Manifesto Focus: Labour

  The election is now less than three weeks away, and the campaign is beginning to hot up. Over the last few days, the political parties have been releasing their election manifestos - the documents which contain their proposals for government should they find themselves in power after May 7th.

  One thing to bear in mind is that - the way the polls are going - parliament will almost certainly be hung, meaning no one political party will hold a majority of the seats. This means that either another coalition or some kind of vote-by-vote deal between parties is highly likely. In these circumstances, the party manifestos should be treated with caution - there will have to be compromises.

  However, the manifestos still offer the best guide to what you can expect from the politicians in the aftermath of the general election, and they will form the basis of any negotiations. So, let's take a look at the damage, starting with the Labour Party:

Financial Policy

• Labour's key financial pledge is to reduce the deficit every year, with the aim of running a surplus by the end of this parliament. The OBR projects this will be achieved by 2018-19
• Income Tax will see significant reform, with the top rate (payable on income over £150,000) rising to its pre-2010 level of 50%. There will also be a new lower rate of 10% for people on very low incomes
• VAT and National Insurance will not change
• The non-domiciled tax status and the Conservatives' Marriage Tax Allowance will both be scrapped, bringing in between £1.5 and £4 billion
• The party has also pledged to tackle the problem of tax avoidance - but then, everybody always does

Employment and Business

• The minimum wage will be increased to £8 an hour by October 2019. The party will also encourage the payment of the living wage (currently £7.85) by offering tax rebates to companies which do
• Labour's Compulsory Jobs Guarantee means that anyone out of work for over two years (one year if you're under 25) will be offered a job which they have to take, or lose their unemployment benefit
• Labour have tried to portray themselves as the party of small business by pledging to cut and freeze business rates on over 1.5 million small business properties. They will be keeping corporation tax at its present rate, however, which does not reflect as it used to the difference between small and large companies
• The Coalition's system of employment tribunal fees will be scrapped

Social Security

• Labour will retain the  per-household benefits cap (£500 a week for couples or single parents, £350 for everyone else) and supports the 'principle' behind Iain Duncan Smith's Universal Credit scheme, though they have said they will pause the roll-out of this controversial policy and review it
• Child benefit rises will also be capped for two years
• Pensioners will retain the protection of the 'triple-lock' (which means pensions increase in line with prices, wages or 2.5%, whichever is higher) but the richest 5% will lose their Winter Fuel Allowance

Health

• The key Labour health policy is the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act, which has proven unpopular with NHS staff
• The party has also pledged to reorganise physical and mental healthcare, as well as social care, into a single coherent system 'focusing on the individual'. This is a common theme of all the major parties' plans
• Labour is also planning on a recruitment drive, and a big one: 8,000 new GPs, 20,000 nurses, 3,000 midwives and 5,000 home care workers
• Everyone will be able to see their GP in under 48 hours, with a target of less than 24 for those who need it
• They also plan to set up a Cancer Treatment Fund, to get waiting times for tests down below a week and provide drugs more cheaply

Education

• The party has pledged to cut university tuition fees to £6,000 in an attempt to snag the student vote that the Liberal Democrats abandoned with the breaking of their own promise on fees
• Labour has also put a welcome focus on technical education, with guaranteed apprenticeships and the introduction of new Technical Degrees, identified as a priority for future university funding. They will have to do more than just increase supply to improve the UK's failing technical education system, however
• The free schools programme is to be ended (though, to be clear, free schools already in the pipeline will still be built) but no change on academies has been mentioned
• English and maths is to be taught to all students up until the age of 18, in a somewhat surprising move which ignores the fact that deficiencies in these subjects are rooted in very early education

Immigration

• Labour will match the Tories is preventing immigrants from accessing benefits until they have worked in the UK for two years
• They will also ensure that all frontline staff in public services speak English
• Illegal immigration will be tackled by hiring an extra 1,000 border staff and introducing exit checks to count people in and out of the country

Crime and Justice

• The main Labour pledge on crime is to tackle domestic and sexual violence towards women and children. Other than a new Child Protection Unit, however, they don't really have any detail on how they will achieve this
• They have promised to scrap the Tories' Police and Crime Commissioners - not that anyone really paid much attention to them in the first place
• They have also said they will 'strengthen the law on disability, homophobic and transphobic hate crime' - but again, detail is lacking
• There is a pledge to ban the sale of legal highs as well, but this will be difficult since new ones are being invented all the time

Housing

• The key promise here is to build 200,000 homes a year by 2020 - although be careful; that means they could build no homes at all each year from now until 2019, then 200,000 in 2020 and claim they met the target. Watch the numbers
• Labour will legislate to ensure a minimum three-year security of tenure for private tenants and to prevent letting agencies from charging tenants fees (as they already charge them to landlords, this is essentially double-profiteering)
• Under Labour plans, Local Authorities will also have the power to forcibly purchase land if developers do not build on it quickly enough (the timeframe here is unclear)

Constitutional Reform

• The main devolution pledge is to fulfill the Smith Commission suggestions for Scotland and to give Wales parity with Scottish powers
• The party also plans to call a 'Constitutional Convention' to discuss replacing the House of Lords with an elected Senate, among other things. Expect this to take a LONG time to report
• The other main promise is to repeal the Lobbying Act, the so-called 'gagging law' which restricts the ability of charities to campaign against government policies

Foreign Policy and Defence

• The keystone of Labour foreign policy is to retain Britain's nuclear deterrent and remain part of the EU  - i.e. no change
• The party supports the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but there is little sense of how best they would approach such an aim in government
• They will also create special envoys for Religious Freedom and LGBT Rights

Energy, Transport and the Environment

• The party has promised to continue with the HS2 project, but continues to prevaricate over how to deal with London's pressing need for extra airport capacity
• The old promise of a two-year freeze to energy bills has stayed with us; Labour also plan to forcibly separate the generation and supply arms of the 'Big Six' energy companies
• Under Labour plans, public operators would be able to bid for rail franchises, but there is no hint of wholesale renationalisation
• The UK's electricity supply is to be carbon-free by 2030 - an ambitious target

                                               (read the entire manifesto here)

Leaders Debate Brings Hope For Progressive Politics

  The leaders' debate on Thursday was a vital opportunity for those with progressive politics to gain some traction in the mainstream of political discourse. With the three establishment parties and UKIP joined by the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, those of us on the left had something remarkably close to parity with the right. This is something which does not occur very often.

