The Future Now

The Crooked timber of mankind

Further to yesterday's post about the tragic death of Baby P, Simon Jenkins has a very good summary of the case in today's Guardian.  As he says:

The implication must be that Baby P died for the same reason that street crime rises, educational performance stagnates, and mortgage debts go haywire. When the human element in any frontline service gives way to quantifiable process, something crucial is lost. The belief has long been bred in the bone of the children's minister, Ed Balls, that any computer can solve the world's ills at the click of a mouse. It is a dangerous lie.

Not shocked

There is much one could say about the horrific neglect and murder of Baby P in Haringey, North London last year; a case that has only now come under the media spotlight because of the legal requirement to await the outcome of the trial for murder of the child's mother and two other men.

What irritates me most, however, is the way politicians and pundits alike talk about how shocking it all is.   When I hear those words I know immediately that nothing will be done to address the underlying causes of the happily very rare instances of extreme child neglect and abuse.

Then there's the blame game.  Someone must always be responsible and held to account.  For David Cameron, it is the government.  For the lamentable Jeremy Paxman (whom Minister for Children, Beverley Hughes, dealt with admirably on Newsnight, I thought) it is politicians in general.  No one, of course, lays any part of the blame at the state of a society in which people like the parents who murdered this child can aspire to parenthood without having first learned the fundamentals of humanity.

The reason, I suspect, that people are so shocked by these dreadful events, is that they have a the false impression that the world is, bye and large, a good, safe, warm and  comfortable place.  For the majority of citizens globally, and for sizeable minorities even in the rich countries, this is palpably not the case.  If 30,000 children under five die each day from preventable causes, then we've got some considerable way to go before we can be proud of the world we have created.

It is probably impossible, ever, under any conditions, to keep all infants safe from the actions of psychopathic parents.   It is however possible to create social and economic conditions in which more young people grow into adults and undertake parenthood with the a level of emotional and psychological maturity that would minimise the possibility of abuse or neglect.

It would also be possible, if we chose not to fix society, to properly fund, invest in and motivate social services departments and people who work in them, to sort out the mess that inevitable follows without on occasion, failing to act in time.

If we really want to protect every single child from parental abuse we have either to change society beyond all recognition, or massively increase social services funding.

We could settle, on the other hand, for being thankful that such events are so rare, and remind ourselves, as Professor Colin Pritchard noted yesterday,

that children in England and Wales are less at risk than in most developed countries. The baby murder rate is highest in the US and only Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden have lower rates than England and Wales.

But please, let's be a bit more grown up about the warts-and-all reality of human existence.  Dreadful thinks happen, thankfully not that often; and unless we are really prepared to address the underlying causes, at huge cost, we really should stop pretending to be shocked.

What is the economy for?

With UK unemployment nudging 2 million once again (and that's the official count - if we apply the measurement criteria used back in the 1970s, it's now well over three million) it's time to ask again a simple question: just what, and more to the point, who, is the economy for, and what ends it is supposed to serve?

It's not - or should not be - rocket science:  the economy consists of those mechanisms and institutions in society through which its members secure for themselves the means to survival and satisfaction in life in exchange for their labour.

For the last thirty years, however, the objective of full employment has fallen off the radar of economic policy because the neo-classical school of economics that has come to dominate the political and academic establishments has persuade people in large numbers that economic policies focussing on continuous growth and low inflation offer the best hope for economic advance. 

This argument is now revealed as a gigantic con-trick, pulled off by economists and politicians, ably aided by much of the mainstream media, in the service of the interests of elite wealth and privilege.  Democracy, meanwhile, appears quite unable to defend majority interests.

I'm not arguing that the state should take responsibility for directly creating jobs for those whom the market doesn't provide.  But there needs to be a moral basis for economic policy, and key among the values referenced should be a commitment to an economy in which everyone has access to the resources and opportunities necessary to make a reasonable living for themselves. 

By starting from that belief, and ensuring it remains the over-riding goal in policy formulation, it should be possible to restructure the economy along more just and inclusive lines.  Presently however, there seems little chance of such progress.

Please get lost in the jungle

The only good thing about Brian Paddick signing up to appear in the upcoming series of I'm a celebrity get me out of here is that it should put a permanent end to his political career.

His candidacy for Mayor of London under the Lib-Dem banner did untold damage to that party's future electoral prospects at a time when Britain desperately needs a strong third party to counter the conservatism of Labour and the Tories.

The new series will likely have two things in common with the mayoral election campaign:  Paddick will lose badly and in the process will piss everybody off, including most of his putative supporters.

Apart from having to endure the slimy Ant and Dec, the new series should make entertaining viewing though, peppered as it is with the usual mix of ego-driven attention seekers, and ex-soap and pop stars trying to revive their flagging careers.

Ester Rantzen really should have been put out to grass long ago.  And quite what Martina Navratilova is doing there I don't know - surely she doesn't need the money.

Mandelson to the rescue?

Whatever one may think of Peter Mandelson, he still show signs of being a top-rate political operator.  He has today called on the Prime Minister to save the threatened UK post office network arguing that in the current financial crisis, the Post Office's trusted brand could become the focal point for renewed confidence among savers and borrowers.

If the post office were to be decimated, as has been the likely upshot of current government policy, it would represent a hammer blow for hundreds of rural communities.  In suggesting, not only that they should be saved, but by coming up with a commercial rationale for saving them, Lord Mandelson might be doing both the government and the country a massive favour.

