Cross-posted from Left Outside

I don’t think Labour really know that the game has changed. We will have an election in 2015 and there is very little chance of one before that. The move to fixed term parliaments means that Ed Miliband et al find themselves in a totally different position to someone like Cameron circa 2005 or Blair in 1994.

In 2005 Cameron suspected the next election wouldn’t be for five years – and he turned out to be right. But he nearly had to fight an election in 2007 against a newly inaugurated Brown. This is something he had to expect and prepare for from the day he was elected Tory Leader, because we all knew some sort of hand over from Blair to Brown was imminent and that this may have been followed by an election.

This meant that Cameron spent a lot time and effort trying to appear electable, trying to appear “in-touch” by visiting the arctic, liberal by hugging hoodies and as a better heir to Blair than Brown could ever be. All this was essential when Labour could have called an ambush election at any point.

Tean Miliband seems to be employing a similar tactic. Liam Byrne is fighting to appear tough on benefits claimants, Ed Balls is trying to sound more fiscally conservative, even Diane Abbott is doing her best to swiftly cover up her gaffes. The commetariat are also playing along, they want to know if he is too ugly to be prime minister etc. Cameron moved left while Ed is moving right.

All of this is stupid. As Sunny has been documenting, not only is nuance from Labour Wonks confusing the public, those who aren’t confused couldn’t care less anyway. I have a better plan for Ed, to be in operation for the next three years or so, or at least until a year before the election date. Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition should officially and unequivocally object, to everything, even good ideas, loudly and often.

First of all, this is essential to good governance. A noisy opposition ensures that a Government has to advance the strongest arguments for its policies and ensure the sharpest execution for fear of being lambasted. If all Tory mistakes are leapt on with gay abandon then the Tories will make sure they screw up less. Remember the incorrect list of schools Gove released last year? That is what happens when people are not terrified of screwing up.

Even where this policy would be a trap it is good policy. For example, Miliband will gain almost no votes by opposing capping benefits at £26,000, but he won’t lose any votes either because, and this is important, nobody is voting until 2015.

Any damage supporting bad policies or opposing bad policy while in opposition can be shrugged off because the opposition won’t have done anything because they can’t. Wrong calls can be disowned and vote winning stances embraced as manifesto fodder. A manifesto which won’t need to be published until 2015 because, I repeat, that is when the next election will be. Plus, by being the voice of opposition Labour would be able to build an activist base which will be important in getting out the vote and campaigning come election time.

By playing the old game, where an opposition has to be constantly on the alert for an election Labour are strengthening the Tories, and doing damage to people’s lives. They need to shape up and realise the rules have changed.

Paul Kenny is right. The Tories will be rubbing their hands with glee at the current spat between Labour and the unions. But they won’t be doing so simply because Ed Balls’ now-notorious speech to the Fabian Conference is a sign that Labour support the government’s cuts agenda – while neither the speech itself nor Balls’ economic policy more generally are music to the ears of the left (Andy Newman has a good response to it), he didn’t say anything anywhere near as austerity-friendly as he was made out to have done by the papers, a point which Carl makes painstakingly clear.

No, what will be making Conservative Central Office very happy is the prospect of the week’s political news being dominated by Labour and the unions airing their dirty laundry in public, on the back of several previous weeks of rumours and gossip-mongering about Ed Miliband’s leadership. In the short term, that means less public and media attention on our still-screwed economy or the effects of the cuts on the vulnerable. In the longer term, and more seriously, it raises for the Tories the enticing prospect of a divided, weakened opposition.

Labour is currently around £10 million in debt, according to the latest available figures, and of the £3.5 million they received in donations in the third quarter of 2011, over £3.1 million – around 90% – was from trade unions. That figure might be higher than usual for Labour, but it’s pretty clear that the party relies very heavily on the unions for money. ( “Sources” apparently claimed to the Guardian that the real figure was less than 50% – but even if it was, a share of – say – 40% would still be pretty damned essential for a party as cash-strapped as Labour.)