The party leaders on stage in Salford

  Although the polls conducted in the aftermath of the debate show a mixed picture, what is clear from the two-hour clash is that the three women put forward a remarkably distinct vision of Britain's future from the austere narrative of three Westminster parties and the UKIP-driven, isolationist dream of a UK cut off from the rest of the world.

  All three attacked the Lib-Lab-Con austerity programme, pointing out that Ed Miliband talks 'the language of anti-austerity' but in fact has supported many of the measures that the Coalition have implemented which have cut into the economy and our public services. Sturgeon in particular was impressive - something which I did not expect to find myself saying - laying out plans to increase spending over the next few years, which would reduce the deficit at a slower rate but which would help to stimulate demand in the economy, rather than the devastation of massive further cuts.

  Bennett, too, made a hugely important point when she put forward the case for long-term investment. Just because a project cuts a little into the balance sheet now, does not make it not worth doing if it will bring huge benefits for the future - something which many of today's politicians and journalists seem to have forgotten.

  Leanne Wood - despite her slightly, ah, wooden performance - should be applauded for facing down the anti-immigration vitriol of Nigel Farage and defending immigration as something which brings a boost to our economy and immeasurable benefits to our country in terms of cultural diversity. That the leaders of the establishment parties have bought in to Farage's fearmongering on immigration is deplorable, and the Plaid leader was right to speak out.

  Most importantly, though, the leaders of these three left-of-centre parties have injected an intangible but vastly important concept back into political discourse: that politics should be about making life better for people, not just about money and power. If GDP growth slows a little or the deficit takes a year or two longer to pay off, but public services are more easily available and the standard of living for ordinary people goes up, that that is a trade-off worth making. The obsession with unsustainable profiteering which has infected mainstream politics has finally been challenged, in front of a 7.7 million-strong audience.

  Even if the results of Thursday's debate are not felt in time for May the 7th, it is my hope that this will be a watershed moment in British politics. As we move into an era of multi-party elections and co-operative politics, hopefully the rampant individualism of the last thirty-five years will start to fade.   

Speaker John Bercow Survives Cowardly Tory Plot to Unseat Him

  The Tories' cowardly attempt to bring down Speaker John Bercow has failed. The last-minute vote in the House of Commons today saw the government defeated by 2228 votes to 202 on a motion to make the process of voting in the Speaker of the House a secret ballot. This, despite being an apparent blow for democracy, is actually a very good thing.

Speaker John Bercow

  The election of the Speaker takes place at the beginning of each Parliament. Usually, if the sitting Speaker does not choose to step down and holds their Commons seat (which they always do, as they traditionally run unopposed by any major party) then they are re-elected as a matter of form. It is theoretically possible, however, that they could be voted out of office.

  Bercow, a former Conservative MP, has been one of the most progressive voices in terms of the conduct of Parliament, eschewing the traditional robes of his office in favour of a simple gown and frequently taking MPs to task for poor behaviour in the House. He has introduced a creche to Parliament to take the pressure off of those MPs who are parents - particularly mothers; he helped drive the creation of the Backbench Business Committee in 2010; and he has called for reform to the undignified, often appalling spectacle of PMQs - only to be blocked by the Tory backbenches. He is also a determined promoter of political participation to young people, appearing at numerous events. 

  The Conservative Party, however, don't like him - they look upon him as a traitor, who has abandoned his early right-wing views for a more socially liberal stance. They claim he is biased against the government, and would like to see him brought down. However, many are unwilling to vote against him in the division chambers, for fear of reprisals if they fail.

  I am instinctively torn on this issue. My instinct is that Parliament should move towards using secret ballots - not only would this allow the system to be made electronic, and thus save huge amounts of parliamentary time, it would also break the power of the whips and stop party leaderships from bullying their MPs into voting through legislation against their consciences. But to introduce it specifically for Speaker elections, and for no other votes, is both ludicrous and clearly politically motivated.

Charles Walker MP

  Moreover, the way this entire affair has been conducted is shambolic. Charles Walker MP, who chairs the Parliament's Procedure Committee, gave a speech declaring that he had been 'played like a fool' - the law had been based on a report he had given in the last Parliament, but had been ignored until today. He and many other senior parliamentarians had only been informed of the vote's imminence at the last minute. Michael Gove, the government Chief Whip, faced calls from the press gallery to resign after the debacle, having ordered a whipped party meeting before the vote.

  Speaker John Bercow has been fantastic for Parliament, and the cowardly attempt to unseat him reflects poorly on William Hague - who brought the bill - Gove and the entire Tory Party. Another disgrace to add to the list.

The Debates Debate

  The leaders' debates were an innovative feature of the 2010 General Election, giving the people of the UK the chance to see the principal contenders for their electoral affection go toe-to-toe over the major issues of the day. So far in 2015, however, they have proved an innovative way for the Conservative Party to waste everyone's time.