Don't cheer too loudly

I have a new piece over at Comment is Free this evening urging caution in the wake of Barack Obama's victory.  I certainly believe his success makes the world a better place, but the kind of progress which would make a real difference to the lives of millions of excluded and disposessed people worldwide, will take more than the election of one man, however remarkable.

Simon Schama, Magnus Pike and the typical blowhard

Alongside the obvious pleasure at Barack Obama's victory in this week's presidential election, there was much to smile at in the election coverage.  The sight of Jeremy Vine on the BBC struggling to get his touch screen controlled map of the United States to work properly will have brought pleasure to many people who, like me, spend hours cursing such devices for their inability to deliver a simple train ticket.

But the highlight of the last week has to be Simon Schama's pre-election rebuttal of a rather unpleasant American gentleman on Question Time from New York.  Against my better judgement I really rather like Schama, although as you can see from the clip, without his own production team to restrain his bizzare limb, and indeed whole body, movements, he is rapidly turning himself into a new Magnus Pike for the noughties.

The Possibility of Progress

The chances of creating a more just, inclusive, sustainable and human world are a little better after the victory of Barack Obama.  America is a country full of contradictions, but as Mike Tomasky - who now deserves a vacation as much as the cadidate himself - observes here, it could not have happened anywhere else.

When America has a good day, the rest of us can afford to celebrate the fact that the United States remains the world's only superpower.  I have my doubts about Obama: anyone who achieves his stunning level of success must necessarily have kept very quiet about any plans to change the world. But, for those of us who know how urgent the need for substantial, structural change is, an Obama White House provides a much better context in which to make our case.  As Tomasky concludes, it's been a good night.

Let's not get too excited

If, as now seems very likely, Barack Obama is elected to the Presidency today, it will be an historic moment.  But what it will mean for United States policy - both domestic and foreign - remains unclear.  The world moves very slowly, especially in respect of building a more inclusive and sustainable global society.

There's been little in his rhetoric to suggest Obama is a radical, and in any case, as veteran US commentator James Ridgeway points out, the realities of congressional inertia and the country's continuing dependence on foreign oil suggest that while the place might look very different to outsiders, it will take some considerable time before any real progressive gains are made.

What is wrong with these people?

Until the Labour Party expels people like the barbarian Andy Burnham, it will not have my vote.

Taking housing seriously?

Only hours after I concluded here that Labour's plans to address the housing crisis are dead in the water, Margaret Beckett, one of the party's most experienced former ministers has been handed the housing portfolio. Well, it has been a day of surprises. 

Beckett's predecessor, Caroline Flint, never quite recovered after suggesting that access to social housing should be conditional on tenants actively seeking work.  Her plans were derided by the Child Action Poverty Group as "insulting and stigmatising to people facing major barriers to employment".  Shelter said the proposals would only "add to the thousands already homeless."   After that her eight month tenure coincided with one of Gordon Brown's flagship policies falling off the political radar.

The new minister continues a now established tradition women being appointed to the housing portfolio. But compared with her recent predecessors, Hilary Armstrong, Yvette Cooper and Flint, she is by far the biggest political hitter to be handed the brief.  If this is a sign that a rapidly regenerating prime minister has remembered what his priorities are, then all well and good.

Beckett has proved herself an adept politician, performing rather better in a series of challenging roles rather than many of her colleagues.  She is certainly a survivor, and on the basis of today's news must still have an appetite for politics despite 34 years as an MP.

But will she be able to succeed where so many have failed, and make a difference to a housing crisis that has proved quite immune to a period of sustained economic growth, and which now seems bound to worsen under the toughest economic conditions in decades?

That depends on how much power she is given and how much influence she can exert.  I have never understood, given the fundamental importance of housing to people's well-being and to the wider economy, why it has been passed, repeatedly, from one department to another.  It's time the housing minister was given full cabinet rank.  That would be a sign that the government really is serious about tackling homelessness.

Yesterday the prime minister was rumoured to be putting together a standing committee of close advisers to tackle the financial crisis.  Equally necessary is a cobra-style committee to tackle social injustice.  If, as head as of a beefed-up Department of Housing and Homelessness Beckett were to chair such a committee, and it drew in education, employment, drug abuse, pensions, care of the elderly and parenting as well as having input into economic policy, then not only would Labour demonstrate to the electorate that it was returning to its principled roots in a meaningful way, it would also put pay to Tory efforts to paint themselves as the party of social justice.

Society's shame

I have a new piece at Comment is Free this morning.  This one looks at the ongoing housing crisis.  Once again the Guardian's standfirst sums it up very neatly:

Millions live in sub-standard housing. Labour hasn't delivered, the Tories are bereft of ideas and even the voters don't care.

Solving the banking crisis

I have a new piece on Comment is Free this morning looking at the banking crisis and its connection with the crazy way private banks are allowed to create money as debt simply to turn a profit.

Cityphilia

With impeccable timing, The London Review of Books has put John Lanchester's superb essay Cityphilia (originally published in January) back on its home page.  If you haven't read it, you should.  You're unlikley to find a better analysis of the origins of the current financial crisis, and its implications for wider society.

Broken Society

Playwright David Edgar has an excellent piece in today's Guardian in which he reminds us it is the Tory policies of the 1980s that are responsible for the current crisis and for many of today's social problems.  He argues that Cameron's new Tories should not be allowed to escape responsibility, even if new Labour could have done much more to repair the damage.

Financial meltdown

As someone who has been predicting the economic and financial chaos that we are now witnessing for a number of years, it's rather difficult to know what to say now it's finally upon us.

To be honest, I didn't think it would quite as catastrophic as it has turned out, although my gut feeling was always that as the financial markets became ever more complex and globally interdependent, then the inevitable crash could only get bigger.

