At last, Rishi Sunak has announced a package of measures designed to support the self-employed during the Coronavirus crisis. Mirroring the employers' subsidy to support workers' wages, Sunak is promising up to 80% of taxable profits to a maximum of £2,500/month for three months - but this is available only to those who make less than £50k, and the majority of their money has to come via self-employment. This, apparently, is the most generous scheme available for the self-employed in the Western world. Though, as you might expect, there are problems. The main difficulty is how payments will not be available until June, which begs the question of how folks in this category are supposed to survive if, like the average punter, they have next to no savings? And this scheme does not apply to the recently self-employed because there's no previous year of tax returns available to calculate entitlements. All there is for them are the eternally long phone queues of the Universal Credit hotline.
A couple of things. Firstly, do not underestimate how difficult this was for the Tories to put together. While the old adage that putting power before principle is quintessential Toryism in practice, junking the junk of Thatcherite common sense and effectively making the state the underwriter of a very sizeable chunk of the workforce grates against every political instinct Sunak, Boris Johnson, and the rest of them has. Coronavirus has demonstrated in practice that many of the "tough choices" pursued by Tory governments past were just that, choices. The whip hand of economic necessity had nothing to do with them. Quite how then the Tories are going to extricate themselves from this remains to be seen, but whatever happens Johnson has previously proved himself adroit in handling one tricksy set of circumstances. I'm left wondering if his coming opposition will prove as equally deft footed.
The second point is bound up with the post-Corona "peace" the Tories wish to strike. Amid the bail outs and income guarantees, most comment on and analysis of Sunak's programme is simply not serious. I've seen some on the left claim to have discerned "socialist values" among the measures taken. You have sundry centrists fantasising about a Sunak-led Tory party, all because he sounds like a marketing manager trotting out pre-prepped corporate lines. The only serious comment comes from the right of the Tory party, who are broadly supportive of Johnson's strategy because he's doing what it takes to save their system. And, of course, the left who have highlighted the class politics of the whole shebang. And that lies in preservation or, if you like, conservation. The clue is in the party name.
From Sunak's first bail out for businesses through to today, he has resisted measures that break income from work, whether employed or self-employed, or the existing meagre support available via social security. For example, Sunak's excuse for not coming up with today's announcement sooner was because of the "complexity" of the system, given that we're dealing with millions of people in very different circumstances and with varying levels of income from month to month. The obvious solution then, if we're thinking about it in a straightforwardly managerial way, would be to command the helicopters to drop parcels of money. A living citizen's income at a flat rate for everyone would eliminate the complexity at a stroke. But we can't have that because it strikes at the wage relation. Capital needs bodies who are compelled to sell their time, otherwise no capitalism. Employers would be hard pressed to find workers who'll scrape by on their pittances, or put up with employment contracts, such as zero hours contracts, if another source of income is available. Coming out of a crisis where the state is effectively the economy, going back to how things were before will be difficult enough, even if they were beginning to be characterised by a Tory Keynesianism. Making support available only through employers, taxable grants, loans, and the punitive benefits system is a design contrived to resemble, as close as possible, the income streams of normal times. Which, ultimately, makes the return to normal much easier.
In short, the support the Tories have made available is welcome. But it does not go far enough - the three month wait, the lack of clarity about short-time workers, no help for renters, the cut to people's incomes - in some cases, catastrophically so, the fact some "non-necessary" workers are still compelled to go to work, these "blind spots" are nothing of the sort. They're inevitable when the preservation of class relationships comes before the preservation of living standards and people's wellbeing. The health most concerning to the Tories is that of capital.
"My voice will not be stilled, I’ll be around, I’ll be campaigning, I’ll be arguing, and I’ll be demanding justice for the people of this country." Thus spake Jeremy Corbyn at his last Prime Minister's Questions at Wednesday lunch time. As per the etiquette of the Commons, Boris Johnson paid him a more courteous tribute than some trading falsely as Labour MPs. And with that, the Commons broke up early for Easter. When it returns, in all likelihood Johnson will face tougher questioning from the obsequious press pack than his new opponent at the dispatch box.
That's for another time. Sadly, Jeremy's time as leader came to the calamitous ending his opponents always forecast it would. In large measure thanks to their own scabby efforts. But while the awful 2019 general election will always be associated with his name, in the long-term Corbyn's legacy will come to be appreciated as a necessary correction to the party. Not just because the movement he occasioned into being recovered Labour as a moral crusade with a moral purpose, as it should be, but also, more crucially, Labour was once again fused with a new class base that can only become more important with time.
