Police and Crime Commissioner Elections

Zombie Regeneration

Zombies are not good for much. They're stupid, psychotic, and cannot be domesticated. Did I mention they smell really bad too?

But they are a profitable foil for the film and video game business. And, according to this innovative regen idea from Detroit, zombies could be an answer to that city's urban blight epidemic.

The Loan Shark's Charter

In July of this year, then junior business minister Norman Lamb unveiled a new Code of Practice aimed at protecting people from getting trapped in cycles of unceasing debt. Targeting payday loan companies (legal loan sharks to you and I), he said, "payday loans should only ever be used as a short-term financial fix, not as a long-term solution to financial difficulties. I would urge people to think carefully before taking out a short term loan and to consider affordable alternatives such as their local Credit Union."

All very sensible. All very agreeable.

But there's a problem. In the 2013/14 financial year, the government will effectively be giving £3bn to the richest people in society. Far from those with the widest shoulders bearing the biggest burden, the government will lighten the load by handing every single millionaire in the land at least £40,000.

As the right are so fond of telling us, there's no such thing as a free lunch. The aperitif the Tories will be serving their rich friends (and, in a number of cases, themselves), is to be funded by taking £3.1bn from low paid workers, children, and disabled people. It just goes to show the Tories aren't against wealth redistribution in principle; they only have a problem with it when it goes from the better off to the most needy.

One aspect of their drive to punish the poor for being poor that hasn't attracted a great deal of attention are their plans to localise the 'Social Fund'. For those not familiar with it, the fund is a pot of money to help the very poorest meet one-off expenses. It covers cold weather payments, maternity grants, funeral grants, furnishings, community care grants, budgeting loans, and crisis loans.

The two kinds of loans available are an example of the social solidarity a society needs to function. Both are determined by the needs of the applicants, and repayment schedules are drawn up individually in relation to their circumstances. In the course of my work, I've encountered low waged workers and benefit recipients who, thanks to a crisis loan, were able to keep the wolf from their doors. It has acted as the kind of safety net even Tories sometimes acknowledge is necessary.

As of next April the government are abolishing crisis loans.

In their drive to localise some benefits (Council Tax and Housing Benefit being the most visible examples), the Social Fund is also going to be handed over to local authorities. With a hefty cut.

In 2010/11, the Social Fund budget was £287m. In 2011/12, they aimed to slash that sum by 36% and after that administer year-on-year reductions of between 2.3% and 2.7%. By 2015, the government hopes to have withheld some £443m from Britain's most impoverished people.

Along with the cut, the Social Fund will be de-ringfenced. There will be nothing stopping councils in wealthier areas junking the scheme altogether and diverting the money to Council Tax cuts for top rate payers. The meagre funds might also be raided by councils who are harder up and struggling to balance the budgets.

But worst of all, not only will the attack on the Social Fund cause anxiety and misery for those at society's sharp end, it could drive tens of thousands into the arms of illegal, high-cost moneylenders. In short, the abolition of the crisis loan and cuts to the fund (on top of the bedroom tax, cuts to benefits, and smaller tax credits) is nothing more than a loan shark's charter.

With such policies in the pipeline, it makes you wonder why this LibDem-supported Tory government took the trouble to try and portray itself on the side of "vulnerable borrowers".

The Year the Town Hall Shrank

BBC Four's The Year the Town Hall Shrank is hard-hitting, powerful stuff. As a profile of Stoke-on-Trent, it is unflinching and uncomfortable. The fate befalling those on the end of austerity is deeply upsetting. As a critique of the ideologically-motivated cuts imposed on councils by central government, it's damning. Yet for all that, there is something unsettling about The Year beyond the tough subject matter. And last Thursday night's episode, which prominently featured the BNP, exemplifies it.

"We have proven people will vote BNP in large numbers when the conditions are right" Michael Coleman, the "brains" behind Stoke BNP intones as we catch up with them in the lead up to last year's local elections. And, for once, Coleman was right. A few snatched words shared by Dave, a refuse collector, sums up the attitudes of that pissed off section of Stoke's working class who, at one point, had returned nine fascists to the Council chamber. He and his family were traditionally Labour voters and always supported the party at general election time. But he had started voting BNP locally because they considered themselves patriotic (but not racist), didn't like the idea of immigrants getting housing when his son couldn't get onto the Council's waiting list, and were frustrated with the local authority.

