A Nation Weeps

I'm devastated Peter Andre and Katie Price/Jordan have split up. Before I go to bed tonight I'll light a candle in memory of their tragically short marriage and hope they find solace pouring out their pain to a succession of OK!, Hello, Heat and News of the World interviewers.

No2EU Campaigning in Stoke

The No2EU campaign here in Stoke has taken on some flesh this last week. At Thursday night's branch meeting of Stoke Socialist Party, Brother C talked about his experience on the first No2EU stall that took place last weekend. He said the experience was very different from being on a normal SP stall. For starters people approaching the stall tended to be more politically engaged, though not always in the way we socialists would like! Given how the campaign's only recently come together it was unsurprising a bit of confusion greeted the name. He and Brother N spoke to some anti-EU people who were preparing to vote for UKIP or the BNP and found the best way of talking to them was to strongly contest anti-immigrant sentiment by putting forward straightforward class arguments. They also found it extremely useful to counterpose the present bosses' Europe with an alternative workers' Europe, which successfully forced the more nationalist-inclined voters to think a bit more deeply about the basis of right-wing euroscepticism. Brother C did warn we have to be sharp on this and not give reactionary opposition to the EU a free pass.

Then on Friday evening we had a No2EU public launch/campaign meeting. We were fortunate enough to have Jo Stevenson of the Young Communist League and Dave Nellist of Coventry SP come and address the meeting (yours truly did the chairing honours). Jo's speech opened with an attack on the BNP - she rightly pointed out the opportunities this election afforded them as well as the fakery of their left-sounding policies. She then moved on to some of the criticisms of No2EU, which aim to paint it as some sort of nationalist formation. She took hold of the 'little Englander' label and said the labour movement is - but only in the sense it along with its counterparts across Europe fight measures coming through the EU that attack our living standards and undermine national collective bargaining agreements. She then moved on to give Unite's March for Jobs in Birmingham next Saturday a mention as an example of concentrating our forces against attacks on our class, from wherever they come.

In his contribution Dave looked at how progressive disillusionment with the mainstream parties has fed into an increasing vote share in the European elections for parties with no Westminster representation, and these votes can go all sorts of ways. Where the BNP are concerned theirs is mostly a protest vote - hard core racists only form a small minority of their support. But there is a problem if they become the favoured repository of protest votes - it can become solidified (as we've found in parts of Stoke). Also we should not forget that wherever the BNP vote goes up, the number of racially motivated attacks does too. Therefore part of No2EU's objectives is disrupting this support. Dave also went on to talk about the lack of democracy at the heart of the EU, it being a creature grown incrementally out of a series of treaties and how in his 30+ years of political activity he hasn't seen any slate of candidates as solid as this one. The main problem he saw with No2EU is that it should have been up and running over a year ago.

During the discussion, Brother N came in on the soft left's love-in with the EU, seeing as the British government has avoided social democratic crumbs that have fallen from the commission's table. But this is not the core of what the EU is about. P replied there is an internationalism of sorts among the bosses, but it's an internationalism of convenience - what unites them is a desire to keep our class down, which is why it's keen on the free movement of labour. For us, our internationalism comes from below and is about uniting our class across borders. Brother C of the Communist Party added that to call the RMT leadership nationalist is utter rubbish given its role organising workers of many nationalities on the London underground. Brother F spoke of the difference between working in care for the public and private sectors, highlighting that the British government as well as the EU are still obsessed with privatisation.

It then came to sorting out activities, which included a stall and leaflet drops in throughout the week, and of course the No2EU intervention at next weekend's demo in Birmingham. Thus Saturday morning found a team of SP'ers, a CP comrade and an indie hitting Hanley high street. Our comrades did a mixture of SP and No2EU, while the others banged out No2EU leaflets like there was no tomorrow. We had a No2EU board up but managed to attract no negative comments - though I did speak to a "card carrying Tory" who refused to sign our petition. Another plus was the No2EU slogan appeared to really catch the eye - very few leaflets went into bags and pockets without a good look. Also I managed to win a Workers' Power supporter to voting for the coalition too, which was strangely gratifying.

But with less than a month to go there's still much to do. If you want to get involved drop me a line.

Countdown to Eurovision

The annual outbreak of nationalist musical chauvinism is imminent! Yes, 2009's Eurovision Song Contest will be hitting our screens next weekend with the usual mix of the kitsch, the crap, and the obscure. This year Jade Ewen's flying the flag for this sceptered isle. Alas like most UK entries of the recent past it is insipid and dull but for all Eurovision-loving patriots it's a case of our entry, right or wrong.

