A Right Honourable Member

Apologies to readers for slipping into Guido Fawkes territory, but I could not resist preserving this for posterity. The below picture is featured in this Mail article. View it quickly before Paul Dacre, if you'd pardon the pun, pulls it.

The Mail helpfully has an enlarge facility.

Cuba: Another Education is Possible

Last night's meeting of North Staffs TUC heard from Bill Greenshields of Derbyshire Cuba Network and the Cuba Solidarity Campaign speak, funnily enough, on Cuba. As readers can imagine Bill's talk was unashamedly pro-Cuba, but this is an important corrective to received notions that have it as a gulag with palm trees - a view assiduously cultivated by the US state department, right wing Cuban exiles, and intellectually dishonest ex-lefts.

Bill opened with a very quick overview of the Cuban system, touching on the statutory right to work, the 1:650 doctor/general population ratio, the strength and depth of social solidarity, and its avoidance of personality cults and dogmatism characteristic of similar societies. If we realise how all this is possible in a poor country under the lash of an economic blockade then, Bill argued, we can also understand why the USA sees Cuba as a threat.

As a former leading member of the National Union of Teachers, most of Bill's talk focused on Cuba's education system. We were given the impression this extends far beyond formal schooling and HE. Crucial to retaining mass support for the Cuban revolution are the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution. These community organisations, working in conjunction with the other mass organisations (the party, the federation of women, the young pioneers, and the unions) are responsible for community events and officially tasked with maintaining high rates of "morality" (i.e. social solidarity).

Pre-school begins at the age of three, with compulsory schooling kicking in at six. This ends at 15 with a guaranteed job for every school-leaver. The way education is done will be quite different to the experiences of readers of this blog. Central to it is 'emulation'. Instead of a system based around competitive exams the emphasis is one educating the collective. If a group of students grasp something in advance of others, the expectation is they will work to help the rest of the class get it. If a section of the class still can't understand it then no one passes the set task. This has led to a reconfiguring of competition between students - instead of awards based on grades, praise is conferred on those who seek to lead emulation.

There is, however, something of a teacher shortage on the island. Education policy is committed to reducing class sizes to 15 for primary and 20 for secondary schooling. The situation is complicated by attempts at integrating disabled children from special schools into the mainstream system: they are guaranteed by statute one-to-one teaching, therefore while integration does take place it is rare.

Apart from the discussion of education and digressions into the health system, Bill gave us a good sense of Cuban social relations. While it is true there are political prisoners and penalties for those who criticise the system, society is more cohesive and solidaristic than in advanced capitalist states. How this manifests itself in education and elsewhere deserve careful study by socialists outside Cuba.

Personally speaking I am always wary of solidarity campaign talks, as they're usually structured around guided tours that show the country in question in the best light. But even with my critical hat on Bill's presentation did an excellent job showing that Cuba, despite its problems and less than spotless record on democratic rights, is a different kind of society. If Cuba is a living example of what can be achieved on a small island under conditions of economic autarchy, imagine the kinds of achievements within our reach if this was married to greater deomcratisation and available resources.

I don't think Cuba is socialist, but it does prefigure some features of future socialist societies. For this reason, despite its flaws, Cuba deserves the solidarity and support of labour movements everywhere.

Strange Statistics

Proper blog post coming later. But in the mean time ... there's something curious happening with my audience stats.

A few days ago I noticed that Google have so helpfully included a basic stats package as standard with every Blogger blog. This is part of a package of measures at making the creaky old blogspot interface more user friendly. As any convert to Wordpress will tell you, theirs is the bees knees and much more intuitive than the clunky thing suffered by the likes of me, Jim, Lenny, etc.

The stats package is basic. And I mean, really basic. You can browse top referrers, country of origin, audience figures over variable time frames, top searches, most popular posts and so on. However, and somewhat strangely, it only records visits. Not uniques. Not returning visitors. Just page views.