As advanced on many occasions on this blog and elsewhere, the stark age effect we see captured by sundry polling - younger people voting Labour, older people voting Tory, younger people more pro-EU, older people Brexity, younger people socially liberal and progressive, older people more socially conservative, and so on, is not an outcome of "values" or, in conservative and alt-right parlance, of brainwashing by a permissive media and lefty university lecturers. It is an effect of class recomposition, which expresses itself long age lines. By way of a quick explainer, since the expansion of the state after the war growing numbers of workers have been drawn into employment whose object is not the production of surplus value, and therefore profit, but the reproduction of the social relationships, institutions, and technologies of population management advanced capitalist societies depend on. Following the arguments of Italian post-Marxism, the character of their labour is immaterial. Their concern is the production of relationships, of data and knowledge, of care and socialisation processes.
From the 1970s onward, immaterial labour underwent a double expansion. Despite the best efforts at curbing public spending in bouts of capitalist revanchism across the Western world, the state grew in size and dispersed itself among semi-autonomous (and occasionally competing) institutions. Simultaneously, some of these functions were hived off to the private sector, while increasingly the offshoring and decline of manufacturing saw jobs replaced by an expanding for-profit service sector, such as retail, warehouses full of call centres, adult care and, more recently, the growth of the gig economy. This recomposition of labour is a decades long process, and it stands to reason the younger you are the greater the likelihood the entirety of your work career comprising immaterial work of some form.
What had this to do with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party? In the first place, there was an alignment of values. Immaterial work is fundamentally about relationships, of our capacity as social beings getting exploited for the benefit of an employer. But that sociability demands an aptitude to rub along with others from all kinds of backgrounds, with all kinds of characteristics. This is one thing self-identified cultural conservatives cannot get to grips with. Liberal institutions aren't responsible for socially tolerant values, it's embedded in the character of the work underpinning the class relationships of the system they defend. Jeremy Corbyn's politics, its internationalism and anti-racism is most closely aligned to the spontaneous common sense of our rising class of immaterial (or socialised) workers. More so than Ed Miliband's Labour with its racist mug, of the clamouring for immigration controls by the Labour right, and certainly more than two metres distance from Boris Johnson's noxious, opportunist racism.
Second, Corbyn's Labour spoke to the general material conditions of immaterial labour. He spoke out against the precarity endured by millions of workers. He spoke up for the public sector, cynically starved of resources by the Tories who saw public spending cuts as their easy passage into office following the 2008-9 economic crisis. And as a means of reinforcing the class relationships their party serves and is sustained by. He stood by young people who have been criminalised, scapegoated, and super-exploited while both parties have traditionally looked the other way, and championed the interests germane to them without the abysmal triangulation and failed cynicism characteristic of his predecessors. And thirdly, Corbyn's Labour took up the immediate interests of immaterial labour - the housing shortage, crap pay, mounting debt and, above all, the climate emergency. In so doing, Labour has cohered itself a new base among the new working class. To put no finer point on it, Jeremy Corbyn saved Labour as a going concern as well a rejuvenating it through two waves of huge membership increases, striking deep roots into and contributing to the political coherence of immaterial workers. Labour has provided for them a collective political focus neither existing trade unions nor other organisations have managed, contributing to its emergent consciousness and a shared sense of interest - a politics that will not go away when Jeremy retires to the back benches.
Unfortunately, improving on the potential shown by the 2017 general election was thwarted thanks to a splintering of the uneasy coalition Corbyn was then able to construct. In 2019, being the party of the new working class was necessary, but it wasn't a condition sufficient for turning in a creditable performance. It showed Labour's core vote has grown appreciably versus the party's previous electoral outings under the Labour right and the soft left, but this is a concentrated vote. Our constituency's "inefficient" geographic distribution, coupled with Johnson's more adept handling of Brexit's class politics, and the wedge the remain movement - cheered on and abetted by Labour's parliamentary fifth columnists - were able to shove between Corbyn and the pro-EU base chipped off a million or so crucial votes. Were the situation different, were Brexit not an issue the antipathy many (mainly older) Labour voters had with Corbyn might have been swallowed on anti-Tory grounds. But the combination of the two were too much.