Having previewed all 42 entries it seems bland is a recurring theme this year. There are no outright pisstakes like Ireland's Dustin the Turkey or Spain's Rodolfo Chikilikuatre's utterly dire Baila el Chiki Chiki. The nearest we come to it is the Czech Republic's offering, Gipsy.cz's Aven Romale. For some reason the guy comes across to me as the bastard offspring of Eminem and Sparks - and not in a good way.

There's something of a 50s motif going on with the Belgian and German entries - but in all likelihood plucky little Belgium will capture votes with its mix of cheese and nostalgia. Ireland have gone for Sinead Mulvey and Black Daisy with Et Cetera. Best described as a mix of The Go-Gos and Hepburn, but with a dashing of extra twee, it might go down okay with emo-type yoofs. The Belarus entry, Eyes That Never Lie with the beautiful Peter Elfimov is a nice slice of 1980s European sub-poodle rock. Visually the most outstanding video award goes to Bosnia's Regina and their Bistra Voda - the red flags, the iconography, the uniforms - it's enough to melt my iron-hard bolshevik heart.

But for me there's only one stand out song in this competition, and it's the Finns with Waldo's People and Lose Control. What can I say? Crappy eurodisco gets me every time:

Will it win?

Eurovision fans will recall Terry Wogan's decision to resign live on air last year and he blamed the Medvedev-Putin-Gazprom axis for ruining this once fine competition. It was the opinion of our Tel and not a few other commentators that Russia will forever now hoover up the votes of East European states on pain of having the gas turned off. The great powers of Eurovision - the UK, Spain, France and Germany are now also-rans doomed to fight shy of glory for at least a generation. As it turns out this argument is completely absurd. Facts are the East European music business takes Eurovision far more seriously than we do in the UK. In 2008 we entered Andy Abrahams, who was a complete unknown to the British, never mind international public. Russia's winning entry was from Dima Bilan, who happens to be one of the country's top international artists with a fan base across Eastern Europe - and Russia is not alone in this. So why should we be surprised East Europeans vote for each other when their entries have name recognition across the region? Wouldn't we in Britain be more inclined to vote for the French if Vanessa Paradis was singing their entry? Anyway, we'll see how it plays next Saturday. No doubt I'll be exhausted from Unite's March for Jobs but I'm sure energy can be mustered for some live tweeting and what not.

Feminist Theory and Identity Politics

As part of a series of papers on identity and sociology given on Wednesday I went along to a talk on feminist theory given by Lois McNay. Her paper was an intervention into debates around identity and post-identity politics. To briefly summarise the context of McNay's paper, academic feminism has been caught up with the problems of political subjectivity for the last couple of decades. Just as Marxism has had its post-Marxist critics who've argued for the dissolution of the working class as the "privileged" subject of socialist politics, a parallel movement inside feminism has contested and argued over the agent of women's liberation. Is it all women? Or is it the repository of women further disadvantaged by class, race and sexuality? Compounded by a widening gap between feminist theory and activity, this questioning has helped discredit the idea of 'woman' as a universalist subject capable of speaking for all women and a preoccupation with theorising women's multiple identities. The result has been a  celebration of differences and (an occasional) exploration of grounds where feminist activists from these constituencies can enter into temporary coalitions with one another. Politically this has meant the womens' movement of the 60s and 70s has fragmented and become supplanted by an identity politics over fixated on representational issues (see Judith Grant's Fundamental Feminism for a good (if dated) overview).

McNay argument was feminism is moving into an era of post-identity politics, which is stepping away from issues of difference and is grappling again with the problem of agency. For example feminists such as Wendy Brown have attacked feminism's postmodern identity turn as a masochism that mawkishly revels in the oppressions specific to that group. The problem for Brown is the absence of political imagination - a preoccupation with theorising gender identity neglects Hannah Arendt's understanding of politics as autonomous, world creating, and concerned with the radically new. In short, while feminists have been obsessing about identity they forgot liberation and freedom.

But for McNay this journey beyond identity politics and embracing agency is being theorised at a very abstract level. The tendency among theorists is to treat the problem discursively - that is a matter of knowledge and cultural (sign) production independent of the lived material existence of women rather than a practical political issue. Or, to translate it into Marxist language, they are approaching the possibility of politics in an idealist as opposed to materialist fashion. However, other proponents of post-identity feminism have identified further problems.