Back when a supple-faced youth founded this blog in December 2006 I took out a free (i.e. basic) account with Statcounter, and I've been using it ever since. So I thought it would be interesting to compare the Statcounter figures with the sorts of numbers being yielded by Google's package.

This is where things get a bit confusing. According to the built-in statometer this blog was visited 1,053 times yesterday. But Statcounter has a different story. It says I had 745 page views. The day before Google has me on 1,051 visits, and Statcounter 774.

Why the discrepancy? Just what is going on? Does Statcounter run a particularly stingy and stringent counting operation? Are Google inflating visits SWP-stylee so bloggers feel less bad about their lack of reach?

Any explanations none-too-heavy on techie talk are welcome.

Andy Burnham for Labour Leader

This is the last in the series of emails from the Labour leadership candidates. Andy Burnham's entry into the race has certainly raised his profile and in public appearances he's done an excellent job attacking Tory plans to dismantle the NHS. But at present I'm undecided whether he'll get my fourth or fifth preference. I will blog more about the vote before the end of the week. In the mean time, if this isn't enough Andy for you here's my take on his 'aspirational socialism'.


Dear Phil,

It’s time for us to be Labour again

As the Leadership contest enters the final stages, I’m giving everything I’ve got because the cause is a great one – I’m fighting for a different kind of Labour Party.

I am asking for your first preference vote today – because I need your help to rebuild Labour from the bottom up.

Our Party has been in the grip of a warring political elite for too long. They have dragged us down with their factional battles. They are out of touch. So it’s time to put power back where it belongs - with you, the members.

Going forward, we just cannot have more of the same.

And yet, that is what some of the Party’s senior figures want. They are making this contest a battle between old and new Labour.

It is the last thing we need.

It threatens to entrench factionalism in our Party for another generation and doesn't represent the views of our members.

As I travelled the country in my Battle Bus throughout August, members everywhere told me that they are sick to the back teeth of old versus new Labour, Blairites versus Brownites. We are Labour – and proud of it.

Both old and new Labour had their strengths – but neither fully reflected mainstream Labour opinion. Old Labour was too often out of step with public opinion. New Labour, whilst right for its time, became hollow and disconnected.

So it’s time for us to be Labour again.

I am offering you that choice. A chance to rebuild our Party from the bottom up, with power returned to members; our councillors valued and listened to; and a grassroots force in every community.

In recent years, we were frightened of our own shadow, taking only modest steps forward. That must change. A Labour Party that listens to its members will rediscover the courage of its convictions and get back in the business of inspiring ideas that bring big social change and a fairer country. That is what is needed to lift Labour hearts, enthuse people to join our Party again and put us back on people’s side.

So, throughout this campaign, I have spoken for mainstream Labour opinion and for the values of the British people. My detailed Manifesto – Aspirational Socialism – brings together the best of old and the best of new Labour, leaving the negatives of both behind. It sets out bold and progressive proposals in the best traditions of our Party such as:

• a free National Care Service funded by a new 10% Care Levy on all estates – giving peace of mind to all older people in this century of the Ageing Society and helping them protect their homes and savings

• a radical reform of the tax system, with a Land Value Tax replacing Council Tax, Stamp Duty and Inheritance Tax – bringing fairness to the system and helping all people get on in life

Both embody Aspirational Socialism – that by working together, and supporting each other, we can help everyone be the best they can be, fulfilling their hopes and dreams.

These are the biggest ideas that any candidate has put forward. I have done so – underpinned by my own philosophy - because I believe politics going forward needs to be more than just marketing and PR.

You can hear more about my proposals here.

I am in this contest to win because I know that our Party needs to change. I have listened and heard what you have been telling me about how it needs to change.

I was equally loyal to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Not everyone can say that, but I can. My first loyalty has always been to the Labour Party, not any faction or clique. This is why I am best placed to move Labour forward beyond the old battles. And this is why I can break the grip of the elite.

I don’t have the support of any establishment in this race - in the media, the unions or our own Party. But I don’t want their support - they don’t want things to change. I want your support to rebuild our Party.

I will unite our Party – members, trade unionists and councillors.