Nevertheless, Corbyn's great legacy is not just re-energising the party by aligning it with 21st century class politics, but being the most effective opposition of my life time. To the centrist hacks and the idiot MPs, their idea of effective opposition is opposing zero hour contracts by championing one hour contracts, or extending tenants' rights by increasing the period eviction notices require by a week or two. Meanwhile, Corbyn has wrenched British politics to the left, forcing first Theresa May to abandon the overt austerity politics of Dave's misbegotten administration, and despite Labour's defeat in December (you know, the one the right won't stop reminding the left about being the party's worst performance since 1935) you had a pre-Coronavirus crisis chancellor unveiling big spending. Rishi Sunak did not announce the Tories' conversion to Corbynism, but it's unlikely they'd have pitched in the direction of state intervention and serious infrastructure commitments were it not for the spadework done by the Corbynist shadow treasury team and the advocacy of John McDonnell.
There is no greater compliment than having enemies adopting your priorities and politics. And while there are significant differences between Jeremy and Keir Starmer, the most likely successor, there is schadenfreude in watching the likes of Labour First shill for a candidate whose policy platform they've spent their entire history struggling against. Our party's history enjoys its ironies too. The uncertainty starts to arise when it comes to navigating the changed class politics of the world during and after Coronavirus. The myths underpinning public spending and the limited efficacy of the state have been utterly destroyed, disproved in the stark realities of income guarantees, unlimited funds for the NHS, and business bail outs. As Keir, like many other Labour politicians, haven't got the first clue about the dynamics underpinning Labour's support - not even an instinctive grasp of them - I fear a future in which the party will pass up opportunity after opportunity, and let the Tories cruise back into office. Jeremy Corbyn, for all his faults, did understand the necessary direction of march. It's therefore up to us on Labour's left to carry on struggling, carry on fighting, and carry on pushing the lessons of the last five years. It's either this, or ruin.
When you've been involved in labour movement politics for a while, chances are you have a Wes Streeting story. Here's mine.
Back in 2008 when the British National Party had nine seats on Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Stoke became a hotspot for anti-fascist activity with rounds of regular campaigning, leaflet drops and demonstrations. One of these occasions involved a march organised on the same day the fash were having a national mobilisation. They were forced to demonstrate in the arse end of nowhere in Fenton, while the anti-fascist march (more or less) had the run of the city centre. Before setting off we had the usual speeches, among whom was the newly-elected NUS president, Wes Streeting. After our fill of platitudes, marched out of the car park, around the roundabout and ... we were stopped dead by the fuzz who'd decided Hanley was off limits after all and were directing us down a deserted side street. Our SWP friends charged the police lines in anger, prompting some not-at-all helpful headlines that evening. I was a good way back from this and happened to be yards from El Presidente. Once the commotion became clear you could see the panic in his eyes. All the careful grifting in the bowels of Labour Students and the NUS, all those "Wes for Pres!" chants performed solo by Richard Angell at conference, it would all be for nothing and that safe Labour seat would be denied if he was caught anywhere near the fracas. At this point he exclaimed to everyone not paying any attention that he had "better go", and quickly scarpered with a hanger-on in tow.
It was lucky for Wes's career that on this occasion, fate had found him positioned in a demo where he could exit unnoticed - except for this Potteries-based anecdote noterer. And fortune carried on smiling. He was fortuitous to leave office before his hapless successor, Aaron Porter, got well and truly destroyed by the student movement against tuition fees. It was also impeccable timing how Helena Kennedy just so happened to have a plush job lined up for him as chief exec for her charitable foundation, one that happened to allow him time generous enough to chase that safe seat. Everything was set. The time to campaign for selection, getting elected for Ilford North, and from there a cruise to the front rank of politics. Unfortunately for Wes, time started working against him just as he made it into the Big House. Crowbar number one was the election of Jeremy Corbyn, which rendered him politically irrelevant outside of Twitter spats and providing off the record quotes to the lobby hacks. And crowbar number two has gone and inconvenienced him again. With Keir Starmer poised to win Labour's leadership, insipid days are here again, the likes of Wes can look forward to business as it should be. In preparation for the new era he's popped out a pamphlet to say Corbynism without Corbyn is a non-starter what with its state controls and stuff. How history has tittered at the timing. As I write the government have announced the nationalisation of the railways, on top of packages guaranteeing workers' income and a pantheon of policies designed to ward off the iron fist of the invisible hand. Poor old Wes. We're not seeing blue Corbynism, but we are seeing state intervention in the economy to an unprecedented scale.