It's fascinating to read a million and one commentators give their opinion.  Suddenly we are all experts on short-selling.  But all this attention to the detail and intricacies of the markets and the various instruments that have been devised solely to allow traders and fund managers to make more money for themselves and their wealthy clients should not distract us from the real problem: that a financial system that makes its central focus the generation of unearned wealth from speculative trading of shares and securities that has nothing to do with the real economy needs replacing with a system which supports the economy in a way that promotes the interests of all citizens and of wider society. 

Reform is not enough; we need to replace the system with one that works, and to do that we need a thorough reassessment of the underlying economic theory on which the whole fragile edifice is built.

Clare Short tells it like it is

Clare Short, whom I had the pleasure of meeting when she attended my book launch a couple of years ago, sums up perfectly the woes of the Labour Government in this piece in today's Independent.  She's absolutely right about what needs to happen, but, of course, it won't.

Sack David Miliband

Gordon Brown has, of course, made a complete fist of things since he became Prime Minister.  On almost every count he has proved a massive disappointment to anyone who believes in the possibility of progressive social change and a more just world.  But that's not why he's struggling so badly in the polls.

Brown's problem is his inability and/or unwillingness to communicate with the electorate and the media in the way politicians need to if they are to be successful; and his failure to recognise the power of the bold gesture in politics.

But he now has an opportunity to start the process of saving his Prime Ministership: he should sack David Miliband.  In terms of the qualities required to be elected Prime Minister, the only thing Miliband has in common with David Cameron in relative youth.  He has yet to say anything meaningful about his principles or beliefs, or about how he would tackle the many and serious problems facing British and global society.

Not only is he Cameron-lite, he is also Brown-lite; the difference is, we know Brown does have principles, and does have a vision for society; he just lacks the capacity to make these qualities work for him in the New Labour/New Tory world of politics bequeathed us by Tony Blair.

Before he became PM, people were looking forward to Brown finding a way to cut through the crap, and reinvent politics as a reality-connected activity in which what politicians think and say means something to ordinary people.  There is still time.  Come on Gordon, assert yourself.  You must have been as sickened as I was, yesterday, to see Miliband swaggering down the street, jacket over his shoulder, lapping up the media attention having declared himself PM in waiting.  Sack him today!

Oy Oy Oyster

It seems that London's automated travel payment system, Oyster, has today suffered another severe technical break down, resulting in thousands of commuters having to be waved through open barriers and thus gaining free travel.

Good for them, but this is the second time in a month that this has happened, although last time it was worse, with thousands of Londoners suffering data corruption on their oyster cards.

Now I might be wrong about this, but I don't remember this happening before.  The system was introduced by former mayor Ken Livingstone, who, untypically for a politician, clearly knew what it takes to get complex technology-driven systems up and running without too much fuss.

Is it a coincidence that the Oyster system has crashed only since Boris Johnson took over as mayor?  I'm not suggesting a Phd in systems engineering is a prerequisite to running London, but you do, at the very least, have to understand that you need the right people in the right jobs if a large and complex city like London is to run smoothly.

Ken this week announced his intention to run again in 2012.  Many more screw ups like this, and the people of London might just be happy to have him back.

None of them get it

Works and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, today attacks the Tories for misunderstanding the causes of poverty, and therefore having no chance of tackling it, if and when they form the next government.

I think he's right about the Tories, but his claims for his own party ring a little hollow after ten years in which the Labour government has set out to reinforce precisely those aspects of the economy which are guaranteed to encourage a growing gap between the haves and have-nots, and leave those at the very bottom with no hope of improvement.

I’m not sure politicians from any the main parties are genuinely interested in creating an economic context conducive to poverty reduction; if they were, they would surely take notice of the evidence that  putting all your economic policy eggs in the basket of economic growth doesn't lead to any reduction in poverty given the way the economy is currently configured.

Redistributing money from rich to poor was only ever a sticking-plaster on the open sore of endemic poverty. Only a redistribution of access to economic opportunities and the assets (land and capital) that make them viable, will bring an end to poverty. No politician, anywhere, is prepared to accept this simple truth.

After Henley

It was fascinating, after such a long break, to hear Tony Blair on the Today Programme this morning.  AS you will know I'm no great fan of his, but this morning he reminded us of the qualities a politician needs to survive. Qualities he was able to acquire in spade loads, while his successor, presumably, had his head buried in books.

Blair was typically diplomatic when pressed on what Gordon Brown should be doing to turn his fortunes around. He wasn’t going to be bounced into giving advice over the airwaves; though it's difficult to imagine quite what advice he could give, even in private.

He was at pains to point out that Brown is to some extent the victim of circumstance. If Blair had had to deal with Northern Rock, the credit crunch, record oil prices and the prospect of stagflation in his first year in charge, he too would have found his honeymoon rapidly curtailed. But he would also have made a better fist of persuading the electorate to trust him, and that things would turn out alright in the end. And, however unrealistic those assurances might have been, they would have satisfied enough people to stave off the kind of unprecedented electoral meltdown that Labour suffered at Henley last night.

And, of course, Blair could have sacked his chancellor. One of his cleverest tactics as PM was to spread the idea that he had little understanding of economics; and that it was therefore sensible to leave responsibility for the economy entirely in the hands of the man next door.

Blair’s grasp of economics may have been patchy, but I suspect he was at least aware of one enduring truth: that in economics, what goes around comes around. While Brown was boasting that he had achieved what none of his predecessors had managed, and cracked the secret of the boom-bust economic cycle – an idiotic claim that sections of the media and academia were grossly negligent in their failure to question – Blair kept his counsel.

