"These are Labour's six tough conditions!" thunders Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit minister. They've been waved about on this, the day Article 50 was finally triggered. Are they going to give the Prime Minister sleepless nights alongside Scottish independence and alleged electoral fraud? Just what are these conditions the party leadership have set the Prime Minister? They are: 1. Does it ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU? 2. Does it deliver the "exact same benefits as we currently have as members of the single market and customs union? 3. Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities? 4. Does it defend rights and protections and prevent a race to the bottom? 5. Does it protect national security and our capacity to tackle cross-border crime? 6. Does it deliver for all regions and nations of the UK? They're all a bit, well, motherhood and apple pie aren't they? As tests go they're as technocratic and politics-lite as they possibly could be. Who on the government benches could come out against aspirations such as these? Labour are more or less saying to Theresa May that "we want Brexit negotiations to be a success", and that's it. I'm sure she's terrified to the depths of her wretched soul. Still, one shouldn't be too harsh. While Labour have scored some modest process-related successes in the lead up to today, such as the Commons vote on the eventual deal, there isn't an awful lot Labour can do between now and then. The party is not going to agitate for a second referendum. It's not going to steal the LibDems' thunder by explicitly positioning itself as the party of Remain. And not having enough MPs, combined with abysmal poll ratings, means that our party is in a proper pickle. Some MPs might talk about the "moral pressure" the PLP can bring to bear, but this is wistful nonsense. No amount of Select Committee reports or carefully worded criticisms are going to derail them. The Conservative Party can relax and get on with negotiations because we're paralysed, if not a shambles. Because of our parlous state and a Brexit position that has triangulated irrelevance, sad to say May and the three Brexiteers will probably pay the hard Brexit idiocies of the press and the backbenches more heed than anything we say. It doesn't have to be like this. Labour can seize the initiative. Presently, Labour is linked to continental social democratic and labour parties through the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. It also has formal links via the Socialist International (yes, the Second International still leads a twilight existence!) and the circuits of Eurowonkdom, the links of the socialist societies, and the ties between Labour-affiliated unions and the counterparts means it too has strong channels and backchannels of communication. Indeed, this evening in the hour long party leader chats with Andrew Neil, Jeremy Corbyn said the party had been talking to its allied parties to help ensure Britain and the EU get a good deal from negotiations. This is not good enough. Instead of sitting passively, instead of two years of moaning and the damaging drip-drip obsessing with who's going to succeed Jeremy and when, instead of being reactive, Labour can assume leadership of the issue. We must use our European links and announce it's going to produce its own plan for Brexit, and it will be doing so by having parallel discussions with other centre left European parties. A shadow Brexit negotiation process, if you like. It allows us hold May to account more effectively than thinking up of ways why x, y, z negotiated position is outrageous, and gives us an alternative plan to go to the British people with. It's about being an effective opposition. We should also do this because if we don't, it's exactly the sort of thing the LibDems or the Greens would do with their smaller federation of European parties. In our case, it could make a difference by helping us recover our polling and stopping the demoralisation and deflation slowly rippling through the party's ranks, and therefore taking power when the next general election comes round. It certainly beats twiddling our thumbs waiting for the government to screw up. How about it?
Yours truly was at the last Sociology Research Seminar Series at the University of Derby. On this occasion our speak was Simon Speck, also of Derby. His paper, 'The Cynical Image: The Critical Potential of the Political Cartoon in the Age of Self-Satirising Authority' took a look at how the powerful have absorbed the bite of satire and transformed it into something that helps legitimise them, and whether using humour to attack those interests was still possible. This was explored this through the medium of political cartoons. He argued that satire takes the powerful as its target, and locates humour in the contrast between the lofty ideals they espouse and their often grubby practice. In this sense, satire is close to the immanent critique often associated with the Frankfurt School/critical theory, of the practice of confronting something with its foundational principles. For example, the controversial Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons send up the piety of Islamists by forcefully contrasting their sacred pretensions (Jihad motivated by the glory of