So if Unite or the GMB (the largest and third-largest unions respectively) were to decide to disaffiliate from Labour, as seems possible, then Labour would – without wishing to get too technical – be financially screwed. So they’d be less able to effectively oppose the government (and yes, I’m well aware they could have been doing a hell of a better job anyway, but that’s by the by) and in particular less well-placed to campaign at the next general election, making it more likely that the Tories will win. If Labour takes a more leftwing line which placates the unions (which is most likely Len McCluskey and Paul Kenny are hoping their sabre-rattling will achieve), this will be the cue for the rightwing press to wheel out all the old clichés about Ed Miliband being the unions’ puppet (because adopting policies which please the millions of working people who voted for you and democratically choose to fund your party is tantamount to craven surrender to Bolshevism, naturally.) And if Labour doesn’t adopt a leftier economic policy and the unions still don’t disaffiliate, then we’re left with the status quo, only with the unions looking weaker and Labour having pissed off just a little bit more of their core vote. It’s not a cheerful trilemma.

So today brings news that former Labour Party official Luke Bozier is defecting to the Conservatives. Many people will be asking “Who the hell is Luke Bozier?”. Those who know of him may ask “Why did he defect?”. Meanwhile, those who’ve read his remarks about joining the Tories will be asking “On what planet does Mr Bozier reside?”.

In explaining his decision to swap sides, Luke tells us where labour has gone wrong:

I became a member five years ago, in the final days of Tony Blair’s leadership. Back then, New Labour was still the intellectual heart of the party. A pro-business attitude and a commitment to revolutionising our creaking public services made sense to me…

…Gordon Brown, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a terrible driver of the New Labour wagon. Most of his three years as leader and Prime Minister were spent defending his own position. As a result, we wasted the opportunity to continue Tony’s reforms and we were punished for it at the ballot box.

I mean, wtf? Clearly there is a debate to be had about why labour lost the last election. I may not agree with those people who believe it was all about the deficit but they do at least have a position which makes some sense. The deficit, after all, was a major issue in the last election. Personally I think the collapse of the economic system over which New Labour had presided, with the consequence that 2.5 million people were left without work, might have been a rather large factor at the last poll.

But to suggest that labour’s great electoral liability was its failure to push ahead with public sector reforms? I mean, really? And this from a supposed strategic genius! I can honestly say that I have not met anyone who stopped voting labour because they want, say, more schools with academy status. If anyone else has I would really, truly love to hear from them. I would, to say the least, be very surprised to encounter any activists who found that bringing choice and competition into the public sector was a big issue on the door steps.

On all sides of the party, there is a tendency for people to believe that the policies they support are also the policies that are necessary in order to win elections. Luke however takes this to a bizarre extreme. If this is the extent of his strategic prowess, then I am more than happy to see him teaming up with the Tories.

Shut the door on the way out Luke. And don’t forget to take out the garbage.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net

Today was my first day in Wapping. Moving there from Green Lanes was something of a culture shock. Gone were the less-than-salubrious kebab shops, the ubiquitous fried chicken places selling sumptuous heart attacks and the 95p store. In their place, riverside bars, Fitness First and a Waitrose. Walking into the supermarket earlier today, I realised the moment I saw the price tags how much I was going to miss Iceland’s delicious £1.50 pizzas. Little did I know how much more of a shock I was about to receive when I approached the newspaper stand to see David Miliband’s apeish mug on the cover of the Independent on Sunday, apparently poised to replace his brother as Labour leader.

My first thought as my eyes rolled into my skull was that we’ve seen it all before and that the last thing Labour needs, if it is to capitalise on the country’s growing anger over cuts and fees and pull in thousands of righteously betrayed Lib Dem voters,  is a return to the vapid infighting of the Blair-Brown years, tearing itself apart over nothing that mattered in any way at all.

I soon realised I was wrong, however. The last thing the Labour Party needs is David Miliband. David Miliband is a vacuous turd shat out by the arse of New Labour as its muscles slackened in death. He offers nothing but a pretty speech, a few well scripted words and a smattering of charisma his brother lacks. Fundamentally, he offers nothing new. Labour needs to reconnect with its ideological roots. It needs to offer a true alternative to the Coalition as it slashes corporate taxes and public services. It needs to forge a distinct identity that could make mainstream party politics interesting to a switched-off electorate rather than chase the centre ground as the Tories drag it rightwards, or the ghost of a dead political movement based on sacrificing ideas for image.

Is Ed the right man for the job? Possibly not. But David is not the answer to Labour’s woes. If he is manouvered ino leadership, then Labour will have learnt nothing from the Blair years. Labour must never again sacrifice ideology for a media-friendly face and action for a little casual charm.

“There is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading…To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.” – Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891)

This story should have got much more attention than it did:

Researchers at Australian National University have found that positions with low security, high demands, and imbalanced effort-reward ratios cause more mental distress than unemployment. Over seven years, the researchers followed 7,000 respondents in an Australian labor survey. People who moved from no employment to jobs of “high psychosocial quality” showed gains in mental health. But those who went from jobless to employed in thankless, unstable positions were found to be more depressed and anxious than those who never got hired at all.

