Let's scotch a myth that's been multiplying like typhus in news about the so-called emergency budget. George Osborne is no "political genius". Take a look at the measures he's outlined. All of them are imprinted with his partisan political economics designed as traps for the Labour Party. The cut on corporation tax - any attempt to reverse it is a tax on business. Increasing the inheritance tax threshold - a reversal appropriates a chunk of a lifetime's hard work. Opposing the extension of the MOT is punishing car ownership. Wanting to see public sector salaries rise above 1% is "profligacy". Voting against freezes to tax credits would be not getting serious with the social security bill. Fighting the conversion of grants to loans falls into the trap of allowing the successful to be subsidised by the not-so-successful. Getting hot and bothered about forcing market rents on "high earners" in social housing is cut from the same cloth. And taking the field against the ill-named living wage for the over 25s is obvious political suicide, even though the recipients on the whole are going to be left worse off when the subsidy of their low pay is cut back. Sure, these measures are driven by short-term political calculation and boost Osborne's standing as the figure who delivered the first "proper" Conservative budget in almost 20 years. No bad thing in the eyes of the thinning blue ranks who'll be voting for a new leader in three or four years time. But genius? Surely, genius political moves wouldn't be so transparently obvious. A genius political manoeuvre wouldn't leave obvious gaping problems, like the refusal to extend the increased minimum wage to low paid public sector workers, or overseeing what will likely be an explosion in homelessness among young people as a consequence of refusing housing benefit to the under 21s. These are, of course, political time bombs a new Labour leader could use to beat the Tories with. Depending on who we end up getting, it remains to be seen whether that will be the case. What was interesting about this budget though was a grudging recognition of really-existing reality beyond the walls of Westminster. Dave has previously said that the welfare merry-go-round of low pay being subsidised by the state cannot stand indefinitely. There's also a sense, partly thanks to the campaigning done by Labour around the cost of living crisis, that wages cannot lag behind on prices and share of national income forever either. But that's as far as it goes. Effectively, the 'official' living wage - that £9/hour by 2020 (don't be too shocked if it ends up being a smidgen more) - represents a cut in the subsidy employers receive via the tax credit system, and a simultaneous knock to the worker in receipt of it. The overall problem of egregious inequality remains largely untouched. There is a word that sums up Osborne's budget nicely. It's not genius, it's decadent. The ruling class and its organs are no longer fit to rule when they start actively undermining the system on which their power rests. Osborne's programme is the very distillation of this problem. All throughout the planning process of this budget, he and his team could have made different decisions. They could have pursued policies that strengthened British capital as a whole, such as infrastructural investment, making sure more people and more money in their pockets, supported the expansion of post-16 education, provided housebuilding an impetus, and thrown the government's weight behind green industrial development. All of these are essential to the economy's long-term health, and each and every time Osborne chose a policy that served the short-term interests of the Tory party or, more accurately, his leadership ambitions. Putting the interests of your party before those of your class was Marx's definition of socialist sectarianism. That insight can apply equally here too. Yet it's much, much worse than business-as-usual decadence. Osborne's austerity lite - again, very careful to hammer only relatively small numbers of people less likely to vote - is premised on some pretty healthy economic growth projections. The Office of Budget Responsibility has revised expected growth this year down to 2.4%, which is still pretty good for a mature economy. Yet you've got to wonder what planet these 'independent' analysts are living on. Right on Britain's doorstep, the EU and the Eurozone faces its biggest crisis since the old Steel and Coal Community was established in the 1950s. There's no way of knowing what fall out a Greek meltdown could shower over the economies of Western Europe, especially when it's difficult to tell a toxic "asset" from a healthy one. And secondly, and more ominously, was anyone at the OBR, the Treasury, and over at Number 11 paying attention to what's happening in China? All of a sudden the global outlook looks less benign - all the more reason for money not to be taken out of the domestic market. Last time Osborne did this in 2010-12, growth was choked off and unemployment rose. Luckily, the economy self-corrected and eventually climbed out of that period of unnecessary stagnation. It seems Osborne is set on trying his luck a second time.
