Here we go, Streets of Rage 2. Be warned, the following statement may be flecked with nostalgia. This 1993 title for the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive is one of the best video games ever made. It is easily the greatest side scrolling beat 'em up of its console generation and it's arguable whether it's ever been surpassed. It was a must-have game at the time for any self-respecting MegaDrive owner, and remains so. To state it boldly: SoR2 is a masterpiece.
I was one of those who did pick it up at release. I remember queuing up in Derby's ComputerGenie of a Saturday morning just as the SoR2 shipment came in and eagerly handing over my £44.99. Yes, it was a lot of dough then but I certainly wringed every bit of value from this 16 megabit beastie (that's just two megabytes in today's money, in case you were wondering). It still got an occasional whirl long after I'd gone off games, that was until some arsehole nicked it from the communal MegaDrive pile in my halls of residence. I never forgot it though, and in 2012 - a gap of 16 years - I was able to reacquire this gaming tour de force for a reasonably priced tenner.
What's the fuss about? 22 years ago the battle for market supremacy between Sega and Nintendo was at its height. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was kitted out with hardware that, pound for pound, knocked Sega's machine out the ring. However, the front line was not so much what each console could and couldn't do. It came down to the games. Just like today, system exclusives helped drive sales and back then Nintendo had locked down pretty much all the large Japanese and American software houses. Until US courts forced them to scrap anti-competitive licensing arrangements, the big coin-ops and franchises went to the SNES. One such game was Capcom's Final Fight, which was (then) exclusively converted to Nintendo's 16-bit console (an outing for Sega's Mega CD was to come). Final Fight was a huge deal in the arcade with its pseudo-3D play field, choice of three characters and multiple moves. The sprites were large and the fighting action especially meaty. As a package, it was a step up from what went before: a logical progression from Technōs tired-looking Double Dragon series and its epigoni.
At this point, Sega was having to rely on a stable of exclusive conversions of its own arcade games and specially developed software. Hence many Nintendo titles were "replied" to by Sega for the MegaDrive and the 8-bit Master System. The first Streets of Rage was in this mould. Three characters to choose from, multiple moves, pseudo-3D play field. You get the picture. Unlike the SNES conversion of Final Fight, you could have two players simultaneously who variously combined to produce unique special moves. It also had a stomping techno soundtrack the likes of which had never previously been heard in a video game. As a defensive riposte, it was arguably a Final Fight beater, received almost universal praise and sold bucket loads. A sequel was inevitable.
Coming just shy of two years later, Streets of Rage 2 improved on its sibling in every conceivable way. The sprites were heftier than Final Fight's, there was more enemy variety, better bosses, more moves, longer levels, four playable characters, meatier sounds and, good grief, the most technically accomplished soundtrack of its generation and one of the greatest ever to grace a video game. I blame this for my dance music fixation. But most importantly, it played like an absolute dream. All you're required to do is walk to the right and kick the ass of everyone you come across. Simple. Mixed in among the usual goons and hoods are knife-wielding punks, Thai kick boxers, fire-breathing fat men, and blokes with jet packs. That's not counting the customary end of level bosses. A number of weapons can be picked up along the way (the sword, keep the sword!!) along with apples and roast joints(!) that help refill your life bar.
The four characters have their own unique sets of moves, strengths and weaknesses. The strongest is the lumbering Max, a man mountain whose spine-busting knee smash is the game's most devastating attack. Next is Axel, modelled closely on Cody from Final Fight. In my opinion he's the dullest character with the most boring move set, but his uppercut comes in handy for airborne foes. The best is Blaze, the all-rounder. As the game's token woman her moves are the most acrobatic but best equipped for a single player play through. Lastly there is Skate, a streetwise kid who can dart all over the screen and unleash some devastating attacks. Have you ever been kicked by someone in rollerblades? Ouch.
The original Streets of Rage was notable because, as far as I know, it featured the first black player character in a video game. Adam returns in the sequel, but this time he's gone and got himself kidnapped by the evil Mr X. Luckily, his kid brother Skate is to hand ... This itself is an interesting about turn of beat 'em up conventions. Typically the plot of these games revolved around rescuing some hapless woman - a girlfriend in Double Dragon, a girlfriend and a daughter in Final Fight, etc. Playing as Blaze you have the then unheard of scenario of a woman fighting through hordes of enemies to save her pal. A nice subversion of the not-so-fine tradition of abduction in video games.