The History of TV Debates

  The original three debates, featuring Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, took place over a three-week period in the run-up to the election on the 6th of May. The televised verbal duel between the main contenders have been a feature of US Presidential elections for years, but - despite the efforts of previous party leaders to get them introduced since 1964 - they have not been historically used in Britain.

  The main objection to this head-to-head style of pre-election politicking is that it was suited only to a Presidential style of political leadership, which is not the way we do things in Britain. At a General Election, after all, we vote for individual MPs, not for a political party and certainly not for a party leader. In theory.
  
  The reality, of course, is that UK politics has become ever more Presidential over time, with the election and ten-year premiership of Tony Blair - the most President-like leader Britain has ever had in peacetime - sealing its fate. We vote, at election time, in most cases for the party we most identify with rather than the individual candidate that we best like. 

  So, the debates were introduced - at the insistence, mainly, of opposition leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Now, however, Cameron is trying to get out of them. Recognising that the old argument wasn't going to wash in light of his own support of the debates just five years ago, he has turned instead to a plethora of others.

Proposals

  The original proposal for the 2015 pre-election debates - all the way back in October - was for a debate between Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband, a second debate also including Nick Clegg, and a third also including UKIP boss Nigel Farage. However, several smaller parties contested this decision - in particular the Green Party, who argued that they were performing on a level more or less equal to the Lib Dems in the polls.

  This began a long saga of political tussling over how exactly the debates should be held. The broadcasters initially rejected the Greens' demand for inclusion, prompting legal action. Cameron then declared he would not take part without the Greens. Miliband, Farage and Clegg wrote letters to the PM demanding he meet their challenge, but Cameron refused to budge.

  In January, the broadcasters announced revised plans: One head-to-head between Cameron and Miliband and two seven-way debates also including Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood. These plans were then confirmed on the 23rd of February, with the first seven-way to take place on the 2nd of April, the second on the 16th, and the head-to-head on the 30th of April - just a week before the election.

Political Quibbling and David Cameron's Cowardice

  These plans weren't perfect. The DUP and SInn Fein - the two principal Northern Irish parties - both complained that if the SNP and Plaid were involved, they should be too. George Galloway, the single MP for the Respect Party, made a similar argument - if the Greens were to take part, with just one MP, then his party ought to have a chance to speak too. These points are both valid criticisms.

  To my mind, the correct solution would be to have a debate between the leaders of all the parties standing nationally (Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP and the Greens) and then separate debates featuring the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish leaders of those parties along with the nationalists. The head-to-head between Cameron and Miliband, as the only two realistic candidates for Prime Minister, also should go ahead. But this is really a side issue.

  Whatever the form of the debates, the main thing is that they should happen. In a system where the policies of political parties, and increasingly the calibre of their leaders, is important to how people cast their votes, we need to be able to see the people clamouring for our support make clear unambiguous statements of their views and then defend them. As David Cameron said back in 2010, they are essential for our democracy. And yet, he has proven the greatest block on them occurring of all.

  His latest objection is that the debates ought not to take place too close to the election, and therefore there isn't time any longer to stage the three debates which have been planned. The fact that the main reason that there is no time left is his own refusal to agree to the broadcasters' plans is clearly not something which bothers him. Instead, he is now calling for a single debate to take place before the end of March, including the seven leaders who the broadcasters have identified. The other seven-way and the head-to-head are to be scrapped.

  Both Cameron and the broadcasters have dug in their heels, the latter threatening to empty-chair the PM if he doesn't turn up. The problem with that, though, is that they might run afoul of pre-election impartiality rules if they allow Miliband to speak for 90 minutes in the 'head-to-head' without Cameron present. So, it becomes a war of attrition - each side trying to batter the other with enough political smears to make them cave in.

  Frankly, the reason for all this is that David Cameron is running scared. His delaying tactics have all been a ruse to fill out the larger debates with as many leaders as possible, in essence to reduce the airtime of Nigel Farage, who he knows will cut percentage points into Tory support with every minute he gets to speak. 

  His objections to the head-to-head debate are less obvious, but he fears Miliband may prove more competent in debate than people will expect him to. Most people's opinion of the Labour leader is the media-fuelled caricature of him as a bumbling buffoon, and whilst he certainly isn't the most charismatic leader Labour have ever had, he is a far more skilled public speaker than is perhaps apparent.

Conclusions

  At this point, it looks increasingly unlikely that the debates will happen. If they do, they will most likely be reduced to Cameron's ultimatum of the single seven-way debate before the short campaign starts on March 30th. Since this will mean having them before the parties have even published their manifestos, this makes the entire process rather less meaningful.

  Through his constant prevarications and craven cowardice, David Cameron has all but scuppered what he himself claimed were debates 'essential to our democracy'. The Prime Minister's commitment to the ideals of 'democracy' have surely to be questioned, therefore. Once again, a leading politician has put politicking before principles and sacrificed the people's right to make an informed choice about their leaders on the altar of grabbing a possible head start in the political race for No. 10.

  It is a sickening display, and he should be fully ashamed of himself. But I doubt he cares.

The Curious Case of Douglas Carswell

  Douglas Carswell was first returned to Parliament in 2005 for the Essex constituency of Harwich. A Conservative Party member since 1990, he defected to UKIP in August 2014 and stood down as MP for Clacton, triggering a by-election which he won by a landslide.

  Since then, Carswell has been one of the principal figures in the UKIP surge and an outspoken member of the party leadership. He also, however, has been reported as clashing with UKIP leader Nigel Farage on a number of occasions - something he has, of course, denied.

