The event is at Five Leaves, Nottingham's radical bookshop. Tickets are £4 waged, £2 student/unwaged and you can book your place via events@fiveleaves.co.uk. Hope to see you there!
Rabu, 26 Jun 2019
Waiting for the Revolution, 1st July
The event is at Five Leaves, Nottingham's radical bookshop. Tickets are £4 waged, £2 student/unwaged and you can book your place via events@fiveleaves.co.uk. Hope to see you there!
Selasa, 25 Jun 2019
Welcoming Labour Party Reselections
Under the reformed trigger ballot system for reselecting sitting parliamentarians, if a third or more of constituency branches, or a third or more of affiliates (individual trade union branches, socialist societies, etc.) want there to be a selection, then by golly there will be one. While not mandatory reselection, which is still the preferred option, it is more permissive then the old trigger ballot system. There, each constituency branch and affiliate had a single vote each and the outcome would depend on a simple majority. However, this was open to huge abuses. Across the country, it wasn't uncommon for moribund branches to magically cast their vote for the incumbent, or for trade union officials to decide which way the six affiliated branches of x CLP were going to vote. And there are plenty of cases of affiliates effectively packing the trigger ballot process to negate the members' voice. Thanks to the reformed system that went through the last party conference this is now much harder to pull off. No wonder some Labour MPs are worried. Especially when our comrades on the self-declared centre and right of the party have preferred to demobilise themselves than carry on the fight.
The process has produced its first casualty. Jim Fitzpatrick for Poplar and Limehouse has said he won't be running again, after highlighting the political differences between himself and the Labour Party's necessary direction of travel. And, to be honest, few should mourn the passing of his career considering his voting record. Though at least he retains a modicum of political principle. There will be plenty of others who are opposed to the transformation of Labour, its policy platform, and will do everything they can to sabotage it who nevertheless think the constituency they represent and the title 'Labour MP for ...' is theirs by divine right.
Though, of course, opening trigger ballots this summer is not without risk. Going ahead means it is inevitable some sitting MPs are going to get turfed out, so what happens to them? When push comes to shove regards whatever withdrawal agreement Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt try pushing through the Commons, if a MP isn't able to stand for Labour again might that make it more or less likely for them to support it? Should a no confidence motion come before the House, are deselected MPs going to vote themselves out of a job and force a general election? Probably not, unless they have a nuclear power station or a fancy museum to fall back on. And, of course, deselection/reselection might mean the removal of some Corbyn supporting MPs, or a simple replacement of MPs of a melty persuasion with, well, new candidates of a melty persuasion. Though it goes without saying this would be the case even if Labour had a simple system of reselection. In the medium to long-term, however, given the composition of the party membership you would expect more left wing MPs, a more coherent, less fractious party, and what prepared to see the left wing programme through. It's a pity there will be short term pain.
Of course, what many sitting Labour MPs were hoping for was a replay of 2017. May called her surprise election, and so the National Executive Committee mandated automatic reselection for all sitting MPs and, where available, the same candidates from 2015 in seats we didn't take. Where there were vacancies arising from retirements, a few favoured folk of the apparatus were gifted seats. That was unnecessary then, but doubly so now when the conditions for an election are ripe. And so as far as the left are concerned, we should see this process as an opportunity. Here we have a chance to re-engage with party members whose commitment and interest may have gone off the boil and perhaps had their heads recently turned. The two party leadership campaigns offered an opportunity to reshape the Labour Party, and saw hundreds of thousands participate in remaking politics. The chance to choose our next slew of Labour candidates and therefore MPs shouldn't be something we hide under a bushel but be trumpeted as an opportunity for engagement.
The scale of the crises we face demands not just a radical government, but the direct participation of the mass of people in politics inbetween elections. Something as internal as selections are actually opportunities for the party to turn outwards, rebuild and reconnect with our base, bringing new people in, and starting the work of practical political education. That some Labour MPs would prefer a quiet summer of a dull and inevitable Tory leadership contest as a lead up to more parliamentary deadlock and more resigned public disengagement says all you need to know about their politics. It's time to consign this to the bin and use the opportunity to make good our commitment to build this party into a movement - a movement of the immense majority for the interests of the immense majority. If you're not a member already, why not join in?