Actually, don't feel sorry for him. Because his pamphlet indulges the same sort of myth-making we've heard before. Corbynism was an anti-working class middle class politics. Corbynism looked to the past and not the future. The election was lost because of the manifesto. So snoring, so boring. What then does Wes offer by way of an alternative. He boldly sets out his stall:
The next leader of the Labour party needs to hit the reset button loudly enough that the voters notice. That doesn’t mean that we need to jettison every policy, embrace the damaging economics of austerity or seek solace in past victories. But it does mean building a transformational economic policy that people can believe in, a worldview that provides security and opportunity in a turbulent world and a political culture that is open, welcoming and inclusive. (p.6)
Ah, if only Wes hadn't spent the last five years stretching every sinew against this very vision. Le sigh.
Now, I'm not about to suggest Wes's pamphlet is complete trash. Some of the criticisms he makes of the 2019 manifesto are formally correct, such as being pretty rubbish on social security - a point on which the Liberal Democrat manifesto was better than Labour's. We see a critique of the 10% stake in larger businesses, which - it's a fair cop, guv - is seen as a tax grab, and a call for reworking welfare so it's more responsive. Certainly a cause the left needs to take up beyond throwing money at the problem, lest those on Labour's right interpret this in terms of more conditionality and more market delivery. Overall, apart from the odd nod to Blairist nostrums (tuition fees, the stupid opposition of consumers vs producers strongly implied in Wes's opposing of outcomes to means), you might describe this as a critique of the 2019 manifesto from the standpoint of ... Labour's 2017 manifesto. That period of history to have completely fallen down the centrist memory hole, simply because even now they cannot reckon with it. And so instead it is subsumed into post-Corbyn sensible sensiblism as if it has been their point of view all along.
To be fair, there are other good ideas here too. Such as putting relationship building and interaction at the heart of elderly social care, initiatives aimed at raising the status of care work, supporting the "foundational" economy (now known as the "everyday" economy since Chuka Umunna passed beyond the veil), and some good wonky stuff too. The Green New Deal/Industrial Revolution gets a full outing, though Wes manages to get through it without once mentioning Rebecca Long-Bailey - a wilful oversight as he's not afraid of name dropping Rachel Reeves, "political thinker" Liam Byrne, Angela Rayner, and the GMB as if it's the only Labour-affiliated trade union. And, of course, NATO is trotted out as an example of Labour's "internationalism" as opposed to the party's long accommodation with and soft soaping of big power politics.
To be honest, Wes's pamphlet could have been written by any of the Fabian Society's correspondents. It shares the colourless policysplaining tone of all its literature, reiterates the party/movement divide by locating politics in its entirety to peddling nice schemes and implementing them from above, and crucially ignoring questions of how to. For a piece starting off with a quote from Antonio Gramsci, like all Fabian stuff this pays no attention to power - how to get it, how to wield and shape it, and how to keep it. Putting the flaws of the Corbyn project at the feet of a manifesto and the leader's anti-imperialist bent, yet again, paints over the near miss of 2017, and more crucially disarms the party well before the 2024 election. If you can't appreciate the centrality of Labour's new base, and the character of 2019's Tory vote, you're not likely to surf these dynamics into office. It's that simple. As such Wes epitomises the problem with Labourism: a head full of fine policy ideas, but not the first clue on how to put them into practice. Saying we've got to win elections is a banality, not a revealed truth. Let's hear about how we're going to win them instead.
Of the government's Coronavirus strategy, Dominic Cummings never said their priority was "herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad." But you didn't have to be in the room following the back and forth between scientists, bureaucrats, and Tory politicians to know this. Just watching Boris Johnson on the telly this last week has demonstrated the government's growing realisation they haven't taken the outbreak seriously enough. There's no point beating about the bush. People have died and are going to die unnecessarily because of the tardy approach taken and the mixed messages put out.
What to do in these circumstances? Confronted with a fuck up of this magnitude, there are three options. Johnson can apologise for his incompetence, the government can try and muddle through, or they can search for scapegoats. We're not about to see a mea culpa sally forth from Johnson's lips, let alone a resignation. What we instead see is a multi-part slow burn budget that has moved to protect capital first, then adding the workers as something of an afterthought. And, apparently, something is promised for the self-employed, freelancers, and people on short time working and zero hours contracts. The pressure's on for more mandated closures that will come too late for some. Nevertheless, staggering measures gives the appearance of doing something, of getting to grip with things and assuring those watching that things are in hand. Even though they haven't been.