I will be a Leader you and Britain can believe in.

With your first preference vote I will make you proud to be Labour again.

Best wishes

Andy Burnham

In the Socialist Future ...

This interesting quote prefaces Ken's 2005 book, Learning the World:

Population will mightily increase, and the earth will be a garden. Governments will be conducted with the quietude and regularity of club committees. The interest which is now felt in politics will be transferred to science; the latest news from the laboratory of the chemist, or the observatory of the astronomer, or the experimenting room of the biologist will be eagerly discussed ... Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited from all quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds.

Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man, 1872

Gives me a good excuse to plug last month's post on Socialism and Space again.

New Left Blogs

Time for your no-frills round up of new(ish) left and labour movement blogs that have hit the streets:

1. North West Hampshire Labour Party (Labour) (Twitter
2. Claire French (Labour) (Twitter)
3. Green Gabbles (Greens) (Twitter)
4. Jules Mattsson (Unaligned) (Twitter)
5. So What Changed? Post-Election 2010 (Labour) (Twitter)
6. The Scribe of the Red Rose (Labour) (Twitter)
7. Second Hand News (Labour) (Twitter)
8. The Red Rock (Unaligned)
9. Eyes on Power (Unaligned) (Twitter)
10. Latte Labour (Labour)
11. Keane on Politics (Greens) (Twitter)
12. A Thousand Cuts (Unaligned) (Twitter)
13. Conservative Policies Dissected (Labour) (Twitter)
14. Questioning the Cuts (Unaligned) (Twitter)
15. Seph Brown's Blog (Labour) (Twitter)
16. PCS North Staffs (Unaligned) (Twitter)

That's it for August/September. If you know of any new blogs (a year or less old) that haven't been featured before, drop me a line via email, the comments or on Twitter. The new blog round up is posted on the first Sunday of every month.

Gramsci and Economism

As we saw in the previous post in this series on Antonio Gramsci's Selections from the Prison Notebooks, he was committed to building a mass revolutionary party in the Leninist mode. But simultaneously he invoked a different and broader understanding of the political party. This isn't limited to members of tightly disciplined revolutionary organisations but takes in the entirety of the organisational capacity of a class. Conceived this way all the separate political parties, associations, combines, institutions, etc. of capital and the ruling class is their political party. The trade unions, co-operatives, labour and social democratic parties, Marxist parties and sects, community groups etc. are our - the working class's - political party. This is germane to our discussion of economism (which I understand, following Lenin, as the everyday bourgeois politics of the working class) because, as far as I'm aware the critique of economism has always gone hand in hand with promoting the Leninist party as its solution.

Before getting stuck into Gramsci's notes on economism, it's worth briefly addressing Gramsci's approach to class consciousness. His view was the working class were on a road of progressively realising its power and becoming conscious of itself and was exemplified from the historical experience of the class from the machine-breaking of the Luddites to mass communist parties dedicated to capitalism's overthrow. This position (not dissimilar to Lukacs) has been variously critiqued as teleological and a left gloss of Hegel's philosophy of history. But this criticism misses the mark because their philosophical positions on consciousness are a meditation on proletarian experience up until that time: it was not derived from a rigid schema based on the progressive evolution of consciousness. If following Althusser philosophy is regarded as the class struggle in theory, it can also be the condensation of working class memory, albeit in abstract forms.

This is important because even though working class consciousness is the outcome of historical processes, it is something that has to be developed and fought for. That socialist consciousness and socialism is guaranteed by the blind laws of historical development is the opposite of Gramsci's views, which makes attempts to ascribe this view to him all the more perverse.