Stoke BNP's 'Activist of the Year 2010' Mickey White hailed from a similar constituency. As Coleman observed of him, Mickey was "typical of new BNP members - disaffected, betrayed, can't get work, struggling to get anywhere with his family, sees no future for mainstream politics, and is looking for something new". While Mickey certainly has "issues", he talked about the appeal of the BNP and how they made sense of his everyday lived experience. At home, surrounded by his family, he observed how at his dad's workplace it was "the foreigners" who were getting all the overtime as the expense of "British blokes". I imagine spending 18 months on the dole has reinforced his perception that local working people were losing out. Mickey then holds up a couple of anti-immigrant tirades from The Sun and The Mail that "prove" what's going on (so much for their disavowal of the political consequences of their poisonous "journalism"). And at the same time, Micky looks up to Coleman, an admiration that borders on hero worship: "I respect everything he says and does. He speaks the truth".

The Year tries to get at Coleman's motivations too. Parked near a Mosque as worshippers file in for prayers, he is asked "what do you see?" His answer is revealing: "I see the future of our country. I see a group of people who are well-organised, have money, and the support of the regime under which we live ... this was an English working class community. I don't like it. I fear it." Coleman voices similar sentiments about the new Mosque planned for Normacot, a sign, he says, of "an occupation by a body of foreign people".

Unlike Mickey's path to nationalism, or the soft support evidenced by Dave, Coleman's commitment to the BNP is inseparable from a paranoid, racist loathing of anyone who does not pass his white British litmus test. As we have seen of late, his bigoted commentary on the summer 2011 riots got him in hot water with the law. Unsurprising considering that, by his own admission, the BNP want to "stir up and agitate".

Unfortunately for the BNP, for all their campaigning (do they always go out leafleting dressed in trousers and matching blue shirts?), for all their grand standing and claiming to be Stoke-on-Trent's authentic voice, the people of Stoke spoke and returned Labour with a decisive majority. Not one BNP councillor retained their seat. And for Mickey, who appeared to believe he was going to get a seat in the multi-member Baddeley, Milton and Norton ward, he limped home with a feeble 3.4%.

While I am a firm believer in giving fascists enough rope to hang themselves, there is much to criticise in their portrayal. Unlike The Year's treatment of Council Leader Mohammed Pervez (pictured), who is often depicted as bewildered and on the receiving end of Blast Film's sharp questions, neither Coleman nor Mickey were challenged on their beliefs. They were offered the opportunity to explain where they're coming from without criticism or contradiction, whereas Pervez was not afforded the same privilege. As we Big Brother fans used to say back in the day, the BNP got a 'good edit' while the producers had it in for the Council Leader.

The biggest problem is the perspective adopted by the documentary itself, which reminded me of the Allegra Stratton affair. Stoke is treated as 'the other' to the burgeoning dynamism of the South East. There is constant talk of derelict factories, joblessness, public sector-dependency, immigration, and economic uncertainty. You are left with the impression the city is one giant council estate full of dilapidated buildings and benefit claimants. There is nothing about new schools, the new hospital, new housing, and the stream of ongoing regeneration projects. It is a place of irrepressible misery and irreversible decline.

But in contrast to the South East, at the same time Stoke is an earthy place full of honest folk. Via the focus on the BNP (who, at the time of filming, only held five out of 60 seats), the film panders to the fascination sections of the metropolitan elite have with our homegrown fascists. They are to be poked at, laughed at, be appalled at. Yet, the BNP here serve as a marker of working class authenticity. They are a sign working class people are thick and mired in bigotry. By confirming themselves as the liberal intelligentsia's exotic opposite, their privileged position as opinion formers and decision makers is assured to their satisfaction - they know best. As American activists are fond of saying, Blast Films really should have checked their privilege.

Nevertheless, this is compulsive viewing for all and not just the handful of Stokies who follow local politics in The Potteries. But just remember whose eyes you are seeing this through.

Abuse Allegations: Media and Power

Guest post (courtesy of Twitlonger) from @catherinebuca. 

The news isn't Schofield or Watson or Newsnight or people talking on the internet; the news is why children have had their complaints of abuse ignored, and are still having them ignored. The news is if, how, why and by whom investigations into these alleged crimes have been circumscribed. The news is what kind of power circulates in society in order to protect certain people no matter their crime.

This is nothing but distraction.

I felt like what happened yesterday with Schofield and C4 News was something of a tipping point, or at least it represented a very important moment where the power to question was put in the hands of regular people instead of just the powerful. Well it seems it was a very important moment, but for all the wrong reasons. It's been jumped upon by those it suits, so that they can regain control of the terms of debate, and start putting the media and the internet and the free flow of information on trial, instead of the people who will continue to exert their tight control on that information.