And yes, scapegoating. When the news broke about Cummings's initial attitude to the outbreak with the "Shippers" scoop, centrist Twitter raised its collective voice to demand our Dom's sacking. Professional pearl clutcher, Dan Hodges, said "It will be impossible for No.10 to retain public confidence if people believe Dom Cummings has any role in the Government's Coronavirus strategy ...". That's it then. The dithering and delaying, the "we're following the science" claims are the fault of Johnson's irascible Rasputin, not the Prime Minister himself. Though, interestingly, this is not an attack of Churchillian ruthlessness hanging Cummings out to dry but rather an effort by the chief Tory organ to shield Johnson from blame. Displacing criticisms to whom a political leader surrounds themselves with is an old trick, and our centrist chums would do well remembering the old adage: advisors advise, ministers decide.
Handily, there's more scapegoating fodder than the noted oddball among Johnson's retinue. Just as the media spent their time pre-election holding the opposition to account, so now while they swoon over Rishi Sunak and fantasise about a national unity love-in with him and Keir Starmer at the helm, they prefer to scrutinise the public instead of the government. You've seen the images of packed flower markets, pubs, parks, queuing outside supermarkets, and thousands swamping Snowdonia and the Lake District in defiance of social distancing and self-isolation advice. Here's a group they can really get on our high horses about, those irresponsibly sabotaging our great national effort in getting Coronavirus licked within 12 weeks. Well, perhaps if the government had taken this crisis seriously from the start, had a consistent comms strategy with public messaging on television, and stopped the game of insider info leaking to select court stenographers trading as political correspondents, perhaps the message might have got through. Perhaps taking the step of ordering non-essential workplaces and shops to shut might underline the gravity of the situation. In the absence of information, people will do what they think best or carry on as normal. What we're seeing is a failure of the politics of population management, but the government's media allies are determined to draw the sting from this miserable mess by depoliticising it.
When the dust settles and the crisis passes, there will be a political reckoning. Whatever happens and whoever gets singled out, Boris Johnson and friends are determined to ensure the buck won't stop with him.
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While centrists coo over the besuited delivery of Rishi Sunak, I have seen some Labour people - in all seriousness - regard the Tories' emergency measures to keep their system afloat during this crisis as positive goods in themselves, as if we're seeing a Conservative chancellor implement the programme of full Corbynism.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
When you look at the specifics of Sunak's programme, he and Boris Johnson aren't taking anything into public ownership. Indeed, their package of wage subsidies, hands outs and dirt cheap loans are all about preserving private ownership. Not that there is anything especially progressive about nationalisation per se, a point jolly old Fred Engels made back in the 1880s. In this brief extract from his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels emphasises the point that nationalisation does not mean the abolition of capital or capitalism, but rather more starkly brings its class relations out into the open. Going beyond means mobilising the forces of production, the workers themselves, to take active control of production and reorganising society around their - our - priorities and needs. Take it away, Fred:
" ... [In a crisis] the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.
If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.
But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.
This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonizing with the socialized character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control, except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But, with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilized by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself."
It may be unprecedented in the annals of British economic history, but Rishi Sunak's third budget was just not good enough. For millions of people forced to endure uncertainty because they don't know if their job will survive the crisis, or because they're self-employed or freelancing, or on short-time working and zero hour contracts, the risk of a much reduced income remains the case.
In addition to closing down bars, pubs and other ents venues, the big ticket item in today's press conference is the government's pledge to pick up 80% of employee wages up to £2,500/month for the next three months, with the promise of an extension if necessary. Universal Credit sees its standard allowance rise by £1k, and ditto for Working Tax Credits. And that's it. Nothing for the self-employed and precarious workers, no movement on changing the five week waiting time for UC, and no change to statutory sick pay which remains stuck at £94/week, and still nothing for renters. Sunak hasn't even introduced conditionality as per the Danish model - the inspiration for this approach - beyond expecting companies to not fire staff for the duration of this scheme.
Apart from ignoring millions of people, there are other big issues with the employers' subsidy. For example, small and medium-sized businesses or charities who've had their takings crash through the floor would certainly find the support offered helpful, but that doesn't solve the problem of cash through the door. The £25k payments and interest-free credit lines (now extended to 12 months) are better than nothing, but it merely delays redundancies. 20% of employee wages have to come from somewhere. Additionally, because of the lack of conditionality what is to prevent business that are doing okay from applying? As anyone who's followed the course of of the British economy over the last 10 years, the so-called productivity puzzle of shrinking production but growing employment is down to capital strikes - the failure to invest, thanks to the government's austerity measures sucking demand out of the economy. British big business is sitting on piles of cash, so why should they be paid to carry on like misers when the rest of us have to make sacrifices?