Gramsci's notes on economism looks at its place within capitalist relations of production, whose interests it serves, and how it is perceived/experienced by the ruling class and the working class. For the powers that be, free trade ideology is their primary species of economism. These ideas demarcate a split between political society (the state and its various appendages) and civil society (everything else that isn't the state, including the economy). But proponents of this view take this *analytical* separation of society into two distinctive spheres as a real separation. It is a nonsense to suppose the state and economy are really separate and opposed as the operation of each underpins and reproduces the other. But as distorted as it is it makes sense from a business point of view - the state is something external to the individual enterprise, as something that taxes profits and, even worse, passes laws and regulations that undermine management's right to manage. Free trade ideology is a philosophical generalisation of this perspective. Its solutions - laissez-faire in commercial relations between businesses and minimal interference by the state in the internal practices of enterprise (and of course, lower taxes) express the view that if left alone everything will be fine.

Despite being explicitly "hands off", as far as Gramsci was concerned this is as much a regulatory strategy for governing capitalism as Keynesianism and corporatism (whether of the Italian fascist or liberal democratic kind). Laissez-faire may be economistic and premised on the state's lack of agency, but to implement it requires changing key government personnel and developing a semi-coherent line of policy.

The main species of economism in the working class, or at least the sections organised by the labour movement, is syndicalism. It performs a similar, but inverted, analytical/"real" split between the state and civil society. For the economistic trade unionist the objective of workplace politics are better wages and conditions, fewer hours, more benefits and more autonomy. The struggle for these are waged against a clearly defined opponent: the employer. There appears to be few links between positions taken in the workplace and politics in wider society, which is why it's not unknown for the Queen's portrait to adorn the living rooms of many a militant.

Workplace relations belong to the totality of capitalist relations of production, but trade unions and trade unionists inhabiting the highly localised and specific relations between employers and employees are functionally uninterested in wider issues: it is beyond their brief. Hence the question of power and power relations is ignored and is entrusted to the political wing of the labour movement - the labour or social democratic party (this is why it takes a great deal for trade unions to begin questioning their formal relationship to these parties). More rarely, syndicalism can develop in a radical direction - especially if a union has won several successive victories and its members are confident. Their victories "independent" of political assistance can inculcate the view that the union/unions themselves can alone take power. Neither view, conservative syndicalism or radical syndicalism, contest the political, moral and cultural legitimacy of capitalism. This is a legitimacy - a hegemony - that operates without respecting the neat analytical separations of free trade dogma and syndicalism.

For Gramsci the relationship of the classes to their specific forms of economism has different effects. A ruling class subscribing to economistic views is a class renewing and buttressing its power. A working class that doesn't break with economism is one that finds its exploitation continually reinforced.

Economism, rather than being an ideology in and of itself is rather a set of several ideologies. "Radical" electoral abstentionism is one (i.e. the refusal to deal with politics, except in the most abstract and outlandish ways to allow for maximum radical posturing). Another branch of economism has taken up residence in academia and continues down to this very day. The inability to make a distinction between fleeting and semi-permanent phenomena was recycled in recent years in voguish approaches to globalisation, post-Fordism and postmodernism. The abstraction/celebration of economic self-interest, which identifies the historically and socially specific economic behaviour of a class with the 'human condition' lives on in (some) rational choice theory. And the outcome of historical processes - technological change - is inverted and becomes the primary driver of social development lives on in a negative sense: it is often (ignorantly) conflated with the Marxist conception of history.

Another example of economism, often found on the far left, are 'intransigence theories', or the avoidance of compromise almost on principle. The denunciation of leaders for selling out workers, a black and white view of the world, the sustenance of shibboleths, the agitation for demands out of step with popular working class consciousness, an implied linear progression of this consciousness in the unlikely event the class takes up a transitional demand or two, all of these presuppose an iron law of history where more favourable circumstances are bound to occur. Hence the order of the day is not building working class consciousness but preserving these perfectly formed ideas for the day when they will have mass support. To compromise now is to dilute them.

As I've already noted, for Gramsci the modern prince (the revolutionary party) was the primary instrument for combating economism. The body of the party unified the collective memory and experience of the working class with theory, which in turn guided the party's strategy on the ground which, at least in theory, forms a tight unity of theory and practice with each drawing on, building, and enriching the other. But in Britain where the far left has historically been weak and the Bolshevik tradition as a whole has never had a sustained mass following (nor is it likely to win one in the future), how can economism be combated in the labour movement?

