ever was. And marshmallows are deceptive: just sweet and sticky with a very soft centre.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: You're Nicked (2010)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Until recently we were required to know him as plain, unthreatening, monosyllabic Nick Clegg – even if his ancestors were aristocrats in Imperial Russia and he was educated at appropriately expensive schools, which may explain his fluency in four foreign languages but not, perhaps, a perceived problem with maths which, when asked by the odious Piers Morgan to enumerate the women he had had sex with, prevented his reply being more exact than “no more than” thirty. But he has moved on, to the point of surviving the unnerving experience of hearing both Gordon Brown and David Cameron declare in public that they “agreed with” him. Now he is Nicholas William Peter “Nick” Clegg MP, PC, Deputy Prime Minister, Lord President of the Council, Minister for Constitutional and Political Reform, with duties extending beyond robotically nodding at David Cameron's back during Prime Minister's questions. Clegg now has the job of finding out what people think about changing the law – abolishing some laws, making others. In this matter, he says, “...it is people, not policy-makers, who know best...It is a radically different approach. One based on trust. Because it isn't up to government to tell people how to live their lives”. This will have come as a surprise to a lot of people who are losing their jobs while Clegg's government orders them to run their lives to an intensity of poverty incurred by trying to exist on the dole, or on reduced benefit or pension. But there is more to him than that.

Responses
To begin with there is the matter of Clegg's persistent self-concept as a statesman rare enough to be changing the face of British politics: “What I find especially exciting about this project is that, now we have got the ball rolling, the debate is totally out of government's control”. But like most conceits this was unhelpful and distorting. Closer to reality were the responses to a website provided by the Telegraph:

“Start with the prisons! Criminals are invited into luxury, paid for by the tax payer...”

“I would dilute Scottish input here in the UK!...”

“I would repeal the hunting act, and also criminalise any hunt protest activities that sabotages the hunt...”

“...the legislation we want repealed is the European Communities Act 1972...”

A more useful suggestion, was: “Hey! Don't you guys trust Cleggie & Co. I voted for them and they've sold out their principles for a handful of government...”

Crucially, Clegg's “debate” is based on the misconception that laws can be changed by popular demand because they are laid down to protect the safety and well-being of the majority of people. In truth the whole massive, overbearing, legal and judicial system with its intimidating institutions, its uniforms, its wigs and gowns and its impenetrable precedents composed in archaic verbiage, was conceived and developed in order to perpetuate the standing and privileges of the dominant minority class in society. Politically organisations like the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties (and any combinations between them) exist to promote that outrage through their propaganda – their lies, distortions and false promises.

A Tory Past
Buried in Clegg's past is his membership, while at Cambridge, of the University Conservative Association. In spite of the written evidence, Clegg has denied all knowledge of this, perhaps through embarrassment after those fervent denunciations of the Tories in the TV election debates. Then there is the fact that among his jobs after leaving university he worked in the private office as a speech-writer for the Vice President of the European Commission – Leon Brittan who, apart from other achievements in an infamous career, assured himself a reputation as a Home Secretary to satisfy the Tories' most passionate advocates of harsh sentencing.

But by 1998 Clegg had changed his mind – if that is what happened – enough to be a Liberal Democrat candidate for the European Parliament. By 2005, already spoken of as a future party leader, he was informing Brittan that while he fancied Kenneth Clarke in that year's contest for the Conservative leadership – he was “quite a personal fan of Ken” – he had reservations; the Lib Dems should be on their guard against Clarke moving the Tories into traditional Lib Dem territory – “this big bruiser ...somehow muscling in on our territory”. (Now that Clegg and Clarke sit beside each other on the same Front Bench it is fair to ask what Clarke thinks of the Tories being “muscled in on”). And Clegg was once opposed to a formal alliance with the Tories because “...the deeply illiberal bent of the Conservative Party over the last 10 years” had made co-operation between the two parties “genuinely impossible”. But diplomatically keeping his options open, he did not rule out joining a coalition in principle “if a more liberal Tory philosophy emerged”. Was he just being cautious? Or confused? Or cunningly ambitious?

Expenses
All these characteristics would have been useful to a political leader trying to defuse the recent crisis over MPs and their expenses; true to form, Clegg played to outbid the others. Shouting at an interviewing TV camera, he threatened to “come down like a ton of bricks” on anyone found to be fiddling the system. Among these brave words there was no mention of the Lib Dem MPs who were exposed as having overclaimed. And Clegg did not promise to bury himself beneath some conveniently loose bricks because of his own claims, which included monthly interest payments of £1,018 on his constituency home mortgage, £2,600 for a new kitchen, £680 for gardening, £760 to repair a path, £2.49 for a cake tin and £1.50 for paper napkins. Neither did he say whether he was talking about himself when he raged that “People will simply just despair that all politicians look either ridiculous at best or corrupt at worst.” Take your pick. And while you are about it you can contribute to Clegg's “consultation” by asking what penalties there are for politicians who are repeatedly and blatantly dishonest. But don't wait for an answer.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Friends (?) in need (2010)