There's also a cash boost here for businesses that have already laid off staff, because these payments are backdated. For example, it was reported one of the most popular eateries in Stoke has closed its doors and laid off all its 40 staff except for the two owners. Like many other businesses this was thanks to a collapse in takings and an inability to sustain the wages bill. However, because claims can be backdated to 1st March they can claim for 80% of the wages paid out since the beginning of the month - a not inconsiderable sum. Consider the boost this provides for businesses shedding hundreds of jobs.
Once again, Sunak is making the wrong choices because the Tories have the wrong priorities. Instead of ramping up orders for ventilators, we get a ramping up of baseless Johnsonian optimism. Instead of support for workers, we see bail outs for capital. Welfare is the government's second priority, its first is the preservation of wage labour and the class system they articulate and defend. Their politics of crisis management is class politics, and by carrying on in this utterly sectional way the misery and despair they're presiding over will become anger and fury before long. Their half-arsed efforts are priming a political bomb set to blow up in their faces, unless Johnson rapidly changes course and matches words with deeds.
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It's doubtful the last minute intervention of Coronavirus is going to sway the direction of the Labour leadership contest and despite my best efforts, Keir Starmer is still the most likely to win. Therefore what he says and does about the crisis now matters because he will shortly be holding Boris Johnson to account, and making the demands the Tories "acknowledge" but pointedly refuse to do anything about. Unfortunately, worryingly, just as Johnson is asleep at the wheel, judging by his comments so far our would-be Leader of the Opposition is also napping on the job.
In Keir's most recent article we see the outlines about what needs to be done. He rightly calls for a finance package to help businesses and workers through the mess, and criticises the government for not doing so. "If the government fails to appreciate that what is now a health crisis will soon be a fully-blown social-economic crisis, then they will have failed to grasp the severity of the situation", he writes. He calls for regular financial statements, a task force comprised of experts, business, unions and others to determine what stimulus measures are required, and for the government to collaborate with international efforts at bringing down infection and collaborating toward a global response.
I've got some issues with this. Left wing supporters bristle at the suggestion Keir's some sort of centrist, and make a virtue of his Trotty past and good works done as a campaigning lawyer. Just don't talk about his time as Director of Public Prosecutions. Okay, accepting these arguments as good coin then why is his contribution to critiquing Johnson's crisis management diluted to the point of being homeopathic? From the off Jeremy Corbyn has offered concrete demands that will make the lives better for our people as Coronavirus rages. As has Rebecca Long-Bailey. As has Richard Burgon. And if these are not to your political tastes, even Lisa Nandy has branded the government's Coronavirus strategy shambolic. Keir here makes no concrete demands beyond the wonkish: a task force, a statement. Useful, yes, but not the point to emphasise when people are facing drastic cuts to income and dwindling shop shelves.
Want more centrism? Keir has it. You'll note that his criticisms of the government pussyfoots around the perimeter of the unfolding disaster, suggesting Johnson and friends haven't grasped the full weight of the crisis. This recycles the tired old assumption that, despite what the Tories do and the damage they inflict, in the end they're wrong and misinformed and a good bit of evidence and argumentation is going to make them see the light. For instance, the rhetoric Keir has used about austerity as a failed experiment (annoyingly oft-deployed by Jeremy Corbyn too) makes the assumption the last lost decade of cuts took because Dave's Tories were mistaken. Nothing else. This Fabian blindness that has done so much to blunt the Labourist critique of society and depress its intellectual curiosity spills out of the centrist doxa, and helps Johnson get off the hook by spinning his biopolitics of Coronavirus as honest errors. The truth is much more damning: their reaction to the disease is a mere extension ruling class politics. Denying the materialism of political argument is never an encouraging sign, and undermines the self-generated hype about Keir offering a "forensic" opposition.
This is not point scoring. It's deadly serious. If Keir is to lead Labour's response then he has to up his game. If he wants to be meticulous and detailed, it requires something more critical than ambushing Boris Johnson with buried stats. If he wants to inspire, he's got to go beyond wonkish platitudes and trying to be all moral by avoiding hard criticisms. For its part the left criticises Keir because we want an opposition that can articulate the common interest against the Tories, because we want an alternative and not a simulacrum weak on Johnson and clueless about the causes of Johnson. And crucially, a party and a movement that can defend our people and win. We want him to be successful. If Keir falls short and doesn't sort the politics out people will die. It's that straightforward.