There is no road map for this, but a general line of march can be built on Gramsci's insights on the root causes of economism. One of the major weaknesses of the British labour movement - but reflecting formal separations in British capitalism - is its division into a political, trade union, and cooperative wing. Labour's political "common sense" is to build electoral coalitions to win power: it is simultaneously the political arm of the labour movement and a catch-all party like the rest. The received wisdom of British trade unionism is economistic to the core. And the cooperative movement, in as far as it has a coherent outlook, is less about workers' ownership and control and more about being the consumers' champion. Therefore each are mired in their own forms of sectional economism. These are the obstacles socialists have to shift, and it's not easy.

Traditionally socialists outside Labour (whether Leninist or not) have and continue to pump out general propaganda for socialism. But this is much like trying to dispel religion by reasoned argument: it is a one-sided war without end as long as social relations replicate and sustain economistic ideas. Socialist arguments have to be combined with a strategy for transforming the labour movement into a body where economism finds less purchase. And the best way of doing this is building, strengthening and founding new relations between Labour, the trade unions, and co-ops. Practically, it means encouraging trade unionists to join Labour and, where affiliated, getting their branches to send mandated representatives to meetings. It means encouraging party members - who by rule should be members of a relevant union anyway - to get active in their trade union branches. It means unions and the party becoming enthusiastic supporters of co-ops and co-ops in turn using the avenues open to them to promote their alternative form of ownership.

This has to be struggled for, it will not drop from the sky. It requires socialists be active across all three areas of the broad labour movement building connections, making it more cohesive, and tying in the fates of each with the direction of all. This strategy, married to arguments for socialism, can produce conditions where the economism produced and reproduced by capitalist workplace relations is always and everywhere challenged by the experience of the labour movement. And when we have that, we have a solid nucleus powerful enough to contest capital's hegemony.

A list of posts in this series on the Selections from the Prison Notebooks can be found here.

Whither the Campaign for a New Workers' Party?

This letter has been circulated on several discussion lists from the Campaign for a New Workers' Party. I will let it speak for itself and add some comments after:


Dear Comrades

Thank you for your continued support for the Campaign for a New Workers Party (CNWP), which has enabled us to sustain and develop the arguments that working people need a new independent political voice arguing the case for socialism against the three main parties who now occupy the common ground of support for big business.

To take our campaign to the next stage the officers have decided to organise an extended Steering Committee at the end of this month to widen participation in the discussion on a number of key initiatives. The Steering Committee will be open to all supporters of the CNWP, but those fully able to participate and vote will be CNWP members who have either paid the current membership subscription or have a standing order financially supporting the campaign. There will be the opportunity to join the CNWP on the day.

The meeting will take place on Sunday, September 26, 2010 from 12 noon to 4 pm at the University of London Students Union building (ULU), in Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY. If you're travelling from outside of London, ULU is a 10 min walk from Euston station. If you're travelling from within London ULU describes which tubes or buses you can use at the following webpage: http://bit.ly/dvv9Yy

The officers have decided that a capped pooled fare will operate, with everyone attending contributing £10 and the campaign making up the difference for those who have to travel the furthest. Please make sure that you take the opportunity to book cheaper train or coach fares well in advance in order to reduce costs.

The main business of the day will undoubtedly be the campaign's response to the huge levels of cuts in public services which the ConDem government are due to announce on October 20th. With a target of £113 billion a year reduction in public spending, (£9 billion more a year than what is currently spent on the NHS!), the government are attempting the biggest cut in the standard of living of ordinary people and their families for over 80 years. The trade union movement in general, and public sector unions in particular, will undoubtedly engage in battles to preserve services and protect jobs. But a crucial question will come next May when elections are due to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, and to local authorities throughout the country - where is the political alternative going to come from, how are people going to be able to vote for anti-cuts candidates?