As I wrote here just before Brown became prime minister, with his rather unbelievable apparent naivety of  economic realities, he spent most of his time at the Treasury setting himself up for a massive fall. Nonetheless, Blair is correct to suggest that his successor is to some extent a victim of circumstance. That circumstance is globalisation, or rather the way in which the process of economic globalisation has removed from politicians most of the traditional tools of economic policy. Their hands are now tied in ways that those of earlier generations of policy makers never were.

According to Blair, therefore, we should cut Brown some slack. But whenever politicians talk of the new global economic context it's as if that context has mysteriously emerged from undetectable cosmic dust particles, and been foisted upon governments while their backs were turned. Nothing could be further from the truth. This new and troublesome context is the direct result of a purposeful project that began with Reagan and Thatcher, and has been consolidated, largely by governments of the so-called centre-left, in the years since.

That process of consolidation continues each time a senior minister makes a speech calling on us to celebrate the growth in the number of millionaires. And it continues each time the former prime minister ask us to look kindly upon his struggling successor, while conveniently ignoring the fact that neither of them have ever seen fit to question any aspect of the economic revolution of the last three decades.

Brown is a poor politician; and while the electorate is unlikely to forgive him that, I can. What lost him my support was his failure to understand that a just society can never emerge until governments recognise the social consequences of the economic changes of the last three decades, and have the courage to strike out in a quite different direction.

A keynesian Cure?

As you will know if you've read any of the articles listed in the left hand column of this page, I am not a Keynesian.  That is to say I don't believe a return to the Keynes-inspired fiscal polices that served western society so well in the decades after 1945, could deliver social justice today.

Keynesianism is a pretty good method for dealing with the failure of an unregulated market economy - one which inherently favours the already wealthy  - to provide an equitable distribution of economic opportunities and resources.  But it is a sticking plaster; and for anyone committed to the principle of social justice, an admission of failure.  Advocating a Keynesian approach is to say, 'well we can't do anything about root causes or the structural failings that promote injustice, so let's just try to alleviate the worst symptoms without screwing up the economy too much'.

The question remains, however, that if no progress is being made in respect of root causes, is there a short-term, stop-gap role for Keynes-based policies?  Having read this piece by Austin Mitchell MP (old Labour) in Monday's Independent, I'm beginning to think there is.

As Mitchell says, the problem with private investment is that its biggest impact is asset inflation: making the things owned by people who hold assets (like land) worth more, while doing nothing to produce more of the goods, or create more of the economic opportunities, which are needed by people at the poorer end of society.

As Polly Toynbee reminds us in today's Guardian, for all the faults (and they are many and considerable) the Labour government does still seem keen to do something about child poverty.  And it can only get anywhere near its vaunted targets by following a more Keynesian agenda.

Of course it's no long-term substitute for tackling the crazy foundations of the current (un)free market economy: the private appropriation of economic rent, allowing privately owned banks to create money at will, and allowing surplus cash that should be used for much needed investment in trade and manufacturing to be used as casino chips on global financial markets.  But it's worth a second look.  Especially with the global economy poised on the brink of recession.  The usual argument against a return to Keynesianism is that it would spark massive and damaging capital flight.  But with economic conditions as they currently are, that capital would not find many welcoming destinations at present.

Surveillance society?

David Aaronovitch has this reasonably balanced piece on the arguments for and against a national DNA database in today's Times.

My gut instinct is to oppose such a database; I suspect the disbenefits would outweigh the advantages, and I'm not sure government, the police or any other public body are up to managing it effectively or cost-effectively.  At the same time, I struggle to fully identify with what Aaronovitch terms the 'intelligencia default position'  that we are 'sleepwalking into a surveillance society'.

As I wrote last year, my biggest concern about such initiatives is that by using technology to address the symptoms of deep social problems, rather than tackling the roots causes, the incentive to build a better society is steadily diminished.

There's currently a rather scary vision of what society might look like a few years hence on BBC1 each Sunday evening, in the thriller The Last Enemy, in which the government is trying to introduce a system called TIA (Total Information Awareness) which would enable the powers to be to track our every move. 

It's going to be a while before the technology makes this possible, and even when it does, I'm not sure how the state would fund the necessary investment.  Although if things continue as they are, and society and the economy continue to morph into a mechanism principally geared to the consolidation of minority wealth and privilege, then the state would presumably have no problem finding private backers for such an Orwellian scheme.

There are worrying problems of crime and insecurity facing society today, but would we not be better advised to examine and address the roots causes, rather than using technology to mitigate the symptoms.  The current BBC drama does not make for comfortable Sunday evening viewing.

Brazil: where economic growth is meaningless

There is probably no better example of the consequences of our failing and morally bankrupt economic system, and the way it has infected every corner of the planet, than Brazil, the most unequal country in the world.

When I visited back in 1994, I was struck not only by the physical beauty of the place, but, in cities like Rio de Janeiro, the visible sores of a society being torn apart by growing inequality.  By all reports, things have got markedly worse since I was there, with rocketing crime, desperate poverty and little hope for those who inhabit the favelas, some of which overlook the glitzy suburbs which are home to their more fortunate compatriots, from less than a mile away.

Brazil is the perfect example of how the standard measure of economic success (GDP growth) is pretty useless as a measure of positive changes in wellbeing across populations.  Brazil's economy has grown 3.4 per cent on average since the millennium, but few of the benefits have been felt in the hills around Rio.  The only growth areas in the favelas is drug related crime and murder.