God) with the profane (Heaven stuffed full of virgins). In liberal democracies, however, satire has become incorporated, and in few places more so than the UK. The cutting Supermac cartoon by Vicky for the Evening Standard in the late 50s, early 60s sent up Harold Macmillan. They set out by taking the mick, but over time the demeaning caricature came to be a nickname and latterly the title of a MacMillan biography. And so the satirical monicker was incorporated into an appreciation of him, and the humour attached to it a sign of his sacralisation into the hall of the political establishment, of having made it. Similarly, former Tory education secretary Kenneth Baker, who on Spitting Image was regularly portrayed as a slug thanks to his slimy reputation, managed to recuperate the attack by noting how, as a self-described historian of satirical cartoons, his depiction was part of one of the fine traditions of British democracy. The logical end of this incorporation is someone like Boris Johnson, who has astutely and assiduously built up a self-mocking, self-satirising image. He was quick to realise, helped in part by regular Have I Got News For You appearances, including four stints as the host, that not only does it raise his profile but the laughter directed by him and at him could be harnessed to confer legitimacy. Hence Johnson was once regularly referred to as the most popular/most recognisable politician in Britain, purely because he was a bit of an oaf. He exploited it to the hilt during his campaign for the London mayoralty, and drew deep once again during the EU referendum campaign. Like many other MPs, liking a joke and being able to laugh at yourself shows up your human side, it papers over power and interest by showing how "down to earth" they are. Johnson, however, took it a step further. His false bonhomie, which is entirely tedious for some, has another happy - for him - consequence: he can use it to evade criticism, and often "humorously" did so when he was in office. Satire then not only flatters, it can make careers. In these conditions, following Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason, with the disappearance of political alternatives to the status quo, the more cynical society become about itself. This, for Simon, is also the lot of satire now. The spreading of cynical sensibilities means that satirical critique is marketable and feeds into open irony. Vicky's Supermac attack was an ironic attack on Macmillan as a blundering fool. In the 21st century, Johnson contrives to be a blundering fool. Does this mean satire is now impossible? Not necessarily. Exploring Sloterdijk's use of ancient Greek understandings of satire, of kynicism as opposed to cynicism. This was an underdog perspective that set itself against dogmatism, abstraction, and the theoretical while celebrating the disinhibited, the embodied, the gestural, the shameless, and the animal. It has an insubordinate, profaning impulse that made the Greek authorities of the day uncomfortable? In the realm of political cartoons, for Simon there is a cartoonist working with this sensibility: Steve Bell. His cartoons are able to avoid the kinds of incorporation suffered by Vicky because he eschews tradition (particularly the liberal tradition, despite most of his work appearing in a liberal paper, and established ways of doing political cartooning), but more importantly his depictions are viscerally materialist and shameless. Physiques are blown up and caricatured in grotesque ways, eyes constantly wander and possess a crazed look, bad language is a staple, and he merges the animal, the inhuman, the synthetic and, in Dave's case, the prophylactic. It's difficult to see Osborne finding flattery in his rendering as a ring-nosed gimp, or May her depiction as a scrawny clown, Bush jr as a simian, nor Blair as an unhinged grin-agog. This aesthetic doesn't make any grand statements or pay tribute to a tradition curated by the likes of Kenneth Baker, but captures the ground ceded by satire in the age of cynicism and ironic incorporation. Is satire possible? Yes, it would appear. But only by abandoning tradition and getting visceral can it regain its bite.
The first quarter is almost up! Can you Adam and Eve it? Here are the books I've read since last time. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden The Path to the Spiders' Nest by Italo Calvino The Ethics of Modernity by Richard Münch The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato Hunting Mister Heartbreak by Jonathan Raban Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams The Philosophy of Money by Georg Simmel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis Ideology and Utopia by Karl Mannheim Ordinary Families by E Arnot Robertson Nadija by Andre Breton Work Time by Cynthia L Negrey Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath Theorizing the Standoff by Robin Wagner-Pacifici The High Cost of Living by Marge Piercy Central Problems in Social Theory by Anthony Giddens Fewer this quarter thanks to some pretty hefty breeze blocks of books - I'm looking mainly at Simmel and Dostoyevsky, which took an age to get through. The latter was definitely worth it. The former? Not so much. I'll say it now too, the Giddens was an excellent read. What have you been reading recently?