There will also be a number of other discussions including widening membership of the Steering Committee by co-option, setting the details for a full campaign conference in the first six months of next year, relaunching the CNWP declaration in the light of changed political circumstances, and discussing reports on membership, finance, website and social media use etc. There will be some time for discussion on resolutions and one area for discussion of which we already have notice is from those comrades wishing to set out the process by which the prototype of a new left party could be established. If you want to submit a resolution for discussion please send it to me by 10 am Wednesday, September 22nd at the latest.

The meeting on September 26th will be an important stage in the development of the CNWP and I would urge you to make every effort to attend. A leaflet advertising this meeting and promoting the CNWP can be downloaded here.

Yours, in solidarity

Cllr Dave Nellist
National Chair, CNWP

---

No one reading will be surprised that I think the prospects of the CNWP range from bleak to non-existent.

One thing that attracted me to the Socialist Party in late 2005 was its decision to launch a formal campaign around this issue. Its line had long been that Labour was a straight party of capital, and a new party of the working class was required to fill the space Blair and Brown had consciously vacated. I viewed the Labour party differently, but I subscribed to the same conclusion. Almost five years on I now don't think the political space was ever there for a new mass party, but there was certainly an opening for a small but serious left formation - an opening that was let slip by the fractious and irredeemably sectarian nature of the far left.

But even then with New Labour constantly tacking to the right, treating the trade unions as embarrassing relatives, and dumping on all things social democratic, the CNWP had precious little purchase in the labour movement and society at large. In the trade unions political representation did become more of a live issue, but this was more due to the efforts of SP activists working as SP activists and the appalling record of New Labour than the CNWP's profile.

On the streets it was even worse: the CNWP met with almost total indifference. On dozens of campaign stalls punters would happily sign petitions against whatever we were peddling and they might have even nodded when we (patiently) explained that working class people needed their own party, but very few would then go on to sign the CNWP  declaration. If there isn't a more damning indictment of the CNWP's failure than the few thousand names of SP and other far left activists who signed the declaration over a five year period, I don't know what is.

The SP could possibly have done more, and Workers' Power and the cpgb framed a number of unanswered polemics around that theme. But the pace of work in our branch and limited personnel meant something else would have to be parked on the back burner had the leadership decreed 'CNWP work' a priority. And if the SP followed the example of its erstwhile comrades in Scottish Militant Labour and liquidated itself into the CNWP, it is very doubtful anything other than a re-branded SP plus a few independents and sundry ultra-lefts would have resulted.

This is a roundabout way of saying that if the CNWP was a dismal flop when Labour was consciously estranging itself from the labour movement, what prospects does the campaign have now the party is in opposition and is busily renewing those links? Tens of thousands of trade unionists are not looking at forming a new party but instead working to ensure there is no repeat of the Blair-Brown years. Some 30,000 have joined Labour since May because it is seen as the natural opposition to the Tory coalition. The SP's branches are rammed with anti-cuts campaigning and party building and won't have the time and energy (or enthusiasm) to simultaneously push the CNWP. And if anyone's expecting anti-cuts opposition directed toward Labour councils will reopen the question of working class political representation, I fear those comrades are going to be very disappointed.

The objectives Dave's letter sets itself sound fine and dandy, but why weren't they done when political circumstances were more benign? It all smacks of having missed the boat.

Labour Leadership Contenders on Cooperatives

This email comes from the Co-operative Party. Readers who are either members of the Labour party or of no party are eligible to join, and I would recommend that you do so here.

LABOUR'S LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES BACK MUTUALS AND CO-OPS

As members of the Labour Party and trade unions prepare to vote for a new Labour Leader, all five candidates have answered our questions on their vision for a co-operative future for the Labour Party.

Andy Burnham highlighted the leading role he played in forming Supporters Direct to give fans a voice in football and gives his vision of a strong NHS and 'aspirational socialism'.

[ Andy Burnham on football and finance ]

David Miliband talks of his membership of the Party and his local credit union, and the potential for co-op structures for Northern Rocks, pubs, schools and energy.

[ David Miliband backs mutualisation of the BBC and canals ]

Diane Abbott underlines her own commitment to co-operative values and describes her own background in a journalists' co-op in the 1980s.