From the July 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Waking up on the Seventh of May, the voters might have experienced a measure of confusion. In the polling stations they had done their civic duty, after months of suffering bombardment from the three main political parties on the theme that we are in a mess and unless you do as you are told it will get even worse, to the point of social collapse too horrible even for seasoned politicians and propagandists to contemplate. You must take immediate action to forestall such a disaster by helping to put a new government into power. But it is important that you are careful to support the right party and not vote for one party when you really support another - for example vote Liberal Democrat when you would prefer a Conservative government. Or vice versa. Or, even worse, to complicate the matter by introducing other parties like Labour, Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, UKIP. So that was what the voters did, in their millions.

But on the day after it became clear that no one party would have a majority of elected MPs, which made forming a government rather more complicated than had been intended. British capitalism held its collective breath; the Stock Exchange, traders and bankers twitched and writhed; this was not what popular suffrage was supposed to be all about. But the day was saved when the three big parties announced a change in their attitude. No longer contesting over one of them being in government alone, they were suddenly certain that the best – the only – way out of the crisis would be for two of them to make up a government in alliance. Majority government was, in other words, no longer the smart option; it had become the old, stale politics. In its place was Coalition – the new, resuscitating politics. And if this made the voters confused – well so were the politicians.

Cameron And Clegg
Just over a week before polling day the leaders of the Tories and the Lib Dems had assured us that they were in no doubt about the disastrous consequences of their rival being elected at the head of a new government. On 26 April this is what David Cameron thought about Nick Clegg:

“It's now all becoming clear...he's only interested in one thing and that is changing our electoral system so that we have a permanent hung Parliament, we have a permanent coalition, we never have strong and decisive government...he wants to hold the whole country to ransom just to benefit the Liberal Democrats.”

(This view of Clegg – as a ruthless, scheming manipulator – differs from Cameron's previous contempt for him as “a joke”, but never mind). Meanwhile Clegg had expressed his own doubts about Cameron's character and political ambitions:

“The Conservatives are so desperate that they have resorted to a crude form of blackmail. David Cameron and George Osborne are stoking up fears in the markets, actively trying to destabilise the pound and reduce the Government's ability to borrow. It's like a protection racket; vote for us or our friends in the City will lay waste to your economy, your savings and your job.”

But hard words had to be smoothed away by the prospect of a Coalition. In that teeth-grinding press conference in the garden at Number Ten, with both leaders behaving like affectionate old school chums, Cameron sniggered when reminded of his sneer that Clegg was a joke. Instead he he trumpeted that this Coalition would mark a “historic and seismic shift” in British politics, with Tories and Lib Dems united on the key principles of “freedom, fairness, responsibility”. And Clegg, not to be outdone for florid vacuity, announced that the government with him as Deputy Prime Minister would be “a source of reassurance and stability”. After which all that was left was for the Lib Dems to explain to their local parties and to their voters why the prospect of being a voice in government was so seductive as to persuade them to drop so many of the policies which were central to their their appeal for votes. But dishonouring election pledges is the very stuff of government – something Deputy Prime Minister Clegg and his party may become even more familiar with in the near future.

Along with the celebrants of the Lib Dem once-unforeseen elevation into the dangerously dizzy heights of power – like Nick Clegg, David (tragically briefly) Laws, Danny Alexander – were those who were outraged at what they saw as a blatant betrayal of what had comforted them as their party's vital policies.

MacDonald
This is not first time an election has exposed those whose energy has blinded them to the cruel reality of the political system they were immersing themselves in – its brutal cynicism, its ready acceptance that its policies are there to be modified, compromised or if need be wiped out, its leaders ready to accept, indeed revel in, what they had repeatedly said would be unacceptable.

The general election of May 1929 resulted in a hung Parliament with the Labour Party, under Ramsay MacDonald, winning the most seats. Outside Westminster, in the mines, factories and shipyards an historic slump was gathering and unemployment rising. By August 1931, with the situation worsening almost by the day, MacDonald might have done the honourable thing and admitted that his party's government was impotent, confused, disintegrating. Instead he approached the Liberal and Conservative parties with a proposal to form a Coalition. With the other leaders –Baldwin and Samuel – he went to inform the King who, when told that MacDonald had the resignations of his Cabinet ready, replied that he “trusted there was no question” of MacDonald's being among them; it was up to them to “come to some arrangement”. A Coalition government, combining Tories and parts of the Labour and Liberal Parties and led by MacDonald, took over.
In the following general election MacDonald's National Labour Party was all but wiped out and the remnant of the Labour Party reduced to a derisory fragment. All this while the slump ground on. There is no reason to believe that now, in the time of Cameron and Clegg, the situation is any different from the 1930s – that the disasters of capitalism are any more curable by two parties in fragile unity than they were by one separately.

Ivan