The Left: Where are we now?

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It is often stated that the left won the social argument of the 20th Century, whilst the right won the economic argument. Liberal democracy is the dominant form of government in the western world. Government is based on the idea of diversity, and the allocation of goods and services by the free market. When I think of most of the people I know, socially liberal and pro-free market is how I would describe their politics.

 The socially liberal Tory government and pro-free market Labour opposition is a sign of the degree to which the majority of society believes the debate has been resolved. But the rise of UKIP is the reaction by a minority who challenge the liberal social consensus and say there is still a social argument to be had. They are the mirror image of myself, as someone who believes the economic arguments of the 20th century have not been resolved. 

 So where does this leave the left? Since the death of Tony Benn and Bob Crow, there has been a lot a soul searching on the left. What do we stand for, now these giants of socialism and the trade union movement are no longer with us? What do we do when faced with the fact most people believe history has rendered our criticism invalid?

 In the past we would look to the Labour party, however they have become increasingly acceptant of neo-liberal ideologies. Recently a major Labour party donor has said that there is little difference between the two main parties on economic issues. This comes on top of several leading figures of the progressive movement writing in the Guardian about the need for the Labour party to adopt new values.

 This sounds like welcome noise to people who were concerned that the Labour party is losing its direction. I believe it is a good idea that the Labour party take steps to differentiate themselves from the Tories, however the values mentioned in the letter do not sound like an attempt to revive the debates of the 20th Century. Is this new trend towards localism where the left is now heading? The sentence “National government has a continuing strategic role to play but the days of politicians doing things "to people" are over” sounds to me like resignation that the Right won the economic argument.

 This new focus on localism, empowerment and co-production does not fit snugly with a traditionally left wing world view. So where do people interested in reviving the capitalism vs socialism debate turn? 

 There are still lots of people making valid arguments about the problems with free-market capitalism. Last month I saw Diane Abbott on Question Time perfectly describing the problems that an unregulated housing market have brought on a generation of young people, however, she stopped short of suggesting any measures to correct the problem. Presenting a solution poses the issue of what form that solution should take. Massive state sponsored house building program? More social housing to reduce rental pressure? These sound too much like reviving the debates of the 20thCentury, not popular with the majority of voters who believe the debate is settled. Do nothing, and hope the problem corrects itself, sounds too much a free-market solution. What solution does the left have to offer?

 From a lot of prominent figures on the left there is much description of the problem (usually very eloquently) and not a lot of offering solutions. Or at least a solution that goes beyond an obvious platitude like “we need to come together to stop this exploitation now”.

 The other half of the left offers the solution which voters consistently failed to support throughout the 20th Century. As much as I believe in socialist values, if a revolution (be it sudden like in Russia or a gradual process of people coming around to left wing views) where to occur it would have most likely have happened during the Victorian or Edwardian period when gaps between rich and poor were at their widest and poverty was at its most intense.

 Where we are now on the left is that we are good at presenting problems with the current economic consensus but bad at presenting solutions people are likely to vote for. Usually this falls back into not presenting any solutions but simply describing the problem.

 Some have decided to take this option by suggestion new values that should be the basis of left wing causes. New values like "co-production" mentioned above. They talk about new political divides, instead of left and right they talk about universalist/relativists divides or localism/centralism divides. These debates might be easier to sell to voters than the old debates of the 20th century, but they are dividing the already fragmented left by turning away from the socialism that is at the heart of the movement.

 The left has a problem of where it will go when the mainstream believes its debates have been resolved. We are in a sorry state, with little direction, but we must avoid fragmenting further. That said, we need to find a way to relate our traditional struggle to new values. I have done a good job of describing the problem, now I need to offer a solution.

Top 5 Most Annoying Political Clichés

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From party leaders to pub philosophers putting the world to rights, when politics is being discussed a well-worn cliché is never far away. Over used buzz words, metaphors and rhetorical stances have probably been around for as long as party politics itself, no doubt annoying the hell out of people interested in nuanced, intelligent debate ever since. Here are five that are guaranteed to raise my admittedly easily lifted hackles.

 5: Let me be absolutely clear...

 When it comes to politicians, this generally means clear is the last thing they’re going to be. Next time you’re watching a political debate, or interview, keep an eye out for it – it’s a matter of when, not if. Why it is so irritating is harder to pin down. Is it that we’re supposed to assume the speaker is deliberately obtuse the rest of the time? Or is it just because it’s a bit patronising? As in ‘you’re obviously not too bright, so let me spell it out for you...’?

 4: You can’t put the genie back in the bottle

 Some people seem incapable of discussing anything political without lapsing into metaphors. This one frequently crops up whenever the negative effects of any new concept or – in particular, technology – comes up. It’s a lazy way of saying that we don’t really have to bother addressing the problems. But metaphors as a rhetorical tool are necessarily limited. The thing is, sometimes you actually can cram the mythical creature back into its receptacle, as it were. Take our current disastrous reliance on fossil fuels, for example. It is quite conceivable that, with the appropriate research and development, we could be able to transition to alternative power sources and leave the damn stuff in the ground. The problem with that is that it requires the kind of concerted, organised effort and investment that our current profit-driven economy is so hopeless at providing. Easier just to say sod it, I mean you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, can you?

 3: Whatever its faults, capitalism is the only system that works

 So prevalent is this standpoint in the age of globalisation that it even spawned its own acronym – TINA (i.e. there is no alternative). In that form, it’s associated with the likes of neo-liberal political scientist Fukuyama, who famously declared that the triumph of capitalism represented ‘the end of history’ (care to comment on that now, Francis?)

 As academic theories often do, it has seeped insidiously into mainstream public opinion. You can hardly discuss economics these days without tripping over some version or other of TINA. It usually signals the beginning of the decline of the conversation towards tired, irrelevant indictments of the Soviet Union, as if this is somehow the only alternative that has ever been tried or suggested other than neo-liberal capitalism. To me, TINA’s inherent flaw is that capitalism, as a system, isn’t actually working particularly well, and the ‘purer’ the system (lack of state involvement and regulation of the finance sector, for example) the worse the consequences get.

 Implicit in this rather lazy position is that capitalism is working pretty well for me. But most of the world’s people don’t live in the West. In the Majority World, this system is giving people a spectacularly poor deal, and could hardly be said to be ‘working’ for them. Even in newly prosperous, up-and-coming states like Brazil or India, it is failing to solve age-old problems of poverty, environmental degradation or inequality.

 2: That’s human nature

 Closely related to No.3, this cliché frequently gets trotted out to justify greed, excess and self-interest, for example ‘greed will always be a motivator, that’s just human nature’. But on that basis, ‘human nature’ could equally be used to justify any number of things, such as murder, rape and gang violence. On the other hand, other aspects of the make-up of our human nature could be said to be compassion, empathy  and looking after one another. But when did you last hear anyone argue that ‘of course governments should protect the poor and vulnerable, that’s just human nature’?

 To me, the whole point of a political system and civil society is to moderate the less pleasant, selfish instincts that most of us to some extent harbour, and encourage those positive aspects of human nature. As an argument to justify an economic ideology that not only exploits people’s greed but actively seeks to stimulate it as a desirable, almost noble attribute, it seems pretty poor, not to mention lazy.

 1: Hard working families

 Politicians of all stripes seem to be addicted to this one. Innocuous on the surface, the phrase has some fairly nasty implications. On one hand, it’s just a little ego massage for the voter. Everyone likes to think of themselves as hard-working and deserving of policy rewards. But it also encourages people to think of decent, hard-working families like themselves as ‘us’ and those other lazy, feckless scroungers that make such convenient political capital as ‘them’. Politicians like it because it’s a subtle way of nudging voters to continue to support the chipping away of the welfare state because people who don’t deserve it are getting something for nothing - those deliberately workless, weasel-like families of the tabloids’ imagination. In reality a huge portion of the welfare budget actually goes to people who are in work, to supplement pitiful wages. 

 Besides, who the hell are these ‘hard-working families’ anyway? Are they sending kids out to work down the mine as soon as they’re weaned off the lazy dependency of breast milk? Maybe even their dog has a paper round? The more I think about it, the more intrinsically annoying this buzz-phrase is, which is why I couldn’t put it anywhere other than First Place.
Well those are mine, what are yours? Answers on a postcard... or just use the Comments box...

The problem of Etonians

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The public’s approval of politicians is at an all-time low. Most people think that the elected representatives of all parties are simply self-serving and money grabbing, mainly interested in looking after their own narrow band of supporters while cramming as much corporate funding and expensive claims into their pockets as possible.

The Tories are especially singled out as being the party of vested interests, of making life easy for the wealthy while cutting benefits. Symbolic of this is the number of Etonians in the cabinet and on Cameron’s personal staff. Recently Michael Gove has labeled the number of Etonians in Cameron’s inner circle as ‘ridiculous’. However the problem is more widespread than this, 45% of all MPs are privately educated compared to 7% of the population. This is true of the opposition as well as the government. Labour has made great strides in women and minority representation but there is still a problem of the over representation of MPs from wealthy backgrounds with private educations. All parties are as bad as each other in this regard.