"Silly people, down there flapping around gossiping on the internet; we important people know best, your moral judgements are flawed, stop talking about this, let us handle it in our own way, don't listen to the media...trust the power."

When the news about Savile took off, everyone asked how it could have been allowed to happen. People were angry that a culture of secrecy, hidden power and the ability to abuse that power existed to such an extent that so many voices were quietened, or erased completely. That power wasn't just Savile's. It's quite an abstract concept and therefore very difficult to pin down just what exactly is meant by 'power' in this context. We tend to look to specific people who may have been in direct control of actively suppressing his and other abuses - and those people do no doubt exist - but that power is more pervasive, and exists as less concrete things: it's in the narratives our media tell about what our morals are as a society; it's in the loose and often informal networks of relationships between people who have the power to shape everything from policy to laws, from the type of programmes we watch to the stars we venerate. It's in the relations we have with each other, and the ideas that circulate and are reinforced by the conversations we have, and the ways in which we react publicly and privately to displays of official power. It's something that is so diffuse and intangible that we often jump from one tangible and easily identifiable thing to the next, trying to stick a flag in exactly what the cause of the problem is. Trying to question what myriad aspects come together to create a society that could let something like that happen and go unpunished is, undeniably, incredibly difficult. And understandably so.

And it's exactly for this reason that we need to cast a critical eye on what is happening right now. We look back, with the benefit of outraged and righteous hindsight, at how power - the complex kind - colluded to silence the victims of Savile, and helped create the culture that allowed it, and we ask how, why?; and we're rightly frustrated. But are we really too close to what is happening now that we can't see the same is in danger of happening again? And that we are each of us complicit in it as we let the terms of the debate be controlled by those it suits, and allow the focus be put on the media, on people like Schofield, Tom Watson, the BBC, and seemingly the whole of the internet (the parts not endorsed by 'the establishment'). What Schofield did when he handed the list to Cameron was give a voice to everyone who feels frustrated by the lack of accountability the government and others enjoy. What he did wasn't 'irresponsible' - it was exactly what we want our politicians to face. We want to be able to question them precisely on things, rather than having to put up with the sanctioned questions that get asked by our media outlets (sanctioned not in the sense that the government explicitly tells them what they can ask; but sanctioned in the sense that there is an unwritten code that is woven through public life, a code that is constituted by the various processes of that complex power I talked about earlier). It is precisely this lack of access to any kind of accountability that breeds the rampant discussions that happen online, with their inevitable missteps and false allegations along the way - because when those in power shut down the lines of communication and close ranks, our need to get to the truth doesn't go away, we simply now have lots of tools at our disposal to try to get to it for ourselves. And we will use them, something that is hardly surprising.

As we watch the tone of the news programmes and the things our politicians are talking about shift today and in the coming days, we simply must remember Savile, we must recognise what is happening. The lines of communication are being further shut down. The story is being taken into the controlling hands of the very people we want to be holding accountable. And we are letting it happen, by shifting our focus as well, to discussions of whether Schofield was 'out of order' thrusting the list into Cameron's hands, whether people are right to float names around online, whether we should even be allowed to talk about it at all. Because that is what this current turn in events comes down to; the question of whether we should be allowed to ask what happened, or whether we should sit back and wait for those in power to tell us what is important and what isn't.

And all of that is even before we get to the point of all the abuse victims' voices that are, once again, being silenced and erased, which suits some people, I have no doubt, very, very much.

Can Conservatives Win Again?

That's the question pundits are asking in the wake of Barack Obama's election win. Though there wasn't a great deal in it - 60m vs 57m, give or take a few hundred thousand here and there, it would appear everyone with an opinion is using this opportunity to write the obituary of American Conservatism. People are pointing to the Democrats winning the popular vote in five out of the last six contests, and the observation that the GOP and its increasingly deranged base are politically incapable of facing up to demographic change. Fold this in with several progressive outcomes to local referenda, can you really start speaking of a permanent and strengthening Democrat majority? Time will tell.

For Conservatives on this side of the water, there is some superficial consolation to be had. An election with a floundering incumbent, a faltering economy, and culminating in an outright victory have not been lost on those desperate for a sign, any sign, that oblivion does not await in 2015. But like the USA, there is something deeper going on.