The authors of the study conclude (a bit mildly) that their ”results suggest that employment strategies seeking to promote positive outcomes for unemployed individuals need to also take account of job design and workplace policy.”

Anyone who has studied some economic theory knows the long list of costs associated with unemployment (including the often dramatic psychological costs). Hence the general view that work is better than worklessness. But when was the last time somebody brought up the issue of the psychological costs of work in a discussion on benefits and unemployment? (Clearly the sorts of people on the dole for a great length of time are not very likely to ever have jobs of a “high psychosocial quality”.)

For the necessary dirty work to be carried out, our economic system requires a permanent underclass of underpaid, overworked and under-appreciated human beings, for whom the mind-bending boredom and squalor of long term unemployment would actually be an improvement in their lives. (This is often the kind of work, remember, that stops the sewers overflowing and keeps our rubbish from piling up and rotting in the sun.)

Findings like these should provide an opportunity to openly and frankly discuss capitalism’s sheer fucking barbarity. Maybe we could decide that our current division of labour needs to be replaced with something more humane; we could defend the rights of individuals to abstain from jobs that will do incredible damage to their long-term health (maybe we could even decide that such people should not be denounced as ‘scroungers’ for doing so).

I’m not holding my breath.

Writing in the Guardian today, George Monbiot told us that first past the post “minimises the accountability” of politicians to the electorate. That politicians will be more “accountable” under AV has been a staple of the yes campaign. The Labour campaign for AV tells us that “The Alternative Vote (AV) would give more power to the public and make MPs more accountable”. But what exactly does accountability mean?

For advocates of AV, it means that it will be easier for us to kick MPs out and to punish them at the polls. As Clegg keeps reminding us, there would be far fewer “safe seats”. Such rhetoric chimes with the low esteem in which many hold the political class. Yet it also betrays very a limited conception of how the people can exercise power in a democracy.

AV increases accountability, but only in the negative sense – in terms of our power to punish politicians for what they have done wrong. Yet if we are to be part of a pungently democratic polity, then accountability must mean more than this – it must also exist in the positive sense. That is to say that our representatives must feel compelled not merely to avoid our fury, but to take steps to garner our positive approval by what they do and what they change. By entrenching a duopoly – and forcing us to choose the least worst option – first past the post fails on this account. Yet AV -by compelling politicians to clock up 2nd preferences, and effectively asking voters what they don’t want rather than what they do – affirms this negative conception of popular power even more.

At the heart of the problem is a conflict between progressive notions of democracy, as government not only for the people but by the people, and alternatively the old whig-liberal idea of “government by consent”. From the the perspective of the former, the ballot is an instrument by which the people may shape and remake the polity. From the perspective of the latter, the demos are important but only as a negative “check” on government – as a means of curtailing power, rather than truly exercising it.

Despite all of this, I am still undecided on how I will vote. It is a question of whether my deep discomfort with the AV system outweighs my genuine fear that a no vote could be interpreted in such a way as to put electoral reform off the agenda for a generation. But whatever is decided on 5th May , the campaign for a genuinely proportional system starts then.

Alan Johnson announced he’s resigning as Shadow Chancellor for family reasons. Reading between the lines, could it be because he knows nothing about economics, frequently clashes with Ed Miliband and is just a little bit shit? Let’s hope Ed picks someone a bit more suited to the role next time, who’ll really go for the coalition’s jugular.

Edit (by Owen, not Salman): Miliband’s picking Ed Balls, which could be good. He was pretty effective at attacking the Coalition’s economic policy when he was standing for leader, and given his support for control orders, it’s an added bonus that he won’t have the Home Office brief any more.

Marx has a wonderful term for the role that unemployment plays in capitalism. He calls it “the reserve army of labour.” The point of this concept is that whilst employing people allows a capitalist to accumulate value, having unemployed people allows you to drive down the price of labour. It’s a simple supply and demand issue: when many people want jobs, then they will have to lower their price more and more.

It’s not the sort of thing that you’d think would really affect countries with a minimum wage. The guarantee of a certain minimum return on a certain amount of work stops the price of labour falling too low, and guarantees a certain (albeit low) standard of living for workers. So, in a recession such as ours, rather than seeing the price of labour falling rapidly, what you’d expect to happen would be just an increase of jobs paying minimum wage.