As leading councillors at Stoke-on-Trent City Council gear up for a quiet summer of street fayres, holidays, and pub-based tub-thumping, word reaches my ear about the bland, the blue, and the blotto that makes up the city's ruling coalition. Everyone knows national politics pivots on what happens in Stoke-on-Trent, so I'm going to assume all readers are familiar with the local situation. If not, read here. So yes, Stoke-on-Trent, a place in which the labour movement was bred in the bone narrowly rejected Labour in May and gave enough space for the City Independents, the Tories, and UKIP to secure a majority and take over the council. Sadly, the indies' pledges to sink billions into a tram system running the length of the city, and their promise to organise a Stoke package holiday with compulsory oatcakes have hit the cutting room floor in the wheeling and dealing that brought the coalition into being. What an appalling betrayal. One development that raised eyebrows, apart from the stupid and failed attempt to make an ex-BNP councillor mayor, of course, was the decision to make the leader of the Conservative group, Cllr Abi Brown, the deputy leader of the city council. It wasn't really a necessary move. With only seven councillors to the City Indies' 14, and with the moldy old kippers on two, the Tories were bound to get into bed with this most unappetising of senior partners. A chance to kick Labour out of office in an ostensibly Labour city, what Tory wouldn't give their right arm for that? There wasn't any political necessity to grant the number two role to Abi, so can that be read as tribute to her brains and nous, or more evidence of council leader Dave Conway's poor grasp of political manoeuvring? It's a bit of both. There isn't much substance to Stoke-on-Trent's Conservatives. They poll well enough, but the party has a tiny number of activists. The repeat appearance of the same old faces on their local election literature tells you everything you need to know. But, interestingly, it's very much a one-woman band. Despite the return of former council leader Russ Irving to the chamber, there's no doubt who's in charge. This isn't because Abi is an authoritarian personality who keeps her troops in line by threatening to extract their toenails. Put it like this. When there is a Tory group meeting, she enters the committee room and the collective IQ instantly quadruples. I wouldn't like to say her colleagues are thick, but when she was on holiday recently the group was utterly paralysed and decisions were delayed until her return. It must have been awful not knowing who to ask permission for a toilet break. What's this got to do with the City Independents? Quite a bit, as it happens. Having previously scrutinised local council officers up close, I know there are some pretty wily operators among the senior management cadre. They had to be. For a period time, nine parties were represented in the council chamber and political infighting rose to such a pitch that the salaried officers had to run the city themselves. Since the return of stable politics in 2011, some have proven unwilling to cede their overstretched authority to councillors. Some have made purchase orders without running it by the relevant cabinet member. Some "forgot" to mention a brewing industrial dispute in local authority-run schools. Dodgy and controversial planning decisions have been made by officials instead of going to councillor-led committees. I could reel off yet more examples, and one of the unspoken stories of the previous Labour administration was a ceaseless running battle between senior councillors and senior council staff. How have the new administration adapted to this situation? Unsurprisingly, they're running rings around the council leader. Having approached him for opinions and decisions to be made, procrastination and prevarication are the non-answers. How different this is from the man-of-action portrayed on countless unreadable leaflets and frothing internet rants. Here is where Abi steps in. Being political to her finger tips and in ownership of the requisite grey matter, rather than just being a nice person who wants to do nice things, council officers have adopted the practice of going to her first. "So Cllr Brown, do you think these children's centres should be cut now or cut later?" I'm sure you get the drift. If she says yes off they go to Dave Conway's office, and the patter goes something like "What do you think about this option Council Leader? Cllr Brown thinks this is the best." And nine times out of ten, the officers leave with the decision she recommended. This begs the question, who leads the council? I think we can justifiably ask that question. Is it Council Leader Dave Conway and Deputy Council Leader Abi Brown, or is Dave bopping a merry granddad dance to Abi's Tory tune?