As surprises in politics go, this one's right up there with night following day. In case you've hid in a cave or were too dazzled by the March for Europe's liberal virtue, Douglas Carswell has resigned from the United Kingdom Independence Party. Something of a square peg in a round hole, Carswell's politics are complete crap. They dress an apologia for the megawealthy up in the taffeta of individual autonomy and pearls of hypermodernity. That said, his market fundamentalism doesn't come with extra wrappings of racism and sexism, as per official kipperism, nor the patrician know-all arrogance of his bezzy mate. In his resignation note, Carswell says that it's "mission accomplished" as far as UKIP are concerned, and so there is little point staying around. Nothing, you understand, to do with his summons before the party's NEC, due to be heard Monday afternoon, on allegations that he derailed a knighthood for Nigel Farage. Indeed, old NF himself on Sophy Ridge this Sunday has pledged to stand against Carswell in Clacton next time. There's little chance of that happening, seeing he's a serial bottler. Still, for those of us who despise UKIP some grim satisfaction can be reaped from their implosion as politics comes to grips with the damage they and their highly placed enabling friends have wreaked. Carswell's resignation is just the latest in the party's pattern of decline. Some might say it was inevitable, but ask yourself this. Do you think he would have resigned if UKIP were doing much better in the polls, if UKIP were driving the news agenda again, and if UKIP had won in Stoke and therefore sustained the momentum of its pre-general election hay day? Of course he wouldn't have. As argued many times previously, UKIP properly got legs in the wake of the Equal Marriage row as thousands of "unreconstructed" shire Tories decamped and threw their lot in with the purple party. Because the Conservative Party is in long-term decline - it remains to be seen if Theresa May has permanently reversed its fortunes (I'm guessing not) - UKIP as the repository for their most cranky and backward erstwhile supporters, as well as the flotsam and jetsam of the terrified petit bourgeoisie and lumpenising sections of the working class meant they became something and rose to prominence as a force destined for long-term decline. This was written into their DNA not just because its core support was old, nor that it was getting power from strata that are sinking, as important both these things are, but also because UKIP was fusing together ex-Tories, ex-Labour, and the small but, inside a small party, significant bigoted floating voter tendency. With little in the way of stabilisers from its class base, and a membership united only by anti-Europe and anti-immigration sentiments it was always going to be a volatile affair. And that has more or less been the UKIP story since day one: treason and plot. Despite congenital instability, UKIP was successful because, eventually, Farage emerged as its undisputed 'charismatic' leader and, this cannot be overstated, the media gave UKIP a massive leg up. As the political establishment were seriously spooked by their ubiquity, the party gained momentum. In 2013 and 2014, it came second wherever a parliamentary by-election took place - coming closest in Eastleigh and Heywood and Middleton. It did very well in those years' local elections too, and they were constantly, ceaselessly talked up by the press and broadcast media as primarily a threat to Labour. However, once momentum was lost, which arguably was the case from the general election on (despite last year's gain in Wales), the wheels rattled loose of the bandwagon. As forecast by Farage himself, failure in Stoke meant an exacerbation of UKIP's crisis. Coming after the unlamented departures of Diane James and Steven Woolfe, so Arron Banks has withdrawn his support and is asking for £200k worth of donations back, there's the European Parliament investigation into alleged UKIP expenses fiddles, and now Carswell. It won't be long before others decamp. For instance, what of Suzanne Evans, who is paid by Carswell to carry his bags? Had the Brexit vote gone the other way, or had Labour set its face against the result then UKIP would likely be enjoying a new lease of life. The predictions of the London ignorati about the cleaning up in Labour constituencies may have come to pass. But that didn't happen. Carswell reaffirms what I've been arguing for the last two years: the declinist tendency is strongly asserting itself and UKIP is collapsing. Its fall might be noisy, it might attract a bit of media attention, but the ginger group of UKIP's future is beckoning the present to hurry up and be it. And it surely will, until the conditions align again for populist right/fascist-lite politics.
Or Deep Duck Trouble Starring Donald Duck to give this platformer its full title. This 1993 (relative) rarity was one of a clutch of Disney games Sega, or rather the developers the jobs were sub-contracted to, produced in the company's eight and 16-bit glory days. And (nearly) all of them are thought of quite fondly, retrospectively. Castle of Illusion with Mickey Mouse and Aladdin across the MegaDrive and Master System, World of Illusion and Quackshot on the former, and Donald Duck's Lucky Dime Caper on the latter. We definitely won't talk about Fantasia or Ariel the Little Mermaid. For the most part, Sega's Disney games were well-crafted, in part because Disney insisted on having input. After all, if you are licensing your cash cows the game they're pasted into better be alright. Deep Duck Trouble was a late period entry onto the Master System, and as you might expect it's well programmed and avoids many of the issues that plagued the console. Namely flickering sprites and hideous tinny music. The adventure sees you assume Donald's mantle as you try and restore a necklace to its rightful resting place, all in order to lift a curse cast on Uncle Scrooge when his treasure hunting ways got the better of him. This involves platforming over five areas of a tropical island before facing off against the end boss and saving the day. It's all competently done. The standard zones common to platformers are here - jungles, water, caves, mountains, ice, temples (all that was missing was the desert). It wasn't the first time these themes turned up in a game, and were far from being the last too. Also, as a Disney game, violence had to be muted. Jumping on enemy heads Mario-stylee is okay, as is kicking blocks onto