One thing Streets of Rage 2 shares with other beat 'em ups of the time is the lawless backdrop. I can't think of one predecessor game - Ninja Warriors, Shadow Warriors, Crudebusters, Vigilante, Renegade not set in a city fallen to the ravages of organised crime. As a plot device, there is an element of practicality to it. Who is it okay for good guys to beat up? Crims are ideal punch bags. There's no moral quandary for starters and it reinforces a sense of right and wrong. But also, SoR2 and co. feed off late 80s/early 90s cultural anxieties: a feeling that social mores are decomposing, that the law was fraying and breaking, that urban spaces were places of danger. After dark, law abiding citizens were at risk of getting mugged or murdered. It's not for nothing that all of SoR2's urban levels take place at night. Coincidentally, in the early 90s city centres across Western Europe and North America were getting cleaned up and made safer as spaces for consumerism. What SoR2 draws on is the cultural memory of how New York had decayed into a risky place in the late 70s and early 80s. Yet alongside the crime it retained a gritty sort of urban glamour. This is faithfully reproduced in SoR2. As you cleave into Mr X's syndicate the flashing neon of a hip, happening city is your canvas. The pumping soundtrack underlines its dangerous but enticing allure.
Let's return to Blaze. In the original game, she was kitted out in a tasteful red jacket and matching tight miniskirt. This time the skirt is still in, accompanied by a boob tube. A good outfit for clubbing perhaps. Not so ideal for street fighting. And she has moves that play up her sexuality. Her aerial arm slice stretches her sprite out, accentuating her breasts. Her finishing flurry ends with a high kick - there would be little left to a goon's imagination before her foot smashes through it. Annoyingly, the other women in the game are even more sexualised. Cut from an identical type, woman enemies have bubble hair, come clad in a dominatrix outfit replete with over-the-top heels (surprisingly, Blaze is practical and wears flat-footed comfortable shoes), and are quite handy with a whip. These are direct homages to Double Dragon, in which women were exactly the same. It's interesting. The evil men SoR2 throws up are either freakishly styled or plain grotesque. They wear their characters on the body. The evil of the women is denoted by their sexualised outfits and choice of weaponry.
Tell a lie, there are other "women" in the game, but blink and you'll miss them. They are these sexless looking robots, and they're spiky automatons under the control of Mr X. Hmmm.
SoR2 draws on what were dated, questionable memes back then. But it demonstrates perfectly the double edge of video games. As a medium it is the most modern, most contemporary of art forms. In its day, SoR2 was at the vanguard of video game design. In every way it was a technically accomplished product assembled by a programming team at the top of their game. Its combined pushing the MegaDrive to its limits with the most perfect beat 'em up playability. SoR2 has long held its place in the canon, and deservedly so. Yet even then, the dazzling pixels and amazing sound were bundled with some pretty grubby social attitudes. This game came out 21 years ago, and so could be alibied by referencing the attitudes of the day. And yet product with exactly the same sorts of issues continue to pollute contemporary games systems. What's their excuse?
Some sense impressions about the Scottish referendum and its consequences.
If no wins on the 18th, it will be of the slimmest of margins and in spite of the politics of Better Together. The two debates between Salmond and Darling illustrated BT's problem perfectly. The first round went to Darling. He does technical detail very well, and took a scalpel to Salmond's bombast. Uncertainty was the First Minister's undoing, and he was duly skewered. Yet in the second round it was Darling who got crushed. He was like a broken record mumbling about currency and pensions as Salmond gave believable answers on the nuts and bolts, and championed a vision of what an independent Scotland could look like. This isn't a fault of Darling's per se, he is the product of a Westminster culture in thrall to managerial politics. When the battle is about ideas, sticking to the so-called wisdom of 'it's the economy, stupid' without bothering about the politics is a recipe for defeat. These people are supposed to be professionals, would you believe.
Still on the referendum, why have the three main parties been shy about their commitment to devo-max? It's curious. According to The Scotsman poll back in February this year some 61% of Scots would prefer it to independence. Small wonder the SNP wanted it being kept off the referendum paper, as that's what is already on offer. Voting no isn't for the status quo, it is for the extension of significant powers to the Scottish parliament. Finally, the Westminster parties have woken up to their commitments - but to begin talking about it 11 days before the referendum typifies their lackadaisical approach to independence. Just like a student who leaves their 12,000 word dissertation unwritten until the night before, it's panic stations. Truly we are governed by fools.
What will happen to the yes campaign, win or lose? Anecdotal evidence is that it has mobilised "ordinary" people and drawn them into activity. It may well be a mile wide, and such coalitions of convenience tend to be but an inch deep. Nevertheless a real social movement it is. Does this make for an immediate radical democratic for Scotland? If I thought that was the case, I'd be supporting the yes camp. Yet I'd broadly concur with this piece, also from The Scotsman. The SNP showed how deep their commitment to social justice ran by failing to turn its MPs out to join Labour and the LibDems for Friday's bedroom tax vote. But more significantly, Yes is firmly under the SNP's leadership. There has been no challenge to it. Differences have been papered over. Even Trotskyists, hardly a significant constituency, are deferring their criticisms to the never-never with their 'yes, but fight for socialism!' sloganising. There are real grass roots organisations involved, but they have allowed themselves to be adjuncts to the SNP. In the event of victory, when the celebrations have settled they will demobilise and go home with few, if any, feeding in to wider activism. I say this not because I'm a misery, but by looking at the mobilisation of analogous movements in liberal democracies. Remember the mass movement against Le Pen in 2002? That worked out well. Or what about the no less real mobilisation of the grassroots for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign? What happened to that movement? As the election committees disbanded the movement dissipated, and the overwhelming bulk of people involved returned to private life. Such is the fate awaiting Yes as their raison d'etre expires.