Yesterday's vote in Greece was a momentous occasion. Almost two thirds of a people, many with politics far removed from that of its leadership, said no to demands for more austerity from the well heeled bureaucrats of the IMF and European Central Bank, and the ministers of the European Commission. It won't be until tomorrow that we'll know what the troika are going to do in response. Reasoned heads would suggest a debt write down and allowing Greece space to grow its economy to meet its obligations. This, after all, is the oh-so radical demand Syriza are pushing - it's hardly all power to the Soviets combined with the socialisation of private property. Yet as past behaviour indicates, the troika are anything but reasoned. Moving from the streets of Athens and the committee rooms of Brussels, how has this news been received by British parliamentarians? George Osborne has pretty much shrugged it off. Direct British bank exposure to Greece is only £10bn, though of course in the our interconnected world of toxic financial instruments ostensibly trading as assets who can say what the real risk is? Nevertheless, the government stands ready to print money to protect the banks economy should the need arise. Labour's response to the referendum outcome is not too dissimilar. However, Chris Leslie, goes on to say "Eurozone countries need to do their best to offer the chance for fresh negotiations. And the Greek government must face up to its responsibilities for stronger governance and economic reform." Perhaps if the troika stopped force feeding debt to Greece while hamstringing its ability to help itself, then I'm sure the Greek government would broadly welcome the acting shadow chancellor's sage advice. For Labour Party people who look to their leaders for a political lead, what then have each of our leadership candidate got to say about yesterday's hugely significant event? For Liz Kendall, it's not a lot. We learn that 150 councillors are signed up to her campaign, and has caved to the Tories' utterly abysmal English Votes for English Laws nonsense. On her Twitter feed there's a retweet of Duncan Weldon's musings, but that's your lot. Over to Andy Burnham's gaff and it's pretty much the same. While it is always nice to see Sally Lindsay doing Labour things, it's just endorsement, endorsement, endorsement. Never mind the events in Greece, what if I wanted to know about Andy's policy positions? I've said it about Liz Kendall before, I might not like what she says but it's easy to find out what she stands for without having to trawl the web for policy snippets. There's nothing on his Twitter feed either. Ho-hum. What about Yvette Cooper? As a trained economist, has she got something to say about the Greek crisis? There's something. Written before the outcome of the referendum became known, she writes that the situation remains pregnant with crisis regardless of the verdict. She argues "Now that this failure risks reaping instability across Europe including here, we need big voices in Europe to persuade both Germany and Greece - and the whole of the Eurozone - that they need to agree an achievable long term plan that will actually get the Greek economy growing again rather than repeatedly putting it into reverse. Without growth any economy will struggle to pay its debts down." Exactly. I'm also buoyed to see Yvette using the occasion to attack the Tories. She notes "The honest broker in that situation ought to be Britain. We are a major European economy, who can play a leading role and we are removed from the immediate negotiations because we are rightly not a member of the Eurozone. But instead our Government has taken a passive approach that is letting Britain's interests down." In other words, Dave and Osborne are striking an isolationist course in the hope the crisis will leave Britain alone and go away. Yvette is right, of course. If Dave was clever, offering its services as a neutral party in the Eurozone dispute might allow him to accrue some political capital that can be expended in return for treaty change concessions. But then Dave is anything but clever. Does the final challenger have anything to say? As you might expect, Jeremy Corbyn puts his response to the Greek referendum in more forthright tones. As he put it, "Democracy has spoken in Greece. The people must rule, not the financial markets." Quite right. While hoping for more, seeing as Jez has been on Greek solidarity demos and is due to speak outside the Greek embassy in London tonight, there's little more that needs to be said. Before undertaking this brief exercise, I was not surprised Jeremy - given his activist background - put out a statement. Nor was I about Yvette. Her presence in the leadership campaign so far has been a touch understated, but quietly formidable. Given her range of experience across most government departments and familiarity with economics, for her not to have commented and put forward a straight centre left position (which is miles better than the Chris Leslie press release), well, that would have been a strange occurrence indeed. It reflects badly on Andy and reinforces the image of him being a one-trick pony. As for Liz, what's the point of coming across as a fresh start if you don't have anything to say about *the* crucial issue facing the European Union and the economies of its member states? A leader is supposed to lead. Jeremy and Yvette have staked out their positions on an issue of enormous import. It's a credit to their political nous and strength as politicians. Liz and Andy haven't, and says pretty much the opposite about them.