the bonces of baddies too. And, as per a Disney game, Donald cannot "die". Standard video game talk of "lives" is banished and replaced by "tries". By this time, platformers were ten a penny with very little distinguishing one from the other apart from mascots/franchises. Deep Duck Trouble does at least make an effort in this regard. Rather than fight an end of level baddy, you're posed with a challenge. At the close of the first level you must keep sprinting to avoid coconuts thrown at you from a miniature King Kong who swings among the trees. Don't forget the spikes and the pitfalls too! Reach the end of the stage and he smacks into a tree. Likewise, the water level demands you do something similar, though this time you're frantically swimming up the screen to avoid the jaws of a very snappy shark. Definitely a nice switch from the usual fare. As well crafted as the game is, there are very annoying cheap deaths from time to time, unnecessarily (and unfairly) tricky bits that see your life, sorry, try tally drop down. This is definitely the case on level five where a drop, which is something usually to be avoided, is actually the way through the level. Considering this was a kids' game on a kids' system, which is how Sega marketed the Master System once the MegaDrive came along, lazy misdirection like this is unnecessary. It's one thing to try and stretch the game experience out, quite another to effectively troll the player. Going back to Goffman and the sociology of video games, point four of a digital reworking of his own scholarship on games notes how, for solo gamers, it is an outlet for presenting their (gaming) self to them selves - among a number of other things, of course. It's an act of reflexivity, a practice of being explicitly invited to monitor your own action as you respond to pre-programmed moves and, depending on the game, its artificial intelligence will likewise try and counter appropriately. There is none of the latter in Deep Duck Trouble. As an 8-bit title, the platforming action and attack patterns of the baddies are strictly scripted. It's as inflexible as the formations advancing down the screen in a game of Space Invaders. The fact it is quite easy once you get the hang of it is suddenly jarred when that unexpectedly tricky jump appears, ill-placed enemy, or hard-to-dodge obstacle. Getting beyond them means investing either a lot of time to familiarise yourself further with the game, which could add up to many more hours of repetitious gameplay (at least modern titles have much stronger narratives that simulate progression). Or, you could cheat. Cheating in games has always been something of an ethical grey area, and what constitutes cheating has changed as games have changed. The sorts of things vintage gamers like me would have thought cheating, such as instant respawns and infinite lives, come as standard now. Which, I suppose, befits games' evolution toward interactive cinematic experiences. It goes without saying that cheating in multiplayer matches over the internet is very much frowned upon, but what about in the privacy of your own home? Naturally, no one gives a monkey's if you can unlock all the best weapons from the off. Indeed, for some players, cheating helps them get full value out of the game and therefore enhance the experience. But for simple 8-bit platformers? During my playthrough using the trusty Retron5 I am ashamed to say that save states came in very handy. Stupid mistakes or surprise deaths were and are much easier to avoid as time can be rewound to the point just prior to one's demise. The application of saving to a game that was never designed to have progress saved fundamentally reshapes the experience. Game over no longer implies a tedious trudge back through the game to the sticking point, only for it to happen again - a cheap death is a momentary inconvenience. The advantage it has is time, especially as the number of tries it takes you to make that perfectly timed platform jump or avoid the tumbling rock from nowhere can be quite a few. Taking out the trudge saves time. If you only get past level four's swooping eagle on the 15th try, that's quite a bit of tedium cut out of the experience. Does this matter when it comes to gaming reflexivity? It can. Cheating through saving is only an option and one the purists can easily avoid by sticking exclusively to the original hardware or exercising iron will power. For others, for me, because time is short (why play when blogging is the best game ever?) liberal use of cheating allows me to get through games I wouldn't otherwise have time to play. What does that mean when it comes to matters of skill, of the feeling of accomplishment, of meeting a challenge for its own sake? Something to ponder in a future post.
I do apologise for featuring Daniel Hannan on this blog.
Yes, that is one of the right's leading intellectual lights. In his own words. His own stupid words. I've picked this out not because Hannan's criticism is interesting and hasn't been said millions of times before, but because it has been repeated ad nauseum for the last century and is as banal as anti-communist boiler plate gets. What strikes me is the method of argument, which in typical Hannan fashion drips with bad faith. It begins with that old warhorse, the "Marx is responsible for 100 million deaths", a point so risible that to take it seriously impoverishes the standards of political debate. Hannan has after all argued Hitler was a socialist because National Socialist innit, so we shouldn't be shocked to find him trading in bankrupt political stock. Also of interest is the strategy chosen to prove his "thesis" that Marx was wrong about everything, which is assimilated to everything he predicted being wrong. It goes like this. Look, no revolution! Look, no sign of the poor getting poorer! Since 1848, the year the Communist Manifesto was published, there have been hundreds of revolutions. Hundreds. Some have succeeded, and have typically had fairly modest objectives. The overthrow of dictatorship or authoritarian government and its replacement by liberal democracy is the contemporary form. But even then, counterrevolution can win out. If Hannan wants his socialist revolutions, he can have them. Russia, obviously, but also the failed revolutions in Germany between 1918 and the mid 20s, andFrance 1968. Sorry Dan, you won't find anywhere in Marx's works a prediction that socialist revolutions would automatically be successful. They everywhere and always depend on the balance