What about Yes in the event of no? I'd like to think that the experience of frustrated ambitions might, perversely, drive more engagement as disappointment spurs radicalism and more activism. On the other hand, defeat might impoverish civic culture as people become deeply affected by it. The continuing fall-out from the miners' strike 30 years on is testament to that. But, again, America can teach us a thing or two. The sort of mass mobilisation seen for Obama was there for John Kerry in 2004. Okay, not as extensive or enthusiastic but the Democrats had the troops and the organisation. No doubt the loss to Dubya was keenly felt, but they bounced back, precisely because the movement was a shallow adjunct of an elite project. Scottish civic culture isn't going to implode in the event of a no. From an activists point of view, it is likely to return to 'as you were'.
Ah, England. Politics can never be the same thanks to the devolution commitment. All the main parties will have to offer more to address the absurd anomalies of the unwritten constitution, and the relationship between the UK's constituent nations. Perhaps, just perhaps, it will be a shock enough to have the kind of popular discussion all the people of the UK state needs. That conversation would have to be had in the event of a Yes too, but I fear that in the present context the forces of reaction will be strengthened. A carnival of the right in which every ugly facet of English nationalism is dredged up and celebrated as a positive, one where the values of collectivism and solidarity which, in a way, the union has come to represent will be eroded even further. The price of "freedom" for five million people is another likely round of misery and social regression for 58 million. Worth it?
New blogs. Let's 'ave 'em.
1. Econ Autodidactic (Unaligned) (Twitter)
2. Emma Ann Hardy (Labour) Twitter)
3. For a Fair Society (Labour) (Twitter)
4. IWANTEDWINGS (Unaligned/feminist)
5. Luke Nightingale (Unaligned) (Twitter)
6. NAPO General Secretary's Blog (NAPO) (Twitter)
7. Papier Haché (Unaligned/trans rights) (Twitter)
8. The Lit Crit Guy (Unaligned) (Twitter)
9. The Medway Marxist (LRC/Labour) (Twitter)
10. Worrall's World (Unaligned) (Twitter)
That's your lot for this month's round up. If you know of any new blogs that haven't featured before then drop me a line via the comments, email or Twitter. Please note I'm looking for blogs that have started within the last 12 months. The new blog round up usually appears on the first Sunday of every month. And if it doesn't, it's usually for want of content!
At 21, Sam Hale is one of the youngest Labour prospective parliamentary candidates in the country. His opponent is 'Kaiser' Bill Cash, noted europhobe and long-serving Conservative MP for Stone. Sam lives in Cheadle and recently graduated from Lancaster University. You can find Sam's campaign website here, and follow him on twitter here.
- Do you regularly read blogs, and if so what are your normal haunts?
I regularly check Guido Fawkes’ blog, as he is very quick on political events and rumours, usually before the main news channels post anything. I receive the Telegraph’s Morning Briefing in my inbox every weekday, which sets the political debate of the day and recaps key events from the day before. They’re both centre-right blogs, with Guido Fawkes being unashamedly so, but I find them very interesting and informative.
-Do you find social media useful for activist-y-type things?
I find social media very useful for helping organise events and campaigns, by raising awareness and spreading information. I think it does have a role in helping form people’s political views, purely through the spread of information. As to creating tangible change, I do feel the best way is to engage directly in the political system, rather than purely relying on ‘sharing’ or ‘liking’ a post or message, but it does have a role.
- Who are your biggest intellectual influences?
I’m a fan of John Rawls, and although A Theory of Justice is a bit of a slog, I find his interpretation of what, given a neutral starting position, a just society is something we can work towards.
I have read a lot of Hayek, whose arguments I find largely to be either inconsistent or to have false premises. Nevertheless, it has helped me understand why classical liberalism prevailed(s), and how the left can counter it.
- What are you reading at the moment?
I’ve just finished the His Dark Materials trilogy, after being told to read it for many years but not doing so. Next on my kindle is Catch-22, although Owen Jones’ new book is coming out so this may take priority!
- What was the last film you saw?
I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy a couple of weeks ago at the cinema – the first Marvel film I’ve seen and was certainly one I’d see again. I’m not a big superhero film fan, but I will certainly consider seeing more.
- Do you have a favourite novel?