In time, they might come to call it the Tsipras Gamble. With an impossibly weak hand, no one seriously thought Syriza could pull it off. The verdict of the bail out referendum was predicted to be close, so close that it might well have been Syriza as opposed to Greece heading for the exit door. Predictions were made and screeds written on the genius/idiocy of Tsipras, but whatever side one took everyone inside and outside Greece forecast a tight vote (including, um, me). That, it was suggested (and indeed, was actively hoped-for in some quarters) would have tied the hands of the Greek negotiating team in meetings with the troika. And so the decisive result, 61% no to 39% yes is of huge significance. It represents two things, both of which are troubling for the status quo across Europe and the nature of the European project itself. In their decadent determination to imprison Greece behind ever thicker walls of debt, the Commission, the ECB, and IMF have progressively undermined the likelihood that the full amount of monies lent will ever be seen again. The demands that the hard pressed majority of the country have to pay up to stay within the (ideologically defined and selectively enforced) set of rules governing relationships between creditors and debtors have set themselves up for a huge fall. While they and their proxies in the Greek opposition threatened the fiscal equivalent of thermonuclear doom, the ground of national pride and democratic self-determination was ceded to Syriza. Tsipras didn't run rings around the troika because of Napoleon-like genius - he did it because he knows austerity is a political matter, while his opponents have managed to convince themselves it's a matter of technocratic decision-making and economic necessity. The margin of victory, won in the teeth of a near unanimity of yes propaganda pouring from media outlets, means that when the troika meet the negotiating team again, they know there's a solid democratic mandate behind them. It also means something of a precedent has been set. Should Portugal or Cyprus say find themselves in further difficulties, referenda are a proven counter measure to the weapons of economic devastation. The leading representatives of the EU establishment are not used to dealing with a democratic upsurge. The EU, after all, has always been an elite project with marginal input from EU citizens, apart from sparsely-observed elections once every five years. The shoddy way the troika have treated Greece is not lost on tens of millions who switch on their news every night. The awful behaviour of Merkel in particular does not reflect favourably on the EU. It's already in the legitimacy doldrums as far as many right wing voters across Europe are concerned. Therefore, it's bonkers to risk the political capital the EU has with people of a centre left persuasion - particularly when Dave's vainglorious and totally unnecessary in/out referendum in Britain slowly but surely approaches. Merkel and co. would be extremely foolish to persist in the hard line they've so far pursued. And there appears to be signs of movement - Merkel and Hollande are jointly convening a Eurozone summit for this Tuesday in response to the referendum. What will win out, the short term placating of voices at home calling for no more Greek bail outs or continued commitment to the Euro and EU? At home, the win has cemented Syriza's position not just as the government (despite, formally, still being a coalition) but as the hegemonic force in Greek political life. It's a lesson all parties of the left can learn from. Tsipras didn't just campaign on national sovereignty and democracy, Syriza has won the argument on economic competency. As I've argued previously, Syriza has promised to manage Greek capitalism better than the capitalists. Their demands are more than just the "isn't it awful" rhetoric that, unfortunately, colours most of the left's anti-austerity campaigning here. It's bound up with a convincing, credible economic model that has something to say to layers of capital as well as labour. Their opponents to the right don't have anything apart from doom-mongering and more misery on offer (unsurprisingly, the official leader of the opposition, Antonis Samaras has resigned as the right fall into disarray), and the left have either capitulated (PASOK) or consigned themselves to irrelevance (KKE). Whatever happens, Syriza's position bristles with the democratic weaponry handed to them. Opposition at home and abroad cannot touch them, for a time at least. Now what? From the right, Fraser Nelson runs down the dangers of the situation. But there are opportunities too. The risk of financial contagion might focus minds at Tuesday's Eurozone meeting to hammer out something that might inject a bit of stability into the situation. Like following the IMF's recommendation that Greek debt be restructured with some necessary write down. Perhaps even a touch of quantitative easing might be indulged seeing as the deflationary pressures on the European economy remain (provided Germany overcomes its understandable reluctance to do so). As the banking crisis in 2008 reminds us, neoliberal dogma can go out of the window if the system is imperiled. There's a geopolitical dimension too. Russia as a possible source for a Greek bail out has been discussed and dismissed thanks to collapsing energy prices. However, perhaps now mainstream comment and EU watchers will pay more attention to the invitation Greece received from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the so-called BRICS)in setting up a new development bank. Ostensibly to fund development in emerging economies, in practice it will provide an alternative to both the IMF and World Bank. Rather than accept the punitive strings these outfits have customarily attached to "assistance". It would be a major coup and a blow to the financial status quo if a developed economy, cut adrift by a short-sighted troika was to act as a fiscal honeypot for European states in trouble. That doesn't mean Greece can be ejected from the EU only to fall into the arms of the BRICS in short order, but in the medium to long-term the IMF and its friends might not want to facilitate the development of a rival.
