"And yet it moves ..."

While playing with digital boxes last night I caught a few minutes about Galileo on BBC2. From time to time in recent years I’ve noted parallels between contemporary events and historical periods – the development of the internet and the conquest of the ‘New World’ as a few explorers are quickly followed by voracious commercial interests determined to carve out territory to exploit for gain; the emergence of the new international super-rich who have amassed wealth and power equivalent to the great emperors of the past – and it strikes me that the stranglehold of neo-liberal economic dogma on our contemporary world is not unlike the stranglehold of the Catholic Church on matters of cosmology in Galileo’s time.

The orthodoxy of the sixteenth century was that the Earth was the centre of the universe and the sun and all the planets and stars moved round it. When Galileo’s observations and calculations proved otherwise, he had the Inquisition on his back and was forced to recant. (The Inquisition was a bit like a combination of the best of our contemporary spin doctors with the best of our torturers.) The orthodoxy of our own time is that ‘the markets’ (no capital letter yet, but watch this space) determine what everything is worth, from the gold ring on your finger to entire countries like Greece. Dare to put your head above the parapet and suggest otherwise and you are either ignored (Ken Loach on one of the TV political slots the other day), ridiculed (George Galloway on Celebrity Big Brother) or vilified (workers demonstrating on the streets of Athens to save their jobs). So, staying with Greece for a moment, we are presented with the bizarre prospect that an edict from the “credit rating agency” Standard and Poor’s (excuse me? who elected them?) that Greece’s debts are now “junk”, as a result of which stock markets around the world go into a nose dive, speculators make small fortunes and politicians look round anxiously to see who might be next in line: Portugal? Spain? UK plc?

This has a striking resemblance to the domino theory, an idea dreamed up by US strategists in the 1960s to justify their attempts to wipe out the hugely popular insurgents in Vietnam who were trying to rid their country of the last vestiges of Western colonialism: it was all part of the advance of communism and if one country succumbed, others would soon follow. Now it’s not the advance of communism that we have to fear, but the judgement of ‘the markets’: jobs have to go, services have to be cut, wages frozen, otherwise we’ll be next and in no time the country will be in ruins! Drink up your fiscal medicine and realise it’s doing you good!

What utter bullshit! Yes, there are markets, (just as there are communists, and of course the two are not unrelated), but they are not supra-human entities and they are not beyond the control of global citizens with sufficient understanding and determination to make them serve collective need, as opposed to individual and corporate greed. To most people this is self-evident, yet despite the banking meltdown, national bankruptcies, fraudsters and gangsters in the highest offices, the neo-liberal dogma is rarely questioned in our public conversations.

We need our Galileo, I hear you say. Well, actually, he’s been around for quite a while: the name’s Marx, Karl Marx. Perhaps it’s time a few more of us checked out what he really had to say.

Lib Dem surge?

When Jeanette Winterson said on Newsnight last night that she thought the LibDems would win an outright majority, I let out a spontaneous cheer … but I’m not supporting them. I cheered because here at last was someone both intelligent and in touch who was saying what none of the professional pundits are prepared to say – the slightly embarrassed, slightly incredulous response from Paxman said it all. Although I think the chances are lower now than they were immediately after the first TV debate, I still believe Winterson could be right and I said so at the time. If it were to happen, I’d be delighted. It would be a result I would prefer to any other, yet I’m still not supporting the Lib Dems or intending to vote for them in my constituency.

I come from a politicised family. As a lad of 15 in the 1964 general election, while my dad was running the local Tory campaign as chair of the local association, I was bunking off school to deliver leaflets for Labour. I’ve always liked to think I did my bit to get Harold Wilson elected, and of course it’s been disillusion all the way since then: support for US butchery in Vietnam, Callaghan through unbelievable complacency allowing Thatcher to romp to power in ’79, then the hijacking and emasculation of the Labour Party under the Blair/Brown project. I’ve lost count of the number of times during the last ten years when I’ve said categorically that I’ll never vote Labour again; one of the most recent was after reading about the way the party hierarchy have been ‘parachuting’ candidates into local constituencies, reflecting factional favouritisms and divisions in the leadership while cynically ignoring the views of the local party activists. This is not a party one can trust for renewal; it is tribal, it is inward-looking and it is definitely past its sell-by date. This is a hard truth to face, especially for those on the left of the party who have hung in there all their political lives, doggedly working away in the hope of bringing the party back to its roots and repossession of its soul; but I’m sorry, guys, it ain’t going to happen, not now, not ever. As for the Tories, I had to go to school with the likes of Cameron and his boy-band and I know from first hand experience what they’re like. Even when they’re at their most earnest you realise that fundamentally it’s just a game to them: they can always fall back on their wealth, their inbred belief in their own decency, and there’s a level of experience and understanding that’s completely missing. And with this particular bunch, they’re so underwhelming in their levels of intelligence and competence that one fears deeply for one’s fellow citizens should they indeed end up in government. But I’m still not supporting the Lib Dems. Of course Clegg is a breath of fresh air, and Cable does seem to know and believe what he’s talking about. Yes, their policies are and always have been more green than the other two, and their politics more grassroots and activist. And, despite the attempted smears of the other two parties, their policies are coherent and they are perfectly capable of government…