Isnin, 24 Jun 2019
The Tories Under Jeremy Hunt
This really wasn't supposed to happen. The whipping operation overseen by Gavin Williamson was designed to exclude Johnson's most dangerous rivals and leave behind the wet blanket. Yet here he is, the proverbial worm that turned taking Johnson to pieces and with the former London mayor giving off every impression he's running scared. It might not make any difference to the Tory membership for whom Johnson's well known weaknesses are priced in, but the spectacle of cowardice can be expected to do as much for Johnson as it did for Theresa May among the wider public. Would his spluttering work in a head-to-head with Jeremy Corbyn? Does he think he could get away with wheeling out a lieutenant to fill in, as Amber Rudd did? And how would Johnson stand up to scrutiny from someone like Paxman or Brillo? The Tory party membership don't care, but if we're facing the prospect of a no-deal no-confidence followed by an early election then the electorate are likely to take a different view.
Johnson antics aside, let us for a moment think the unthinkable and imagine. Suppose the more the Tory membership see of Hunt, the more they like, and we get a situation in which he unexpectedly takes the crown. What kind of opponent for the Labour Party would Hunt make? It is true Johnson is an entirely known quantity whereas Hunt is less so. His tenure as Foreign Secretary has avoided the egregious blunders of his predecessor so far, and looking at the policy platform set out in his launch speech, Hunt has an inkling of the character of the crisis besetting the Tory party. He knows that the Tories have to appeal to young people, and so offers a menu of policies that, four years ago, would have got denounced by Dave and Osborne as Bolshevist-inspired. These include 1.5m new homes, cuts to tuition fee payments, aggressive action on clean air in the cities, more funding for schools and colleges, and a white heat of technology narrative about making the UK the new Silicon Valley. Not exactly stirring stuff, but it is a pointer in the direction the Tories need to go if their demographic crisis isn't going to kill them.
Nevertheless, policy for policy Labour has a superior offer on all of these, and whether there is an election this Autumn or we have to sit it out until 2022, the party can be confident in the strength of its manifesto. Though how the Tories will try and turn that into a weakness is something I plan on writing about soon. But back to the present, Hunt comes with his own stack of weaknesses. His record over the NHS is a recruitment sergeant of its million plus employees to voting Labour. Every scandal, every unnecessary death, every cut, every hospital and walk-in centre closure, he's on the hook and Labour will do its best to remind the public of it. However, while this could possibly managed - 2015 shows the NHS is no electoral magic bullet - more challenging is his Brexit position.
At last year's Tory party conference, he went out of the way to liken the EU to the Soviet Union. If there was any truth to such an absurd claim, Britain's dwindling band of tankies wouldn't be so enthusiastic about leaving. Yet, he's not a true Brexiteer. He campaigned to remain and is formally committed to leaving the EU with a deal. His "I'm prepared to leave without a deal" line is just puff for the Tory audience at home, but it won't wash. As something of a realist, as far as the degeneracy of the party goes at least, he knows a deal isn't possible by Hallowe'en and has said all along he would delay Brexit past then to get the best outcome. This isn't what the selectorate want to hear, so if somehow Hunt ascends to the top job his party is faced with an immediate crisis: a Hunt leadership would help the Brexit Party keep its momentum, and activists and perhaps a few MPs would throw their lot in with Farage. Sounding little different to Dave and the gormless suits we associate with pre-Brexit politics, it's difficult to see how Hunt can see off BXP and keep the Tory coalition together. Ah, but he'll have the centre right Tory remain vote, yes? No. Whereas Johnson has always been sharp enough to fudge and bumble his way through questions about no deal, before tempering them with the independent trading nation nonsense, Hunt has always been very specific about what no deal means. He knows it will be devastating to British business and the "entrepreneurs" he tediously identifies himself with, and has said he'd still press the hard Brexit button. The truthful answer is not always the politic answer, so good luck with keep the LibDem leaners on board.
In sum, Johnson is more polarising and eminently beatable. His electoral strategy is to appeal to no-deal leavers and hope this will give him a coalition just big enough to see off a divided opposition. And Hunt is on a trajectory to triangulate defeat by refusing to hold fast to the October 31st deadline, and going out of his way to say no deal is profoundly reckless and damaging, but he'd still do it anyway. The Brexit Party and the LibDems would have a field day. From an electoral point of view then, Labour couldn't have asked for a contest between two more self-destructive strategic positions.