  But it is clear that Carswell is something apart from the mass of Ukippers. Whilst he is in line with general 'UKIP-py' policies such as opposing equal marriage for same-sex couples and scepticism about anthropogenic climate change - as well as, of course, the core UKIP mission of getting the UK out of the EU - he is something of a radical when it comes to other areas.

  Particularly of interest is his dedication to electoral reform. The Daily Telegraph named him their Briton of the Year in 2009 for his commitment to shaking up what he calls 'that cosy little clique called Westminster'. In a speech at the UKIP conference on Saturday, he outlined his proposals for changes to the electoral system.

  First on his list is recall elections. The coalition has introduced a form of this in the Recall of MPs Bill, but this is a weak form of recall which only allows voters to replace their MPs if they are sentenced to more than a year in prison or the Commons Standards Committee bans them from the House for 21 days. Carswell believes that real reform means having a threshold at which a simple petition can trigger an election - in his proposal, 20%.

  Another policy of his is to mandate that ministerial appointments are confirmed by the relevant House of Commons Committee. This procedure already occurs in the USA, and would prevent the Prime Minister from appointing favourites who do not command the confidence of the House as a whole.

  Of course, the jewel in the crown of these reforms is replacement of the archaic Single Member Plurality (or first-past-the-post) system with which we choose our MPs. Moving towards a more proportional system would, of course, benefit UKIP hugely - but it would also make Parliament far more democratic. My own article outlining the reasons for reform can be found here.

  All of this is rather sensible, and somewhat removed from the immigrant-bashing, Thatcherite-plus rhetoric of the majority of UKIP's leadership. Douglas Carswell and Nigel Farage have seemed strange bedfellows since the beginning, but now with the election campaign beginning in earnest, the differences between the two may become more important.

  It is far too early to say whether the fault lines of some future split have emerged, but one thing is clear: Douglas Carswell is a UKIPper apart.

A 21st Century Crusade: The rise of the anti-Islam movement in Europe

The organisation Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (Pegida by the German acronym) has announced its first UK rally, due to take place on the 28th of February in Newcastle. 

In just four months, the group has racked up nearly 160,000 Facebook likes and has staged a number of protests in Germany, some attended by up to 25,000 people. Offshoots have sprung up in Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland and - now - the United Kingdom.

Former Pegida leader
Lutz Bachmann

According to reports, the UK branch is expecting somewhere between 500 and 3,000 protesters to attend the rally. This is by no means, therefore, a major demonstration. Indeed, Pegida itself as a European movement has suffered serious setbacks since the height of their popularity following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. 

Founder Lutz Bachmann was forced to resign from the organisation after a photograph of him styled as Adolf Hitler went viral on the 21st of January. German politicians, including Angela Merkel, have criticised the organisation over its use of the Charlie Hebdo incident for political purposes, and counter-protests in Germany have reached the stage where they are drawing more participants than the protests themselves. 

This might seem to suggest that Pegida, less than four months after its foundation, is already on the way out. But we cannot afford to be so optimistic. Pegida itself is just one part of a wider campaign across Western Europe which is targeting Muslims as a group. The very concept of 'anti-Islamisation' is nonsensical - the Muslim population of the UK is just 4.6%; in Germany, it is 5.4%. There is no 'Islamisation'; the fastest-growing belief group across Western Europe is, in fact, atheists, not Muslims.

But the narrative has been picked up, not only by radical rightist groups like Pegida and Britain First, but by the media - and from there, it has filtered into general society. A report last October showed that anti-Muslim hate crime rose by 65% over the preceding twelve months; in France in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, 24 violent incidents against mosques were logged in just six days. The last ten years have seen a seemingly inexorable upward trend in anti-Islamic sentiment across Europe, fuelling the rise of anti-immigration Parties like the French Front National and UKIP, as well as direct action groups.

There is a real danger that the actions of tiny extremist minorities on both sides will increase the polarisation of society around the issue of Islam. The stage is fast approaching where it is no longer possible to take a balanced view on the subject: one must either be an apologist for Islam in all its forms, or emphatically opposed to it. This is dangerous. Islam, like any religion, has inspired some people to do terrible things in its name, but the vast majority of its adherents are peaceable, friendly citizens of our countries. We must stand in solidarity with them.

The narrative of mutual warfare - crusaders vs. jihadists - is one which Islamist and far-right groups alike benefit from and seek to encourage. Those of us who are moderates - the vast majority - are easily capable of shrugging off the efforts of these bitter fringe elements. So let us not succumb to their poisonous rhetoric, but expound the virtues of tolerance and liberty and the right and ability of the human species to live in harmony despite our differences.

The 'crusaders' of the 21st century are no less brutal and self-serving than those of the 11th. We should treat them and their misguided 'anti-Islamisation' campaign with the contempt they deserve.

A Royal Coup? – Queen Guitarist Brian May Considering Standing for Election

Brian May might not be of the House of Windsor, but the Queen guitarist is certainly rock royalty, and earlier today (4th February 2015) his agent announced that the 67-year-old is considering standing as an MP in the 2015 General Election. Coming on the heels of comedian Al Murray’s decision to stand against Nigel Farage in Thanet South (albeit in his guise as the Pub Landlord), it seems like 2015 may follow in Britain’s fine tradition of celebrity candidates.

However, whereas Murray’s campaign is – I’m sure the guv’nor himself would admit – a bit of a joke, May’s political credentials are a touch more serious. The CBE he was awarded in 2005 was a decoration both for his services to music and his charity work; for May, as well as penning hits such as ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘The Show Must Go On’ and attaining a Ph.D. in astrophysics, has also devoted much energy to campaigning, principally on behalf of wildlife.