The country should not be run by a private school educated elite. Our government cannot be made up of MPs out of touch with the problems faced by most people. Problems like trying to buy healthy food for a family on a tight budget. Problems like trying to give your child the best start in life when state school is the only option. Increasingly, people have the problem of having choose between food and heating. As a country, we will struggle to deal with these important problems if none of our leaders have any experience of them.

It is no wonder that the current government wants to stop benefits for the under 25s. When they were young, their parents lived in houses with spare rooms for unemployed children to stay in between jobs. It honestly has not occurred to the members of cabinet that some parents cannot financially support their children up to the age of 25. It probably has not occurred to them that a 24 year old can have a family and a career, be made unemployed, lose their house and then be forced to move their entire family in with their parents. These are not circumstances that occur to the children of the wealthy, so it is no wonder a government of such people has not taken this into consideration.

The political principals of all leading parties are guided by the ideology of the wealthy. Their creed is competition, self-reliance, hard work brings rewards – but these too only benefit the wealthy. Competition seems like a good idea when your children begin with a head start in the race. Self-reliance is fine if your expensive private education allows you walk into any job of your choosing. And whilst hard work may well bring rewards for them, to most politicians the hard work of an office cleaner is not worth a living wage.

Poor people have to play by the same rules as the wealthy and they lose out. When they vote for someone else, the guiding principle behind our economy do not change. Meanwhile the rich get richer, the gap between rich and poor widens, class mobility decreases and safety net which most poor people rely on is being dismantled.

There are currently more working people in the UK claiming benefits than non-working. This is because wages have stayed low while food, heating and rent bills have soared. Still the government is cutting from the welfare bill. Wealthy MPs with private education have little need of the safety net benefits offer so they view it as unnecessary expenditure. If there were more MPs for poorer backgrounds then the benefits poor families rely on might not be under such threat.

Related to this problem is the fact that too many politicians have only ever worked in the Westminster bubble. There is a dire lack of MPs who are former teachers, nurses, police officers, office workers and shopkeepers. Most rising star MPs worked for think tanks or as special advisers before being elected. This has created a disconnection between the problems of the outside world and the problems of Westminster. Case in point is the low importance most voters place on EU membership (either in or out), but this debate still dominates Westminster.

Parliament is becoming increasingly abstract from the real world issues which affect most people lives and the root cause of this is the rising number of MPs from privileged backgrounds, who are privately educated and have only ever worked in Westminster. This is hurting our democracy as more people become disaffected with politics. Faith can only be restored in politics when politicians take steps to change this overrepresentation. All parties need to take action to stop this trend and have candidates which reflect the income and educational background of their constituents. In short, fewer Etonians and more people who have experience of the everyday problems most  people have to deal with.

Tony Benn: An obituary

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The strike against David Cameron is that he does not believe in anything. That’s not to say he is apolitical - he clearly believes in the values of the Conservative Party, the ability of the free market to allocate resources and western liberal democracy – but his polices lack a basis in political theory and he does not have a transformative vision for society. Lacking a coherent narrative to explain the banking crisis he simple fell back on blaming Labour overspend on benefits. His only decent new idea, the big society, wilted under lack of support and has been replaced by pandering to UKIP, petty Eurosceptism and political narrative targeted at the Conservative base.

Without a clear vision of where the government is going it is unclear why he wants power other than to stay in power. As a society we may have lost faith in grand narratives, but do voters really want a leader who gravitates towards what is popular (or at least what is perceived to be popular) and has no ideological base to be held against?

Tony Benn was the complete opposite of this. For him, the purpose politics was neither just as a mirror of public opinion, nor merely ideology-free management as New Labour and every government since seemed to see it. A man with a clearly stated ideology, who not only believed in making Britain better, he had a clear vision of where we would go and how we would get there. A vote for Tony Benn was a vote for a man who wanted power not for its own sake, but because he had a plan to use it improve people’s lives.

This plan was socialism and it informed all of Tony Benn’s career. Many people disagree with socialism, both voters and Labour Party members, but what I believe is important about Tony Benn’s political career is he had these values, backed up by ideology and theory which he could be held to, debated and challenged on. In our distaste for grand narratives we have turned away from this and towards bland politicians who have no ideology and seek power only for their own self-aggrandisement. You may disagree with Tony Benn and the virtues of socialism. But the process of democracy, in which he deeply believed, is more important than the outcome. A democratic process whose politicians have clearly stated goals and ideologies is superior to a democratic process driven by marketing focus groups and the prejudices of the right wing tabloid press.

The Benn family name is synonymous with the Labour Party. His father William Wedgwood Benn was a cabinet minister in Ramsay MacDonald’s second Labour government, whilst his son is a shadow cabinet minister in the current Labour opposition front bench. Tony Benn’s career in politics has always been lively. He campaigned not to inherit his father’s peerage and remain in the House of Commons. He fought a bitterly contested election for deputy leadership in 1988 and led the Stop the War coalition against Blair’s invasion of Iraq. Always he acted with principal and integrity. In 2001, he stood down from parliament saying he wanted to "spend more time on politics".

Benn was unusual, if not singular, among Labour Party MPs who have served in cabinet in that he became more left wing as he aged. But his belief in collectivist economic principals of national ownership and state intervention weren’t always as fringe as they now seem. It is difficult to overstate how different a country Britain was when Benn began his career: whole swathes of the economy nationalised, and governments of both parties seeing part of their role as maintaining full employment. Whilst Benn did undoubtedly become more left wing during the ‘70s and ‘80s, the centre ground under Thatcher moved in the opposite direction at the same time. Unfashionable as it subsequently became, Benn believed that politics and economics could change peoples’ lives for the better.

To those on the British left Tony Benn was a man who meant a great deal to a lot of people. An icon of what we want to be and achieve. There will be many questions about the identity of the modern left asked in the wake of his death - I asked some of them here. These are important questions, but what I am mourning the most about Tony Benn’s death is the loss of grand narratives, of transformative visions of society and clearly defined ideologies.

Our current governments believes in nothing except their own vested interests and their wealthy, privileged supporters. What is needed to chase to these Etonians from power is politicians who have ideologies to be held against and a vision for a society where we will all be better off. Tony Benn is no longer with us, so we cannot rely on him to lead the way. Now we are alone we have to find the way there ourselves, and it starts today.

Bob Crow: An obituary

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Unpopular with working people, excessively confrontational, out of touch with the modern age, the product of a bygone and obsolete ideological system, should have retired years ago. But enough about Ian Duncan Smith. Bob Crow is back in the papers, this time because he passed away in early hours of Tuesday morning. With the death of another controversial figure on the left, there will be much soul searching in the coming days about where the left stands in the 21st Century.

Bob Crow, trade unionist, head of the RMT, thorn in the side of Tory politicians, and especially Boris Johnson, was in many ways what a lot of the left of centre wish they were. He had little regard for public image, well aware that the right wing press would demonise him whatever he did, but he led campaigns to stand up for the rights of working people. Crow opposed job losses, pay freezes, rising University tuition fees, pension cuts and austerity. When Labour were found scratching their heads trying to find a way to say they disagree with the Tories but not too strongly, Bob Crow could reliably be found on TV laying out the case for the opposition better than the opposition themselves. Not to mention the fact that he was probably one of the only union leaders that most people have actually heard of, demonstrating the extent of the labour movement's decline in the post-Thatcher era. His approach attracted more people to his union, with membership rising by 20,000 during his time in charge.

Criticism of Crow has often centred on disruptive tube strikes and his £145k a year salary. Whilst undoubtedly a more money than what most trade unionists earn in years, it can at least be said that Crow was successful in his job, in contrast to the bankers who dragged home huge bonuses whilst causing the financial collapse of their own institutions.

It has been argued that his confrontational approach to leadership alienated more people from the left. Of course tube strikes are unpopular, especially in London where most of the commentariat live, but strikes are supposed to be inconvenient and annoying, that's the bloody point. The people who complain about Crow's tactics want all left wing criticisms to be phrased in a reasonable and polite way so that they can be completely ignored. In a future where rioting maybe the only available form of dissent, Crow's strikes and picket lines may look reasonable and polite.

There is another future the left can see after Bob Crow, which is the continual removal of the spine from the movement. Ed Miliband states that he "didn't always agree with him politically", the fact that the Labour leader made this clear in his statement highlights the degree to which the mainstream left wants to distance itself from the trade union movement. I am genuinely confused about what form political dissent is supposed to take (other than through writing blog posts) when unions are disproved off as a relic of the past, student activists are labeled as violent thugs and any form of protest is to be met by water cannons and rubber bullets. I cannot think of many rising stars of the Labour party who can be said to have thoroughly obstructed the goals the right. The current level of ambition seems to be aimed at being a slight inconvenience.