I think I’ll have to say the red classic, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It really gets to grips with the heart of what is wrong with the capitalism, and lays it out in easy to understand terms. I particularly found interesting how some of the characters lay the blame of their problems on immigrants and foreigners; lessons can be learnt from how Owen challenges these beliefs in the book, which are of particular importance given the rise of UKIP.
- Can you name an idea or an issue on which you've changed your mind?
When UKIP started to do well in the polls and local elections, at first I didn’t mind so much given how they are politically similar to the Conservatives and thus were drawing their voters from the Tories rather than Labour.
However, the results of the May 2013 County elections in Staffordshire (in particular, the divisions covering the Stone constituency where I am standing) was when I began to worry about the spread of UKIP. In almost every county division in Stone, UKIP came second behind the Conservatives and ahead of Labour – it was becoming clear that former Labour voters were starting to believe the myths about immigration and Europe that UKIP were putting out in their leaflets. In Stone we were subject to a particularly distasteful homophobic leaflet put out by the UKIP candidate that mocked bi-sexuals amongst other groups. It was from then on I realised the importance of tackling UKIP head on and the myths they perpetuate.
- How many political organisations have you been a member of?
I’m a member of a few campaigning organisations - the British Humanist Association, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Labour Representation Committee, as well as local groups in my town.
- What set of ideas do you think it most important to disseminate?
Communities and how they increase and expand opportunity is something that drives me and my politics. The idea of community is incredibly powerful in what they can achieve – as groups of people they live, work, shop, drink, socialise and ultimate stand together, inherently protecting the weakest and poorest in society. However, for them to work effectively they require a good foundation of strong public services. David Cameron’s battering of public services is one of the main reasons why I am standing in 2015, as our communities cannot withstand another five years of this disgraceful Government.
- What set of ideas do you think it most important to combat?
The attitude that immigrants are the root cause of everything that is wrong with society.
- Who are your political heroes?
I’ve always considered Tony Benn to be my ultimate political hero – his critique of free markets I find to be solid, and his opposition to wars honourable. I’ve also been watching a fair bit of Charlie Chaplin recently and found his interpretations of the politics during the 40s particularly interesting.
- How about political villains?
Perhaps ‘villains’ is a tad unfair, but I’d have to nominate the entirety of Staffordshire County Council’s Conservative cabinet, particularly the Deputy Leader/‘puppet master’ Ian Parry. Their last manifesto promised no more ‘salami slicing’ of public services, which is something they’ve kept to. Instead they’ve just removed the entire sausage! What they are doing to our youth services, libraries, elderly home care, amongst over public services, is disgusting.
- If you could affect a major policy change, what would it be?
Public transport has always been an area that interests me, although I’ll admit now it’s not the most thrilling of topics! Nationally, I think that the policy that has come out of Labour discussions that allow not-for-profit companies to bid for railway contracts is very good and could breathe fresh air into our dusty and creaking network. Locally, I’d like to see our councils take a leading hand in how bus companies provide their services – currently it’s a chicken and egg situation where routes are only run where there is demand, and people only use them where there is a nearby route. If Stoke City Council and the County Council took a lead on this we could sort out many problems relating to transport across the area.
- What would be your most important piece of advice about life?
It sounds a bit of a naff philosophy, but it’s something that proves effective to me time and time again: If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. Speaking to people on the doorsteps, when I ask residents for any local issues usually you’ll only hear of small niggles, that can usually be rectified with an email or call to the council. They may seem unimportant, but it’s these things that can make a huge difference to the quality of life to a whole community.
- What is your favourite song?
I listened to Paolo Nutini for the first time at this year’s Glastonbury festival and thought he was brilliant. Just for managing to incorporate Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator into a song, I nominate Iron Sky.
- Do you have a favourite video game?
Anything Star Wars keeps me hooked – I usually prefer multiplayer games where I can play with friends in the same room together but Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 are the exceptions.
- What do you consider the most important personal quality?
Friendliness.
- What personal fault do you most dislike?
Smarmy people really grind my gears.
- What, if anything, do you worry about?
Money is always something I worry about – as the director of a company I have an additional set of finances to fret about!
- What piece of advice would you give to your much younger self?
To listen more.
- What do you like doing in your spare time?
I’m fortunate that I love buying and selling things and so my job is something I really enjoy. I’m always on the lookout for things to try and see for my partner and me so we regularly venture out, very often a day at the races.
- What is your most treasured possession?
An odd one, if it counts, but it would have to be my online calendar/diary – I’d be completely lost without it! I’ve set it to sync with all gadgets so it’s not something I need to worry about but its astonishing how much I rely on it. I do have a copy of the 1945 Labour manifesto which is something I’d have to drag out of a burning house!
- Do you have any guilty pleasures?
Chocolates and sweets, although my teeth do show it!
- What talent would you most like to have?
I’d love to be more handy with my hands – I like the idea of creating/maintaining things, and on paper I can do it, but in practice I’m completely useless.