There were howls of dismay on my Twitter feed last night. And it wasn't all because Heather Watson lost a close fought match with Serena Williams. It had something to do with this: that the GMB and Unite look all set to endorse Jeremy Corbyn's candidacy for the Labour Party leadership. And the people doing the moaning? Mostly Liz Kendall supporters. It's a strange turn about, considering a number of PLP Blairites view Unite as some sort of latter day manifestation of the Militant Tendency. Why are they up in arms about their designated enemy's leadership preference? On the one hand, there is the complaint that neither union have undertaken a formal consultation with their members about who they should endorse. There are two things worthwhile noting at this point. The first is unions are representative organs of the democratic will of their members. Whether you think they should have had a proper, organised debate in the union about endorsement or not - and I think doing so could well have helped boosted the pitiful numbers so far signed up as affiliated supporters - it is well within the rules for this decision to be made by elected executive members. If the Kendallites don't like it, they might wish to spearhead direct democratisation campaigns in the unions. Secondly, I doubt there will be any such hand wringing when, right on cue, USDAW and Community deliver their support for Liz Kendall by an identical method. After all, everyone remembers David Miliband magnanimously insisting those two unions ballot their members prior to granting him their endorsement. The other problem for Liz Kendall supporters is that they're deeply worried. For all the prattling about Ed Miliband's character in the lead up to the election, it remained the case that the more people saw of him in the short campaign, the more they liked him. Not enough to win, of course, but it was a thing. Unfortunately for Liz, she is suffering the opposite problem. Her candidacy has rapidly gone from being a contender to looking increasingly like her bandwagon going to roll in at fourth place. Needless to say that would be a disaster for whom Liz's liberalism is synonymous with "modernisation". Should this scenario come to pass, there could be a few resignations and decampings to a Tim Farron-led (cos he's going to win, isn't he?) Liberal Democrats. Let's come back to this main point of this piece. In truth the GMB and Unite are between a rock and a hard place. I suspect very strongly that the respective general secretaries would like to nominate someone other than Jezza, but it's politically impossible for them to come out publicly and so so. Despite very strongly disagreeing with the GMB's Paul Kenny's decision to accept a knighthood, he has been an excellent general secretary and served his union well. The GMB are growing off the back of well-organised industrial disputes, targeted anti-austerity campaigning, sustained recruitment, and a building up of the union's soft power within the Labour Party. For Paul and the exec to come out for the three leadership candidates who, at best, have an equivocal attitude to more cuts would cut against the work the union has been doing. Unite's Len McCluskey on the other hand has made a name for himself denouncing austerity and threatening to call plagues down upon the party unless it listens to his "advice". However, an uncharacteristic period of quiet on his part has settled over the airwaves since Jez made it onto the ballot paper. Even the dogs in the street know he would like to see Andy Burnham as leader, despite his stark position takings these last few years. In addition to being politically impossible to support anyone but Jez, there's the small matter of trade union activists themselves. When the anonymous briefer in the Telegraph piece says "He represents the kind of Labour values the unions want to support ... Are we backing someone who could not possibly win? Yes, we are. But there is a feeling we need to nail our colours to the mast ... He represents anti-austerity, investment in sustainable growth, supporting tackling poverty. That is the way to get the deficit down while improving living standards", the unions are giving voice to some of its most active supporters. And I happen to agree. Remember, Labour didn't lose the election because it was "too left", as some cynically and self-servingly maintain, it lost because of the perception of lack of economic competence - which is hard to tie to the too left charge when the "left" policies consistently polled well - and because the Tories scared the bejesus out of enough people. Labour needs to formulate an alternative that, to mangle the Blairist mantra, combines economic efficiency with a heartfelt, cast-iron commitment to social justice. What better way to ensure that happens by making sure anti-austerity politics pulls in a greater number of votes than the candidate who epitomises business-as-usual?