Peggy, our indomitable feline comrade and companion, passed away earlier today.
Before coming to us Peggy had led an itinerant life. She was unfortunate enough to have had three prior owners all of whom had to give her up. There was a relationship break up, work commitments, and someone who had to go into an old folks' home all in Peggy's past. And each time she ended up at Iris's Cats in Need, a fine and locally famous Stoke-on-Trent institution comprising a couple of charity shops and a cat sanctuary at the bottom of a garden in Abbey Hulton.
This was where we met Peggy. After the passing of our previous feline overlord, the Brilliant Comrade and Great Leader Charlie, a couple of friends were dropping off masses of his unused cat food at Iris's when one of them sent me a photo. This was of an older cat who'd been passed over for three or four months. This was, of course, Peggy - her already-given name. We went along to have a look and she was so friendly with us we just had to take her home. On the 21st August 2015, comrade Peggy entered the BC bunker. And the rest, until this morning, was bliss.
Within moments of Peggy coming through the door she was purring like an idiot and rolling around. She settled in as if she'd always lived here. And much to my surprise, I never knew a cat could be so affectionate and, well, soft. While Charlie was a little sod always up for a scrap and would bite you when he'd had enough fuss, Peggy was a soak for the good life, a complete decadent. She simply absorbed all the strokes, playing, and tickles - she couldn't get enough of it. She was also very intelligent and apart from an early spree of pissing on the kitchen floor and occasionally missing her litter tray accidentally-on-purpose, entirely remarkable. Peggy was easily the most vocal animal I have ever met. You could say something to her and she would chirp back, and this back and forth could go on and on and on. The only time she ever showed the usual kitty-type aggression was when her toy came out. She truly hated birds, so to have toys flying about the living room that approximated their movements sent her into paroxysms of rage. Yet within an instant, she could go from chewing the living hell out of what she presumed was an evil avian to rubbing around your feet and asking for tickles. She was very much a people purrson and loved our company.
Sadly, given her earlier history she wasn't without hang ups. She hated cars and especially detested going out in her cat carrier, we presume because of her earlier period of confinement for months on end and having got passed from one owner to the next. Thankfully she was spared the stress of a final journey to the vet's, and she was able to pass away peacefully and in comfort at home with her humans attending to her.
So long comrade Peggy, you are much missed.
NBIf you have a bit to spare in these difficult times, please consider supporting Iris's Cats. And if you're thinking of taking on a new feline friend, look no further!
Two budgets in the space of a week? This Coronavirus is really spoiling us. Well, spoiling the markets because Rishi Sunak's latest package of measures gently clasped the invisible hand and offered it smooth, calming words to dampen down the animal passions. And just like that, the markets reciprocated his therapeutic whispers with the FTSE up by almost three per cent. Not bad seeing this week has was quaking at the terrors not seen since the dog days of 2008. Nevertheless what's good for the capitalist goose isn't always good for the proletarian gander, and "ordinary" people are still waiting for help.
Sunak unveiled a loans package of £330bn for struggling business, with a big hint that the airline industry can expect some special measures in the coming days. Sounds like Branson's special pleading helped. Likewise, to clear up the confusion surrounding Johnson's advice to people to stay away from restaurants, bars, and theatres, he said insurance companies would be expected pay out for businesses forced to close thanks to these recommendations. There is also to be a year-long business rate holiday, and additional £25k payments for smaller enterprises.
Okay, so why loans? From the standpoint of book keeping, as Richard Murphy notes, monies doled out appears as assets on the balance sheet, whereas grants would go on the deficit. No wonder the markets were happy. We might consider habit too. The model of financial fundamentalism Sunak is desperately trying to preserve demands the whip hand of debt, and for long-term watchers of such things Gordon Brown's capitalisation and part-nationalisation of the banking sector did recoup returns to the Treasury. Sunak is learning from The Master. And you have to think about the politics too. Four years from now the Tories have a handy bribe to offer the ranks of small business owners - vote for us and we'll write off your debt.