- If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true - apart from getting loads of money - what would you wish for?
Let’s go for winning the Stone seat in the 2015 General Election.
- Speaking of cash, how, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money?
As my partner often says, I’m incredibly boring with my money and I suspect not a lot would change, and would still do my shopping in Aldi and in the local High Street. I’d probably get more enjoyment from investing the money than spending it.
- If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be?
Although I met Tony Benn a couple of times, I didn’t get chance to have a proper conversation with him so he’d definitely be my first guest. I think I’d also choose Nye Bevan and George Orwell.
- And how are you finding campaigning in what is normally considered a rock-solid Tory seat?
It’s begun well – I’m getting various emails and calls from people who have never voted before (or used to vote Bill Cash!) who are interested in getting involved in my campaign so that has been very positive. It’s a very tricky constituency in that less than half of constituents live in the 3 biggest towns, with the rest being spread out in various villages and hamlets. They all have their own different community vibe which is great but is hard work in spreading myself across the whole constituency!
Viewed from afar, Better Together has been a poor show. Not in terms of numbers involved out canvassing day after day. I'm on about the politics on offer. The vision thing. Yes have it. That an independent Scotland will share the monarchy, be a semi-colony of the Bank of England and fancies a corporation tax race to the bottom with rUK and the Irish doesn't really matter. It won't be this forever. Where Salmond and the SNP have been really clever is allowing 'Scotland' to be populated by all kinds of aspirations. It's a sail catching every gust of hope, and one that may well blow it across the finish line.
Better Together have absolutely not done this. Alastair Darling has approached the independence referendum as a managerial matter. Questions of social justice, of what the union could be and should be have been crowded out by technical arguments around currency, pensions, oil revenues and economic stability. These are important issues, but you fight politics with politics. You match ideas with ideas. You have to show the people of Scotland how life will get better under continued union with the rest of the UK. Saying "more of the same" is simply not good enough.
Yet just as an independent Scotland would not always be the plaything of the bond markets, so a no vote does not necessarily mean Westminster business-as-usual. The situation is pregnant with positive, tangible possibilities. If it survives the union and the 63 million people of the UK stands on the cusp of irreversible change. So, on the day the RMT in Scotland narrowly voted to endorse the Yes campaign, here are seven political reasons for saying No Thanks, and staying with us.
1. Labour are going to win the general election next year. Yes, really. The SNP have - wisely - tried tying the yes vote to anti-Tory sentiment. As a country, Scotland is the most spontaneously social democratic section of the British Isles. This is nothing to do with the "natural character" of Scottishness. It is rooted in the brutalities of deindustrialisation, the use of Scotland as Thatcher's proving ground for the Poll Tax, and how the people of Scotland had no constitutional comeback at governments the country didn't vote for, both then and now. Yet Conservative rule can be counted out in the months. Tory civil war, UKIP, and general nastiness and incompetence have done for them.
2. Labour have a recognisably social democratic policy agenda. It's not consistent. There are too many residues of the old thinking and concessions to anti-immigrant scaremongering. Yet on the whole, the package is moving in the right direction: left. Scotland's NHS is yet to be blighted by backdoor marketisation. Under Labour, it never will be. But more than that, Labour is looking to develop a national care service alongside the NHS so our elderly and most vulnerable people will not get caught up in or be let down by medical and social care professionals working in silos. Labour is committed to capping energy bills and rents, of making sure the scourge of low pay is checked and reversed by raising the minimum wage and vigorously promoting the living wage, of scrapping the bedroom tax and dumping the Tory proposals to victimise the poor further. More house building, a jobs guarantee, increasing taxes on the rich - if it's a scrap over social democratic policies the SNP want, it's what they will get.
3. If Scotland votes no, it still wins. Devo-max, which all the Westminster parties are signed up for, enables Scotland to keep its tax beyond contributing to the provision of services/institutions managed on an all-UK basis (EU membership, NATO, foreign office, overseas aid, R&D, UK-wide infrastructure investment, etc.). Never again will a Westminster government be able to attack the people of Scotland through the block grant. As is right, Scotland's spending priorities should be up to the Scottish parliament. This has none of the risks so belaboured by Darling, and undermines the centralism of Westminster government in the rest of England.
4. Speaking of centralisation, the Labour party is committed to handing power and money to local authorities. In a few short years a century of Westminster centralisation will be undone. If this is good enough for England and Wales, it's good enough for Scotland too. While the SNP, paradoxically, aren't so keen on devolving power away from Edinburgh if Scotland stays in the union empowering local government this way will be irresistible. Local elections will matter much more because our communities have a greater say of how their money is spent. In Scotland, I hope this would mean a deeper embedding of social democracy which, in turn, will inspire, inform, and change local politics south of the border.