As the titans of the old left die out or retire we need to be asking question about what sort of movement we want to be. We do not have to be the same movement that existed in the past but we need to be inspired by their passions and desire for change. We need to the sort of movement someone like Bob Crow would approve of and not a shrinking, apologetic movement. The right will try to demonise us, the public maybe temporarily inconvenienced but in the end everyone will be better off. Bob Crow fought for a better working conditions for all RMT members and the wider population, and it is important that we remember that.

Does socialism need a new name?

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Socialism. The word used to strike fear into the hearts of the rich and privileged. It is the patient insistence that everyday people would someday seize the excess of the wealthy few and spread it around more fairly. It has been the foundation of nations and political movements. Leading right-wing politicians and economists have spent enormous amounts of effort convincing the poor they would be worse off if the wealth was distributed more evenly. Socialism was a banner under which large sections of the left were happy to assemble.

 Today socialism has little traction. Few, if any, British politicians openly identity as socialist and not even the most easily rattled elements of the right wing press feel the need to argue against it. No one seems to take socialism seriously anymore. If someone identifies as socialist it gives the impression of either being chronically out of touch with current political debate or being a generational throw back who is still fighting the miners’ strike.

 This seems strange if you read the news. Unemployment is high, The gap between rich and poor is widening, class mobility is at an all-time low, private utility companies are making huge amounts of money while ordinary people are having choose between food and warmth. Global inequality is reaching crisis point, as the 85 richest people in the world now own more wealth than half the population. Oxfam has expressed concern about the massive inequality of wealth.

 The current situation appears to be the perfect breeding environment for socialist ideas. 
However, the political establishment is yet to be rocked by hordes of people assembling outside parliament singing Billy Bragg songs and demanding the renationalisation of the utility companies. Instead politicians continue to cut benefits and the media stereotypes the poor as criminals and scroungers on shows like Benefit Street.

 So if we accept that the time is right for socialism but nothing is happening is the problem socialism itself? Does the public feel the socialism has been given its time and has failed? Given a low level of interest in socialist ideas it is a plausible explanation. This means that ideas of wealth redistribution and public ownership could be revived under a new banner, one which brings in modern ideas of environmentalism and multiculturalism and combines them with old values like full employment and progressive taxation redistributing income.  

 Giving the old ideology a fresh coat of red paint and send it back out into the world to frighten the rich all over again is a tempting course of action. The problem is this has not happened. No new movement has emerged as a successor to socialism. Occupy packed up and went home. The trade unions occasionally try and launch a new left-wing party but nothing comes from it. Even the Green party can barely get a representative on the news despite having more MPs and more supporters than UKIP.

 At this point is helpful to take a look at feminism, the only left wing ideology making any form of progress right now. Campaigns such as No More Page Three or Lose the Lad Mags are getting media attention and have genuine grass roots support from activists. On top of that there is the growth in feminist groups at universities and colleges, successful social media campaigns such as Everyday Sexism and young rising star MPs such as Stella Creasy openly identifying as feminist. It would be nice if socialism had this level of exposure.

 However, it was not always this way. In 1998, Time magazine proclaimed that feminism was dead. Feminism had a poor public image and was losing support amongst young politically engaged women, the key group it needed to be successful. It was argued that the word feminism was too inflammatory and had the wrong image. It was said that women’s rights needed a new movement to reach out to young women and get them interested in gender politics. This did not happen and eventually the old movement rose again with young feminist thinkers of today drawing their ideology directly from the last hey-day of feminist activity in the 1960s.

 So what happened? Mainly a core group of activists remained loyal to the ideology and continued to work hard keeping the movement alive. Feminism adapted to a new political environment and used modern resources such as social media to unite a divided movement around important, clearly stated goals such as making The Sun drop Page 3. Successful campaigns have built momentum and encourage others to be active in the movement. The evidence is against dropping the old ideology and reinventing. Stay true and wait for the world to take notice again.

 The good news for socialists is that there are places where this already happening. The US has seen a growth in socialist movements as liberal voters becoming increasingly dissatisfied with how similar the two main parties have become. It seems unlikely that America could the basis of a socialist revival, a country where the mere accusation of being red can ruin political careers. Although socialists have yet to have any impact on the political establishment there has been a growth in Marxist and left leaning journals such as the New Inquiry. As the notion of liberalism is watered down in America, the genuinely progressive need somewhere else to go.

 A political party with a commitment to socialism in the UK seems a long way off, but that does not mean socialism is dead. A revival will come, partly because the current state of the economy and the growing wealth inequality proves that the ideas are still relevant. Socialism does not need a name change, what it needs are activists that can keep the struggle going  and adapt to new opportunities as they come along. The sun does not set on ideologies; they just go out of fashion temporarily before being popular again.

Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda and the important of strong beliefs

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It is one of those strange footnotes to history that there were still Japanese soldiers fighting World War Two up until the mid-1970s. It seems almost farcical and would doubtless make the subject of a great comic tragedy, a cross between Blackadder Goes Forth and Letters from Iwo Jima. This bizarre occurrence is back in the public’s perception with the death of 91 year old Hiroo Onoda.

 Hiroo Onoda was a Lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War 2. He was ordered not to surrender and was cut off from the main Japanese army when they surrendered on 15 the August 1945. Lieutenant Onoda continued to hold out on the jungle island of Lubang, part of The Philippines, until 1974 when his elderly former superior officer was dispatched to rescind the orders he had been carrying out for three decades. 

 It is easy to mock Lieutenant Onoda as someone who ignored the blindingly obvious truth that Japan had been defeated and that continued resistance was futile. It seems logical that after ten years with no word and no one sent to relieve his position Lieutenant Onoda would give up, which makes it is easy to dismiss him as crazy, deluded or fanatical but I admire his strength of will and refusal to give up despite very difficult circumstances.

 This not to say that I condone the killing of up to 30 other inhabitants of Lubang through raids and skirmishes with Lieutenant Onoda over the 29 years where he kept fighting the Second World War but his circumstances are clearly extraordinary, which is why The Philippine government pardoned him when he finally did surrender to Philippines President Marcos in 1974.

 The story of Lieutenant Onoda, and the humour which usually accompanies it, is a reminder that it is easy to scorn and mock people of strong, sometimes unmovable, beliefs. Many people believe that an ideological flexibility is superior to the petty squabbles of politics and look down on those who identify as belonging to either side of the spectrum. A lot of the time this is just aggressive centrism and a healthy sense of self-superiority but it indicates a marked distain for anyone with strong principals. I for one prefer identifying as belonging to an ideology and having a set of principals which I can be held to. It makes it easier to tell who has genuine principals and whose beliefs are mutable to whatever is fashionable.

 In my life I have been accused of a certain ideological Onodaism; not changing course, denying plain evidence and refusing to accept when I have been proved wrong. I believe having strong beliefs is not a character weakness, I believe it shows strength of character and courage of conviction. Having strong beliefs gives people courage during hard and testing times; as I am sure Lieutenant Onoda’s belief in Japan gave him the strength to continue to carry out his orders. Sometimes it seems easier to flip-flop in the face of great opposition, but the most interesting and courageous people are the ones who stand by what they believe in.

 This is not to say that it is acceptable to be aggressive towards people who have less strong or different convictions to yourself; just as it was not acceptable for Lieutenant Onoda to kill those people. However it should be remembered that what is a plain and obvious truth to one person can be opaque to a different person in different context. We can see that in the leaflets dropped on Lubang to encourage Lieutenant Onoda to surrender. He later said in an interview: "The leaflets they dropped were filled with mistakes so I judged it was a plot by the Americans". A simple fact can be viewed differently by different people. This is why we need a spectrum of political debate to ensure that different interpretations are taken into account. Ideological flexibility or aggressive centrism can be bywords for letting the majority always have their way.

 It is easy to laugh at Lieutenant Onoda and his three decades of personal warfare but I feel it shows exceptional strength of character and determination to continue for so long. I hope these are characteristics we value as a society and aspire to individually. I hope we can all show some of the determination of Lieutenant Onoda.

To vote or not to vote that is the question

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A young man sits in a cream coloured chair; he is thin and tall, unshaven, with long messy Hoxton hair. His clothes are fashionable and the top few buttons of his shirt are undone. He leans forward earnestly; desperate to be taken seriously, when he speaks it is with a manic energy. He moves seamlessly from off the cuff remarks to buzz words taken from the meta-tags of any news website: “the 1%”, “occupy”, “apathy”. His words do not always make sense, his points half formed, he has more passion than facts and towards the end he starts to lose his temper.

 Opposite sits an older man, relaxed, confident in his own element, his suit is well tailored but not flashy. He has a beard, a change of image, it looks a little out of place. He leans back with easy confidence. His body language, his mood, his words are dismissive. He knows the problems with everything the young man says; the flaws, the details passed over, the over-ambition and the under-planning. He remains calm but over time grows more hostile and less accommodating.

 It would be easy to characterise this as an argument between the young and the old or the left and the right, but it is really an argument of change against more of the same. The young embrace new ideas and flirt with left wing radicalism. The old have become jaded, they have seen so many grand-narratives rise and fall and see the same arguments, the same failings, repeated endlessly. They have become cynical and selfish and it’s easier to dismiss someone for their lack of thought than listen to their complaints.