of forces. i.e. Politics. On the poor getting poorer, that firstly wasn't a phrase Marx used - more dishonesty. And secondly, he did note that wealth would increasingly concentrate in ever greater quantities in an ever-diminishing number of hands. And, not that Hannan would notice or even care, there are plenty of people on this planet who work long hours and earn an utter pittance. Poverty reduction and the expanding middle class on a global scale Hannan approvingly noted was, in recent years, largely accounted for by China, a state noted for taking a very hands-on approach to economic policy and a self-identified socialist one to boot! And let's look at some of Marx's other predictions: capitalism's chronic tendency to crisis, the diminishing of the law of value, the replacement of living labour by dead labour (i.e. machines), the constant revolutionising of production and ceaseless churn of social life, the persistence of movements and parties founded on class struggle, the use of foreign labour to divide workers and keep the values of wages down, the non-disappearance of unemployment - need we go on? There are a number of things Marx didn't predict, but from the distance of 150 years since Volume One of Capital was published, perhaps Hannan would like to tell us how each of these don't exist, weren't forecast, and are a figment of the left's dogmatism? Such as it was, Hannan's argument has to fight shy of the actual facts, of any kind of exegetical engagement with what Marx actually said and the historical record for it to maintain a smidgen of plausibility. And yet being demonstrably false, fake history if you will, it comes back time and again. 50 years from now there will still be people making exactly the same argument. How is this possible? It's because, in politics, truth and evidence are always secondary. Politics is war by less violent, peaceful means, and that means our fabulous parliamentary democracy is always conditioned by the necessity of managing a necessarily contradictory, necessarily conflicting social system crisscrossed by the struggle of interests. Hannan is the son of privilege and spent his formative years in elite institutions. There is little doubt he is a convinced hard right ideologue, and lacking the wit and empathy to think beyond the boundaries of his gilded berth he assumes the air of an expert, the ruling class analogue of front. Something we've seen a bit of lately. With this imagined authority, which is materialised by the platform provided by the Conservative Party as a MEP and the "intellectual" personality conferred by the rightwing media (and any media that treats with him as a Person Who Matters), he has the apparatus to say pretty much what he likes. He can be critiqued and shown to be full of it, but the political economy of Tory punditry protects him. There's an audience for the mendacious and the idiotic, and as a good disciple of free markets he's dutifully supplying a demand. Coincidentally, this position also helps reproduce the intellectual case for the sorts of interests he embodies, which in turn assists the conditioning, tone, and borders of public debate. This then is Daniel Hannan, an intellectual evasive of intellectual inquiry. A self-styled historian who fights shy of the historical record. A representative of a layer of pundits, commentators, and "thinkers" for whom truth is passé, a tedious, conformist and boringly unoriginal chunterer without a scintilla of merit, let alone credibility and honesty. He is a product, a vessel of interests, and a not terribly sophisticated one at that.
At the time of writing, three people lie dead because of a hate-filled zealot. Whoever this man was and whatever his motivations were, nothing compelled him to drive a four-by-four down the pavement on Westminster Bridge. A grievance, real or imagined, didn't cause him to leave his home with a machete blade this afternoon. His intention to cause a mass casualty event on the day Belgium and Europe remembered last year's callous attacks on Brussels airport and metro was something dreamt, planned for, and worked toward. As his biography is picked apart, we can try and understand the motivations, but doing so is never an excuse in justifying them. In this case, the security services acted in an exemplary fashion. The ring of steel protecting Parliament did its job, and the attacker was stopped just inside the gate to the grounds, though not before he stabbed and killed a police guard. Given the sudden nature of the attack, it's very difficult to see what else could have been done, though that does not preclude an analysis of the incident. And, in a very rare instance, I'm going to defend the intelligence services. There is a very good chance the assailant was on a terror watch list. It's quite possible he had been or was presently under surveillance. Inevitably, the questions will be asked why he wasn't detected and/or picked up before now and prevented from undertaking this afternoon's attack. Again, while it's right such issues should be explored, lessons drawn and, if there is a case of egregious carelessness that those responsible be held to account, what really has to be asked is what could have been done differently? Thankfully, we don't have indefinite detention without trial of suspects, but unless there are teams on standby covering the move of every single suspect then the answer has to be very little. Watching someone getting into their car and driving into central London is not immediately suggestive of suspicious activity. There is no way his intent to kill could be inferred before the car mounted the pavement and started accelerating towards passers by. This kind of attack is next to impossible to prevent if someone is so minded to carry it out. The main political take home from this, however, is despite the three murders and multiple injuries is that the police response acted exactly as it should. Parliament was protected and the attacker prevented from causing even more harm. Thankfully, the mass carnage we saw in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin was avoided because of timely action. The way to ensure, in the medium to long-term, that terror attacks are ultimately fruitless is by preserving what we have. If the reaction from the government is another curtailment of liberty and freedoms, they've won. If it marks a shift away from multiculturalism, with all its problems, to one-size-fits-all, they've won. If it heralds another round of attacks on Muslims, they've won.