Ahad, 23 Jun 2019
Obsolete Politics and the Socialist Party Split
The full gist is a critique of recent successes achieved by the Irish organisation in the women's movement. This is elaborated in more depth by Coatesy and the Weekly Worker here and here. One can't help but be struck by the coincidence of Taaffe's critique of an organisation that has made political headway, versus the almost total collapse of the SP's position in the Public and Commercial Services union where, in a very short space of time, they've gone from virtually running the shop to a couple of seats on its executive committee. And that's before considering the significant losses of cadre and possibilities for recruitment to Corbynism, that has been the SP's lot these last four years. You might be tempted to think Taaffe should account for his leadership's blunders before attacking others for not having the right kind of success as per his Marxism-by-numbers.
The politics, however, are an excuse for a reassertion of authority against other sections in the "international" showing too much independence of thought from the London mothership. And so we have declarations of ludicrously wordy factions (Taaffe's, as it is formally a minority in the international, is 'In Defence of a Working Class Trotskyist CWI'), a roughshod disregard for the procedures of the organisation, expulsions, departures of entire sections and, interestingly, the declaration of 127 England and Wales comrades - approximately a third of the activist membership - signing a protest letter. Woe betide any full-timers who dare disagree with the eternal general secretary or they will find their "careers" disappeared, as has happened to the editor of the ever-dreary Socialist.
As night follows day, their former comrades around Socialist Appeal have weighed in. In their open letter to current and former members of the CWI, they argue the bureaucratic thuggery dispensed at Taaffe's behest is reminiscent of their own departure from Militant (as was) in 1992. For those not around at the time or for the not terribly interested, the Taaffe-led majority wanted to decamp from the Labour Party for the sunlit opportunities that they thought existed outside, whereas the minority around their guru, the unimaginative and plodding Ted Grant, argued that they should stay the course. The minority went on to publish Socialist Appeal, hence the name, but nevertheless retained and built a fairly substantial international (in Trotskyist terms) roughly comparable in size to the CWI. Its highpoint was having the ear of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and its low was its own catastrophic split at the turn of the decade. Nevertheless, they suggest the degeneration of the CWI lies in their rejection of Grant's work and Labour Party entryism. Though, to be fair to the Taaffe position, being burrowed in Labour has barely increased Appeal's membership nor brought it influence over the development of Corbynism. They are just as isolated from where the socialist action now is as the SP themselves, despite being embedded in Labour like a limpet.
The real crisis for the SP is exactly the same reason why all self-styled Leninist organisations around today are in crisis, and that's because they are engaged in sect-building projects. Even at its height, for all the trouble and sleepless nights Militant caused Labour Party bureaucrats, even following its initial period of success at Liverpool City Council and the role played leading the Anti-Poll Tax Federation - achievements the SP ritually trumpets some 30 years after the fact - it amounted to no more than 8,000 members. And most of these vanished in the blink of an eye. These are issues shared with the disgraced Socialist Workers Party, who once boasted of having 10,000 members, and other moderately sized sects elsewhere. The SP and SWP are the lucky ones. Much smaller outfits never take off, despite differing politics and strategic orientations. Anyone been troubled by Workers Power since they wound themselves up and entered the Labour Party en bloc?
The biggest difficulty all revolutionary socialist projects face is pushing what are essentially insurrectionary politics in societies in which workers' organisations have long been institutionalised, pacified and integrated into the smooth(ish) running of things. And where democratic habits of mind have been the common sense, at least as far as the UK goes, for well over a century. Yet the UK remains a capitalist state overseeing a capitalist society, class struggle hasn't gone away, and still Trotskyist outfits are sidelined and irrelevant. The problem the SP has specifically is the class subject they orientate towards and seek to shape is completely obsolete. It's more than an issue of the SP's notorious economism, of its dismal reduction of class struggle to saving jobs, stopping cuts, and protecting services, but of an old hat approach to what class is.