Conor Foley touches on this issue in a piece over at comment is free, where he reviews the film Tropa de Elite, which, he suggests, has completely missed the point of what is going on in Brazil.  As he concludes:

Brazil's violence is a symptom for a wider set of social problems, for which Brazilians need to take responsibility. Most middle-class Brazilians have never set foot in a favela and talk about them as if they are another country. Films like Tropa de Elite are helping to keep them in denial.

The artist as leader

I have a piece at comment is free this morning, prompted by Daniel Barenboim's series of Beethoven sonata recitals in London, which conclude this afternoon.

A return to the old ways

Good to see Conor Foley back at comment is free with his opinions on the speech yesterday by David Miliband, Britain's Foreign Minister, who seemed to be saying that we should turn back the clock to a time when the world was run by an elite group of rich nations purely in their self interest.

Miliband's speech is a perfect example of the process of legitimisation through which dubious policies, like the invasion of Iraq, enacted without parliamentary consultation, and against the democratic will, are subject to a gradual process through which they are made to appear reasonable and proper.  The intention of this process, is, of course, to make it easier to get approval for similar interventions in the future.

It's surely no coincidence that Miliband's speech comes just at the point when the great experiment to create a global deregulated market economy is beginning to come apart at the seams.  That project, if the promises of its architects were to be believed, was to have created global prosperity and conditions in which perceptions of injustice within and between nations would diminish and democracy would flourish. 

It was never going to happen, and now the chickens are coming home to roost, Miliband and the unprincipled guardians of the Britain's Labour government, have no option but to push gently back in the direction of managing the world through quasi-imperial dictat.

At a time when the new Australia Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is sufficiently courageous to apologise publicly for the worst colonial excesses of his nation, and with the possbililty of an Obama White House within a year, how depressing that the Brits feel it necessary to ramp up the neo-con rhetoric.  Where is the vision, where are the values?

08:45 update: I've just read Simon Jenkins piece on this subject.  It's worth a read.

Time for prophets

Neal Lawson had a very honest piece on comment is free this morning, in which he came down unequivocally on the side of those who despair at the lost opportunity of a three-term Labour government, and the way new Labour has exchanged principles for power to no end other than re-election.

He quotes Lord Tebbitt who said recently:

These days, I find myself saying, 'Chaps, there are some things which should not be privatised'.

There is no chance whatsoever of new Labour changing course now.  They will have to lose the next election and be dragged back to the centre by a Conservative government (perhaps kept on the straight and narrow by the Lib-Dems).  We will then see if they have the guts and the soul to re-reinvent themselves as the party of social justice.  I'm not hopeful.

As Lawson concludes, and as I have written elsewhere recently, it's a time for prophets; but there's no sign of anything ressembling a prophet in the modern-day Labour party.

The continuing collapse of a once great culture

Edward Lucas of The Economist has a good piece in today's Guardian in which he concisely appraises the state of democarcy, society and the economy in Putin's Russia.

I'm glad he is able to find words to describe the magnitude of the catastrophe overtaking the Russian people because, quite frankly, I can't.  He begins,

Capitalism is amoral, verging on the immoral. What makes it tolerable is constraint and redress. Voters, consumers, shareholders, public officials, lawyers, legislators, journalists and pressure groups are counterweights to the ruthless and narrow pursuit of private profit. That doesn't work perfectly in the west, but it doesn't work at all in Vladimir Putin's Russia, where the fusion of political and economic power is complete.

He goes on to make the point that because the left has been targeting its ire on the Bush administration, and the global impact of its policies, it has taken its eye of the ball as far as Russia is concerned. 

At least the British government has taken a firm stand over the Litvinenko affair, but it will take a coordinated international effort to bring sufficient pressure to bear on the morally bankrupt regime in Moscow. 

It's very difficult to see a way forward.  A first step must be to ensure the next US administration is not encumbered by hawks for whom a strong and corrupt Russia provides a ready excuse for continuing with the outdated policies of the cold war.  Beyond that, let's hope large numbers of influential people get hold of Lucas's new book, which looks like an essential read.

Meacher fundamentals

Michael Meacher may be struggling to regain credibility having joined, a little too enthusiastically, in the 9/11 conspiracy theories a few years ago, but this week on comment is free, he reminded us what progressive politics is supposed to be about, and why the Labour party has lost all credibility in the minds of those who believe there's a proper role for government in creating the conditions from which a more just and inclusive society might emerge.

Meacher opens by saying that

as the position of the two main parties becomes increasingly intertwined and the differences between the Blair and Brown variations of neoliberalism become increasingly difficult to detect, the debate about the political fundamentals has dwindled almost to invisibility. Never was ideology more needed, and never was it more lacking.

While I disagree with him that we need a return to ideology, I do think the left/liberal/progressive movement (call it what you will) needs to focus on ideals, and have a debate about values.  Until more of us can agree about what is wrong with society (and the global economy) and how we got to this point, we will struggle to know what to do about it, and fail to come up with a viable strategy for change.

Meacher concludes by saying:

It will not be easy for any government to begin to move away from the privatisation, deregulation, unfettered market tenets of neoliberalism which have governed western political economy for the last three decades and to establish again a much more healthy relationship between the market and society. But the gathering international crisis, where money and power have so clearly over-reached themselves, offers a real chance. And re-inspiring the Labour project in the runup to the next election may leave little choice.

I'm afraid that particular task is quite beyond the capacity of the Labour Party in its current state, but the idea of establishing a more healthy relationship the market and society is one that should be taken up by all progressives, within and without the party system.