 This is the point we have reached as a society, change or more of the same. Soon, the political parties will begin the run up to the 2015 general election. Labour will promise change and the Conservatives will stand on the “more of the same” platform. However many young, poor and disenfranchised voters will see both as offering more of the same. On the ballot paper there is the same austerity, the same bowing to the Murdoch press and big business, the same paralysis to tackle the growing problem of climate change. There is a feeling that a vote will change nothing. The change we want individually cannot be gained by a single vote so it seems to be worthless. Any change that is promised is rarely delivered on. So many do not vote.

 Onto this stage steps Russell Brand: to some an icon, to others a misogynist and for many, easy to dismiss as another pop-culture fad. The main message people will take away from his recent New Statesman editorial and his interview with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight is Billy Connolly ‘s old gag of “don’t vote - it only encourages them”. I think Brand was aiming for something grander, closer to Gandhi’s “be the change that you wish to see in the world”, something encouraging to the disaffected.  However, the cliff notes version has been condensed to “don’t bother voting, nothing changes”.

 This is, of course, what a lot of people think: “the current crop of politicians on offer does not represent what I want so I won’t vote for any of them”. This is usually countered by: “if you do not vote for X, Y will get in.” On the left Y is usually the BNP, UKIP or Tories. This is hardly a call to revolution: “vote Labour, the best of a bad bunch”. It is hard to build an energising national campaign around: “we’re not Y”. But this is where the left is. Many of feel us less than inspired by our leaders, both in parliament, the trade unions and the media. Tony Benn is old and ill, broken down by a lifetime of not quite achieving his aims. His son, Hilary Benn, does not represent the values we want. This seems like the best metaphor for how we feel on the left.

 Brand, the Hoxton Hipster, with his don’t vote, spiritual revolution in the mind message could be the best encapsulation of a generation of young lefties. He is easily dismissed by the right for being childish, impractical and sensationalist, but he makes some good points in his Paxman interview and 4,500 word New Statesman leader which resonates with a lot of people. He says some of things we want our leaders to be discussing which are firmly off the table, mainly inequality and the environment. However his overall message lacks a grand narrative and falls down on the details.

 So this is where we are as the left? Russell Brand as our spiritual leader? Is this because the right is so dominant in media? Is it because in a post-Thatcher world the political spectrum has moved so much to the right that only someone who is pretty far out can represent us? Are our views so far out of touch with mainstream politics that only a clown can voice them? Or is he a medieval court jester, the only one who is allowed to criticise the king because his comments are couched in humour? If no one takes him seriously he can say whatever he wants, which is the perfect moment to say something deadly serious.

 I for one approve how of Brand is bringing leftwing issues to national attention. His personal life, obsessive self-promotion and endless discussion of his own life make his good points easy to dismiss and I sometimes wish he would just tone it all down a little to be taken that much more seriously. However if it gets people talking, thinking and most importantly reading more on left wing subjects than he can only be a good thing. He can be a gateway drug to the left. The convert goes from Russell Brand to Laurie Penny to Robert Tressell. Much the same way that Catlin Moran works for feminism. I am glad someone is kicking up a fuss or no one would be.

 When it comes to his non-voting I must disagree. Partly because I subscribe to the “if you do not vote for X, Y will get in” tribalist leftwing view but mainly because democracy is decided by those who show up. Brand’s comedy shows are aggressively marketed at the youth because they turn up to them. However they do not show up to the ballot box so politicians do not target their policies towards the young. If the young voted at the same rate they purchased Hoxton haircuts then a whole range of issues would be on the table. Politicians would take inequality, the environment, youth unemployment, LGBTQ rights and drug legislation much more seriously than they do now. Brand lays the problems for disenfranchisement squarely at the feet of politicians. Others lay it out feet of those who do not vote. I personally think it is fault of both. The youth let politicians down by not engaging with political issues. Politicians let the youth down by not engaging with the issues that matter to them. It takes courage to involve yourself in the political process (and this goes beyond voting) and can be painful but it is essential to achieve want you want. Brand’s change of consciousness sounds like a good idea but it will mean nothing if the change stops short of the ballot box.

 We are left with the basic decision of change or more of the same and I think the young, the poor, the disenfranchised and apathetic are still not convinced by either argument. The mainstream left has drifted dangerously close to more of the same as we need to stand for change like Russell Brand does. The left is in trouble when only a clown to speak for us and take the ridicule. We are also in trouble if old cynical people can dismiss us so easily. We have legitimate criticisms but sometimes we make them in ways which do not resonate where they are needed. Converting disenfranchised non-voters will be essential to winning the argument. The left needs to work harder at listening to their reasons for not voting. Above all we need to be better. Better at what we do, how we argue and how we present ourselves. When Russell Brand is the best icon of our movement we need to think hard about what sort of movement we want to be. Then go out and build it.

Godfrey Bloom: the worst kind of bully

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Being bullied in school is not something I choose to remember often. At the time it had to be endured until I had passed my GCSEs. Looking back at it now, there were broadly two types of bullies: there were the kids from the bad estates and the broken homes who lashed out seemingly at random, you could forgive them for their circumstance, never offered a chance at life, they did not know who or what they were angry at.

Then there was the other type. The posh, sporting alpha-male bullies, who even by their early teens knew that society existed for their benefit. They bullied because they could get away with it. I am sure their self-confidence, ability to intimate others and the fact that society is structured to progress them has allowed these bullies to become highly successful hedge fund managers.

Or they could have turned into politicians like Godfrey Bloom, a UKIP MEP who sees himself as a champion of the ordinary, powerless man in the street who has been disenfranchised by the liberal political elites. His view is that the sensible voice of the British public has been drowned out by a torrent of political correctness, EU regulation and feminism. Yet for all his claims to be a political outsider who fights for the voiceless of Britain, it is clear he is nothing more than a pro-establishment bully.

Like most bullies Bloom seems to enjoy picking on people weaker than him, not the physically weaker but the politically weaker, people in less developed nations. He caused serious offence by suggesting that the government should cut aid to ‘Bongo Bongo land’. He also clearly has little respect for women after writing on the website politics.co.uk "Women, in spite of years of training in art and music - and significant leisure time in the 18th and 19th Centuries - have produced few great works." He goes on to claim that women are better in the pantry (what normal person has a pantry anymore) and that men are better at parallel parking. By using these offensive stereotypes he gathers support for his policies of protecting white male establishment at the expense of everyone else.

Life must have been pretty easy for Godfrey Bloom, being sporty, posh and confident. Success in life is generally graded against things he is good at. He succeeds in competitions, sporting and commercial, because the rules are fixed in his favour. However this process of fixing the rules of society in favour of rich white men is threatened by liberals and feminism which Bloom dislikes and takes every opportunity to insult. He wrote this confusing statement on men who support feminism: “They are … men who seem to have no link with the usual social and sporting male preserves, the slightly effete politically correct chaps who get sand kicked in their face on the beach.” I have read this over about ten times and I have no idea what it means. What I do know is that he is talking about me, someone who does not like sport or beaches. I am not sure why he thinks people kick sand in my face, but I think that Bloom implies that he is the one doing the kicking.

Well of course he is kicking sand into the faces of liberals. Why would such a person support an ideology that seeks to enfranchise others? Bloom stands to lose out from liberalism and feminism. Liberals and feminists stand directly opposed to a system rigged in Bloom's favour.

Bloom is the worst kind of bully. The one with the weight of society behind them. He claims to be a dissenting voice against the liberal establishment, but this is a lie. It is a lie he has told so many times he believes it himself, but it is still a lie. The truth is that Godfrey Bloom is the embodiment of the establishment and it is only because of the implicit support for establishment figures that anyone listens to him at all.

However, as school taught me, the one thing worse than the bullies were the kids who stood behind the bullies and jeered them along. The ones who gave the bullies the validation they need. These are the people who like Bloom's political incorrectness. These jeering lackeys are the white middle-class men who are so afraid of change because it will diminish their lot.

UKIP are playground bullies but their jeering supporters are those who are lazily pro-establishment. It is our simple minded dislike of Europe, of immigrants and belief in a fictional British history that gives power to UKIP. It also our belief that the poor are poor because they are lazy and that feminists are complaining about non-existent inequality that helps the bullies go stronger. As a nation we are the truly despicable ones, the ones who jeer as bullies like Godfrey Bloom pick on someone else.

Fracking exposes of a crisis at the heart of the Tory Party

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The Tory party is in crisis. This is mainly a result of UKIP’s attack on their right flank, bolstered by the party leadership’s unpopular stance on EU membership. However there is also something deeper going on here. It must be hard for the party members to get excited about being a Tory. The glamour of opposition has gone and the party has been tarnished by being in power. Their term had been characterised by lack-lustre economic growth and compromise with the Lib Dems. Drumming up passion from the membership must be difficult, who are looking at the sexy UKIP for a little excitement.