But they’re still part of the mainstream, old politics. If they do well enough this time, presumably they will be able to bring in electoral reform and a slightly fairer tax system, but let’s be honest, we’re talking moderate adjustments to the status quo at the very most. There’s no way they’ll embark on the sort of truly radical agenda that would begin to seriously address the problems that have been building steadily in the UK since the war. Some argue it’s already too late for that and that we face a painful future of further decline, deterioration and fragmentation. It could well be. But this election is indeed different to any I’ve lived through, and it could be a tipping point to a major shake-up and realignment that will eventually allow access to power of genuinely alternative voices. I see a beacon to a possible future in Salma Yaqoob’s campaign for Respect in Hall Green. I’d certainly be supporting her if I lived there. But I don’t, and in my constituency it was a two way fight between Labour and Conservative, now, under the Clegg phenomenon, presumably more of a three way fight. The maths is clear, especially when you throw in Independents, Greens, BNP et al.: in this particular case, a vote for the Lib Dems will almost certainly give the seat to the Tories. I shall not decide till the last minute; if there is another surge, as Winterson proposes, that looks likely to bring the Lib Dems to power, I’d go for it, but if, as now seems more likely, it stays as a three-way split, I shall swallow my words again, and very reluctantly vote Labour. Keeping Cameron out has to be the number one priority. So in this particular election in this particular constituency I shall be supporting the Greens and Respect, rooting for the Lib Dems and voting Labour.

Election 2010

David Cameron's attempt to blame Gordon Brown for the record deficit is fundamentally dishonest. Why? Remember back in the autumn of 2007 when Brown backed off from calling a snap election? Suppose he had called that election, and lost, David Cameron becoming Prime Minister. Would David Cameron being Prime Minister in the UK have made any difference to the financial meltdown that occurred a year later? Yes ...... I beg your pardon! How? Don't forget at the time he and his friends in the financial industry were arguing for less regulation of the banks, not more, and it was his party, under Margaret Thatcher, who deregulated the financial industry, allowing all the mergers and international takeovers in the name of "free markets". No ...... OK, so when the crisis came, do you think David Cameron would have been able to respond with the speed, overarching understanding and international clout that Gordon Brown was able to muster? Yes .... You're obviously a Tory tribalist! I challenge you to find a single serious commentator or political/economic historian who agrees with you. No .... Nobody can be sure what might have happened if the international response which Brown led had taken longer or been less decisive. There can be little doubt we in the UK would have been in a far weaker economic state than we are now. Would David Cameron have bailed out the banks? No .... Well he didn't object at the time. In the heat of the crisis both the opposition parties were supporting the action the government was taking, agreeing that it was necessary to prevent an even worse scenario. Yes .... So how would he have funded the bail-out, if not through increased borrowing? Perhaps all his millionaire friends would have dug deep into their pockets? When the extent of the banks' bad debts became clear and the City establishment started to get jittery about the scale of refinancing required, would David Cameron have kept his nerve and insisted on the appropriate level of recapitalisation? No .... then he would almost certainly have done too little too late, the crisis would have deepened and the recovery which now at last seems to be happening would still be a long way off. Yes .... OK; I don't believe he would, but if he did, then he would have to borrow to find the cash, and the deficit created by that borrowing would be exactly as it is now. Conclusion: the record deficit is a "lesser of two evils" and was the right choice of strategy. It is a necessary cost of securing recovery and we should be thankful we had a serving Prime Minister with the acumen and courage to implement it. Brown deserves praise, not blame. In his heart of hearts, I'm sure Cameron recognises this, but in his desperation to seize power he ignores it, instead trying to exploit the sheer size of the deficit in a gross simplification of the economic context. I think this is fundamentally dishonest. I rest my case.