This is inadvertently highlighted in Taaffe's recent and dishonest article, In Defence of Marxism, ostensibly about Trotsky's posthumously published In Defence of Marxism. Dishonest because this is less a commentary on the book and more another tedious big-up of Militant's record. Indeed, you might say Taaffe is the Nick Cohen of the Trotskyist movement. Regardless of the occasion or the subject, the same article is always produced. Rather than take on his opponents directly in open political argument, we get this:
At the same time, we have to combat and defeat all ideologically petty-bourgeois political trends which seek to divide, to introduce separatism into the workers’ movement. Under the signboard of ‘identity politics’, the US bourgeois first use their ‘ideological factories’, the universities, to spread their pernicious doctrines in order to divide mass opposition to them and their system on separatist lines – race, gender, caste, etc. While Marxists support the rights of all oppressed minorities, we always emphasise and strive for the maximum unity of the working class.If Marxism was a programme of research and a guide to action for Taaffe as opposed to, say, a dreary justification of his six decades of political activity, this kind of nonsense - a left spin on Jordan Peterson-style anti-PC ranting - would not pass muster. As explained on a number of occasions, what is often misnamed as identity politics is a central characteristic of contemporary class politics. Not because of bourgeois conspiracies but because it is a property of capitalist political economy, and one that is increasingly important. As the production of intangibles - knowledge, services, experiences, care, subjectivities - depend on human brains and our social being, the character of exploitation changes. The vector of surplus value extraction in the advanced countries has grown more off the back of rentier-style relationships, vs the "classical" and "invisible" production of surplus value as the difference between the value of labour power vs the value of goods it produces. It means that, in the long-term, capital is less able to deskill workers as it has done historically because it cannot replicate or own the brains cognitive capitalism requires. Instead, capital now tries harnessing the spontaneous creativity of masses of networked but largely atomised workers to sell stuff, to surveill behaviour, and to try and generate the kinds of human beings more likely to accept the prevailing state of affairs as normal and natural.
Ah, but how does this explain the absurdities identity politics can descend into, where one identity is valorised and used to exclude other identities? Well, just as Lenin once observed that in and of itself everyday trade unionism was the bourgeois politics of the working class, limiting what, for the sake of brevity, you might call identity questions to issues of representation and recognition is the equivalent. Without a critique of capitalist political economy, trade unionism tends toward accommodation and reformism. Ditto, minus an understanding of the production of identity in intangible production, identities can appear to be off-the-peg cognitive structures, and exclusive spaces - even if their root is in oppression. Without grasping the relationship between identity production and capitalism, it naturally tends toward a liberal pluralism, which is a million miles away from intersectional politics: the only class politics worth the name.
I suppose this is beyond Taaffe, for whom Marxism stopped when Trotsky's book - probably his worst book, incidentally - was published. But it nevertheless demonstrates the hiding to nothing his politics is doomed to pursue. The SP's politics makes certain assumptions about the workers they address: that they are trade unionists, are motivated primarily by economistic concerns, and see themselves as workers above all else. This sounds suspiciously like a liberal identity location that claims a special privilege for itself, while dismissing other experiences of capitalism as ephemeral and in some way inauthentic. The SP used to talk about how the labour movement was in crisis in the 90s and 00s, and how consciousness had been thrown back. All true, but its solution was and remains an attempt to jumpstart a class politics of a simpler, easier time. Of when industrial workers commanded the field, workplaces were huge affairs, and a basic class consciousness could be taken for granted. Taaffe's template of class is not what it is, but how he wishes it to be: the so-called mass worker that dominated the labour movement imaginary of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Small wonder the SP aren't going anywhere. They're chasing the past.
The same, however, cannot be said of the Socialist Party in Ireland. While also wedded to a sect building model, which has limited their development over the years and will no doubt present more difficulties in the long run, their more sophisticated understanding of class and identity politics - if not in thought at least in practice - has enabled them to build influence and intervene in the struggles around abortion and reproductive politics. Issues, in case Taaffe and co need reminding, that are crucial to how the system reproduces itself.
Sadly, a reckoning between the SP's antiquated politics and the realities of 21st century class politics are overdue, the result, as with all splits, will see dozens of socialists give up on politics altogether, their fingers burned by the hothouse pressures of sectarian struggle. I sincerely hope that is not the case. Plenty of former SP members made the leap into Corbynism while their former organisation pratted about on the fringes of the labour movement and, in some instances, tried sabotaging it. If you happen to be in this position, don't give up and retire into private life punctuated by occasional Twitter ranting. Corbynism is an expression of the new class politics, warts and all. Its importance cannot be overstated, which is why we need your experience and your commitment.
Sabtu, 22 Jun 2019
How Likely is an Early General Election?