Linda Zerilli in her Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom argues that not only are debates around agency overly discursive, they remain focused on issues of subjectivity, which is precisely the same ground gone over by identity politics. But also the discussion can become trapped within reinterpretations of the rules of gender and, in spite the aims of the argument, end up propping up the hegemonic terms of what constitutes gender. Instead feminists should work towards Arendt's understanding of politics of remaking the world and embrace its open-ended promise.

For McNay, this is a non-starter. By rejecting subjectivity all together all that's left is utopianism. Political agency is only possible if there are agents capable of acting politically! As such Zerilli's nod toward agency can only be a gesture. McNay however has her own way of addressing the question. She does not want to write these debates off - instead McNay suggests the way of bridging theory and practice is by turning to Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus, which offers a sophisticated means of understanding how social relations and power are embodied without positioning subjectivity and agency as an effect of structure.

There were two things that struck me about McNay's talk. I couldn't help thinking that if this is an accurate snapshot of feminist theory, it's in a place similar to where it was before the women's movement fragmented and was partly absorbed by academia. What differs now is a more nuanced understanding of the problems of subjectivity and political agency. However, even though McNay's use of Bourdieu offers a way of reestablishing the connection between (academic) feminism and actually existing feminist politics the former remains esoteric and divorced from the day to day concerns of the latter. The women's movement in Britain isn't what it used to be, but there are plenty of women (and men!) who identify with the feminist label working in a variety of political arenas. Some may follow the academic debates but few would say their activity is guided by it. But ultimately a way has to be found of building and sustaining an enriching dialectic between the two, otherwise theory will remain an academic language game played by and only accessible to an elite of professorial feminists.

In Defence of No2EU

At long last No2EU's list of candidates for this June's European elections have been released. There are no great surprises on the list (the rumour Alice Mahon was to stand at the head of the Yorkshire and Humberside list proved unfounded) but the lists are pretty solid from a socialist and militant trade unionist perspective. As left challenges in the European elections go, it's head and shoulders above the scattered efforts of the far left in 1999 and the ritualistic paper candidates of the Socialist Labour Party and is on a par with the Respect and Scottish Socialist Party intervention five years ago.

But rather than being seen as a welcome step forward No2EU has come in for a barrage of criticisms. "It's undemocratic!" "It's nationalist!" "It's a creature of the Stalinists!" "It's a bureaucratic lash-up!"

There are problems with No2EU. As far as the Socialist Party are concerned the platform is not as left-wing as we'd like it to be and we would have preferred the coalition to have come together earlier. But neither of these should rule out the involvement of revolutionary socialists. The SP is participating in No2EU not because we endorse every dot and comma of the platform, nor are starry-eyed because it is being driven by the RMT. We do so from the standpoint of our perspectives.

As everyone on the far left is aware, the SP believes the immediate strategic task for socialists is the building of a party that politically represents the independent political interests of the working class. While there are a handful of decent MPs, councillors and activists inside Labour who do so, they are marginalised and the prospects of a left advance are choked off by the right's stranglehold on the apparatus. Hence why the SP has been agitating around the slogan of a new workers' party for a long time and why it helped set up the CNWP.

This understanding conditions our participation in No2EU. The question the party has asked itself at every stage of our involvement is the extent to which No2EU furthers or hinders our strategic objective. For socialists who want a new workers' party, this should be their chief consideration too.

First, does the existence of No2EU make the emergence of a new workers' party any less likely? There are no arguments I can think of that says it does. How then does No2EU contribute toward the process?

There is the RMT argument. The move of Britain's most militant trade union into electoral politics marks an important step along the road to refounding a new workers' party. It has also provided the resources that has made this nationwide challenge possible. The union and its general secretary has name recognition among tens of thousands of militant workers. Now, some on the left have sought to downplay this - they point to the lack of debate or mood within the RMT regards No2EU, which allows them to argue it's really the union's executive rather than the union itself that is behind the coalition. There are two rebuttals to this criticism. Firstly the executive has the license to make important strategic decisions in between conferences. As a democratic and accountable body, if No2EU is deemed a failure by the membership then they will be punished for it. However there's scant evidence of internal opposition to the move. Second, how does the RMT's relationship with No2EU differ in kind from the "organic link" the big trade unions have with Labour, an arrangement that has long justified far left endorsements of the party of Blair and Brown?