He – along with actor and fellow Brian, Brian Blessed – led the Team Badger (with the unfortunate acronym TB) campaign against the proposed badger cull in 2013. May also heads the organisation ‘Save Me’, dedicated to protecting animal rights, particularly with regards to fox hunting and badger culling.

His campaigning, however, has since expanded from the sphere of animal welfare: the Common Decency initiative, founded by May just last month, focuses on reform to Parliament and our democratic system, intending to root out corruption from Parliament and establish a new system whereby MPs vote according to their conscience, not strict party discipline. It is under the banner of Common Decency that May’s proposed Parliamentary bid – if it materialises – will be fought.

Brian May’s announcement today is more, then, than just another celebrity poking their nose into politics for an extra five minutes in the limelight. The Common Decency initiative is aimed at one of the greatest problems with modern British democracy – that MPs simply do not represent the people, leaving us effectively powerless. The fact that May – a self-confessed habitual Tory voter – has decided to throw his weight behind this important issue shows just how far the traditional parties have failed the electorate.

If he does choose to stand at the General Election, there will no doubt be people lining up to vote for him. I, for one, hope that he does, and brings a little new life and new energy into our stifled political system. Long live the Queen!

Victory for Syriza

  Syriza, the left-wing alliance, have won the Greek elections. This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to anyone who has been following the situation - all the pre-election polls pointed towards this result. Nevertheless, this is a pivotal moment in not just Greek but European politics: The first time since the financial crash that any Eurozone country has had a government opposed to ruthless austerity.

  The votes at the time of writing have not all been counted, but Syriza looks set to win 149 seats in the Greek parliament - just two short of an absolute majority. In order to form a majority government, therefore, they need a coalition partner willing to work with them against EU austerity. That partner is the right-wing Independent Greeks party, led by Panos Kamnenos, a splinter from the centre-right New Democracy. Both parties are fiercely opposed to austerity and to EU interference in Greece. 

  Independent Greeks have 13 seats in the new parliament, giving the coalition a majority of 11 - not ideal, but still a massive achievement for Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras. At the age of 40, he is the youngest Prime Minister Greece has had for 150 years, and he has transformed Syriza from a fringe party of the left into the largest in Greece. 

  Syriza's victory changes everything. Tsipras has stated that he does not intend to leave the Eurozone, but has made it perfectly clear that he is no Europhile either. Syriza's partnership with the Independent Greeks will also bring a more Eurosceptic bent to the new coalition government. The policy clash between the two partners on non-economic issues, such as immigration and the position of the Greek Orthodox Church, may also cause problems down the line. However, for now Greece appears to have a dynamic, anti-neoliberal government capable perhaps of overturning the austerity measures imposed by the Eurozone's central command.

  Make no mistake, the election of Syriza is not a panacea. Greece's Eurozone partners, particularly Germany, will be as determined to preserve the status quo as Syriza is to overturn it. Centre-left figures such as France's Francois Hollande and Italy's Matteo Renzi have failed to overturn the austerity consensus at the EU level, and Syriza will have to work with others across Europe if they intend to succeed. 

  But Syriza, unlike the previous New Democracy government, offer the Greeks hope. The economy of Greece buckled under austerity, contracting by 25% under the ministrations of the so-called 'troika' (the ECB, IMF and European Commission). Austerity has failed in Greece as it has across Europe. The Syriza victory will spur the anti-austerity movement across the continent. With general elections set to take place in the UK, Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Spain (where the left-wing Podemos is vying with the governing People's Party for first place), 2015 may well be the year in which the ideology of European austerity crumbles.

  We can but hope. And vote.

Charlie Hebdo: A Warmongers' Dream

  Unless you have been absent from the planet Earth for the last week or so, you will know that Islamist terrorists killed 17 people in Paris and the surrounding area over the three days from the 7th to the 9th of January 2015. This was the most deadly act of terror in France since 1961. 

  The attack on the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) was carried out by Islamists apparently connected to al-Qaeda's Yemeni branch, while the gunman who struck the kosher supermarket Hypercasher near the Port de Vincennes self-declared his membership of ISIS.

  On the 11th of January, 3.7 million people marched in Paris and other cities throughout France to show their unity in the face of these terrorist networks' actions. The march was led by the families of the victims and more than 40 world leaders, including the French President, the British Prime Minister and German Chancellor. 

  These were the largest rallies in France since the liberation of Paris from Nazi German occupation in 1944. They were also a moving demonstration of the unity of not just the French people but also of the global community in the face of the despicable, murderous actions of Islamist extremists. The fact that the rally was attended by both the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of Palestine underscores just how important a show of unity this march was.

  And then, on the 12th of January, France announced it would deploy 10,000 soldiers and armed police onto its streets.

  The political necessity for such a show of strength, I understand. Hollande, France's embattled President, needs to salvage some credibility from the disaster that this attack has been. It may also be that there is a valid strategic and security reason for this massive mobilisation, which has already begun. But the deployment has been accompanied by such violent, warmongering rhetoric that I fear the consequences.

  In less than a week since the shootings, more than 50 anti-Muslim hate crime incidents have been registered across France. That is a worrying trend. The presence of ten thousand armed men on the streets will not calm this - it will fuel the fires. What is suspiciously close to a declaration of martial law is a move which will cause further polarisation, in France and across Europe.