Tory party membership since the war has looked like this:

(Source)

Vote share has followed a broadly similar pattern. Since polling a staggering 49.7% under Anthony Eden in 1955, the Tory vote has shrunk back to 36.1% in 2010 - still not enough to win outright, despite Labour getting its second worst-ever result off the back of a deeply unpopular government.

The results from the second order European elections since their inception don't make comfortable reading either. Tory shares have been 51% (1979), 38.8% (1984), 35% (1989), 28% (1994), 36% (1999), 36% (2004), and 27.7% (2009).

A government mid-Parliament tends not to pay too much attention to what the polls say, but the Conservative Party are consistently falling behind among the under-59s (especially the 18-24s), and the regions outside of 'the south' (excluding London). The most recent YouGov poll is pretty indicative of the general trend.

Matters are not helped by the emergence of an electorally credible alternative to the Conservatives' right. However, despite UKIP's rapid rise in under 20 years, its base - if it can be called that - is ageing, and has marginal purchase amongst younger voters. And the right seem set to fragment even further with expelled UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire teaming up with the execrable "celebrity" Katie Hopkins to form 'We Demand a Referendum', a carbon copy of the late James Goldsmith's dismal Referendum Party. With a bit of luck, that should cost the Tories and UKIP a handful of MEPs in 2014.

Like their American brethren, it's not so much the Conservative's appalling record that's doing them in; they are at odds with long-term demographic and cultural trends. The political pendulum may still be to the right on welfare, economic policy, public spending, and immigration; but it has swung decisively to the left when it comes to rights for and attitudes toward women, minority ethnicities, and LGBT people. This politico-cultural shift is taking place on a global scale and it would take a massive amount of violence to throw it into reverse.

For a whole host of reasons the Tories have struggled to move with the times. Dave's pre-election liberal Toryism tried, but quickly, unseemly, that was consigned to an unmarked grave shortly after the LibDems gave them the leg up. Now, the Tories have to swim against an appalling record of incompetence and spitefulness, and cope with decline, fragmentation, and an ageing and diminishing base. Is it reasonable to write off the Tories? Could Dave be the last Conservative Prime Minister ... ever?

Tories might be interested in the recent history of the Canadian Conservative Party. Its immediate predecessor spectacularly collapsed in the 1993 federal elections from 158 seats (an absolute majority) to just two - probably the greatest electoral catastrophe ever to befall a governing party. And yet, 13 years later, the Tories were returned to power as a minority government and then went on to win an outright majority in 2011. How?

Canada has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world. Its population of 33 million welcomed over a quarter of a million new arrivals in 2010. In addition, just under 20% of Canadian citizens are what we in Britain would class BME, 4% of the total comprising of aboriginal peoples. The white majority themselves are split between groups identifying themselves as English, Scottish, German, Canadian and, of course, Quebecois. In 2005 Canada legalised gay marriage, and enjoys the sorts of liberties and freedoms as your average European social democratic state. Not ideal turf for Tories.

Canadian Conservatives have been forced to adapt. Looking at their 2011 Manifesto, despite the disparate components that make up Canada it is very clearly a one nation document, albeit updated and modernised for the 21st century. It is framed around the traditional Tory nostrums of lower taxes, but this is explicitly linked to plans for jobs and growth. Unlike their counterparts here, deficit reduction is tied to economic strategy. Demonisation of immigrants is absent, green issues are highly visible, unions are not singled out for a battering, and there are commitments to religious freedom. It's all very liberal and managerial and does not wear its ideology on its sleeve. These are the fluffy modern Tories sincere Cameroons can but dream of.

But it is more than just a question of programme. The tradition of North American exceptionalism extends to its politics. Unlike Western Europe, Canada has retained a substantial Liberal Party. Historically it has dominated the political scene, only being occasionally interrupted by interludes of Conservative rule. However, it would seem history is now catching up with Canadian politics. Founded in 1961 the New Democratic Party was born out of the labour movement and has started to occupy the left, social democratic political space the Liberals formerly claimed as theirs. The 21st Century particularly has seen them break through. In 2011 the NDP won 30.6% of the vote (up 12.5%) and increased their number of seats to 103 (up from 37!). The Liberals were pushed into a distant third place and the separatist Bloc Quebecois practically wiped out in their heartlands.

The Conservatives themselves have benefited from earlier seismic shifts in politics, that saw the 'traditional' Tory party, the Progressive Conservatives, merge with the Western-regional Reform Party. But that was a tremor compared to the 'Big One' of historic left-leaning political realignment, moving Canadian politics from a liberal/conservative to a "normal" conservative/social democratic axis. This reflects the growing strength of the labour movement, the patterns of inward immigration, and a consolidation of a liberal and tolerant culture. The Conservatives are creatures of the moment: faced with adapting or dying, they consolidated their forces and chose to adapt.