The crisis in enthusiasm stems from the party's make up. Like the Labour Party its membership has steadily decreased over the last 30 years. The average Tory Party member is in their mid 60s and comes from a more relaxed section of society. They are well off, retired, comfortable and desire little, expecting their way of life to be protected. They see their traditional lives as threatened by modernity and are angry about this but they do not have a grand vision of how society should be remodelled. This is because they do not need one. Society had provided for them nicely, however, it is hard to energise a political force around protecting their way of life.

It was not always like this. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Tory Party was known for dynamism and vision, they had Thatcherism, an idea that would change the whole nation. The Tory Party was seen as being on the side of business and innovation. Now they are seen as protecting vested interest and the young business person of today is not a Tory. If anything they are apolitical or libertarian. They want government out of the way completely. The final triumph of Thatcherism threatens to destroy the Tory party itself. The old members are inactive or dying off and young ones are not replacing them.

They need to do something to move the party’s image away from NIMBYs and social conservatives and towards the ethics of today’s young business people. After growing up under Blairism, these people are generally more socially liberal than the average Tory Party member but are also more in favour of the free-market. They see rural Tories’ opposition to high speed rail or wind farms as stifling the future of British business. The Tory Party needs to do something, and fracking appears to be their solution.

The government have thrown their weight behind fracking in a big way, claiming this is both the solution to our energy concerns and the economic stagnation that has gripped the country since they came to power. This idea has not been universally popular, and the government has inadvertently managed the difficult task of uniting wealthy, rural NIMBYs and green movement against them. Despite this, the government has claimed we could be the Saudi Arabia of fracking. From this I imagine Britain will become a country where a few extremely socially conservative rich people will possess unimaginable wealth and the rest of the population will be poor and live in a dry, lifeless wasteland – this is probably George Osborn’s vision of utopia. 

The process of fracking has the potential to cause irreparable damage to the natural environment and if anything is clear, the world does not need more sources of green house gases. However, the biggest problem is that we currently have a lively debate about alternative energy solutions that has the potential to do some real good. Countries like Germany are already moving towards producing their entire energy requirements from renewable resources. Fracking only delays the problem of what to do when the gas runs out at the possible  expense of this critical debate.

Still support for fracking solves some political problems for the Tories. Aside from the political problems it solves if fracking brings about an economic boom, it helps the party reclaim their mantel as the party of business. We have heard a lot of talk of how Britain can be a world leader again, in something over than CCTV cameras per square mile, while private companies make huge profits, driving growth and employment. This is the essence of what Conservatism used to be about.

Fracking also appeals to the elements of the Tory part that is frightened of modernity. This is big traditional heavy industry which voters like because they can understand what it does. This is not a social media start up with complex business plan that is difficult to understand and uses the word fermium a lot. This is also not a similarly complex financial industry, support for which is still tainted by popular dislike of bankers. This looks like government actually doing something. Even if doing something will create 30,000 gas towers across mainland Britain.

In fact the only people who seem to dislike this are the retired Conservative Party members whose garden view of a National Trust property is about to be spoiled by a pillar of smoke rising into the sky and whose house is about to experience increasing seismic activity.

This has exposed a division between Tories for whom Conservatism is about conserving, and the party’s Thatcherite members. It asks fundamental questions about what it means to be a Tory. One thing is certain, the Tory Party cannot go on mounting effective electoral campaigns with an increasingly ageing and inactive memberships. Something has to be done to bring new life into the party and attract young people. Also for the party to win an outright majority in a general election they need to become more dynamic and more appealing to young entrepreneurs.

Fracking may not be the solution to our energy problems, but it does help the Tories with their political problems. It focuses on business and aggravates the comfortable rural Tories whose vested interests the party is seen to protect. The government's support for fracking is not aimed at tackling the energy crisis or creating jobs, it is about marketing the Conservative Party to a new generation of business people.

Do as I say, not as I do: Religion in the Middle Eastern Uprisings

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A wave of revolutions have taken place across the Middle East, and in their wake, a lot of people are asking what sort of government do they want to see. Unfortunately, a lot of the people asking these questions are neither from nor based in the Middle East. Westerners feel the need to meddle with these newly emerging regimes and shape them according to their own personal bias.

Recently in Egypt the democratically elected Islamist president was ousted by the military and a new government is being formed. In Syria the process of overthrowing the old regime is still going on and the opposition groups are becoming increasingly fractious. They are divided along religious and ideological lines mainly in their views of what the new Syria should look like. Iraq and Libya are facing the same problems of spreading sectarian violence.

In the UK bloggers are pontificating over what people far removed from them should do. Mainly they talk about which factions the UK should support. Religion is frequently a factor in this as it is divisive across the Middle East. The growing conflict between Shi'a and Sunni Muslims for control of certain countries is well documented, however, other groups such as Alawite Muslims in Syria stand to gain to lose depending on what form of future government rules there. The Middle East is also home to a lot of Christians, especially in Egypt where Christians make up ten percent of the population and are worried about the implications of an Islamist government. Syria also has a sizeable Christian population (again around ten percent of the population) who have similar concerns as Sharia law spreads amongst the rebel groups.

Recently the Catholic Herald wrote an article in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and criticising the UK's support of the Syrian opposition. Conservative Christian bloggers were quick to point out that Christians were better protected under Assad's brutal Ba'athist dictatorship, which is secular, than they would be under an Islamist government. This was accompanied by a chorus of support for the Middle East's secular regimes. It seems that Conservative Christian bloggers support secularism in the Middle East but have a different attitude to the UK where they are deplore the “aggressive secularism” of the British government in its plans to legalised gay marriage. The hypocrisy of this is beyond belief. I do not see how you can justify supporting a dictator who uses chemical weapons against his own population whilst criticising a government's attempts to extend equal rights to all its citizens. I assume the fact that chemical weapons are not mentioned in the Bible as sinful makes the Syrian government more righteous than the British one. According to certain Conservative Christian bloggers, secularism in the Middle East is the best form of government - even if it comes couched in brutal military oppression - but in the UK secularism threatens to undermines the basic values of the family.

Another claim of Conservative Christian bloggers is that the UK is a Christian country and that government policies should encourage Christian values. In reality only 13% of people identified as being members of the Church of England in the last census. Congregation numbers are falling across the UK and many Churches are left without a folk. They can hardly be representative of a silent majority of British citizens who want the British government to enforce Christian values. Still, Conservative Christian bloggers assert that the UK is a Christian nation and the government should reflect this. In the Middle East, the majority of the population not only identify as Muslims but actively practise the religion, and want their governments to match the demographic make up of their nations. Especially in some countries where years of military rule has enforced secularism to prevent an Islamic uprising. Mohamed Morsi was democratically elected as an Islamist leader by the population of Egypt. The West preaches democracy and then complains about the outcome when the Middle East takes up the mantra. Conservative Christian bloggers would prefer secular regimes in the Middle East (secular Middle Eastern regimes only come in the aggressive kind) despite the wishes of the population for a government that reflects their values. Again this hypocrisy is staggering. The UK can barely be described as a Christian nation beyond that the fact that we have an established church that is heavily in decline due to overwhelming Christian apathy. However, according to Conservative Christian bloggers the UK government should adopt Christian values (despite widespread support for gay rights and a woman's right to choose) while the Middle East must have aggressive secular regimes despite what the people of these countries want.

Hypocrisy among Conservative Christians bloggers is nothing new, but this latest wave of hypocrisy is surprising and I advise Conservative Christian bloggers to look at the difference between what they desire in the Middle East and desire here at home. It's hard to claim to be the voice of morality when you clearly endorse whatever is best for your own group above the needs and wishes of the general population. If Conservative Christian bloggers do not like the aggressive secularism of the British government then I invite them to live under the Assad regime and see what really aggressive secularism is like before telling Middle East countries what they should do.

No One Likes Tax Avoidance

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You would be hard pressed to find someone who supports tax avoidance. We all agree that at least some tax must be collected for the police, fire service, the military, etc. Only an extremely libertarian inclined individual would suggest that it is acceptable for multi-billion pound companies to only pay tax on a tiny percentage of their income. However, I believe that it is not enough to oppose tax avoidance and that only radical change to our economy can prevent large companies from dodging their responsibility to society.

There is little political will to tackle the problem of tax avoidance – the government would much rather spend its time exaggerating the problem caused by poor people. Whenever anyone suggest that a stronger line be taken with large companies, their apologists argue that if we are not nice to the wealthy people and let them get away with whatever they want, then they will take their money elsewhere. As recent tax probes have shown, if rich companies do not pay tax when we are very nice and accommodating to them, then I am not certain what we have to lose by compelling them to pay more tax.

A political and popular desire to tackle the entrenched privileges of wealth is needed to stop tax avoidance. Whenever a particular gross piece of excesses is uncovered, we as a nation simply tut disapprovingly but nothing ever changes. We are currently going through a phase of rumbling and groaning when people have to grudging admit that the perhaps the wealthy do treat their social obligation as a wall to urinate against. Still even if new laws are passed and loopholes closed, tax avoidance will still continue on a grand scale, as you cannot prune neo-liberalism into something fair or compassionate. This is what most people (including a lot of lefties) would like to believe, partly because it conveniently avoids questioning the wider implications of tax avoidance. If companies treat their social obligation to pay tax something to be wriggled out of, how do they view health and safety or even employees’ wages? If you think the idea that a company would try to avoid paying its staff is ridiculous, then look at McDonald’s attempts to do just that in America.