  And that's what they want. The Porte de Vincennes gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, said in his ISIS propaganda video that his actions were in defence of the Palestinian people and in protest of the Coalition actions in Syria, Afghanistan, Mali and Iraq. Make no mistake, in his mind his murders were an act of war. Responding to rhetoric of war in kind will only worsen the situation. And the more Muslims in European countries suffer as a result of the backlash against these incidents, the easier it will be for Islamists to radicalise young Muslims in future.

  The ideology of these people - Salafi-Jihadism (ultraconservative Wahhabist Islam mixed with a quasi-fascistic personality cult and the willingness to undertake violent jihad) - is vile, make no mistake. It should be eradicated. But we must remember firstly that the ideology is our enemy first and foremost, and that the young men brainwashed by its demagogic leaders are victims of the virus. 

   That does not mean we should not defend ourselves against them. I am no pacifist. But we also cannot afford to become locked into an exchange of violent and ever-ratcheting rhetoric with the adherents of Salafi-Jihadism. That will only play into the hands of warmongers like Marine le Pen in France and Britain First here in Britain. And we especially must not allow our justified anger to spill over into attacks on moderate, law-abiding Muslims in our own countries or overseas.

  We may be Charlie. But we are all humans first.

Killing the Music Industry

  Something's killing the music industry. That's just a fact. How else do we explain the presence of One Direction, Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor at the apex of the UK music charts. In the US, the Billboard 200 is topped by Swift, Nicki Minaj and Ed Sheeran as I write. Someone save us.

  Yes, something's killing it alright. The question is, what? Well, on the 8th of January Korn drummer Ray Luzier became the latest artist to declare the culprit online music piracy. This, in and of itself, has a fine petingdigree, going all the way back to Beethoven. More recently, Metallica have faced down LimeWire and - at the last gig I went to - Skindred singer Benji Webbe accused all the members of the audience who admitted to pirating his music of 'stealing from my fucking children's mouths!!!'. Which, hilarious as it was at the time, slicked in sweat and a dash of spilled blood, is kind of true.

  Declaration of interests: I have, in the past, downloaded music illegally. Shock, horror, all my metal friends leave me. Yeeeaaahhhh... No. All of them have too. So have all of you. Crucially, though, I stopped doing so before the age of 15. Why? Quite simple, really: I had a little bit of disposable income by that point, and wanted to support the artists I like(d). So, now I buy CDs or (if the CD is hard to come by) download albums legally. A reformed man.

  Here's the issue: I don't have THAT much disposable income, even now. So, while I buy as much music as I can afford, that's not too much. So, being a music-loving sort of chap, I use services such as YouTube, Spotify, and even occasionally Last.fm. The thing is, whilst these services are legal, they are't particularly lucrative for the artists either. They only receive an estimated $0.005 per play, which is pretty poor by anyone's standards. Although the disparity between this figure and the revenue from music sales has been subject to debate, everyone agrees the former is a fraction of the latter.

  And therein, dear reader, lies the issue. Illegally downloading music is bad. You shouldn't do it. We know these things. But the thing which will replace piracy will not be increased album sales; it will be increased use of streaming services. This is because the average UK household income is between £44,000 and £51,000 for a two-adult, two-child family. Take the mean of £47,500 - that's just under £12,000 per person. Before tax. And bills. And rent/mortgage. And clothes. And food.

  Are you getting the idea? People don't have the cash on the hip necessary to indulge what for many of us is a deep passion for music. Which means that people will continue to use streaming services, which pay artists a tiny amount of money over often extremely long periods of time. Granted, this is better than nothing, but not by very much. While we're on the subject, even album sales aren't making musicians that much - about 13% of the total album cost for a physical copy, and less for iTunes downloads and their ilk. This has always been the case - and in fact some artists who have been in the business a while, such as Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, say things have actually improved quite considerably in recent years. Which is to be welcomed, but 13% still seems pathetically small.

  The thing is, there's always something 'killing' the music industry - recorded music itself was attacked as damaging when it first emerged. Piracy is the current bugbear, and I will admit it's a problem, but the prevalence of streaming services at the expense of album sales is - to my mind - a greater long-term threat. But artists have to adapt. And there is hope for the future in the internet as well as fear, by making it easier for artists to access their audiences without the middleman of a record label taking a hefty cut (about 30%). Independent labels and artists should of course be encouraged, and we should support the musicians whose music we enjoy where we can. But let's not get too het up about the death of the music industry because the charts may be flooded with utter dreck, but in fairness they have been for years, and we will preserve this industry we love best by determining to ourselves that we will never let it die.

Orwellian Britain

 
  In his 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes a dystopian, totalitarian state ruled by an inner core of detached elites who manipulate the lower orders with deft use of a pet media machine; conduct endless foreign campaigns in order to drain resources and keep average quality of life at a level which prevents resistance; and use a secretive security organisation to pluck suspected enemies of the state from the streets and torture them into submitting to the guiding ideology of the day. Oceania is a place where surveillance is everywhere, poverty and hunger are widespread, and foreigners are senselessly demonised as scapegoats for all the ills plaguing society.

  Sound familiar?

  One could be forgiven for thinking that political leaders both here in Britain and in other western democracies have been reading Orwell's magnum opus a little too much like a blueprint, rather than a warning. We have seen, for example, that David Cameron and George Osborne have been accused of being too closely involved with BBC appointments; that the organisation has faced numerous claims of bias against anti-establishment parties such as the Greens - over 85,000 people have supported a petition declaring they believe this to be the case; and that other media organisations, such as the Murdoch group, are just a little too friendly with certain politicians.