British (and American) Conservatives clearly need a Canadian-style makeover. But it is extremely unlikely. Demographic trends are roughly comparable, but the constitution of the respective political fields are different. Canada's politics has seen fragmentation grow over into realignment. British politics in general is slowly fraying (the First Past the Post system has kept a lid on it - for now), but one of the two main parties is not about to be replaced by an upstart challenger. Furthermore, because of its myriad links to the labour movement, immigrant communities, and social movements, Labour are weathering it better. The Tories however are locked in to their narrower constituency - move too much in a liberal one nation direction and you lose your base to UKIP as you win over swing voters. Stick with a core strategy, and the undecided voters go elsewhere. Gobbling up their Coalition partners may present a way out. It has, after all, happened before. Or, Micawber-like, something else might eventually turn up.

Demography is not destiny, and British Conservatism does face seemingly insurmountable odds. But, historically speaking, as the most successful political party the world has ever seen, its resilience should not be underestimated. Never ones to put principle before power, there is always an outside chance it could make the necessary changes to win again, however unlikely that looks now. Therefore it requires constant, unceasing vigilance and work from Labour, the labour movement, and progressive people to keep it in the predicament it finds itself.

Galloway's 70s Porn Voice Over Campaign Ad

Ever wanted to hear George Galloway at his seductive best?



Believe it or not, these gentlemen are in the business of winning votes from the good people of Croydon North.

Trotsky on Lesser-Evilism

Trotters (apparently) once wrote:

The occupation of eastern Poland by the Red Army (in 1939-40) is to be sure it is a ‘lesser evil’ in comparison with the occupation of the same territory by Nazi troops, but this lesser evil was obtained because Hitler was assured of achieving a greater evil. If somebody sets, or helps set a house on fire, and afterward saves five out of ten of the occupants of the house in order to convert them into his own semi-slaves, that is to be sure a lesser evil than to have burnt the entire ten. But it is dubious that this fire-bug merits a medal for the rescue . . . ”

Okay, this doesn't really work for lefty fire-bugs who called for an Obama vote yesterday, but still. At least he didn't condemn lesser-evil'ers as petit bourgeois dilettantes or unprincipled combinationists.

Class and Political Values

In this interesting piece carried by the latest edition of Progress Magazine, YouGov supremo Peter Kellner writes “New polling for Progress shows that working-class attitudes are not what some in the Labour party imagine them to be” and subsequently goes on to argue that social class does not condition values, politics, and voting habits as it once did. Anyone with a passing knowledge of recent work on the sociology of class, or indeed the theoretical justification underpinning New Labourism and the Third Way are likely to have encountered similar arguments at some point. However, unfortunately for Peter and in spite of his intention, his argument underlines the continuing salience of class – but not in the way he or his left wing opponents might expect.

The class definition Peter employs is the widely-accepted National Readership Survey approach to grading. It runs like this:

Grade	Class	Occupation of Chief Income Earner
A	Upper Middle	Senior managerial, administrative, professional
B	Middle	Middle managerial, administrative, professional
C1	Lower Middle	Supervisory, clerical, junior managerial, administrative, professional
C2	Skilled Working	Skilled manual workers
D	Working	Semi- and unskilled manual workers
E	Lower	Casual/part-time workers, pensioners, benefit-dependent

See here for more information. It is also worth noting the NRS definition excludes the 'upper class', the wealthy minority who sit at the pinnacle of the class structure and are therefore outside the grading.

Please allow me an aside before we get to the meat of the matter.

I don't like this approach to defining class. It smacks too much of a tick box approach. It has the advantage of easy codification for use in tables, matrices, statistical packages, and market surveys. It has the tendency, as Peter shows below, to treat these analytical distinctions as really existing divisions in the class structure. As Marx was fond of saying, one should not mistake the things of logic with the logic of things.

I don’t particularly blame Peter for working with the ‘standard definition’. It’s not just pollsters who uncritically go by this definition. For the wonk milieu, mainstream politics, and the entire advertising/marketing industry, NRS is an article of faith. But to use the old language, I still believe it’s one’s relationship to the means of production that counts. If you work in an office as opposed to a factory or a shop floor, if your labour is by brain instead of by hand, chances are you are as working class as any production operative, care worker, train driver, or shop assistant (there is a good chance you - the reader - are working class too). It is undeniable the composition of the division of labour has transformed these last 30-odd years, but the content of those class relationships remain fundamentally unchanged.