In calling out Jon Lansman and Momentum publicly for the temerity of, you know, organising, Tom Watson has made a fool of himself. Worse than that, in attacking a mooted alliance between Momentum and Unite he has gone so far as to suggest there is something improper about unions seeking to maximise their influence in the Labour Party. It's only a hop, skip and a jump away from questioning the legitimacy of trade unions acting politically at all, and that's a very dangerous game. Understandably, Len McCluskey has replied in his inimitable style and the war of words continue via social media, while spilling out continually into Unite's own bad-tempered general secretary election, and potentially damaging Labour's own council and mayoral campaigns. Tom Watson is frequently attacked by Corbyn supporters as disingenuous and hypocritical because, let's make no bones about it, his criticisms of them often are. From the Brownist machinations against His Blairness, to the minor skirmishes with Progress during the Miliband years, and now in the era of Corbynism, Tom has acquired and assiduously cultivated a cloak-and-dagger reputation. He is the fixer to end all fixers, the puppet master that has the party bureaucracy dancing along with his manipulations. While he is responsible and accountable for his actions, Tom is a product and heir to a tradition that has long cast a shadow over the Labour Party, and one coming to its end. I am talking about the old Labour trade union right. Packing meetings, nobbling selections, stitching up internal elections, blocking and suppressing opponents, elevating bad faith to the status of performance art - all lovingly narrated in Uncle John Golding's The Hammer of the Left - are, or were the old right's stock-in-trade. I say were because while the culture of shenanigans is very much part of the party's make up, it is increasingly getting more difficult to pull off. There are three reasons for this. First, there is much greater visibility than previously. Cases of egregious bad behaviour, especially in these factionally charged times, can get publicity. And lots of it. That damages the party politically, and this behaviour impinges on the second factor: the membership. Typically dismissed as keyboard warriors who've never seen doorsteps outside Google Images, in reality the massive 2015-16 intake are no more or less active than the majority of "old" party card holders. They turn up at meetings. They turn up and campaign. Abuses of democracy and process can serve to mobilise and strengthen their determination to stick with the leader and his programme (after all, that is the basis of Jeremy Corbyn's appeal). In effect, the membership, which remains majority Jez, make the discharge of bureaucratic chicanery more difficult and more expensive, politically, for those who indulge it. And the last point is the virtual disappearance of the trade union right. The fixers of old had one foot in the PLP and the party machinery, and another in the trade unions. While workplace organisation was much stronger and consequently more militant than present before 1979, its concomitant was a quiescent bureaucracy uninterested in rocking the boat too much in the wider party. While nostalgics write of the transmission belt unions provided from the works' canteen to Westminster's terrace, worker MPs, with some exceptions, packed bureaucratic habits of thought alongside their underwear and Sunday best as they made their journey to Parliament. Likewise trade union officialdom reinforced exactly the same sensibility as they engaged in party structures. Keep things on an even keel, anything for a quiet life. The unions wouldn't intervene too overtly or too consistently in "high politics" provided Labour delivered the policies and in return they were expected to pacify and discipline their memberships at the party's behest. The relationship gave trade union leaders and senior officials direct access to ministers and Number 10, and an input into policy, but led to combustible politics as the 1975-79 Labour government shows. Upon Blair's election as Labour leader in 1994, the relationship became increasingly one-sided as the years wore on. The unions were still expected to rein in industrial action, and in return, well, the Tories will be kept out. This was an unsustainable situation. Readers may recall from the period of the late 90s on how unions slowly but surely turned left. General secretaries preaching the virtues of "partnership" and cooperation were replaced one-by-one by a clutch of officials collectively dubbed the awkward squad. Politically speaking, they were all well within the envelope of big tent trade unionism but to greater and lesser degrees they took more uncompromising stances with regard to members' interests. This firmed up even further after Brown's defeat and the dawning of the Tory/LibDem coalition. First, most affiliated unions organised (haphazardly, it has to be said) for Ed Miliband and were for the most part later forced by active members into stumping for Jeremy Corbyn. Meanwhile, trade union officialdom has almost been entirely replaced by a layer or organisers who were lay members during the New Labour years and, in some cases, would have participated in disputes Blair and Brown oversaw. This is particularly the case with the Communication Workers' Union and the monomaniacal attempts by a Labour government to soften Royal Mail up for privatisation. The overall result is a shift in trade union bureaucracies and powerful lay committees to range from the soft left to Corbynism in political composition. Only USDAW and wee Community remain largely unaffected. You can see where this leads. When it comes to affiliated trade union input into Labour, basically the material base for a union-backed Labour right has withered away. Because Blairism, as a variant of liberalism believed its own Third Way waffle and failed to understand the labour movement. It simultaneously set about undermining the electoral coalition it built in the country, while negligently and blindly destroying its own allies on the trade union right in the party. While unions are not monoliths, they are not disposed to be the guarantor of machine politics any longer, especially as it tries and stymies their influence. And so the material base for that has largely shrunk to party positions - lay and staff - elected office, and whatever can me mustered via Labour First, Progress, and the affiliated societies. In this context, more trade union participation represents a threat. Hence the overt hostility shown Len McCluskey, who has long promised more Unite input into the party, is far from an irrational dislike. Once placed in this context, the anonymous briefings to the press, the moaning at PLP meetings, the compliance unit and its doings, the studied refusal to fight the leadership politically,the bizarre criticisms levelled at Momentum as a Corbyn proxy and Unite, and the utterly counter-productive behaviour makes sense. They are, effectively, the last gasps of a gravely weakened tradition lacking a discernible way of coming back. If they want to retake the Labour Party and become relevant again, a massive rethink is needed. But for as long as they're unwilling to even understand why there are where they are (apart from one brave and largely unacknowledged exception), they're stuck. If not doomed.