[ Diane Abbott wants to make the co-op movement relevant to a new generation ]

Ed Balls - the first ever co-operative MP to stand for the Leadership - outlines his record in Government on co-operative schools and financial services and wants to expand co-operative housing and re-mutualise Northern Rock.

[ Ed Balls calls for a designated Government Office & Minister for Mutuals ]

Ed Miliband reminds readers of his role in making the last manifesto the most co-operative ever and promises to argue for a greater role for the mutual model in banking and to give users and workers a greater voice in public services.

[ Ed Miliband pledges to put the co-operative ideal at the heart of public services ]

The Left Case for Ed Miliband

I know many readers are eagerly anticipating the results of the 100 worst UK political blogs. Unfortunately I must ask for your continued forbearance: they won't be appearing until this evening. In the mean time here's another guest post from Brother G on Ed Miliband. For the record, Ed will be receiving my second preference.

I had hoped to make it through the Labour leadership contest without making one of these posts. After all, the prospect of four months of witnessing the candidates talk vaguely about change in a variety of venues has proved tedious enough without the rest of us throwing an oar in.

But with ballots about to start arriving in letterboxes, and with the frankly terrifying prospect of a David Miliband win continuing to haunt the contest like a resilient case of the clap, I think its important that I try to add something, anything, to the debate in the hope of preventing that from happening.

So here it is: I believe that Ed Miliband is the best choice to lead the Labour Party in the coming period.

It might seem strange that a self-confessed socialist writing for a popular former-Trotskyist-turned-shameless-class-traitor blog such as this (revolutionary purists despair) would be declaring their support for one of the Miliband brothers over the alleged Left candidate Dianne Abbott. But the truth is that from her inauspicious start preventing John McDonnell making it onto the ballot, to her lacklustre campaigning, through to her insistence on pigeon-holing herself as little more than the token candidate, I have been nothing but disappointed with Abbott’s role in this contest. If the left is to prove itself a legitimate presence within the Labour Party in the near future, it would do well to turn the page on this ‘turn the page’ candidate before she manages to develop into a figurehead.

In Ed Miliband, we have an opportunity to renew the Labour Party in a way which puts our values at the heart of our movement. While his elder brother (by accident or by design) exemplifies all the most odious elements of the New Labour era: the wealthy sponsors, the pandering to right-wing rhetoric about the deficit, the stale and disproven obsession with chasing an imaginary Middle England, his younger brother has instead cast himself as the Miliband with his finger on the social democratic pulse.

Ed M has been insightful in his acknowledgement that it was traditional working class support, not the aspiring middle class, that left Labour in their droves. And while his program lacks the radicalism that those of us on the left would like, it nevertheless marks a clear path through the broad church which can appeal to the majority of party members, and to the public.

Policies such as lowering the 50% tax threshold to £100,000 and introducing a living wage are steps in the right direction. His stance on civil liberties is a refreshing break from the worst elements of Labour’s authoritarian past. And the introduction of a graduate tax, votes at 16 and support for AV look set to strengthen the Labour vote amongst students and young people. But more important than all of these is the shift in the nature and tone of inter-party debate that an Ed Miliband victory could herald. As he himself put it, New Labour often saw its job as being to defend the public against its own members. If the Labour Movement is going to grow and develop in the coming years, such hostility must end.

I believe that an Ed Miliband victory could herald the start of a process of renewal within the Labour Party which can develop an effective social democratic program, heal the divisions of the past 15 years and put the final nail in the New Labour coffin. And if the war criminals and prima donnas desperately scrabbling to intervene on David Miliband’s behalf tell us anything, its that they are worried about exactly the same thing.

That is why, with mix of cautious optimism and cold pragmatism, I will be voting Ed Miliband as my first preference.

(For those of you who are curious, my second preference will be going to Ed Balls, in the hope that his first act as Shadow Chancellor will be to dash Osborne’s skull open on the dispatch box while reciting Keynes’ General Theory of Employment.)