No doubt some in the Johnson camp, as well as a few Tories, were buoyed by recent polling suggesting Johnson would take the Tories to an overall majority and completely nullify the Brexit Party threat. However, Tory MPs have reason to be wary. They learned much to their chagrin that polls are snapshots, not predictions and perhaps they need treating with a pinch of salt when politics are this turbulent. Therefore all eyes are going to be on the upcoming Brecon and Radnorshire by-election. Nominally a safe Tory seat with a majority over 8,000, even in normal times by-elections can produce the most incredible upsets. Perhaps the last was George Galloway's coming from nowhere and taking Bradford West with a 10,000 majority back in 2012. Since then, by-elections have proven relatively straightforward, with all four contests of this parliament going to the sitting party - so far. Yet events, dear boy, events. The former incumbent Chris Davies has indicated a willingness to stand for re-election, and apparently has top level backing to run as the Conservative candidate. Unfortunately the recall trigger - filling out a false expense claim - is hardly likely to endear him to his constituents. This alone is an anti-politics issue par excellence, and a Brexit Party in need of momentum has said it will stand - even though the chance of taking it is low, if we go by the leave/remain result for the seat (52/48, the golden ratio). The possibility of the 2017 runner up and previous incumbents, the Liberal Democrats, coming through the middle as BXP cannibalises the Tory vote looks very probable.
Nevertheless, while the Tories would like to keep the seat and would be hoping for a Boris bounce, a loss can easily be explained away due to local factors. But how it would impact on calculations for an early general election depends on the size of the Tory and BXP vote combined, versus its opponents. If the LibDems take the seat on the basis of their appearing to take votes from Labour (currently third in the seat), and the losses the Tories suffer map roughly on to BXP gains, the temptation is to interpret the result as continuous with the EU elections result. Therefore Boris Johnson's own punt at rebuilding the voter coalition that powered Theresa May to 42% of the vote appears to be a go-er: rump Tories plus BXP vs an opposition divided among Labour, a resurgent LibDems, the growing Greens, and the Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties. As a paper exercise, it does have legs.
Therefore the decision about a no deal election would likely proceed in short order depending on the outcome of the by-election. However, while the decision might be taken implementing it is far from straight forward. There are Tory MPs who find the prospect of going to the country harrowing, given what happened last time. There are Labour MPs who, uncertain the NEC would mandate automatic reselection again and fearing strong challenges from the Brexit Party and LibDems, aren't about to vote for their demise. Across the Commons there will be politicians who would treat no deal as the central plank of the Tory party's manifesto highly irresponsible and a risk too far. Johnson certainly would not find an easy passage to a general election under these circumstances, unless he moved early to repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. And then there are the unknowns. A by-election is one thing, but a general election necessarily ushers in other issues. It's easy to ignore the state of the hospitals, the pertinence of climate change, and how life is harder for millions in 2019 than it was in 2010 when an election is just about Brexit, but not when it's about who should govern.
A general election then is difficult to produce, even if Johnson wants one. Unlikely, but not impossible. And if the last four years have taught us anything we'd better be prepared for it. Just in case.
Letting Johnson Be Johnson
While this also keeps the unfortunate news that the Tories are facing a by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire following the unseating of Chris Davies for a false expenses claim from troubling the popular consciousness, it hasn't been a kind 24 hours for the Conservative Party. The key question though is does any of it matter? Well, yes, of course it does. If you are a domestic abuse survivor, if the coarsening of public life appalls you, if you are sickened by how our so-called betters get away with awful behaviour while the rest of us are held to much higher standards, if you are angry about how this shit is normalised and trivialised, it matters a damn deal. But is any of it going to change minds about the party and, crucially, shift members' votes away from Johnson?
I very much doubt it.
There are a few of his supporters who look fondly back at how Have I Got News For You launched his career as a post-irony banter politician, but that was 15 years ago. Still, we shouldn't be surprised many Conservatives prefer to dwell in the past. Nevertheless, some find his trying act entertaining and genuinely thinks it connects with people. Their problem is that thanks to his antics in more recent years, you're just as likely to find as many abhor him as adore him. However, Johnson's getting away with it is more than just media coverage being favourable (seriously, would you call this morning's reporting positive for his campaign?). As we've recently noted the relationship a large chunk of members have with the Tory party is entirely instrumental. You see something similar with Trump in the US. Despite behaviour that should have America's waning fundamentalist Christianity community clutching their pearls in horror, they duly trooped to the polling stations and back for him in the belief he'll hasten the coming of the lord or some such quasi-theological nonsense. The same is true of a Johnson-led Tory party and Brexit. Indeed, a chunk of those backers are resigned to the view his no deal rhetoric is just that and a betrayal is coming, but at present he's their best bet.