Then there is No2EU's platform. It is not ideal but it's hyperbole to describe it as "nationalist" or "reactionary". How many nationalist outfits condemn the BNP for whipping up racism and xenophobia and put the the blame for the avalanche of attacks facing our class at the bosses' feet? If they exist I'm not aware of them. If No2EU's platform is no good, then on programmatic grounds how can one justify voting for Labour? It seems to me there's a lot of purist positioning among the far left in the hope some sharp denunciations can pick up the odd disillusioned SP and Communist Party member. On the plus side it means the more "colourful" elements of our movement have excused themselves from participating in the campaign. But in the long run what do they think a new workers' party would look like? Neither Die Linke nor Rifondazione Comunista have revolutionary programmes. Both have attracted workers with all kinds of ideas and not a few apparatchiks from social democracy and official communism - there's no reason to believe Britain will be exceptional. Are they going to flounce out because it will draw in members with politics well to the right of the No2EU platform?

And what about the wider labour movement? It's not only the small forces grouped under the No2EU banner who are following its fortunes. Trade unionists at all levels of the movement will watch its electoral performance. If it performs creditably those elements leaning toward a new party in the unions are likely to be emboldened, and it makes the argument of there being no life outside Labour that much harder to sustain. The better we do, the more chances there are of a serious trade union-backed challenge at the next general election. That none of No2EU's ultra-left critics have picked up on this tells us all we need to know about their disconnect from the movement outside their hothouse milieu.

No one thinks No2EU is going to directly lead to a new party. But it's an important moment on that road. The working relationships being forged between ourselves, the CPB, RMT, Indian Workers' Association, and a whole raft of independent socialists and trade unionists who've got involved is something that will serve the fight for a new workers' party well. If you think Labour is finished as a vehicle for class politics, No2EU is the only campaign that will strengthen the political hand of the workers' movement. Have your criticisms by all means, but do not let them be an excuse for not being part of the process.

Anatomy of the Crisis

On Tuesday evening Chris Giles, economics editor for the Financial Times paid Keele a visit to deliver a talk on the independence of the Bank of England. Thankfully, rather than concentrate on this topic (which, let's face it, was only ever going to float the boat of economics anoraks), he gave us a broad overview of the mess we find ourselves in and the prognosis for the future. In short, things are grim but anyone hoping for a re-run of the great depression are going to be disappointed.

Giles narrative begins in early 2007 when things started unravelling in the American sub-prime mortgage market, which through a series of domino effects and feedback loops spread the developing crisis to money markets, financial institutions, corporate credit and then to the wider economy. All told the crisis stayed out of sight for much of the 18 months, but when it did surface it was in a series of spectacular collapses. Most economists and central banks did not catch on to what was happening until it was too late. For example, they expected inflation would be the big problem of 2008. As we now know they were wrong. Badly wrong.

If there was a watershed moment it wasn't the reluctant nationalisation of Northern Rock nor the bailing out of Bear Stearns, but the collapse of Lehman Brothers. As far as the US government and financial authorities were concerned a line had to be drawn somewhere. Ideologically they could not countenance propping up every failing bank and politically they would have a hard time selling it to the American people. The consensus among economists was that if a bank should be allowed to go down, it should be Lehman's because it was not as central to the finance system as other institutions. This turned out to be a catastrophic mistake: it marked the exponential growth of the crisis. In a stroke not only did a widely-known investment bank plunge into the abyss, but with it went the regime of trust that underpinned the loans banks make to each other and the wider economy on a daily basis. Credit dried up and capital fled the so-called emerging economies for the comparative "safety" of home. The ultimate legacy of Lehman's is a financial climate where the only credit worthy borrowers are governments.

We are familiar with how this has played out up to now. According to the IMF world trade and industrial production has fallen off a cliff. The value of world trade has declined 30 per cent since the onset of the crisis. Production in the advanced metropolitan economies is down 15 per cent, with South Korea and Japan reporting 30-40 per cent shrinkage. Stock markets are back at 2003 levels. The Purchasing Managers' Index for manufacturing (which measures what companies say they are selling) is well down, but is showing signs of a very slight recovery. And then there are the social consequences. Official statistics show unemployment in the UK sailed through the two million barrier in March. Bankruptcies are at record levels and repossessions are up. Whatever progress was made in tackling poverty here and around the world is rapidly being rubbed out.