There's another difficulty when it comes to debt, and why it's a bad way of preserving employment. Suppose a small catering business applies for the Sunak whack to tide them over for six months. Why is it in the company's interest to take on more debt to keep their handful of employees in a salary, when the more sensible approach would be to limit the loan for essential overheads and the owner's living and lay off the staff for the duration of the crisis, ensuring social security picks up the tab? This loan scheme is primarily not about preserving jobs, but preserving capital.
There's a bit of a dodge when it comes to one of the few plebeian offerings in this fool's gold package. There will be mortgage relief for up to three months for anyone infected by Coronavirus. This would certainly be a marginal help for some, but again there are problems. When the majority of people who are sick now haven't been tested and the public are told to stay away from GPs and A&Es, by the time the worst of Coronavirus is over only a small number of people are going to have a note from the doctor for their aches and pains. How can anyone applying for relief prove they were ill? And what of those with multiple properties? As Jade Azim observes, what's to stop a Coronavirus-inflicted landlord claiming mortgage relief on all their properties while happily hoovering up the rents?
Sunak's second budget at least mentioned ordinary workers, and he said he was sitting down with businesses and trade unions to see what can be done for everyone else. Naturally, we await his measures with some interest. Yet what we heard is entirely consistent with his first budget. Eye-catching and gargantuan piles of money, but nothing on bettering the lot of working people. Capital came first, the workers an afterthought. If you was feeling generous, you might say breaking with the governance habits of the last 40 years takes some adjusting. But when you have John Redwood calling for targeted measures to keep people in work and the editor of Conservative Home waxing like a demented Keynesian about negative multipliers and criticising the chancellor for not going far enough, dogma is not the root of today's disappointment.
As ever, the preservation of Sunak's class and their system is the primary concern.
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We - the left - aren't criticising Boris Johnson because we want him to fail, but because we want him to succeed. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister is failing and appears determined to make matters worse than they need to be. And so while it is welcome he has acceded to demands for daily press briefings following a welter of criticism, the first that took place today was a pretty shoddy affair.
There was his customary shabbiness. Not just the contrived pulled-through-a-hedge-backwards look, but the shiftiness and inability to answer straight questions with a straight answer. When asked about workers and what they're supposed to do during the period of Coronavirus-enforced isolation, Johnson said his government had announced an uplift in the living wage (sic) and "we hope the people listening to this will take away the message that they will be protected." Totally reassuring. Asked about respirators he side-stepped the issue, and he talked about restrictions but only offered advice and suggestions. Shambolic.
And about those workers. His non-answer meant nothing. There are ideas floating around in the right wing ether about enhanced sick pay and a temporary basic income, but all on offer today were platitudes and a recommendation one should work from home. Fine for those who can, but those who can't? Consider, for instance, the case of Richard Branson. While he rushed to the government begging for a £7.5bn bail out for the airline industry, his business saw it fir to put their workers on eight weeks of unpaid leave while he sits the crisis out snug on his private island. And where Branson leads, others are sure to follow. How are these workers and others looking at hours and wages drying up going to make ends meet? Johnson might have ignored this today, but he can't ignore it forever.
Also appalling was his recommendation that people avoid bars, cinemas, pubs, and theatres. Appalling, because he's basically consigned thousands of businesses to oblivion. As many have pointed out, business insurance only kicks in if the government shuts them down. By warding people away, many will be forced to voluntarily shutter to save money and not a few face going under, because their closure does not meet the terms of their insurance policies. Yes, support was promised to help small businesses in last week's budget, but how long do they have to wait, are they being contacted now about the help available, and how far back does it cover? Sadly, another of Johnson's oversights for which others will pay.
Yes, Johnson says his approach is guided by the science, which, in the UK's case, has significant holes. Even if the assumptions and modelling were correct, his job is tor provide the political response and the political leadership, to develop a biopolitics and necropolitics of Coronavirus. As Johnson's initial efforts show, this comes laden with all sorts of assumptions. His ruling class common sense is laissez-faire governance, of government presiding over the rules of the game (the Tories initially devised) and intervening only where and when it's deemed necessary to formulate this regulation, or address that upset in the equilibria. And this was how his time in office was supposed to be. Throw money at infrastructure projects, stoke the culture wars a bit, and get on negotiating a glorious Brexit deal. This prospectus has been destroyed by COVID-19. With everything seizing up, entire sectors of the economy staring down the barrel of ruin, and millions facing destitution on top of sickness, Johnson has to break with the governing habits that have served his class well these last 40 years. The logic of social necessity will compel him, as it has done every other European government, but at what cost while he dithers and delays?