The capture of Keynesianism

Now I'm no Keynesian, although I do recognise the crucial role Keynesianism played, post-1945, in ensuring that the re-built western economies delivered full-employment to populations for which the experience of the 1930s was still painfully etched in the memory.  Rarely can the democratic will have been expressed so successfully through economic policy as it was in the 1950s and 1960s.

Quite different structural reforms are required today if the global economy is going to deliver on that same promise; it is a task beyond Keynes. 

Nonetheless, Thomas Palley has a thought-provoking piece over at comment is free right now, in which he describes how governments that are keen not be associated with Keynes' thinking, are happy to take up his policy prescriptions when it suits them, especially when the economy starts failing in precisely the 1930s kind of way that Keynes said it would if everything was left to the markets, and systemic deficiencies were not addressed.

While I don't fully agree with Palley's prescription, his analysis of what's been happening to the US economy is spot on:

The current US economic expansion looks like being the first ever in which median household income fails to recover its previous peak. Job growth has been tepid for much of the time, and the employment-to-population ratio has remained well below its previous peak. This dismal experience comes on top of three decades of wage stagnation, during which household income only grew because of longer working hours and having both household heads at work.

Changing health

As ever, an interesting piece from Michael Tomasky on the importance of the debate over health care in the battle for the Democratic nomination.  It sounds as if Clinton is gaining support by having a policy that can never be implemented, and Obama is losing support because it's just too difficult to explain to the electorate why the Clinton plan (mandatory insurance) is a non-starter. 

The comment below Tomasky's piece by Don Reynolds, who appears to know a thing or two about this, is at once the most enlightening and depressing thing I've read during during the campaign.  Reynolds says,

There are no politicians, including Hillary and Obama, that are able to stand up to the physicians, hospitals, nursing homes, and pharm corporations (and their lobbyists). The only one that honestly wanted to try was John Edwards and he is no longer in the race. (I doubt he would have met with any success either.)

The USA is clearly unable to deliver on the promise of universal health care, which puts it way down the league table in terms of social progress among the rich nations.  But this should send out warning signals to other countries about the problems to be faced over the coming decades, as science races ahead, the population gets older, and we find ourselves unable to fund the quality and quantity of health inputs we would like in an ideal world.

Not-so-super Tuesday

Well, it looks as if the nomination process for both Democrats and Republicans will rumble on a little longer, after yesterday's super-Tuesday primaries proved less conclusive than had been widely touted.

It's pleasing to see that Obama and Clinton have been making an effort to appear like members of the same party with very similar policies over the last couple of days, instead of tearing strips off each other at every opportunity.

Nobody seemed to rate Huckabee's chances of getting back into things yesterday, but his victories in several southern states mean I am happy to stick my earlier predictions for both tickets: Clinton/Obama and McCain/Huckabee.

New Labour, Old Tories

The most interesting, though hardly surprising, thing about the comments of new Housing Minister, Caroline Flint, on employment and social housing, is how much they remind one of the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher's leadership twenty or so years ago.

When Labour was elected to power in 1997, the least many of us hoped for was an end to the Norman Tebbitt inspired 'get on your bike and look for work' approach to the problem of poverty and economic exclusion.  But then new Labour has proved itself little different from Thatcher era conservatism in so many respects.

The arguments against making access to social housing dependent on employment have been well made before, and are so again today: By Adam Sampson of Shelter, here and (Wednesday morning update) by Lynsey Hanley, here.

Thankfully, presumably stunned by the negative press, Downing Street seems to be pulling back. Let's hope the dreadful Ms. Flint, who has only been in post two weeks, will be re-redeployed as quickly as possible.  She has already proved herself quite unworthy of the responsibilities of Housing Minister in a Labour government.

Keeping McCain out

In case you were thinking that, in the unlikely event of the Republican's retaining the White House in November, it wouldn't be so bad, because John McCain has to be an improvement on George W Bush, you should read this from Johann Hari:

... the truth is that McCain is the candidate we should most fear. Not only is he to the right of Bush on a whole range of subjects, he is also the Republican candidate most likely to dispense with Hillary or Barack.

Let's hope Super-Tuesday provides a clear winner for the Democractic nomination so the campaign proper can begin.  It would be catastrophic if an increasingly bitter primary campaign between the Democratic rivals dragged on, and so left the door open for the Republicans.  As Hari concludes,

It is a sign of how far to the right the Republican Party has drifted that [McCain's policies] are considered signs of liberalism, rather than basic humanity.

Stop stop and search

If you want to understand why cross-party calls for extending stop and search powers are wrong-headed, and why the policy won't reduce crime, you should read this excellent short piece by Deborah Orr over at the Independent's new Open House blog.

Public sector fat cats?

Council Tax up to pay Fat Cats £50,000 a year.  That's the headline on the front of today's Daily Express.  It's up in arms because there are now 30,000 middle managers in local government earning twice the national average wage.

It fails to mention why these people command such salaries.  It's because pay rates are largely determined by the labour market which applies as much to the non-profit and local government sectors as it does to the profit-seeking commercial sector.

The public sector puts a great deal of effort into working out how much to pay its staff in order to ensure it can attract people of sufficient calibre to manage large, complex organisations that have to deliver a multitude of services.  Salaries have to be paid at these levels because that's what people doing similar jobs in the private sector are earning.  Cut the salaries and the best people will leave.

Now, I'm sure there's a great deal of waste and inefficiency in local government, but much of the private sector is similarly troubled; consider the train operating companies, for example.