I can't be arsed with yet another disingenuous Labour Party spat, so I'm turning to less weightier matters. Socialist Worker announced week before last that the SWP were departing from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. Coatesy over at the Tendancehas the story. Their reason for departing is because TUSC voted to field candidates in this May's local elections (talk about leaving it late in the day), and as far as the SWP are concerned this meant its participation in the alliance had become a barrier to cosying up to the Labour left and recruiting. I hate to break it to you guys, but that's not your bar to success. In truth, the SWP had only ever been a semi-detached TUSC affiliate, and was always viewed as such by its primary sponsor. Writing in the latest issue of the soaraway Socialist, Clive Heemskirk notes the SWP's refusal to take political responsibility for TUSC candidates in England and Wales at the recent conference vote and so their departure wasn't unexpected. Readers with long memories will recall the Socialist Party itself walked out of the Socialist Alliance in 2001 as it would not/could not countenance following a majority line enforced by the SWP, and so 16 years on we find the SWP swanning off because it could not tolerate being a minority subordinate to the SP. I love me some irony. Clive's response to the SWP's flounce goes on to draw distinction between the SWP in England and Wales, and what's left of their sorry outfit in Scotland. There, the Swps remain affiliates of Scottish TUSC and are participating in this May's council elections. This is on the grounds that the SNP's demolition of Labour has shown alternatives are possible, and that Our Kez is a Blairite. Not unreasonably, Clive points out that from the perspective of sects aspiring to lead a proletarian revolution, Carwyn Jones and Welsh Labour, and local government across England are qualitatively no different. Rather than forcing a Liverpool-style confrontation with the government - which is the blueprint for running councils For All Time, regardless of circumstances - Labour have taken on the role of administering cuts and therefore little better than Tory authorities who wield the axe with alacrity. Of course, the real reason the SWP left TUSC is a case of why bother? Throughout its history, the "party" has zigzagged from one position to another. Before the Socialist Alliance and Respect, elections were distractions from the class struggle. Then during their star crossed affair with the Gorgeous One, leaflets about dog poo and getting the vote out were the pinnacles of revolutionary politics. And since then, it's back to tedious old movementism with dilettante forays into elections under the TUSC banner. For an organisation past its sell by, and with a reputation for toxicity among labour movement activists (especially younger comrades) on a par with Nigel Farage, they certainly don't lose anything by withdrawing from TUSC. As for TUSC and the SP itself, they too aren't exactly going places. Rumours persist that the RMT are seriously thinking about reaffiliation to Labour, and so they should. But for the SP themselves, it's no secret they've had a very difficult time orienting towards Corbynism. First, after years of saying the Labour Party was dead for the purposes of socialist politics it springs back into life. Beyond petitioning and flogging their papers on the margins of the Corbyn movement, their impact has been nil. Even worse, there is anecdotal evidence that Corbynism is undercutting them. However, as the SP has more of a root in political realities than the SWP (which isn't saying much) the option of packing their bags and trying to ponce off campaigns a la their erstwhile bedfellows doesn't exist. All they can do is wait and hope for an opening seeing as their campaign to get "former Labour Party members" (i.e. members of Militant's editorial board and others) reinstated went nowhere. However, this isn't entirely down to having-nothing-better-to-do. As the SP noted, their local election campaigns are "targeted". This might have something to do with a collapse in activists willing to put up, but also, they can "help" Corbyn. This is probably crediting them too much nous, but they know their vote is going to be utterly derisory. By standing against councillors and council candidates they view as anti-Corbyn, TUSC might just win enough to prevent them from being elected. As Momentum fights inside, the SP are taking them on outside. The "Blairites" are weakened and, it is to be hoped, Corbyn supporters would be grateful. That a Tory or a kipper could get in instead is of little consequence. That it would cause nary a ripple on events unfolding in the Labour Party doesn't matter either. The main audience to be convinced of their continued efficacy and relevance are SP members themselves. Appearances of everything, their real standing in the world, nothing. And so another milestone in TUSC's and, indeed, British Trotskyism's demise passes. Unfortunately for comrades clinging to the tradition, there isn't going to be an influx of tens of thousands to save them. They - the SP and SWP - passed up their moments to make history. Instead, they can look forward to being less a plaything and more a minor trinket, forgotten and seldom seen at the bottom of history's pocket.