And the bad news goes on. Global output is expected to fall for the first time since the Second World War. World GDP growth has taken a massive hit - if it grows at all this year that will be thanks to China. For Britain the decline in output is equivalent to the 1979-82 recession, the difference being the pain being "shared" across all the regions of the UK and not just concentrated in the north. And of course government borrowing has had to mushroom to keep the show on the road. To put it into context, it stood at around seven per cent of national income during the 90s. When the government last went to the IMF for a loan the share was between seven and eight per cent. After the bail outs and recapitalisation of the banks public borrowing is equivalent to 12.5 per cent.

These have been the effects, so what were the causes? Giles made a distinction between immediate causes and underlying factors. The sparks that lit the tinder were:

* The bursting of the house price bubble, which was egged on by cheap credit.

* Excessive risk-taking by the banks, which infected the wider finance culture. As the (then) chief executive of Citigroup said in July 2007, "When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing."

* Light touch regulation, which amplified the effects of the natural business cycle in conjunction with a complacent culture: Bank of England and IMF stability reports recognised the dangers but there were more or less ritualistic additions rather than calls to action.

* No distribution of risk - the bursting of the Dotcom bubble did not wreak havoc because risk was not concentrated. On the surface, prior to the collapse risk distribution appeared to be secured by financial instruments that sliced and diced mortgages. Problem was these "products" were concentrated in a few key firms and warehoused by the banks before they were widely distributed among investors. Furthermore when the crisis hit and brought down AIG, the insurance firm at the heart of global finance, this concentration of risk caused severe damage at the core of the system.

* The initial round of implosions precipitated more collapses as investors grew fearful and panic spread around the world.

These causes were conditioned by a precarious global economic climate. In the first place there was a serious imbalance in the economy. Since the IMF's intervention during the Asian crisis of 1997-8 and the attendant capital flight a strong domestic culture of saving developed, which sought increasingly profitable investment outlets. One of these was the US government itself via bonds, but also (mediated by US banks) its massive housing sector. It made cheap credit possible but also provided the financial backbone that allowed for riskier and riskier investment decisions.

Secondly economists had developed an irrational trust in their models. Because they appeared to be accurate more faith was placed in them and a models culture ruled the thinking of banks, central banks, regulatory debates and the academic discipline of economics itself. However, as Marx once noted, one should not confuse the things of logic for the logic of things. These models had two chief defects. They modeled individual banks and institutions in isolation from the rest of the economy. As such they were blind to the possibility of crisis that attends any complex system - a self-evident truth for ecology and network theorists for over a generation now (and, of course, far longer for sociologists and especially Marxists).

Third and fourth, the faith in the models reinforced a global culture of complacency that thought many of capitalism's problems had been solved, a culture best encapsulated by Gordon Brown's declaration that boom and bust had been abolished. All that remained were micro problems. As such the good times helped breed an anti-regulatory orthodoxy.

Finally there was a structural underestimation of risk. Society (or rather, the drivers of policy and the captains of finance) had forgotten banks are inherently risky institutions. Immediately there are intermediaries between savers and borrowers. The former provide the funds for lending, the latter the interest payments on loans. Therefore banks fulfill essential economic functions and are too important to allow for their wholesale failure. If anything's been learned from this crisis, that is the lesson.

How to get out of the crisis? Giles took a look at the measures being implemented across the world, which broadly follows those pursued by the government here. All the advanced economies have interest rates around zero, some have taken to 'quantitative easing' (the creation of electronic money rather than the printing of bank notes), the fiscal stimulus (many countries opting for bigger interventions than the UK, via tax cut and spending increases), recapitalisation of banks, a beefing up of the IMF, and automatic stabilisers such as falling prices have kicked in. In addition the UK has enforced lending by the banks (thanks to their part-nationalisation) and currency depreciation, which is significantly narrowing the gap between exports and imports. Taken together all these amount to a very strong economic stimulus and the IMF thinks things will begin moving again by 2010. But it is a big risk: if it doesn't work, what then?