5. The independence referendum has changed the union. It will never be the same again. But that change needs deepening. If Scotland does vote no as per current polling, the margins will be tight. It means afterward Scotland will be in a stronger, emboldened position within the union. Independence won't go away, a comeback and revisit is inevitable in the medium to longer term. To keep Scotland on board all of the above is not enough. There has to be a massive policy shift. As it just so happens, one is bobbing up and down on the horizon. Living in times of uncertain energy prices and growing insecurity, we shall increasingly have to turn to the resources of these islands to provide our needs. Presently the Scottish government have the target of 100% of Scotland's energy to be generated by wind power by 2020. If Scotland remains in the UK, the political minefield and environmental lunacy of fracking makes Scottish wind and wave extremely attractive for speedy investment. This means a real shot in the arm for the green reindustrialisation of Scotland and a windfall under devo-max as electricity is exported to the rest of the UK and elsewhere. That could happen anyway, but how much longer would it take if left to the Scottish government alone? Scotland is in a strengthened position to lobby for and make the case for the rapid development of these resources, but only within the union.
6. If Scotland remains in the union, its anti-Tory majority will have the pleasure of kicking this odious government out of power. Not just that, 2010-15 may well be their last hurrah. Splits and UKIP are bleeding them dry, they cannot seriously claim to be a Britain-wide party like Labour can and, long-term, demographics are against them and the UKIP freak show. Do you really want to leave the fun of delivering the coup de grace to the English and Welsh only?
7. I admit it, one of the reasons I want you in Scotland to stay with us is entirely selfish. I am a socialist. I want to see a better society in which all that is best about our shared culture - solidarity, liberty, acceptance - to be celebrated. All that is ugly, the sexism, racism, xenophobia, bigotry, whether it comes in an orange sash or a yellow and purple leaflet, needs driving out. The obscenity of inequality and dominance of the city is disgusting. The great thing is I'm far from untypical. There are millions here who want to see what I want to see. If you vote no, the act of union goes from a parchment born of aristocratic and dynastic skulduggery to something much better: a voluntary union of peoples. Scottish social democracy now is no finished article, but already strengthens the popular centre left majority where you are strengthens the political balance in favour of working people and their families here too. And when we vote in a Labour government next year, social democracy will be yet further embedded in Scottish politics. If we have each others' backs, we can make life better for all 63m of us. So please, when you cast your ballot on the 18th, vote to stay with us.
The Conservative/LibDem Coalition has proven itself the most incompetent and vicious government this country has seen since the 1930s. In future decades historians of politics will damn it for the food bank queues, the severely disabled people being forced into work, for allowing the super rich to coin it while hammering the worst off and, of course, failing utterly to rebuild an economy that can hold its own in the cut and thrust of global capital flows. But among the foot notes, two positives will get highlighted. One will be the piloting of equal marriage through the Commons, at significant cost to the Tory party, and the other will be this: the introduction of universal free school meals for five to seven-year-olds across England and Wales.
Seeing lefty Graun writer Zoe Williams attack the policy from the right was not expected. Her complaint is that introducing a universal benefit jars with the food emergency semi-deliberately created by the government's butchering of social security and promotion of poorly-paid, insecure work. If they wanted to tackle the problem, making sure nice middle class people pocket a chunk of taxpayers' cash might be a start. As she puts it, "to drop over £1bn on a universal benefit that excludes by child’s age rather than parent’s means is just preposterous." She goes on:
And yet I’m coming to realise the sad undertow of this story, which is that things have become so bad I wouldn’t make a defence for any universal benefit at the moment. The solidarity argument of universalism used to be heartwarming. But now all it does is emphasise the erosion of security at the bottom, the erosion of the social promise that nobody has to starve and everybody deserves a roof over their head – and how fast and brutal it has been.
Two things. This will keep £800 in the pockets of parents every year for three years. It is real, practical help for the majority of people affected by it. If Zoe doesn't want her 800 nicker, I'd recommend donating it to the Labour Party or a trade union. The labour movement is the only one serious enough and in a position to tackle the obscenity of food poverty. I recommend all her guilty-feeling friends do the same: your eight hundred pounds will help Labour win next year.
The immediate advantage of rolling it out as a universal benefit means no laborious application process or means-testing. Having previously worked with people on low pay and/or subsisting on social security, endless form-filling and monitoring by a welfare bureaucrat is something a surprising number shy away from. There is pride too. I come from a working class family that was always eligible for free school dinners. Did my mum put in a claim? No. I can remember asking why some kids got free meals and we didn't. "It's because they're poor", came the reply. Making it universal removes any stigma straight away and ensures every child in want of decent, nutritious food gets one cooked meal every week day. If the price is some rich folk getting to save cash too, I can live with that.