As such, whatever character defects Johnson has is irrelevant. And for the same reason, revelations about Nigel Farage's commercial activities, dealings with Russians or whatever, and everything else thrown at him bounces off because, in a political sense, both are tools. They are means to particular ends. Johnson's many faults are priced in to the Tory imaginary. The yellowing grassroots think they're getting a step closer to their Brexit fantasy, and those around him get the positions they desire while Johnson indulges the thing that matters the most: himself. As such it's very difficult to see what could possibly stop Johnson from getting in to Number 10, short of him withdrawing from the contest.
Jumaat, 21 Jun 2019
Cassius - Cassius 1999
Awful news from Paris on Thursday morning. Here's the best way of remembering Philippe Zdar: crank it up.
Khamis, 20 Jun 2019
Hunt/Johnson
Actually, those manoeuvrings sound very much like the work of our old friend Gavin Williamson. Which, of course, they are. Between his getting through to the second round of voting and crashing out in the third, as campaign manager Williamson is credited with camp Johnson lending Stewart enough support to knock Dominic Raab out, leaving the field to Johnson's right free of "credible" inconveniences. And with Sajid Javid out the way, transferring enough support to help Hunt at Michael Gove's expense means Johnson faces a characterless void of a human being who isn't an any-Brexit-at-any-cost idiot. Given the state of the Tory party membership, Johnson now has a month-long cruise into Number 10. What a pitiful and dismal state of affairs.
Is there any way Hunt could trouble the coronation? It's doubtful. As Johnson has the right locked down he might pitch a bit in this direction. He very recently has form thanks to "150% agreeing" with Donald Trump's attack on Sadiq Khan. Far from damaging his chances, this not-at-all subtle dog whistle to the base shows he's prepared to indulge them. Not that this will put bankrupt centrists and "leftwing celebs" off from piling in behind Hunt as the stop Johnson candidate. I can almost read the Nick Cohen opinion piece now.
Regardless of the "delights" the remainder of the contest has in store for us certain political realities cannot be ducked. The coalition of Tory voters is in tatters thanks to Farage's intervention, and the successful driving away of more moderate and remain-leaning Tory supporters by repeated capitulations by the government to its fringe. Johnson can put some of it back together, but not soak up the Brexit vote in the way Theresa May was able to at the last general election. And thanks to his person being a polarising figure totally relaxed with no deal, he also runs the risk of firming up the opposition. Therefore, from Labour's point of view because he's a known quantity a Johnson premiership will make our job easier. And he has Brexit to deal with. No doubt we can look forward to some "amusing" mangling of Brexit with breakfast and other contrived bobbins, but like May he can't get a deal through the Commons, he hasn't the time to negotiate something new with the EU and, indeed, doesn't understand the basics. Before we know it, the country will face the avoidable farce of no deal, or the greatest volte face of our age that could make the Tory party permanently kaput. I know what I'm rooting for.
Think then of the next month as a period of calm before the storm. As weather systems go it promises to be blustery and destructive, though the high pressure fronts pushing it in all directions could easily send it off course to blow itself out. Our job during this period of Tory introspection is not to fold our arms and look on, but seek to intervene vigorously and energetically about the issues they raise - and seek to make out talking points their talking points. People know Johnson is an appalling creature and a racist, and yet his support remain steadfast. Our challenge is to keep the pressure on while finding new ways of wounding him and driving a wedge between his candidacy, his base in the party, and those who would punt for the Tories if it meant Brexit's delivery. Now is the time to be canny and do our damnedest to demobilise our opponents.
Rabu, 19 Jun 2019
On Tory Party Psychopathy
Stephen Bush suggests we need to look at things through Tory members' eyes. For them, for a variety of reasons, Brexit is an unalloyed good that might cause some difficulties at first but midwife considerable upsides eventually. The prospects of things getting that bad so lumps of the UK fall off aren't entertained with much seriousness, and so we get the answers we get. Yes, there is some truth to this. And yes, there is more going on.