An economic system which concentrates wealth among the few, as opposed to distributing it more evenly, will always have the problem of these few wealthy individuals taking advantage. They hold the greater amount of power and thus cannot be compelled to pay their fair share of taxes. What we have seen recently with Starbucks, Google and others is an indication that taxes which are supposed to be inescapable (remember the old adage) can be avoided by the wealthy as our wealth based system will always create an incentive for the rich to avoid paying their fair share of tax.

The solution to wanton tax avoidance is to change the way we think about wealth completely. We need to stop thinking about wealth as a goal in itself, but more a by-product of success in another field such as science or art. Wealth (much like fame) is a life goal in and of itself, one which we acquire through cynical self-interest, the proof for this is that no small child ever said they wanted to grow up to be a hedge fund manager when asked what they wanted to be in primary school. We also need to stop respecting people purely because they are richer than us. Being wealthy does not necessary mean you are a more creative or intelligent human being, it more likely means that you had a bigger leg up in life than others. Mainly we need to think about the global plutarchy of the ultra-rich as a different sort of person who transcends national identities and inhabits a world so different to ours it might as well be alien. The idea that people whose existence is so far removed from the pressures of normal life know what is best for the average person is laughable. We need to stop bowing down to the extremely wealthy and living in fear that they will take their money else where - that fire sale has already happened. We need to remember that social obligations are for everyone, and it is grossly unfair that wealthy companies pay a smaller percentage of tax on their income than the average private citizen who earns a lot less.

Only with radical change will the excesses of greed and wealth be stopped. Small, incremental changes will not stop tax avoidance, sweeping reform of our entire political and economic system is needed. If we are all so disapproving of tax avoidance then it is time we face up to what the underlying causes are and accept what the solution is.



Iain M. Banks: An obituary

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“I’ve seen the Chebalths of Eyske in their Skydark migration, watched field liners sculpt solar flares in the High Nundrun, I’ve held my own newborn in my hands, flown the caverns of Sart and dived the tube arches of Lirouthale. I’ve seen so much, done so much, that even with my neural lace trying to tie my elsewhere memories as seamlessly as it can into what’s in my head, I can tell I’ve lost a lot from in here.’ He tapped one temple. ‘Not from my memory, but from my personality. And so it’s time to change or move on or just stop.”

These words are said by Ilom Dolince – a four hundred year old citizen on the Culture in Iain M. Bank’s novel Look To Windward – on his death bed. When the Scottish author gave a talk on utopias in fiction at the British Library in 2010, he choose to read this section from his writing and discussed his views on death in detail. He remarked that he had no problem with the concept of dying and not existing, having not existed quite pleasantly for around thirteen billion years before being born.

Two months ago he announced that he was dying of gall bladder cancer and that The Hydrogen Sonata would be his last science fiction novel. Appropriately, The Hydrogen Sonata is itself a novel about moving on from one existence to another. In this book, the Gzilt, the Culture’s sister civilization, are in the process of Subliming and moving on to another dimension where they will be changed forever. Today it has been announced that Iain Banks has died from his illness and fans across the world are in mourning.

It’s easy to see death as a recurring theme in his more recent work from virtual hells in Surface Detail to Guy, dying of cancer, in The Quarry. Whether this is intentional or not is unclear, but as ever Banks approached the subject sometimes with humour, sometimes with astonishing imagination and sometimes with stirring human emotion. He was always a writer who could approach a subject in many different ways and find the best way of expressing an idea. I hope that his end was like the role he imaged for Chay in Surface Detail, ending suffering and providing a final rest for those weary of living.

The hardest thing about being a fan whose hero dies is coming to terms with the fact that there will be no more books, no more works of genius to look forward to. What we have is all we’re going to get and if we have read it all, then we can never again capture the feeling of reading new writing from our heroes for the first time. However being a fan is a lot like having a large family. We don’t have to be alone in our grief as there are people who grieve with us.

I have saved one of Iain M. Banks’ novels, Use of Weapons, to read after his death - there’s no reason why it should be that one, but I want once more to open one of my favourite author’s books and for the last time read something by him for the first time.

Woolwich: Is 'The Left' Responsible?

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The recent barbaric murder of a British soldier on the streets of Woolwich by Islamic extremists has been met with universal condemnation. And rightly so: yes, a great deal many more British soldiers have been killed oversees and yes, fatal knife attacks on the streets of the capital are sadly not rare either. However, the medieval nature of the attack on Lee Rigby, combined with the killers’ ‘political’ ranting and complete disinterest in being observed by the public set this particular crime apart.
The three main party leaders, along with Boris Johnston, all reacted admirably (and it’s not often you will see Boris referred to in a positive light on this blog). Cameron, in particular, has been careful to avoid stirring up anti-Islamic sentiment, describing the attack as a ‘betrayal of Islam’. With depressing predictability, the usual suspects of the EDL and the remnants of the BNP tried to exploit the events to further their own anti-immigrant, anti-multiculturalism agenda. But overall, the world of politics has remained impressively calm at the news. Awful as the attack was, the reaction to it was refreshingly measured and uncontroversial. In fact, the only reason I’m writing about it on here is to respond to one troubling point mentioned in passing on the BBC’s live news feed by one commentator about the implication for ‘the left’.
Usama Hasan, a researcher at anti-extremism think-tank the Quillim Foundation, was reported as saying: "The real problem here is the decisive hatred preached by a very small minority of clerics in this country in a small number of our mosques and universities. They know who they are and there are Muslim groups and other groups - left wing groups may I say - who defend that kind of grievance and victimhood mentality. That's what must change and has to stop.”
Ah yes, that old chestnut, ‘the left’. I’m not exactly sure which left-wing groups Hasan is referring to here, nor why a ‘victimhood mentality’ should automatically lead to violent killings, but I find any idea that the left is somehow partially responsible for this murder or Islamic extremism in general completely abhorrent. For a start, the notion that the left does, or even can, have one unified opinion about Islam makes little sense.
Admittedly, the relationship between the broad left and Islam is of course a complicated and confusing one. After 9/11, Islam drew excessive negative attention in the press, and the Left were the strongest critics of this. On the other hand, the Left has always criticised the socially conservative aspects of any religion. Trying to defend Muslims from prejudice can lead the left, some would argue, into justification of extremist violence, especially when combined with a dislike of Western cultural hegenomy and militarism. Hasan’s implication is that the left finds it difficult to condemn outright Islamic extremism because of Islam’s association in the UK with racist prejudice against Muslims.
Some, such as author Nick Cohen, have tried to coin the term ‘Islamic fascism’ to make it more comfortable for left wingers to criticise Islamic extremism whilst maintaining a distance from right-wing anti-Muslim rhetoric. In his (mostly awful) book, What’s Left, Cohen argues against the left’s opposition to the Iraq War, claiming it had been hoodwinked into supporting repressive regimes as a result of cultural relativism. The left, he argues, should look past its distrust of US military might, and see Muslim fundamentalism for what it really is: a form of fascism.
I disagree with both Hasan and Cohen. The Left has condemned the Woolwich attack as vociferously as anyone else: Billy Bragg, as close to an emissary of the Left as I could imagine, took to Facebook to describe it as “...shocking. What he did for a living cannot be used to justify what happened to him.” Not exactly the words of someone who is afraid of stepping on anyone’s sensitive toes. And anyway, the left does not see Islam as immune from criticism any more than it sees Christianity as immune from criticism. It’s a thorny issue, certainly, because left wingers also want to be seen to respect other peoples’ cultures and values. But, on issues including ranging from the position of women in strict Islamic communities, to the lack of willingness to integrate into a healthy multicultural society in some areas, the left have a strong track record of raising concerns.
As for Cohen’s ‘Islamic Fascism’ idea, I reject this as a way of framing the debate, purely because the right-wing, political fascism of the EDL variety is an ideology based on hatred and prejudice, regardless of whether this leads to actual violence or not.  Islam is not. There is no inevitable link between ‘Islam’, ‘Fascism’, and the events of Woolwich. To suggest otherwise would be to say that there is something inherent in the Islamic faith which can lead to these sorts of attacks, which theologians and others insist there isn’t.
Perhaps the reason certain people are blaming ‘the Left’ is because some lefties seek to link events like the Woolwich murder with US and UK foreign policy. To be clear, in my opinion, the idea that illegal, unjustified military invasions such as the Iraq war would throw petrol onto the fire of extremism was self evident: in fact, the Blair government was warned of this at the time, and ignored it. But I must emphasize: seeking to explain the motivation behind Islamic extremist violence is NOT the same as justifying the violence. The Left seek macro explanations, in contrast to the reaction of the far right who prefer to just demonise all Muslims. Perhaps it is this nuance that the knee-jerk- reaction loving, easy-answer-seeking elements of the right-wing media fail to grasp about the relationship between the Left and Islam.
So blame the individual attackers, obviously. Nothing can absolve them from that responsibility. Or blame the radical clerics if you like. Or blame the idiotic wars that have made Britain a target for terrorism. Or blame the EDL nutters and extremist Islamic groups, who both provide each other the fuel they need. But the Left? Honestly, I don’t think so.