Also, universalism isn't about "feeling nice", it's about cohesion. Or more than that, it's about ensuring those who don't need it still get a buy-in. I don't have kids, but receive a good wage. If I did and a £800 saving came my way, I'd be more inclined to want that policy to continue, and perhaps extended for the course of my daughter/son's school life. Self-interested, yes. Selfish? Probably. But when well-off, well-connected and influential people are habituated to the saving and defend it for entirely selfish reasons, they ensure those without their social capital and advantage continue to receive the benefit too. No form-filling. No stigma.
The policy is a transparent election bribe, but it doesn't matter. What does are the kids from similar backgrounds to mine, and that's why every socialist, every Labour person, and anyone with a decent bone in their body should welcome its introduction.
When a Tory raises their eyes to the horizon everywhere they see the 12 yellow stars of the European Union twinkling in the deep blue firmament. Yes, the modern Conservative Party is dysfunctionally obsessed. It can be distracted enough to bash the poor and fulminate against trade unions, but the abiding obsession is Europe. The dinner on the plate is Europe. The first thought in the morning and the last one at night is Europe. From being a coalition of interests its scope is narrowly reducing to that of a mono-idea sect, an organisation that places its euro-fixation above the interests of its class. What a sorry state the Tory party has become. Not that I'm complaining, mind.
For the Tory hard right, the electoral maturation of UKIP represents threat and opportunity. They see the impressive votes wracked up in areas traditionally no-go for the blue team. They note how its no-EU, no-immigrants populism falls on fertile soil. And so, being the stupid empiricists they are reason that a) the Tory party is failing because it's not rightwing enough, b) a pact/merger of the Tories and UKIP would capture a large plurality of the British electorate (48% going by adding together their respective scores in yesterday's YouGov poll).
UKIP on the other hand see the Tories in two different ways. There's the strategy helpfully outlined by Stuart Wheeler, UKIP's bankroller. For him the party is less an end in and of itself but a ginger group that will force the Tories further to the right. Bliss is Boris Johnson + Euroscepticism, apparently. Then there is Farage himself. Say what you like about him, he's not a stupid player of the political game. He knows the appeal his one (two?)-man band has among Tory members and loyal voters, and that UKIP has a historic opportunity to force a realignment of the right. Replacing the Tories outright might be a bit of a stretch, but chewing up and annexing as much of them as UKIP might put high office within his reach. He also knows the likes of Wheeler are so much fair weather friends - stabilising UKIP as a large, europhobic alternative with a clutch of MPs in the big house will help make sure the sun keeps shining. And should a group of Conservative MPs decamp en masse, that puts Farage in a very powerful position indeed.
Pro-UKIP Tories then want a pact or merger. The Faragists want to exploit the decay of British conservatism by splitting the party and swallowing the europhobes, reputedly weighing in around 100 MPs and goodness knows how many associations. Yet election-winning strategies they are not.
On the Tory side, the moderate centre right is barely visible in the parliamentary party. Dave's reshuffle dumped pro-EU ministers and drafted in more headbangers, and this itself underlines the disconnect between the PCP and the coalition of interests the Tories need to build to win next year. For every loyal voter having their head turned by UKIP, there's another just about clinging on with gritted teeth. The working class Tories, the small business people, the professions and, increasingly, medium and larger businesses neither in finance or located in the South East have not so much been ignored by their party as having had their noses rubbed in abandonment. Nor are Tory voters uniformly, well, Tory. The Dave of 2010 jiggled his wares in a snug-fitting liberal-conservative bikini. The baggage of racism, sexism, section 28 and general nastiness were things of the past, he told us. For the Tories to jump into the sack with UKIP would put this important tranche of soft Tory voters well and truly off. The pickings for a centre rightish socially liberal LibDems are there. And there are Tory activists themselves. Just as the left likes to fire its big guns on the apostates in its trenches, UKIP has driven a section of Tory activism insane with hatred. They see a party ostensibly with similar aims preventing a majority in 2010, robbing them of council victories and, of course, scuppering any chance of winning next year. For Bone, Hollobone, Dorries and Mogg what they would gain on the right would be lost on the left and centre.
Yet UKIP aren't sitting entirely pretty either. Before the slow burning crisis of Toryism exploded this parliament, UKIP had got on okay with the general run-off of anti-politics. Thanks to the perennially unserious far left, a Green party with nowhere near as much exposure, and the too-toxic BNP, by 2011/12 UKIP had established itself as the go-to protest party. This has carried on being a tasty side order even as the party feasts on the Tory meat. However, the two don't necessarily mix. As the party remains in the ascendency it won't matter too much, but to stabilise the internal tensions need ironing out. For every Thatcherite caricature there's another member who was on the wrong end of the 1980s. Neoliberal fantasists who dream of flat taxes and an NHS founded on payment at the point of need meet with others who have fond memories of full employment and nationalised industries. Enthusiastic Toryism vs antipathy toward it. Where's the centre? Well, there isn't one. The irreconcilable can only be reconciled for so long. Should Farage pull it off and UKIP is flooded with dozens of MPs and thousands of ex-Tories, how long would the anti-politics brigade hang on? By this stage they would no longer be needed, but the price paid is UKIP's anti-politics tinge. Farage and his Tory co-thinkers might have their perfectly formed anti-Europe sect, but it won't be going anywhere.