I hear tell of George Osborne applying for the Evening Standard vacancy only after other people came to him for advice on their applications. What a charmer. Still, his landing the editorship of London's biggest free sheet is as shocking as it is audacious. How is it someone barely able to string a sentence together, let alone lacking journalistic experience of any kind, can simply drop into and run one of the country's biggest titles, and carry on doing another five jobs, including the nominally full-time role of representing the good people of Tatton? Connections, of course. Standard proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev said "I am proud to have an editor of such substance, who reinforces The Standard's standing and influence in London and whose political viewpoint - socially liberal and economically pragmatic - closely matches that of many of our readers". Lebedev is the son of an oligarch who got stinking rich thanks to the plundering of Russian industry after the fall of the USSR, and has basically spent his entire life swanning around the jet set and organising parties for celebrities and other chums in London. Osborne and Dave are previous attendees of these lavish jollies, which is pure coincidence, of course. For Lebedev, buying the former chancellor for the pocket change of £200k a year ensures he has an in where the future of the Conservative Party is concerned. Favours rendered always come with the expectation of favours to be conferred. Of Osborne himself, this move nakedly demonstrates the incestuous character of our elites and, fundamentally, how they work. It shows how the dispositions, networks, and cultures of our gilded rulers form a social mesh that automatically qualifies them within the terms of that social world for the privileged positions of running our most powerful and influential institutions when such opportunities arise. It doesn't matter that Osborne isn't and has never been a journalist, his social weight and inertia helps ensure it is not a matter of plugging a square peg into a round hole. This process of fitting, of integrating individuals was something the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu spent his career exploring. Permit me a moment of self-plagiarism:
His basic ideas are that each of us are endowed with a set of dispositions and preferences acquired throughout our lives (the habitus), and this acquisition is always overlaced by patterns of domination and (relative) privilege. My working class Tory background, for example, is part of my being and conditions my interests, dispositions and position-takings in ways I am aware and not aware of. And it will always be the case. More obvious examples are how the physicalities of our bodies, the genders, ethnicities, and disabilities condition and shape the habitus. The habitus is socially acquired and is irreducibly social. Bourdieu also argued that societies can be understood as if they are great meshes of overlapping fields. All human endeavour, from the operation of culture, through to the internal doings of institutions and right down to the pecking order in the local bowling club can be understood as if they were economies. The marketplace is typically a scene of competition (and collusion) between actors to secure market share, hence profits, hence economic capital for themselves. Other human activities can be understood the same way. Education systems see pupils compete through a battery of assessments for grades, i.e. cultural capital. Literary fiction is a competition among authors for the cultural capital specific to that field - prizes, critical acclaim, recognition. Politics the acquisition of political capital, and so on. What Bourdieu does is to link up habitus and field. Through socialisation, education, extra-curricular interests, work and so on one's habitus acquires social and cultural capital, and the more one possesses the better fit there is between the individual and a greater number of fields. It's not that Oxbridge graduates are especially brainy, it's that their acculturation and networks disproportionately favours their chances of succeeding across a greater range of social fields. They have the strategies and know how to get on that puts them at an advantage vis a vis the rest of the graduate population ... This, however, is not a theory of unproblematic social integration. It's a theory of best fit.
What the ownership of large quantities of cultural capital does is endow an over-exaggerated sense of one's self-worth as well as entitled expectations. Osborne, having effortlessly done the Member of Parliament thing (the benefit of having staff who can do the job for you!) and undermined the position of British capitalism from Number 11, again without breaking a sweat, for him the editorship of the Standard is merely just another set of meetings he will attend to, a few bits of documents to shuffle through, and a few decisions to be made for others to carry out. This mode of working is pretty standard among our social betters. For ridiculous money and wedges of prestige, their actual responsibilities barely extend beyond reading and commenting on briefing notes. These are hyped up as difficult, complex tasks that only the super-talented can do, but all their discharge actually requires is acculturation and a bit of front. The politics of the move are more than foolish. Osborne, hailed as a genius by people who can't tell the difference between it and deviousness, could well end up harming his prime ministerial ambitions and the standing of Lebedev's comic. While most people who read papers know they have a political affiliation and editorial line, the legitimacy in part derives from their formal separation from the parties they back. The little bit of critical distance confers authority on editorials, and also means that politicians themselves pay attention. Because Theresa May and Sadiq Khan know the Standard is a vehicle for Osborne's views, neither are going to take its criticism and cajoling at all seriously. Indeed, in Khan's case - despite his ill-judged congratulations - they can be publicly dismissed with virtually no electoral backwash from Standard readers. And so, George Osborne. The move into journalism, if it can be called that, is certainly a hubristic one. But we all know what follows on after.