... she is right. The further observations made by Eugene Fischer are also right. Then again, saying you cannot grow your population in Fallout Shelter quickly without pregnant women - as noted by @catherinebuca (since deleted) - mirrors life is also correct. Cue confusion for those wedded to either/or thinking. Fallout Shelter is a resource management game set in the 1950s retro future/post-apocalyptic Fallout universe, and forms part of Bethesda's marketing juggernaut as it gears up for Fallout 4's release this coming November. And basically, all you do is run a vault, the nuclear bunkers in which some inhabitants (dwellers) of the franchise cower. And the aim, as much as there is one, is to keep it ticking over by expanding the numbers of rooms and facilities it has, keep the population going, and protect the place from radroaches and raiders on the outside. It's a make busy game, a real-time challenge of incessant micro-management pile ups. In such a game your population has to reproduce. Therefore "impregnating as many women as possible" is an inescapable game mechanic. This is something it shares with plenty of other games, such as Civilization and Sim City. With one key difference. There population growth happens "spontaneously" off the back of food production and the placement of residential zones, respectively. Fallout Shelter demands the player adopt the view of women as a reproductive resource. This, of course, is identical to the position patriarchal social relations have placed women in throughout recorded history, which in turn has been subject to radical feminist critique.
Something else is afoot too. The practice of video gaming helps inculcate and reinforce various postures we need to assume to get on. There's the practice of screen-staring, the practice of lifestyle design, the practice of ego-amplification. Fallout Shelter reproduces the logic and practice of managerialism. It reminds me of the problematics of population management explored by Michel Foucault in his first volume of The History of Sexuality. Various disciplinary technologies that centered on the body conspired to produce certain kinds of people, namely bodies that were healthy, bodies that were docile, and bodies that would work. This is your viewpoint. You manage a population. In Fallout Shelter, there is a certain gender fluidity. If you fancy it, your time as Overseer can establish an underground matriarchal dwellerdom, place all the women in the skilled jobs - including what passes for military - while the men wash dishes and scrub floors down the canteen, but that does not escape the horizon of the managerial problematic. It simulates the managerial mindset and strives to inculcate a sympathetic predisposition toward managing things, of being able to take the point of view of management - something most workplaces try and encourage anyway. Decisions here are conditioned by resource bottlenecks or by external threats, in contrast to really-existing managerialism which is always much concerned with social control of subordinates. What Fallout Shelter depicts in its game mechanics is an ideology of management. Power is stripped out of the equation.. There is no need to take the viewpoint of your charges, because you always know better than them. Could Fallout Shelter be fun and compelling in any other way? That's a bit like reimagining Space Invaders without the shooting. It's a stripped down ideologised simulation of the necessities that beset human communities, and how it encounters them in the context of a culture constituted by unequal gendered relationships naturalised in and by accepted regimes of ostensibly technocratic managerialism. Anita's observations are right, but they're just one element of the cultural codes wrapped up in the game.
Crisis? Since 2009, when has Greece not been in crisis? What the people of Greece have suffered is nothing less than a permanent depression that has since its economy collapse by almost a quarter and hundreds of thousands of its young people have fled abroad in search of work. Meanwhile, public spending has been cut to the bone in an austerity programme the likes of George Osborne can but aspire to, and has seen it return surpluses of around six per cent of GDP to the treasury. However, instead of investing and allowing that money to recirculate, to grind the cogs of the Greek economy onwards, it's being systematically parcelled up and sent off to the creditors. As the depression grinds on, the state is effectively prioritising the synthetic demands of the so-called troika, of which more shortly, above the human needs of its flesh-and-blood citizens. This is fiscal barbarism, the collective punishment beating of an entire people not responsible for the debts in whose name austerity is being carried out. And it's an austerity that just isn't working. To have complied with the creditors' requests ha seen debt rise from 120% of GDP to an utterly unsustainable 170% - instead of Eurozone bigwigs carping about the credibility of Syriza and Tsipras, the people of the Eurozone would do well to reflect on the idiocies of their finance mandarins. This wasn't a situation of Syriza's own making, but they've certainly made the best of it. Internationally and domestically, Tsipras and Varoufakis have played a nuanced, sophisticated political game aimed at raising the level of consciousness in Greece and abroad, but as we have seen this week with Tsipras's