A Tory/UKIP pact/merger would not win any general elections. But it would still be dangerous. This is a formation that could wreak havoc in local government, continue failing to represent British interests (however you define them) in the European parliament and, most crucially, poison political culture even further. Watching the death agonies of the right is not a spectator sport. We need to be out there challenging both whenever and wherever we can.
Consider three separate, seemingly unconnected incidents that have risen to media prominence recently.
1. The horrifying, systematic attacks on mainly white girls by gangs of Pakistani paedophiles in Rotherham.
2. The abuse meted out to Zoe Quinn, a US video game developer and author of Depression Quest.
3. The theft of naked photos from the social media accounts of prominent Hollywood stars, including A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst, and posting them online for all the world to see.
What drives a man to hack a woman's social media presence and repost details about her personal life? What kind of mentality laboriously reconstructs compromising pictures from supposedly deleted data to leak, leak, and leak again? How depraved do you have to be to spend time grooming schoolgirls solely for the purpose of imprisoning, raping, and torturing them? All of these behaviours are on the same continuum, a spectrum of woman hate.
And some say feminism isn't necessary.
The common root is more than just your standard misogyny, of the sort a lot of men have grown habituated to for over a century. The world where everyone knew their place, where men were men and women were sex/drudges is slipping into the night. And some men don't like it.
At the extreme, violent end of the scale is the Rotherham abuse. While conceding nothing to reader-friendliness, Slavoj Žižek(!) argues that the behaviour of the paedophiles concerned, be they convicted or not, is about asserting masculinity by damaging and breaking the girls they victimised. It's positioned as ritualised revenge, as getting back at the dominant white, secular but occasionally racist culture that positions them as second class citizens (brown-skinned, Muslim). Sexual abuse is an affirmation of their maleness, of seizing the property of one's adversary and using it as they see fit. "Their" women, their wives, sisters, mums and daughters already know their place, hence there is an element of the abuse "schooling" the white girls about their lot in life. There's something in this, but I'm inclined to agree with Paul Cotterill: the material circumstances and lived existences of the abusers counts for more than ideological considerations. Paedophiles aren't born sexual predators: they're made.
Then there is predatory behaviour of the other sort. The hounding of Zoe Quinn and the hacking of celebrity social media accounts is also an attempt - a doomed one - to put women in their place. As I've argued before, the "new misogyny", the harassment, creeping, stalking, name-calling, what have you isn't just the result of a few disturbed people getting their hands on an internet connection. It's deeper. It's symptomatic of a perceived emasculation crisis, of men on the one hand having to compete with women on an increasingly level playing field in the jobs market, of women becoming increasingly visible as actors and participants in their own right in areas traditionally marked off as men-only. Like video games. Like action-adventure films. What better way to lash out than rewriting a woman as a sex object, be it through scurrilous allegations that Quinn's game got good reviews because she slept around with industry journalists, or slapping naked photos of action heroine Jennifer Lawrence all over the internet? Everything else is stripped away. Their individuality. Their talents. The only thing that matters is what's between their legs. Pathetically, the men who pile in to these feeding frenzies find validation; they really think they're thumbing their nose at the feminist conspiracy.
Both types of abuse are born of decay. Women have been coming out of the home for decades. Girls and young women rightly expect to lead a life as meaningful and self-directed as that open to boys and young men. The redoubts of the women haters are crumbling as generation after generation are habituated to women in public life, to women in "male jobs", to there being no essential differences in capability and capacity. There is no reason to believe this trend will not continue, provided it is actively preserved and defended as we go. Abuse of this character is a spasm of inchoate fury and fear, but hopefully it is one whose days are looking numbered.
The most read this month were:
1. When Genocide Is Permissible
2. Critiquing Doctor Who: Deep Breath
3. On Bombing ISIS
4. The Social Significance of Ian Botham's Penis
5. How Not to Write About Rotherham
August's most-featured-in-the-news tops the page view tally for this month, followed not too far behind by the Doctor's return to our screens in Peter Capaldi's skin. Does having an openly Scottish Doctor indicate a clandestine contribution by BBC Wales to the Better Together campaign?
Yes it's been a busy month on the blog, the most buzzing it's been since December 2013 no less. And my choice for the couple of posts that didn't make the cut? There is UKIP's General Election Prospects. Written before Douglas Carswell's defection, everything said here still applies, but even more so. My second selection wouldn't shock long-term readers either: The Top 100 Dance Songs of the 1970s. Never miss an opportunity to inflict your music taste on the internet-going public.