Express readers would no doubt argue that there's a difference, in as much as we are paying for public sector inefficiency through our taxes, but then we also underwrite private sector inefficiency via the prices we pay for the goods and services produced by private businesses.

It's certainly true that the salaries of middle managers in local government are much higher in relative terms than they once were, but the gap gap between the highest and lowest paid has been stretched as a result of private sector pay awards.

The poverty of American politics

It was probably inevitable that John Edwards would be forced out of the campaign for the Democratic nomination before Super-Tuesday.  But as this piece from The Nation points out, despite the media clamour around Clinton and Obama, he did manage to shine a light on the continuing poverty that blights American society, and has vowed to continue his struggle.

That the richest country in history is unable to address endemic poverty is not just a symptom of a dysfunctional democracy, it proves beyond doubt that the economy is unable to deliver basic rights to millions in America and elsewhere.

Let's hope that under the next (hopefully Democratic) administration Edwards is able to further raise his profile (perhaps as Vice-President?) and continue putting his message across.

When the truth counts for nothing

This piece in The Nation is rather depressing.  It points out that Bill Clinton's recent attacks on Barack Obama seem to be having the desired effect of increasing overall support for his wife's candidacy.

What's depressing is not that the former President's assertions appear rather short on factual accuracy (that's par for the course), but that Hillary's campaign has calculated that the bad publicity arising from the use of such smear tactics is likely to have a positive impact electorally. 

I'm still unsure about who to support, although this story pushes me a little closer to Obama.

Although I reckon (the) Clinton('s) will be more effective in power; if he can pull it off, an Obama White House could provide a launch pad for a new and radical era in US and therefore global politics.

That said, as I have argued elsewhere, this is more evidence that democracy is still very much in its infancy.

Last of the radicals

A very good piece in Saturday's Guardian by Martin Kettle, lamenting the passing of Peter Hain from the government.  Kettle reminds us that, whatever you may have thought of his permanent sun-tan, there was something different about Hain.  He was pretty much the last survivor of a quite different political era.  A time when politics offered hope, and exhibited rather more ambition than it does today.

Kettle goes on to say,

He regularly managed to get the message out that he believed in more redistribution, that trade unions were important, that the voting system should be reformed, that civil liberties should not be dismantled and that Britain's place was in Europe. You can say he did not do any of this effectively enough, or that he should have opposed the Iraq war - or even that he was wrong. But you cannot say that Hain was just a technocrat.

Well worth a read.

Hague at his hilarious best

Let's start the week on a light note, courtesy of the oratorical skill of William Hague.

America's choices

With the presidential primaries entering a crucial phase (super Tuesday is now less than a fortnight away), the New York Times has published it's endorsements.  And they're worth a read.

It's supporting Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, largely on the basis of her experience and the fact that she's demonstrated a willingness to learn from her mistakes.  And because the new President will need to hit the ground running, and Clinton would seem more able in that respect.

As it points out, there is little difference between Clinton and Obama on policy issues, both  ...

.... promise an end to the war in Iraq, more equitable taxation, more effective government spending, more concern for social issues, a restoration of civil liberties and an end to the politics of division of George W. Bush and Karl Rove.

If either of them make it to the White House and are able to make serious progress in respect of any of these aims, there will be much cause for celebration, both in the States and around the world.  Encouragingly Americans seem ready for change.

The Times doesn't mention the possibility of a dream ticket, with Obama as Clinton's running mate, but it does urge an end to the current feuding.  I don't think the recent spats between the two campaigns preclude such a partnership, assuming Mrs Clinton does take a clear lead.  It's inevitable when politics is driven by the media and voters are encouraged to make up their minds on the basis of candidates' gladiatorial qualities, that things will get nasty.

As for the Republicans: while unable to get too excited, the paper goes for John McCain as the best of a bad bunch.  McCain at least has some integrity, and while not the moderate he would make himself out to be, his would be a clear improvement on the Bush administration.

Rudolph Giuliani, who despite not having yet properly entered the campaign remains in contention, gets very short shrift.  Despite his initially positive record as Mayor of New York,

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

I didn't like him the first time I set eyes on him!

My prediction:  Clinton/Obama versus McCain/Huckabee, with a comfortable win for the Democrats, but no landslide.

A Minsky moment?

Martin Wolf has an excellent analysis of the probable causes of the current turmoil in the financial markets in his FT column this week.  Was George Magnus right, he asks, to argue that we are facing a Minsky moment, with

a collapse of debt structures and entities in the wake of asset price decay, the breakdown of ‘normal’ banking functions and the active intervention of central banks?

Wolf argues that there are several contributory factors to the current crisis and people will pick the one, or combination, which suits their perception of how the economy works.  But I was particularly interested by this:

a still less orthodox view is that man-made (fiat) money is inherently unstable. All will then be solved when, as Mr Greenspan himself believed, the world goes back on to gold. Human beings must, like Odysseus, be chained to the mast of gold if they are to avoid repeated monetary shipwrecks.

I think that the system of money creation upon which the economy rests is seriously implicated in the failure of markets and regulatory authorities to avoid the manic peaks and and depressing troughs that have plagued economies since the industrial revolution.  Certainly there are other contributing factors, but these arise largely as a consequence of the way we allow private banking interests to create money at will, with the result that the exchange value represented by the total money supply has little to do with the quantity of wealth and wellbeing created through economic (and social) activity.

This argument is dealt with very well in Michael Rowbotham's excellent book: Grip of Death, and it is a theme I will explore in detail in my next book.