In the questions Giles was asked more about the impact of Lehman's failure, the possibility of the British taxpayer getting their money back from saving the banks. There were two points Giles made that particularly interested me. The first was that in the UK the recession maybe sharp, but there is no crisis of consumer confidence. Spending has held up, all things considered. What has gone down in 'consumer investment' (i.e. small investments): it is this that has boomed over the last decade, not spending. He also added that if there was a collapse in consumer confidence the government are more than prepared to fire up the printing presses to stave off deflation. The second point was the future shape of the British economy. The crisis here is different to how it has taken hold of Germany and Japan, but strong manufacturing sectors hasn't stopped them from being hit very hard. Proportionately, they have been hit harder than British manufacturing. Giles forecast an economy less reliant on finance - London will retain its position as Europe's financial capital but it is likely to be less profitable, less sexy and smaller. Britain's economy will become more mixed, but it's hard to say now what this mix will be.

Concluding, he quipped that the next few years were going to be a "great time to be an economist" and said economists are learning, and will continue to learn after the next crisis has hit in another 20-30 years time. Considering he's a professional economist, there was little appreciation of the crisis tendencies inherent in the system - all that's needed is a bit of tinkering here, a bit of knowledge-gathering there and eventually economics will guarantee a capitalism with all the contradictions ironed out.

Credit where credit's due, Giles's account of the crisis was excellent and I've seen this analysis echoed and mirrored in the left press. But his vision of what comes next manages that rarest of feats; the marrying of utopianism with a politically impoverished outlook. Not only is a capitalism without contradictions impossible, it's not particularly desirable either.

Twitter, Again

So Nadine Dorries has been whinging about Twitter. Auntie Nadine tells us that not only is it banal, but it's a symptom of a deep malaise in Western civilisation. Apparently there have to be some seriously ominous movements deep within the bowels of society for making so many people want to communicate 140 character long messages (or less!) with like-minded people.

Of course, if society is so broken and alienating, it has absolutely nothing to do with the economic and social policies implemented by her ilk from Thatcher to the present day.

I've been on Twitter for nearly a couple of months now, and yet I do not feel caught up in some kind of enclosed social bubble. Unlike Dorries's colleagues in the shadow cabinet, it has helped put me in loose contact with people from all sorts of backgrounds. These include activists, bloggers and other interesting people I wouldn't necessarily have encountered in Stoke - despite The Potteries being the world centre of political and cultural events. And when you're in the activist game, weak ties can be very important.

But there's more to Twitter than that. For me it has become something of an interactive news feed. A typical day sees banter going back and forth, but also the stories and blog posts you may have otherwise missed are highlighted, and that's not forgetting things the media would otherwise ignore. Where was the police violence at the G20 and the death of Ian Tomlinson first broken? The blogs helped keep the story alive a full week before the mainstream media (with the honourable exception of The Graun) realised it wasn't going to go away, but you heard it first on Twitter.

And yes, you can tell everyone what you thought of In the Loop or how your cat wiped his arse on the carpet, but you can promote your own blogging output (boosting your blog readership) and articles put out by your friends or party. It is another arena for fighting the battle of ideas.

In my opinion Twitter is extremely useful for the internet-going lefty. But that applies equally to the right as well. Sadly not many of our opponents and enemies among the Tories share Dorries's Luddite attitude.

Plug: You can follow me here, and a list of socialist twitterers is here.

Men of the People

On Question Time last week, Andrew Lansley, shadow cabinet member for health attempted a defence of MPs having second jobs. Apparently secondary occupations help anchor our representatives in real life outside of parliament. Leaving aside the obvious objection that this role is supposed to be performed by the party organisation (at least according to the work political scientists have done on linkage), you have to ask what sort of "real life" Tory MPs are in regular contact with. For instance Lansley revealed his second job consisted of 12 full working days per annum as a non-executive board member. His remuneration for leaving the cosy bubble of Westminster for the rough and tumble of the workplace is £24,000/year.

Is Lansley a one off? Or is he typical of the Tory shadow cabinet? Shall we take a look at other leading shadow cabinet members with jobs on the side?

William Hague, shadow foreign secretary lists his interests outside of parliament as reading, walking, cross-country skiing(!) and judo. But his other outside interests include directorships of AES Engineering and AMT-Sybex. Steven Norris, the former front line Tory MP and London mayoral candidate is the chairman. Pure coincidence of course. In addition Hague has a list of smaller employments as long as your arm - mainly as a speaker (£10K - £20K a pop!) but also as a member of the political council of Terra Firma Capital Partners (another £15K - £20K) and lastly as parliamentary advisor to JCB for a salary in the region of £45,000 - £50,000!