  We have six million CCTV cameras in this country - roughly one for every eleven people - which is one and a half times as many as in China and nearly a quarter of the world total. Security services are able to access our every online and telephone communication, and all three establishment parties in Parliament collaborated back in July 2014 to force through a bill overturning EU regulations which would have banned this practice in just eight days. The Home Office has the power to tag, relocate and restrict the movements of terror suspects without any judicial oversight and for an essentially indefinite period, even if they don't have enough evidence to make a criminal charge.

  Over 900,000 people rely on food banks to live, as a direct result of the Coalition's welfare 'reforms' and ideologically-driven, economically-illiterate spending cuts. The UK has not had a single year of peacetime since 1935. Nigel Farage and David Cameron are engaged in a seemingly desperate race to pile as much of the blame for our economic woes on immigrants, rather than attack the reckless finance capitalists and ineffective regulation by establishment politicians which caused the problem in the first place. Quality of life has stagnated for years; income inequality has been growing since the 1980s and wealth inequality is at its highest point since the late nineteenth century. Politicians are aloof, disconnected and seemingly deliberately unengaging, resulting in voter turnouts lower than at any point since the Second World War.

  Our country has yet to plumb the depths of Orwell's fictional super-states - luckily for me, or it would be off to the Ministry of Love for a little stay in Room 101 just for thinking this, let alone writing it - but the direction of travel is clear. The CIA's use of despicable torture against untried foreign nationals, the growing instability in North Africa and the Middle East and the disturbing actions of Russian President-stroke-Mafia-boss Vladimir Putin show that the UK - or should I say Airstrip One? - isn't the only part of the world seemingly falling in with the writer's dark predictions.

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Welcome to 2015, boys and girls.

The United States of America: The Real International Terrorists

On the 9th of December, the US Senate released a report into the interrogation techniques practiced by the CIA in the aftermath of 9/11 and through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Particular attention in the $40 million investigation was lavished on the secretive COBALT detention centre. The 'techniques' employed here range from unnecessary rectal feeding of detainees, leading to one sustaining 'anal fissures', to being forced to sit naked in cold concrete cells, with at least one confirmed death from hypothermia.

I will spare you any further details of the physical and mental torture that detainees of the COBALT prison - and others - were put through.  It makes for grim reading. Bear in mind, of course, that these people were suspects. Not one had been convicted of any crime, and many (the CIA puts a 'conservative estimate' at 22%) weren't even supposed to have been there according to the CIA's own guidelines. Yes - the guidelines of an organisation which sees waterboarding, enforced sleep deprivation and threats to kill detainees' wives and children as legitimate interrogation tactics. When even this lot think imprisoning someone is a step too far, but it happens anyway, we need to be very, very worried.

Discussion about the futility and the dangers of Bush and Blair's 'War on Terror' abounds - I've written on the subject myself. But these new revelations go beyond anything else we've seen. This report is set against the backdrop of the continued Western military presence in Middle Eastern and North African countries, the leviathan surveillance state and the still-extant Guantanamo Bay detention centre. We must open our eyes to the true lengths that the US and UK governments are willing to go to in their zealous crusade against the 'terror' they themselves created.

And yes, I say US and UK governments. The Senate report also shows quite clearly that - along with a number of other supposedly 'liberal' democracies - the UK has been fully co-operating with and assisting in the mass torture and systematic human rights abuses perpetrated by the CIA. Other culprits include Germany, Italy, Poland, Australia, Denmark... the list goes on. The CIA have now come clean - when will MI6 follow? 

Returning to the Americans, the CIA misled US government officials, lied to the White House and fed misinformation to the press. To date, not one CIA employee has been prosecuted or even reprimanded so far as we can tell.

The brutal irony of the situation is this: if another country were perpetrating human rights abuses on this scale, the USA would probably use them as grounds to justify an invasion.

The thing is, they'd have a better case against themselves than they ever did against Iraq.

The Failure of George Osborne's 'Economic Plan'

  The Tories say the economy is recovering, and they point to GDP growth statistics of 1.7% last year and a forecast of 2.7% for 2014. Labour, however, say that this doesn't matter, because the cost of living is still high and on the up. At first glance, this might seem absurd - how can a growing economy not lead to increased living standards? The reason is actually quite simple.

   By making significant real-terms public spending cuts, Osborne has stifled inflow of money from the Treasury into the wider economy. Keynesian economic theory holds that governments should use public spending to stimulate demand in times of recession, but Thatcher threw Keynes out of the window back in 1979 and Osborne has ramped up the neoliberal experimentation to the point where even Maggie would be disgusted.

  Lack of economic stimulus. has contributed heavily to wage repression - as this graph shows, wages have increased at below the rate of inflation in every quarter since the coalition came to power bar one. It is interesting to note that the brief pre-election recovery in real wages came only after two years of fiscal stimulus packages by the Brown ministry. His chosen method of stimulus, relying heavily on quantitative easing and the bank bailouts, was far from optimal - it injected money into the finance industry but neglected other sectors - but it did actually start to show some results by early 2010. Naturally, the Tories took swift steps to shut that nonsense down immediately upon assuming power.

  With average wages so far below inflation, it is easy to see why most people just aren't feeling the so-called 'recovery'. Abstract GDP growth figures, however promising on paper, just don't mean anything to ordinary people if the money in their pocket isn't there. But if the economy is growing, and yet it isn't making its way down to us, then where the hell is it?!

  That's an easy one too. It's in the pockets of CEOs and bankers, of company shareholders and major landowners. The combined wealth of the richest 1,000 UK households jumped 15% in 2013 and now stands at almost £520 billion, with the result that the UK now has more billionaires per head than any other country. The baseline for entry into this super-elite group is now £85 million - £5 million more than before the recession. So, while the UK as a whole has only just surpassed 2008 levels and the average person is still some considerable distance from that, the richest members of our society are actually much better off than they were six years ago. 