£2.17 an hour?

Unfortunately, our lovely government looks to be doing away with all that. In a speech made today, Iain Duncan-Smith has outlined plans to force jobseekers’ into working positions for no more than their benefits. This means that people will be working 30 hour weeks for £65. That’s £2.17 an hour, or 36% of the minimum wage.

He has said that if people refuse this option, they will have their benefits cut off for three months. So that’s it, work for a third of the minimum wage, or starve, lose your house, perhaps even lose your children. That’s a pleasant thought.

But above and beyond this coercion, the new system will put added pressure on all people employed in similar positions to those that will be taken on by benefit claimants. Why would a local council pay someone minimum wage to sweep streets when they can get the work done cheaper? And of course this new labour would undercut all the laws that secure workers’ rights. Being on placements without employment contracts will undermine all labour law. If you go on strike from your position you can effectively be immediately sacked by having all pay cut off. You can’t unionise either, because for all intents and purposes while working 30 hours a week the government won’t recognize you as having a job.

It is time to fight for workers rights, to demand that all benefit claimants in this position have a right to join a trade union, and to receive at the very least a minimum wage if not a living wage for any work they do. We must also ask the question of what the government expects of people who have their benefits cut off. How are they expected to live, without turning to crime? Who can live on £0 a week?

Even with the protection from massively low wages on paper, this government is returning to the economics of the reserve army of labour, side-stepping laws in order to save money by targeting the poorest of the poor.

Sunday’s Right to Work demonstration was an extremely important first step in building up momentum behind a campaign to stop the cuts. Full reports are available here, and if I manage it I’ll post up some pictures. A significant feature of the demo was the (still far too small) presence of Labour Party activists and Labour-affiliated unions. It was therefore very sad to be handed this:

This was printed on an actual sick bag, which was being distributed by members of the Alliance for Green Socialism. Now, I understand the sentiment here, and I sometimes feel it myself. It’s quite a funny joke, good for the pub or the SU bar. It might even be OK as a blog post. But what sort of collapse in political judgement led anyone to think that making this your major public intervention into a large demonstration of trade unionists and activists was a good idea? How reckless, stupid and sectarian. Those of us outside of the Labour Party should be delighted that people within it are fighting cuts, and talking about doing so openly.

Now, of course, the AGS is hardly an influential force in the labour movement, but I wanted to raise this because I think it reflects a more widespread instinct amongst those outside of the Labour Party. Beating these cuts will be impossible without the activists in Labour, and in that context vomiting at them is not very helpful. When more energy is devoted to denouncing Labour hypocrisy than fighting the Tories, we all lose.

One of the most frequently repeated myths on the left is that we are fighting for the representation of this vast number of people who lie to the left of the Labour Party. In fact in nearly every single demonstration or large public meeting I attend I am told about this by some faux-psephologist with a microphone, normally someone with an interest in recognising him- or herself as the head of a growing mass-movement. I am perhaps a cynical grumpy old man, but today’s results in the Labour leadership contest should really be giving us something to think about.

Ok, the fact is that there was no real hard left candidate, but the closest thing to that in the form of Diane Abbott polled an appalling 7% before her elimination in the first round. Yes, I know that I will be told that there are all sorts of people who are left of the Labour Party so didn’t vote, but given that there has been a whole lot of caucusing around the hard left for the leadership election.

It is integral to our position as leftists that we do not give up the fight to convince people to think like us. For too long we have been complacent with the view that when the working classes realise their position in society they will join us, for too long the left has lied to itself. That is not to say that our cause is lost, and nor is it to say that we should move in the other direction towards the patronisation of current working class culture, but the signal is loud and clear that we must do something differently.

Although there are some fantastic new initiatives such as Mutiny, the leftist parties in this country lament the lack of barricades without taking any of the blame. We must think about new ways to reach people, as the old way – the production of pamphlets that nobody reads (actually, does anyone produce pamphlets anymore? Maybe it would be a good idea!), of weekly newspapers that only those in agreement buy, of parties that reaffirm the beliefs of their memberships rather than reaching out – are simply not working.

As Reuben will say to me once this piece is published, it is all too easy to lament the state of the left, it is all too easy to be critical of people who make small errors when the big errors are made by those in power, but that is not what I intend to do. Rather, this election must be seen as a call to action, a call to conviction in our principles, a call to the dissemination of radical ideas in new ways, a call to the production of new theories that engage not with the past but with how people are living, a call for changing how we organise.

In other news, at least we didn’t end up with David.