Ken Clarke register of interests is small fry compared to Hague's. Clarke holds a directorship for Independent News and Media (of the Indy fame) and sits on the advisory board of AgCapita Funding Partners. In addition Fat Ken lists a number of speaking engagements over the last year weighing in at £5,000 - £10,000 apiece. All this is a far cry from the halcyon days at British American Tobacco, but the register tells us BAT paid for the flight, three day accommodation and "hospitality" for Clarke and son's jaunt to last year's Singapore grand prix.

Francis Maude is the shadow for the cabinet office and shadow chancellor for the grand duchy of Lancaster. Maude's responsibilities cover the so-called third sector of cooperatives, NGOs and social enterprises. And boy, has Francis been very social with his enterprising. He is the chair of Prestbury Holdings PLC, non-executive chair of The Mission Marketing Group, and carries out a non-executive role for UTEK Corporation. If this wasn't enough, he sits on Barclays' Asia-Pacific Advisory Committee and draws income from properties in the south of France and a home in London (a home he claims expenses for, as exposed on Dispatches a couple of weeks ago). So two shadows plus four jobs on the side. How does he find time for his love of opera and cricket?

Among Alan Duncan's (apparent) interests are "mimics and impressions". Compared to his colleagues, our shadow leader of the commons does a good turn as a proletarian. Duncan is a non-executive director of Arawak Energy, a gas and oil exploration firm whose field of operation is in Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Usefully Duncan also owns Harcourt Consultants who advise on energy issues for projects outside the UK. On top of this he receives rental income from a number of London properties.

Liam Fox, the shadow minister for "defence" doesn't have any directorships! Instead he has to get by on a number of (unspecified) lectures for the medical education firm, Arrest Ltd. (he also holds shares in the company). What catches the eye are the number of gifts he receives contributing toward the costs of his private office. No less than six donations from well-remunerated executives and partners have found their way into the office kitty. Must be nice to have such charitable friends.

Oliver Letwin as head of policy seems well suited given his career as an establishment philosopher. And Letwin also shows being an ideas man doesn't mean you have to skimp on comfort. He is a non-executive director at a subsidiary of Rothschild's, which does him for pocket money.

Tory party chair, Eric Pickles delighted Westminster watchers with his train wreck performance on Question Time at the end of March. If you recall, he justified his second home (financed by the taxpayer via expenses) on the grounds 30 odd miles late at night was too taxing for him. I'd suggest his side employments are probably taking it out of him too. He is a non-executive director for Property Awards Ltd. He's also parliamentary advisor for Royal British Legion Industries. In exchange for his selfless patriotic services RBLI pay somewhere between £10,000 - £15,000.

One is left with a sneaking suspicion that the story outside the shadow cabinet is pretty similar. The Tories' social universe is largely limited to well heeled business circles united by mutual back scratching and patterns of interlocking directorships. It is a world a million miles away from the overwhelming bulk of people. The yawning social distance between them and us means they have little clue of what life is like for most of the middle class, let alone working class people! For the Tory leadership we are abstractions fed to them on policy documents and caricatures that crop up in dinner party conversation. At best we are voting fodder. At worst we are the mob. And because we do not exist in any meaningful way we should not be too surprised when they prioritise the demands of capital above all else. To be sure, the next Tory government will be by the privileged, for the privileged.

Edit: Also at Socialist Unity

After The Worst Week Ever

Am I the only one tired of the 'Brown is finished' meme dominating the headlines and the blogs this weekend? Ever since Brown famously bottled an autumn general election 18 months ago, the sound of knives sharpening has greeted every downturn in the government's fortunes. And especially so now - this last week is being hyped as THE WORST WEEK EVER. The defeat of the government over the gurkhas, the climb down over MPs expenses, the widely panned YouTube appearance, Charles Clarke declaring he's ashamed to be a Labour MP and now Hazel Blears has put the boot in, in an article ostensibly lamenting Labour's failure to communicate "the positives" to the public. So definitely the worst week since ... the government's last worst week.

But all the talk about a challenge to Brown's leadership is just that, talk. Wretched and despised the head of New Labour maybe, no one is prepared to do a Brutus and plunge the knife in. And why should they? The political careers of Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine and John Redwood didn't exactly flourish after their turns in the role. Nor would a parliamentary coup necessarily go down well with the public. For example, insiders have briefed the media to suggest Brown's replacement by Alan Johnson might save Labour up to 100 seats at the next general election. But there is no suggestion of politics or political difference: it is always framed in terms of cynical self-interest. A successful challenge, which if it comes is most likely to assume this apolitical character, isn't the smartest way of "reconnecting" Labour to its support.