surprise announcement of a bail out referendum, that hegemony has only brought them very limited wiggle room. For all the talk of capitulation and sell out from ultra-left micro groups and the increasingly unhinged KKE, the referendum caught the troika on the hop, and has allowed Syriza to oppose both democracy and national pride to the EU's carpet bombing of Greece. But even then, Syriza cannot defy political realities. Despite everything that has happened, as Monday's huge Yes demonstration, um, demonstrated; there are millions of Greeks - not all of whom are untouched by austerity by any means - who will cling to the bail out in the hope that by staying in the Eurozone, anything and everything the troika throws at them is going to be a lesser evil than the alternative. That's why, though from the safety and comfort of sunny Stoke-on-Trent, I didn't think ringing up Berlin and asking for an 11th hour renegotiation was a good move, but having out-maneouevred our ECB friends with a referendum, and then looking like it might be lost, Tsipras at least had to do something to try and avoid a major loss of face and, perhaps, the government's resignation. The troika know this too, which is why after their initial shock, and the absurd rant at the Greeks by Commission president Jean Claude Juncker, they've knocked it back. When the Greek electorate can't take more artificially-induced depression, but want to stay in the Eurozone at all costs, Syriza are in a difficult position that no amount of radical posturing can extricate the party from. Meanwhile, I've seen the argument floating about in some centre left circles that parallels the common sense of the ECB's bovver boys: that Greece ran up the debts, so it has to pay them. It's not as if faceless banks and the debt holders either, as this BBC graph helpfully demonstrates:
This has led some to suggest that Syriza's line is morally reprehensible because what is being lent is taxpayers' money. Spain and Italy, with not a few difficulties of their own, would quite like to see those debts repaid so their own economic houses can be put into order. Understandable, except for a few things. Firstly, Syriza has not repeated the Bolsheviks' actions a century ago and repudiated all foreign debts. What they are asking for is a combination of debt relief, because £170bn is simply not sustainable for an economy of Greece's size, and a restructure. Showing far greater awareness of how capitalism works than the high priests of European capitalism, they know every cut acts as a negative multiplier. Scrapping the "solidarity grant" each pensioner receives upon retirement, for instance, weakens spending power and the jobs reliant on that money, depressing economic activity and therefore the capacity of Greece to service its debts. Secondly, in cheerleading more austerity for Greece because they've been through it themselves, the Spanish and Italian governments are acting in such a reckless way that they're unlikely ever to see the sums returned. Likewise with Angela Merkel. As a canny and astute politician, she knows her tough talking curries favour with the German press and electorate, and she also knows that her policy agenda is imperilling the likelihood of repayments as well as the future stability of the Eurozone itself. Like the centre right here, Merkel is sacrificing the medium and long-term health of German capitalism and those it has subordinated to it in the EU framework for short-term posturing. So what if it keeps a lid on the populist movements in Spain and Italy and those stirring elsewhere if the whole project is in danger of fraying? In short, on the side of the debtors the people least qualified to negotiate with Greece are recklessly imposing conditions that undermine their own position. As the crisis builds and creates uncertainty and jitters, you can be sure they're the ones insulated from having to pay for it.
The most popular posts last month were: 1. Short Notes on Jeremy Corbyn 2. Don't Blame the Council 3. What is Jeremy Corbyn Playing At? 4. The Gnashing of Blairite Teeth 5. How the Conservatives Can Win Again Another very busy time on the blog. After last month's peak we've had to settle for being the third best month ever. Diddums. Still, very good for what has always been a too quiet time of year as far as my little corner of the internet is concerned. Enough backslapping. The announcement of Jeremy Corbyn's candidature pulled the punters in as I started musing about its potentials and its qualities. Likewise, the internet travelling public lapped up the mild rebuke aimed at what then seemed an unserious attempt at getting himself on the ballot. ITV's Don't Blame the Council saved my blogging bacon last week as I was for want of something to write about. Upsetting Blairites appears to be a niche I've started cornering, so expect more of that. And bringing up the rear is how the effects of Tory policy, i.e. the generation of greater insecurity and social anxiety might, after all, provide ideal electoral fodder for them in the future. Who's hanging around for a second chance? There's yesterday's piece on the running sore that is local politics in Stoke-on-Trent. And there is my slightly chin-stroking piece on the politics of labour supply helps explain why British business can live with the Tories hammering migrants - because their social security cuts are aimed at unlocking a perceived labour reservoir at home.