How fair is fair-trade?

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Ethical consumption is at an all time high. Never before in the history of the world have people been so unaware of how their goods reached them, but also curious to know, hence ethical consumption. In the past, we would know who had made our clothes and where the wool had come from. In the more recent past, we would not have known, but also we would not have cared. Now we want to know and we want to care.

Fair trade and other forms of ethical consumption are ever present in today's markets. Once the preserve of specialist shops, they are stocked by supermarkets alongside goods made in sweatshops without a hint of irony. The fact that even Nestle, that old boycotter’s favourite, now sticks the fair-trade label on some of its confectionary hints that fair-trade is part of the mainstream. It scratches an itch some people have about their spending habits. However, there are people who knowingly consume unethical goods or are aware of a dubious moral track record of certain brands but continue to purchase them anyway.

Why does this happen? There is a degree to which unethical consumption is a reaction to pressure to consume ethically. Some feel a knee jerk reaction to what is perceived as left-wing pressure, political correctness or interference in their daily lives. These individuals continue to consume unethically in order to resist social pressure to consume ethically. This attitude is selfish and a result of culture which emphasises individual gratification above collective good. There is a degree to which advocates of ethical consumption are their own enemies as applying pressure to change consumer habits can drive people in the opposite direction. We can see a similar phenomenon with advertising; many people avoid the Go Compare website simply because their adverts are so annoying.

Worse than callous disregard for the suffering that unethical consumption causes are those who believe that unethical consumption is good for the world’s poor. There are those who generally believe that sweatshops and exploitative labour improve the circumstances of people in poorer countries. For some this is simply a desire to justify their spending habits and a way of intellectualising rigid brand loyalty. For others it is somewhere between blind faith that capitalism will solve the world’s problems or genuine belief in the libertarian free market, a point of view which can only come from a position of privilege. Just as capitalism’s greatest defenders are those who have lucked out and currently sit on top of the heap, unethical consumption is defended by those who value cheap produce above all else and cannot see beyond the end of their garden. Only someone who has never stitched T-shirts continuously for twelve hours for only a few cents could ever suggest it was a route out of poverty.

Just because someone consumes ethically does not necessarily remove the impact of their consumption on others. It’s not that buying a Fairtrade T-shirt or jar of coffee isn’t preferable to a non-Fairtrade version. It’s just to say that these consumers aren’t just paying for a product alone. Ethical consumption is just another level of service. People who have more than their fair share feel guilty and want to know what effect their excess income has on the world. Purchasing Fairtrade products is a way of assuaging this guilt, whilst essentially maintaining the present system by those it benefits, albeit whilst also acknowledging its obvious flaws. If you are rich, you are hardly likely to seriously challenge the economic model that made you rich. It is however difficult to deny the problems caused by inequality on a global scale so a certain section of the wealthy have come up with ethical consumption as a means to relieve their guilt without having to threaten their position within the established economic system.

There are those who question the rights of ethical consumers to have a larger income than average and believe that this inequality is part and parcel of the system which lead to ethical consumption differentiating itself from unethical consumption. In short there will always be unethical products until we radically reconsider how the market place is constructed. Only substantial change to every aspect of our economy will remove unethical products.

Leaving this complex issue up to anything as simple as consumer choice will never resolve the problems caused by unethical consumption. Offering ethical alternatives from the same companies which created the problem in the first place alongside their unethical counterparts is not a solution and will never be. If you worried about unethical produce then ethnical consumption will not resolve the problem. Only radical change to the economy will suffice. However, in the absence of a strong movement for radical change, ethical consumption is preferable to ignoring the problems consumption creates, or choosing to believe that exploitation will rid capitalism of its contradictions.

Bankers! Bankers! Bankers! Out! Out! Out!

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The death of Thatcher has opened up a lot of old wounds and a lot of old debates. The news narrative was dominated by North Korea and IDS claiming he could live on £53 a week, then all of a sudden we were dragged back to the 1980s to debate the miners’ strike and the poll tax riots. Again and again, I have heard the same justification for Thatcher's actions: that the unions controlled the country in the 1970s, and that they used collective bargaining to bring the country to a standstill.

Clearly there was public outrage following the Winter of Discontent, which Thatcher effectively harnessed to pursue her own political agenda. Even many of those who disagreed with her cure for the problem agreed that ‘something had to be done’. Most politicians are opportunists and this was a once in a generation chance to change the agenda. Thatcher's success leads me to ask: why are we so bad at this on the left? Could we not use the banking crisis in the same way to achieve our aims?

Anti-banker sentiment is at an all high. Bankers are derided across nation, from cartoons in broadsheet newspapers to Carling commercials. Their popularity is located on the scale somewhere below politicians and above benefit claimants - firmly near the bottom. However no-one is making a strong attempt use this anger to effect any change, unlike the Thatcher government was able to in the early ‘eighties when it capitalised on anti-strike sentiments.

Essentially, the main reason for this is the entire political establishment is broadly in favour of letting the banks off the hook. Neither side wishes to be publicly viewed as in the banker's pockets, but the general consensus in Westminster is that we need the elitist, tax dodging money swallowing black hole that is the City of London more than it need us. This is of course not true, and will remain untrue until the Square Mile takes off and flies above us in a disgusting parody of a Douglas Adams novel. Britain isn’t the Isle of Man. We have an economy that exists outside the Square Mile and anyone who works in chemical engineering, software development, games & high tech arts, aerospace or any of the other industries in which Britain is a world leader should be greatly offended by the idea that we dependent on the bankers.

It doesn’t have to be this way. ‘Bashing the bankers’ is just tabloid stuff – in and of itself, rhetoric doesn’t achieve much. What it could do, however, is provide the ground work for creating a broad consensus for more intelligent regulation, and above all an end to the morally redundant idea that rampant inequality is somehow good for everyone. Anti-banker sentiment could be a starting point for a debate challenging the assumptions of our pro-greed, anti-collectivist consensus, just like Thatcher challenged the political consensus of the post war era. It’s a debate we badly need to have, but neither the Labour Party nor anyone else in mainstream politics seems willing to have it.

Thatcher, for all her innumerate faults, stood for a clearly defined ideology. She had a vision for what society should be liked and set about making it so, manipulating anti-union sentiment and patriotic feelings over the Falklands war whenever public confidence in her plan faltered. Thatcher genuinely believed that the whole country would be better off if labour markets were less regulated and the unions were less powerful. At the time most of the country did not believe this as strongly as she did (although now it is now an almost universally held political opinion) but popular anti-union sentiment allowed her to pursue her ideological objectives. The reason the same thing is not happening to the bankers today is that it is no longer consider appropriate for politicians to have strong ideological view points. Instead both sides tend towards varying degrees of acceptance of the neo-liberal hegemony.

The Conservative Party under Thatcher’s leadership were not united in their support for her policies and she had to fight off a few leadership challenges before eventually be ousted in 1990. Still to most people she stood as a strong unifying figure bringing together a diverse movement around a single set of goals. This is something the left sorely lacks. After the banking crisis the left is more divided than ever. This is especially true when discussing how we respond to the problems presented by this new era of capitalism. The left has always been fractious and divided but there is no consensus on how to best use the popular dislike of bankers to achieve any political goals.

Thatcher was an astute politician who used the public’s anti-union sentiment to great advantage in order to accomplish her political goals. The Left could learn a lot from her in how to respond to the banking crisis and in finding a way to snap out of this ideological paralysis we find ourselves trapped in. The public hates the banks almost as much as they hate benefit claimants. This is because most people who work hard resent people who they feel have got something for nothing. The Right is expertly using this feeling to roll back the welfare state. The left should be thinking the same if they want to make a dent in the power of international banking conglomerates.

Five assumptions of the Left

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People make assumptions all the time, not least about what lefties believe. How many times, for example, have you felt like an argument boils down to “so, you’re left-wing, so you must think X”?

But what assumptions about left-wing people are appropriate? As well as being critical of the wider problems in society, we need to turn our examination inwards and look at ourselves. This is how we build a robust movement. To that end, I have drawn up a list of five basic assumptions I feel it is necessary to make to be on the left. It is not exhaustive, but I do think that if you feel any of these points are invalid, then you are probably not leftwing. In my opinion, they represent core underpinning beliefs.

1. Privilege exists

Or - that the world is unfair. It is important to acknowledge that everyone is given different advantages or disadvantages in life purely based on the circumstances of their birth.