On Andrew Marr this morning, Ken Livingstone accurately diagnosed the political roots of the government's problems. New Labour remains terrified of the party's social democratic shadow but this is its only route to salvation. Labourism renewed might not be my cup of tea, but that would be many times better than New Labour's grey hodgepodge of neoliberalism, Keynes-lite and managerialism. If there is hope for the government, it won't lie in the polls until the values of the past are embraced and built upon. But alas, this is all academic. Brown will not be removed. And in a party that has choked off members' influence by closing down democratic decision making, a revival of social democracy this side of an election is about as likely as my becoming a UKIP MEP.

But there is something socialists in and out of the Labour party can be cheerful about, and that's the state of the Tories. They feel pretty good about themselves. They ride high in the polls. The MPs expenses row barely touched them. They are enjoying fairly favourable media coverage. But very deep divisions lurk beneath the surface. Cameron and Osborne will almost certainly pursue a Thatcherite course if they win the next general election, but when it comes to values they are keen to position themselves within the cultural lifestylist consensus embraced by New Labour. The same cannot be said for other members of the parliamentary Conservative party, nor the Tory grass roots. And then there is Europe. Since Howard took over from the farcical Ian Duncan Smith he and Cameron have successfully placed a sticking plaster over the seeping wound. Opposition has certainly helped maintain discipline, but euro-scepticism is a position no Tory leader has managed to hold onto while in power. Cameron will prove no different, and neither will the Tory grassroots. The popularity of the odious Daniel Hannan (who, incidentally, views the NHS as a "socialist mistake") among them shows this particular fissure yawns deeply as it ever did. Lastly, a Cameron government are likely to take the axe to the "defence" budget, which will anger the Colonel Blimps and armchair imperialists in the local associations.

How long it will take these contradictions to surface is hard to say, but they certainly won't before the next election. But there's no harm in the hard left and the mainstream parties pursuing tactics aimed at bringing these out into the open.

May Day Musings and Mutterings of a Maverick

First of all let me take this opportunity to wish you all a happy May Day.

Now, down to business. It’s Apprentice time again and I am hooked. I thought this week’s task was dull but the action in the boardroom more than compensated. I have to admit that Debra Barr, self-confessed super gob, floats my boat. Anybody who dares to criticise her performance is met with a haughty, sneering half-smile and a contemptuous glare. This week, she even dared to lambast Nick, Sir Alan’s trusty lieutenant, and received a smacked-arse and a final warning for her efforts. However, in the follow-up programme shown immediately afterwards (although I am told it is filmed six months later) Nick sang her praises and explained she got a bit excited in the boardroom. Nick’s boat has obviously been floated too. I don’t think she would have found Margaret so malleable!

One of the highlights of this episode was Margaret referring to another of the contestants, Lorraine, as a ‘Cassandra’. This, as we all know, referred to a prophet from Greek mythology that made correct prophecies but was always ignored. All right, I didn’t know - I could only think of Rodney’s wife in Only Fools and Horses. Sir Alan obviously didn’t know either because he glanced quizzically at Margaret as if to say ‘who the fuck is Cassandra?’

Now, talking of Cassandras, Boffy’s Blog has been predicting for some time that while being very deep the current recession will likely be relatively short-lived. Recently, a few commentators are starting to agree but originally he seemed to be a lone voice in the wilderness. I don’t want to start a deep debate on economics here. This is intended to be a light-hearted and upbeat post and I certainly am not underestimating the misery that people are currently experiencing in the dole queues. But I am going to stick my neck out here (like my heroine from The Apprentice) and state I agree there is a recovery underway and that over the coming months the rise in unemployment should start to slow before the jobless figures start to decline. If I am wrong, I will hold my hands up.

And talking about being upbeat, the Met Office is predicting a warm, dry summer. As I am suffering economic hardship, my summer holidays this year are going to be four nights in Bournemouth at the UCU annual congress. This is a big improvement on last year, which was two nights in rainy Manchester for the same event. Hopefully the sun will shine and I can escape the gruelling machinations of trade union bureaucracy for a few minutes to enjoy an ice-cream cornet on the seafront. Who knows, Sir Alan might even send Empire and Ignite down to Bournemouth to sell ice creams on the beach. Debra would look magnificent in her swimwear! Oh to be in England!