As for whether the Fed's dramatic decision to slash interest rates will have the desired effect, I'm with Larry Elliott who says today:

... make no mistake, the policy of slashing rates to rescue big finance is both flawed and fraught with risk. The big flaw in the cheap money approach is that it was too much cheap money that got the US (and Britain, for that matter) into difficulties in the first place. If the policy response to the collapse of one bubble is to blow up another one, then that's an indication of intellectual bankruptcy.

Over at the Times, Anatole Kaletsky is more sanguine, although even he argues that some good old-fashioned fiscal intervention by governments will be necessary in order to make the Fed's monetary prescription effective.

As he concludes, it is impossible to say for certain yet what will happen.  But one thing we do know for sure:  a great deal of pain will be felt by many people.  And, as ever, it will be the worst off that suffer most.  Contraction in the job market, higher consumer prices and an increase in mortgage repossessions will hit millions of people, and there will also be a major impact on the public finances: quite how Gordon Brown is going to fund his pledge to build three million new homes after this, I'm not sure.

Only when there's a much more widespread appreciation of the flaws inherent in the modern financial system, will it be possible to create conditions in which the majority will enjoy real economic security.

My first political hero

The news of Peter Hain's resignation from the cabinet this afternoon got me thinking of the time, more than 30 years ago, when he was framed, allegedly by the South-African security services, for a bank robbery of which he was innocent.

Back in 1976 I was in my first year at Exmouth Comprehensive, and have a very clear memory of writing an essay about Hain's acquittal in Miss Revill's English class.  My story, set some time in the early years of the twenty-first century, saw Hain entering No 10 as Prime Minister.

When he ran for deputy leader of the Labour party last year, I thought for a short while that my pre-adolescent prediction might come true.  Now it seems that Hain's ambition has done for him once and for all.

Fit for leadership, Prime Minister?

Talking of the demise of New Labour, I was today reminded of this recent post by Tim Luckhurst at comment is free about the fitness for purpose of Gordon Brown.  Luckhurst knows his stuff and I've no reason to doubt anything he says.  But it's a pretty damning critique, and, if it's accurate, rather revealing for those who, like your loyal correspondent, had tentatively looked forward to a new dawn when Tony Blair handed over the keys to No. 10.  Here's a taster:

He is a clan chief. It was why Robin Cook disliked him. Cook, Labour's true lost leader, saw in Brown characteristics he also deprecated in John Smith and Donald Dewar. Schooled in the cynicism of Labour's Scottish executive committee, they all played the squalid game of keeping power inside the family and allocating jobs to clansmen.

Perhaps I should have known better, or perhaps Mr Brown is due a renaissance.

Call this government?

Alice Miles has a brilliant piece in The Times this morning,  Ostensibly an attack on the poorly thought through plans to reintroduce cookery lessons in schools, she ends up illustrating how feeble media-driven government in the UK has become.  It's almost unbelievable:

And so it was that I turned on the television yesterday to see the Prime Minister's special farewell to Konnie Huq, the children's television presenter. Yes, the Prime Minister. In between his world tour and not appearing in the House of Commons while his Chancellor announced the effective nationalisation of a bank, Gordon Brown made a little film to commemorate the retirement of a Blue Peter presenter.

The Prime Minister appeared after Basil Brush, who is a stuffed fox, and a couple of comedians. “Thanks for everything you've done,” Mr Brown said to Ms Huq, with that strange television smile of his. “You've done brilliantly. Thank you.”

I still can't get my head round the idea of David Cameron in No 10 (and I struggle to see how it will be any better) but New Labour's time is surely up.

(Afterthought: Surely even Times readers know that Basil Brush is a stuffed fox?)

Change the world

Comment is free is running a series under the banner Change the world following last weekend's Fabian Society conference on the same theme.

I guess one shouldn't expect too much with the Miliband brothers so centrally involved, but there is little sign in the conference programme of any debate about the causal links between an economy which fails so many and the political reactions of players on both sides of the growing cultural divide, nor as yet in the pieces on CiF.  I shall be watching with interest, and will wade into the debate if time permits.

When the rich pay no taxes

If you think George W. Bush has been bad for America, take a look at this piece by Paul A. Moore over at Counterpunch.  Moore describes the way the president's brother, Jeb Bush, has used his time as Governor of Florida as to destroy the traditional, mildly progressive, tax structure in the state and replace it with a system by which the poorest are forced to underwrite the totally irresponsible investment decisions of a few powerful politicians and wealthy business people (well, businessmen actually), who run the state.

As Moore writes:

.... Bush tried to privatize all things profitable and make the people assume all risk associated with investment.

And it seems that he pretty well succeeded.  The only consolation is that just as America's sensible term limits have now forced the ex-Florida Governor from office, so the constitution will later this year see his brother leave the White House.  It's hard to imagine how future historians will view this short, disastrous, episode in the country's history.

What is the Treasury for?

I have a new piece over at Comment is Free prompted by this morning's article in The Times by Peter Riddell in which he argued that the Treasury should stick to economics and lay off social policy, as if there were no link between the two.

Ending educational apartheid

On the day the government proposed a below inflation pay increase for teachers in the state sector, Anthony Seldon, as far as I am aware the only educationalist in this country with any vision, has the text of a stimulating speech reproduced in today's Independent.  The debate over the future of education in the UK has barely begun.

Living daylight

Conservative MP Tim Yeo makes a strong case on Comment is Free for his private members bill to pilot a new daylight savings scheme in the UK.  Although the thought of it not getting light until 9 o'clock on cold winter mornings is pretty ghastly, his argument is persuasive and I think it an excellent idea.  I shall be urging my MP to vote in favour, and you can too.