  Some people, then, have done very well out of the global economic crash and the suffering of millions. The rest of us, meanwhile, are a little more strapped for cash - and it doesn't look like it's getting any better anytime soon. With the Tories plotting a law which will make eliminating the budget deficit by 2018 a legal requirement, more cuts are on their way, which will lead to further wage depression and thus falling demand in the economy. The current trend towards underemployment, with more and more people disappearing from unemployment stats into false self-employment or abusive zero-hours contracts, will continue and the queues outside food banks and job centres will only grow. 

  Of course, that will push up the welfare bill, sending Daily Mail readers frothing at the mouth and baying for blood. Then the government will be 'forced' to slash social security further, driving more and more people - particularly young people - onto the scrapheap. Welcome to the age of austerity politics. It hasn't worked so far, but the elitist, neoliberal mainstream parties aren't about to let a silly little thing like that stop them! They have the lower orders to crush.

Israel's Apartheid Continues

  

  Benjamin Netanyahu is at it again. He is not content, apparently, with the continuing blockade of the Gaza Strip, with the government-sponsored construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian soil, with the occupation of the State of Palestine itself in violation of any semblance of international law, and with the periodic brutality of the Israeli armed forces in their fruitless assaults on Palestine and her people. No, none of this is enough for this genocidal warmonger - now he is to make the Palestinian people second-class citizens in their own lands.

  A bill currently going through the Israeli parliament will make Jewishness a condition of the 'national rights' of Israel. For the 25% of the population who are not, including the Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation, lesser 'civil rights' will still be available - according to Netanyahu - but they will be officially, legally second-class citizens. The bill also bans the flying of the Palestinian flag and a number of other measures dressed up as counter-terrorism but in reality targeting the oppressed Palestinians.

  This bill is so blatantly ridiculous, even Netanyahu's fellow Likud party member and President of Israel Reuven Rivlin has come out against it, calling it 'unnecessary' and 'harmful' and pointing out that it will play into the hands of Israel's critics. Damn right it will: this is further evidence of the Likud government's ultra-Zionist, far-right agenda to crush the Palestinian people out of existence - or at least, out of Israel.

  The ridiculous thing is, the quickest way to remove the Palestinians from Israel, halt the majority of the inter-community violence in the region and make the bill truly unnecessary would be to recognise Palestine's sovereignty and accept the two-state solution - but that is something Netanyahu will not do. Meanwhile, Palestinians - who  have always been treated as second-class citizens in Israel - will not take this new legal confirmation of their status lightly. One commentator, Abu Azzan Saud, went to far as to call this 'the beginning of the third intifada'. 

  So, more deaths to come, then, on the back of a law allegedly designed to reduce the killing. Welcome to Netanyahu's apartheid state.

Deja Vu: UKIP By-Election Victory. Again

  Yesterday’s by-election was more or less a foregone conclusion, with the Tories’ original promise to ‘throw the kitchen sink’ at Rochester & Strood having been ashes in the mouth of the Prime Minister for at least a week. So, Mark Reckless – UKIP’s candidate – retakes the seat he held as a Conservative MP from 2010, and no-one in the country with so much the suggestion of a finger on the fluttering political pulse of the nation should be at all surprised.

  That doesn’t mean the win is insignificant, however – not by any means. There have been noises for a few days now about a UKIP win triggering at least two more defections from the Tories. There are about as many candidates for this as there are Tory backbenchers, but two frontrunners are the arch-Eurosceptic Peter Bone – who has called for UKIP and the Tories to work together in the past – and John Baron, who when questioned about whether he would defect replied with the deliciously clichéd ‘never say never’.

  With the General Election approaching fast, it is more and more unlikely that the new tradition of forcing a by-election if you decide to jump ship to Farage’s mob would hold. Therefore, any future defections could well be automatic, potentially swelling the ranks of UKIP substantially in the run-up to May 2015. However, whilst Farage will be keen of course to pinch as many Tories as he can get his made-in-the-UK purple mittens on, what he is really after now is a Labour defector. This would fit in with his growing narrative about UKIP being a party of neither the left nor the right – and, considering polling shows their appeal among former Conservative voters is approaching its critical mass, it is looking increasingly necessary if UKIP want to keep up their admittedly impressive momentum.

  And what about Rochester & Strood itself? Well, with a much-reduced majority of 7.3% on a low turnout of just 50%, Reckless is far from secure. Lord Ashcroft’s polling shows that the Tories are likely to reclaim the seat in 2015, when – as Grant Schapps put it this morning – ‘the future of the country will be on the ballot paper’. Lib Dem, Labour and even Green supporters might be willing to lend their votes to the Tories to keep out a UKIP MP for a full parliament where they were not willing to do so for the sake of five months. We shall see.

  Speaking of the other parties, it didn’t go too well for them either. The swing against Labour was -12%, nearly as much as against the Tories, while the Lib Dems got just 1% and lost their deposit once again. The Green Party, meanwhile, continued their recent trend of thrashing the Lib Dems into fourth place with 4% at the expense of some of the Labour vote. Sixth place, for those who are interested, went to a dominatrix who was last year voted Britain’s favourite sex worker. She got just 300 votes less than the Lib Dem candidate.

  To summarise: UKIP continue their march, while the Tory and Labour high commands will be quaking in their respective boots at the prospect of further defections. The Greens are still doing quite well and the Lib Dems look like the next general election may well see them wiped off the face of the Earth. 2015 is going to be an interesting one, methinks.