This isn’t to say hard work shouldn’t be valued – it is an unfair accusation that the left favour dependency or handouts. It is to say, though, that if you are born into a well off family you are more likely end up wealthy yourself. Being successful in life (i.e. having lots of money) is not automatically a function of how hard you work, but is determined by how fortunate you are in your birth.

Accepting privilege is an essential leftwing belief. It runs under everything else and is connected to all the other points on this list. It also connected to the idea of questioning authority and what privileges brought someone into a position of authority. Being a woman, from an ethnic minority, gay disabled, or a whole host of other things means you must work harder to be successful, as well as being more likely to face obvious discrimination and harassment compared to a group society has favored with more power.

The Right claim everyone is given an even footing and that success is a result of hard work. But privilege is the crux of what makes society unequal. Biology should not be destiny. The circumstances of your birth should not determine your lot in life.

2. Rational people can be irrational

Not every decision everyone makes is always clearly thought out and considered. This may be obvious, but it’s also very important. Consider the reverse of this point. To lean to the Right you must believe that everyone is rational all the time: criminals make rational choices to commit crimes; addicts choose to continue their addiction; the poor are responsible for their own poverty. This underpins a lot of right-wing policy: criminals should be harshly punished because they chose a life of crime. That the poor deserve to have their benefits cut because they chose not to get a job.

To lean the left is to say that some things are beyond your control and that society should step in and help out in these circumstances. Not just to correct privilege, but because people make irrational decisions and need help to get them out of the situation they have found themselves in. To be left wing is argue against the sentiment ‘you made your decision and now you must pay for it’.

3. Inequality is a bad thing

Having an uneven distribution of wealth and power does not create incentives for those at the bottom of the pile to better themselves but instead creates social strife which in the long run makes us all worse off. This is linked to questioning the fact that those at the top of pile did not get there through their own hard work but through unfair advantages. Why else, for example, are there so many people from rich, privately educated backgrounds in the Cabinet – pure coincidence? Inequality in wealth and power is a symptom of the sickness of privilege.

One of the things I find very strange about the right is when they claim that those who have less should work harder to have more, but society clearly throws obstacles in the way of some and not others. This right wing argument boils down to saying that women should work really really hard to be successful and that men just need to work hard to be successful. Claiming that inequality is a good motivator is just silly.

To be on the left is believe that inequality is caused by privilege and not laziness, and that to defend inequality is to defend a society that privileges some over others.

4. Collaboration is preferable to competition

More can be accomplished by working together than in fighting each other. The free market does not lead to the most socially beneficial allocation of resources. Competition favors privilege – this is why the wealth gap has widened so much in the past three decades.

The right argues that free market competition creates incentives for innovation and that, if left to its own natural devices, it will allocate society’s resources to where they are most needed. Those who are left-wing dispute this and claim that the free market allocates more of society’s scarce resources to the most privileged, rather than to where they will do the most good.

To be on the left is to argue that by working together, through government, collectives or other means, we can achieve a more socially beneficial resources allocation that overcomes privilege. That together we are stronger and that competition divides us.

5. One size does not fit all

Also know as diversity, a phrase much mocked by the right. We are all different, as are our needs. Yet in general society doesn't take this into account, and benefits some over others. This is essence of privilege.

The right argues for a universalist approach. But measuring everyone by the same standard in a clearly unequal society does not work. In contrast, diversity also means accepting that there are valid lifestyles different to yours. It can be hard to accept that others value things differently, some value family more than others, for example. Some value their peers more than their family. It can be hard to understand people with different lifestyles, but everyone deserves dignity, compassion and respect. It should be accepted that one size doesn’t fit all.

Accepting diversity, and that other people live lives completely differently to your own, is essential to being left wing. It is also important to accept that there is not always a single standard of behavior or proper way to do things.

I wanted to show how these problems are interlinked through the idea of privilege, in other words that the circumstances of your birth determine a lot about your life and that society is deeply unfair. Ideas that are essential to how we see the world – and the problems we want to fix.

It is important to always question our own ideas, our own assumptions, and our own privilege. This contributes to both a stronger ideology and a broader movement.

The politics of Iain Banks novels

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On Wednesday the 3rd of April, best-selling Scottish author Iain Banks announced that he was dying of cancer and that his next novel, The Quarry, will be his last. In light of the news, many fans must be looking back over his oeuvre, considering what conclusions can be drawn while he is still alive.

Iain Banks was famously described as “two of Scotland's best authors” because he writes both science fiction and literary fiction (the former as Iain M. Banks). Despite the different genres, the same broad political and social themes come up in all his novels and a lot of common ground can be found.

Iain Banks is amongst the most popular writers of today who is clearly left wing. He is outspoken on subjects as varied as Scottish independence and Israel’s military intervention in Gaza. Politics infiltrate his novels to varying degrees, but it is ever-present in the themes, characters and settings he explores. One recurring theme is the idea that political opinions are a manifestation of peoples’ deepest values, such as in The Steep Approach to Garbadale. The difference between left and right wing people, according to main character Alban Wopuld, all comes “down to imagination. Conservative people don’t have very much so they find it hard to imagine what life is like for people who aren’t just like them... empathy and imagination are almost the same thing, and it’s why artists, creative people, are almost all liberals, left leaning.”

Allegory is often used to convey these ideas. 1986’s The Bridge presents a strange coma-world which symbolises the crumbling of Britain’s post-war consensus and the onset of Thatcherism. The part of the Iron Lady herself is filled uncompromisingly by a sadistic Field Marshall, who indulges his pigs with luxury accommodation on his captured train whilst enjoying such activities as forcing tethered prisoners to run to exhaustion in front of the slowly driven locomotive. But it is, perhaps, the puzzling allegory of his Culture series which pose the most interesting political questions.

These novels mainly explore the question of “how perfect is the Culture?” Is this anarchistic, socialist, post-scarcity collective really a utopia? It caters for every possible human need and removes the need for sickness, death, money, want and intolerance. No one works as society is administer but hyper intelligent computers known as Minds for the benefit of humanity. Who would not want to live in the Culture where literally anything is possible? The subtle question asked by most of the Culture novels is: “is the Culture so perfect that they feel the need to meddle in the affairs of the less perfect?” Banks’s reaction to real-world military interventions perhaps suggests an answer: on the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he returned his torn-up passport to 10 Downing Street in protest (after abandoning his original idea of “crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns”).

Many of the early books provide simple comparisons between the Culture and other civilisations. In Consider Phlebas, the Culture is at war with the Idirans who seek to aggressively conquer other species because they believe themselves to be superior. In The Player of Games, the Culture encounters the Azad who have a suppressive hierarchical society, repressive gender politics and the material problems of scarcity. Compared to these societies, the Culture appears utopian and the reader feels that they are justified in intervening to improve the lot of their citizens. Similarly, in Excession the Culture face the Affront, who are so disgustingly violent towards every other living creature that the reader has sympathy for the Culture in declaring all-out war against such an insult to sentience.

However in later books, perhaps as a reaction to the cultural imperialism of neo-con foreign policy such as the Iraq war, the Culture's well-meaning interference has disastrous consequences. In Look To Windward, the Culture unbalances the fiercely cast-based Chelgrian society in an attempt to make it more egalitarian. This results in a bloody civil war for which many Chelgrians feel the Culture is responsible. The Culture's belief in their own perfection and how to better others ultimately leads to more death than the Idirans or the Affront could create deliberately.

Whereas the Culture novels show us how great the future could be, Banks’s non-Culture novels show us how awful the future could be. In Against A Dark Background, the Huhsz cult is allowed to hunt and kill people in order for their messiah to be born. In The Algebraist the future is divided between the overbearing Mercatoria and the sadistic Starveling Cult. In these nightmarish vision of the future, technology is turned against humanity to repress and cause suffering. Banks has scorn reserved for our own world too, from the cruelty of Thatcher’s Britain in The Bridge to money-grubbing US businesses in The Steep Approach to Garbadale.

In his Culture set novella The State of the Art, Banks turns his lenses directly to Earth as we know it. Set in the 1970s, it deals with the Culture's first contact with humans. The Culture citizens, with their perfect existence, are horrified by how cruel life on Earth is. However, one Culture citizen decides to stay on Earth, smitten by the concept of Christianity (reaching the opposite conclusion, co-incidentally, to The Crow Road’s Prentice McHoan, who eventually finds happiness by rejecting religion). Banks explores the idea of whether happiness is truly possible without experiencing suffering, and thus can anyone in Culture be happy? He poses the idea that the Culture's meddling in the affairs of others may just be a means to justify its own existence.

At its best, sci-fi tells us something about our own world – as Banks once said, “no-body who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history.” The Culture is more than just an aspiration of what lefties believe that a future society could be like, free from binding social roles, repressive leadership hierarchies and scarcity of resources. It is also an allegory for how westerners feel enlightened compared to poorer nations, and our need to meddle in their affairs – much as the West has done over the course of Banks’s career. We want to live in the Culture as much as we realise that we would rather live under western liberal democracy than under most other governments on Earth. The Culture reminds of the need to be critical of ourselves to see what effect we have on other societies.