In 2019 a lot of Tories don't feel particularly attached to the union. Unless they happen to be Scottish Tories. This is partly a consequence of the Tory implosion in 1997 where they were eradicated and from 2001 had to get by with just a single MP until the Davidson/May renaissance in 2017. For much of the last 20 years the Tories have been a de facto English nationalist party, a position that was actively cultivated by Dave in his talking up of the SNP "threat" before the 2015 general election. You might remember the SNP were opposed to his austerity scheme and derailed the roll out of the bedroom tax in Scotland, in turn reinforcing the divisive idiotics that the SNP headed up a nation of idlers subsidised by England. And since the referendum the Scottish government have positioned themselves as implacable opponents of Brexit. Scotland here then is less a valued part of the UK, and more an obstacle to levers' hearts' desires. A consequence of this is Northern Ireland. More or less forgotten by Westminster until May needed DUP support, it's almost as if The Troubles were expunged from national consciousness until we were forced to consider the politics of the place again. But it's not so much the new found relevance of the DUP that annoys, but again the presentation of the border as an obstacle. Rather than address it, as per May's dreadful deal, or pretend it isn't there thanks to the technical fixes Boris Johnson keeps banging on about, Tories are increasingly happy for it to just go away. By narrowing the Tory horizon to England and, at a push, Wales, should we be really surprised?
It must be noted we're not dealing with the same Tory membership as those who held out against Thatcherite values. When May could do no wrong, hard to believe now I know, the Tories basically consumed UKIP. They ate the vote and they ate the membership. Anecdotal reports rolled in to Conservative Home and off the lips of worried MPs how associations were starting to see the reappearance of people who had decamped to UKIP. Matters were made worse more recently as Mr Magic Pockets Arron Banks urged kippers, and anyone else who was listening, to ditch their party and join the Tories to deselect remainy MPs, put pressure on May, and influence the outcome of any coming leadership contest. No wonder they're quite happy to see the party crash and burn then. For them, their relationship to the Tories, their membership is even more transactional than Labour's support. And with the arrival - and success - of the Brexit Party, there's somewhere to go if they burn the house down.
This doesn't capture all the Tory membership by any means, and it's hardly the case the bulk outside of UKIP returnees are any better politically or, for that matter, much different in terms of demographics and values. They too are mostly white, disproportionately retired, and better off than most when it comes to fixed assets, share ownership and other income. The key difference is unlike the membership of the mid 90s, these are far less likely to be involved in community activities and charitable ventures than their forebears. One reason why membership ballooned to almost three million in the post-war period was the party provided a means for social networking for the ambitious and the upwardly mobile respectable, associations had dozens if not hundreds of clubs and bars between them where 'better' people could drink away from the hoi polloi of the working men's club and the spit 'n' sawdust. Charitable good works were also very important. One could mix with other like minded souls and discharge patrician obligations to the less fortunate. The mid 90s membership surveyed by Seyd et al were aged remnants of these cohorts, of which now few persist. Long-term members who've been around since the Thatcher years are more likely to identify with and still hold sacred the values the blessed Margaret allowed to prosper. Senses of social obligation aren't as great, and members are not embedded in the same broader networks as the older generation. And as for the new lot with their transactional mindset of Tory-because-Brexit and mercenary attitude to the party and its success, the psychopathy we're seeing is yet another symptom of the party's long-term decline. A process, of course, Theresa May has done well to accelerate.
The present Tory party membership then is more socially isolated than previous generations of activists. This is reinforced by the lumpenising effects retirement has on a membership comprised more of older men than anyone else, and crucially the anxieties one experiences when you are dependent on supplementary share income on top of one's pension(s). Economic anxiety isn't about being poor. It's always about already having property and wealth, even if those holdings are quite modest. Brexit appears to be attractive because in an uncertain world, the nation remains permanent. Reasserting itself by leaving the EU again promises the better, easier society of yesteryear when we were in charge of our destiny. Promises of certainty always go down best with those who don't feel it, and feel disarmed and out of sorts with the world. Therefore, risking the union or the economy doesn't matter because they think they're relatively insulated from anything going wrong, but they keenly feel it where Corbyn is concerned because he represents a direct threat to how they perceive their interests. More than that, he condenses everything they find objectionable about modern Britain, and why a Corbyn Brexit is not acceptable to them.
In sum, the Tory party have lost their collective mind, but it's the outcome of long-term changes that, at various intervals and unknown to them, has been shepherded along by successive party leaders. When things are this bad, when the very existence of the party itself is disregarded in cavalier fashion, you know we're in new territory. Whether the Tories die remains to be seen, but it's giving off every indication that it's chill with the prospect.
Isnin, 17 Jun 2019
Transphobia and the Liberal Media
In this episode of #RedHacks for Politics Theory Other, Joana Ramiro speaks to Juliet Jacques about her time writing for the liberal and centrist media and how their indulging of transphobia ultimately closed down these avenues for trans and non-binary writers. As ever, a fascinating and thought-provoking listen.
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