With that out the way, let’s get to the rub. What Peter wants to investigate is the view that working class voters, by his definition, are the special repository of progressive politics and, by extension, test the left’s orthodox touchstone that the working class is the vehicle for socialist change. He observes:

We asked more than 15,000 people where they placed themselves on a scale from left to right. As the figures below show, middle-class voters are more likely to describe themselves as left-of-centre than working-class voters are. But they are also more likely to describe themselves as right-of-centre – the biggest difference between the classes is the number of ‘don’t knows’: one in three DE voters, but only one in eight AB voters. If we take the difference between left and right, then there is a one-point lead for the left among the middle classes, and a larger, eight-point, lead for the left among DE voters. So, in relative terms, there is a slightly greater overall tilt to the left among DE voters – but the larger truth is that social class plays only a marginal role in determining how leftwing or rightwing we are.

Okay. Going on, YouGov asked its sample about their attitudes on seven issues. There were big majorities for three progressive policy ends - workers on company boards, taking the railways back into public ownership, and for gay marriage. However, there were big anti-progressive majorities on three other issues: ending all immigration, stopping overseas aid, and no to higher taxes for funding public services. The seventh issue people were asked about - should unemployment benefit be reduced - saw a more even split.

Breaking the results down by NRS class, Peter notes that middle and working class voters hold similar views on four of the seven issues. On the other three, working class respondents are two-to-one in favour of ending all immigration, and scrapping overseas aid. The middle class, by contrast, appear more progressive: they split evenly on both questions. These "surprising" findings appear to be bucked by unemployment benefits - the middle class are 53-38% in favour of a reduction, as opposed to 45-40% against in the working class bracket. However, separating out the C2s finds them as favourable to benefit reduction as the middle class groupings. As Peter observes, the DEs are against, presumably because they would or are more likely to be directly affected. And as if to underline the point, the attitudes of the C2s "show scant signs of working class solidarity".

To his credit, Peter says this doesn't mean Labour should throw its principles overboard and adopt a thoroughly reactionary agenda, but it exposes the misplaced hopes the Labour left and others have in the socialist propensities of the working class. With the disassociation of politics from class, it therefore makes little sense to adopt the sorts of policies the left think can win back disengaged working class votes.

While I accept the argument that "it is worth understanding where people actually are", there are three problems with Peter's position.

1. In the comments, Dan Paskins observes "it is no great surprise that 'reactionary' policy proposals on issues of high public concern are a greater priority than 'progressive' policy proposals on issues of low public concern." While not quite asking leading questions for proof of an expected outcome, there are issues of framing here that Peter did not address.

2. YouGov finds the three progressive, left wing policies - workers on company boards, rail renationalisation, and gay marriage - score big majorities across all the class gradings. Rather than being of interest only to a shrinking industrial working class, does this not show left policies can have swing potential and win large numbers of people from all strata to a properly social democratic Labour manifesto?

3. Peter inadvertently shows the continued salience of class. While he links perceived material interests among the DEs to opposing cuts to unemployment benefit, he overlooks how these interests condition the non-progressive responses to immigration, overseas aid, and higher taxes to pay for public services on the part of the C2DEs. As we saw in the earlier discussion on working class benefit-bashing, right wing arguments against the welfare state make sense from the standpoint of everyday experiences of working people. The idea you have to work while others are living it up on benefits funded by the taxes you pay has a deep resonance, precisely because of their class location. This insight, this negative manifestation of, for want of a better phrase, working class "identity" goes some way to explain YouGov's findings. As anyone who regularly canvasses people will tell you, anti-immigration sentiment tends not to have a racist wellspring as much anymore - it is in the main fuelled by perceptions of benefit dependency, jumping the housing queue, taking jobs off locals, and undercutting wages. Likewise with overseas aid - why give poor people elsewhere money when we have things we urgently need at home, such as funds for hospitals or care for the elderly? And why should workers pay more from their increasingly-squeezed pay packets for public services that are being cut and they seldom use anyway?

Therefore, by YouGov's own admission, left wing policies can be popular and class does matter. The tough political task for socialists and Labour people is to argue and advocate alternatives to these reactionary politics that speak to working class life experience and perceptions with ones that do so even more convincingly.

USA Elections: How the World Would Vote

If only everyone but Americans had a vote, eh?