Lions led by donkeys: October 20 and the sheer dysfucntion of British politics

Yesterday, around 150,000 people marched through central London to protest against austerity and job cuts.  Similar marches took place in Glasgow and Cardiff.  In almost every respect, the marchers represented everything that is decent about Britain; people cutting through the political and media narratives and responding to the reality of austerity and the direct effect it has on people’s lives.  Many of them would have been public sector workers, forced to implement austerity every day while working desperately against mounting pressures to protect the dignity and wellbeing of those they serve.

And yet, at the heart of the event, there was a  morass of conflict and inconsistency that showed clearly how British democracy has lost its way.   The most obvious was of course Labour leader Ed Miliband addressing the rally; leader of a Party that has promised not only to keep all the coalition’s cuts in place after 2015 but to make additional cuts of its own.  Miliband’s presence was of course a symbol of the relationship between the TUC, who organised the march, and the Labour Party.  The strangeness of this event is not so much the fact that Labour looks increasingly like an echo-chamber for the coalition’s neoliberalism, but that Labour remains largely funded by unions whose members appear to oppose the neoliberal consensus of which Labour is an integral (and, on the basis of Ed Balls’ recent pronouncements, enthusiastic) part.  The relationship between Labour and the unions looks increasingly like a dysfunctional marriage in which the maintenance of appearances and patterns of behaviour has long superseded any sense of common purpose; without that troubled relationship Miliband addressing yesterday’s rally is about as likely a spectacle as Margaret Thatcher addressing a symposium on the benefits of free school milk.

None of this would be so puzzling if there were not a nuanced, evidenced case against austerity economics; indeed, if austerity economics were not failing in its own terms.  As many of us predicted at the outset, cuts and austerity are not reducing the deficit but increasing it; a slower version of what is happening in Greece and Spain is happening here, and all Labour’s economic policies are set to do is to speed the process.  Much of the austerity narrative is astoundingly economically illiterate; every time a Coalition politician solemnly intones banalities about paying down the nation’s credit card, or talking about Labour’s profligate legacy, they are showing their inability to grasp – or at least to articulate – the most basic economics.

A fine example of that illiteracy can be found in comments by Hove MP Mike Weatherley, who was reported a while ago celebrating benefit cuts of £10 million in Brighton and Hove without apparently the slightest inkling that this was £10 million taken out of the local economy – hitting businesses both large and small (although the small ones do not have access to the cheap labour of workfare, pioneered by Labour and implemented with zeal by Tories.

And also note in that piece how Tories continue to  press the lie that housing benefits are paid to those on benefits rather than lining the pockets of landlords, and repeats the lie that those who receive benefits are not working, when that is simpy not the case.  These lies continue to gain traction, and not only do they build on the rhetoric of Labour in office but continue to inform its public positioning.  It’s not as if the language is quite the same as that of the Tory party – which at its recent conference often appeared to be only two gin-and-tonics from labelling the recipients of benefits as “useless eaters” – but is couched in terms of that insidious dog-whistle phrase “hard working families”.  Labour’s rhetoric on benefits is almost a dictionary definition of moral cowardice.

And the technical understanding of how shifts in public expenditure affects economies is increasingly undermining the case for austerity.  One of the stranger aspects of yesterday’s events was a Labour leader addressing a TUC rally from a position that appears to be substantially to the right of the IMF.

The dysfunction we saw yesterday was that of tens of thousands of decent people – people who know that there is an alternative that is better, fairer, more efficient, more grounded – being betrayed and abandoned by the Westminster elite; and by a Labour leadership that really has nothing to offer beyond more of the same.  Yes, Labour politicians do make all sorts of noises about fairness and justice; but they simply appear incapable of understanding that fairness in society depends above all on economic justice, and on reversing the transfer of resources from the poor and vulnerable to the wealthy and owners of property – a transfer that Labour presided over in office, which the Coalition has accelerated and which, rather than the deficit, looks like the rationale for austerity and cuts. Labour’s leadership looks like nothing so much as a First World War general, straight out of Blackadder, whipping up enthusiasm for the big push while the poor bloody infantry try to rationalise away their anticipation of the likely reality.

The real debate in Britain – and elsewhere in the rich world – is not between political parties in the establishment, but between a political establishment that is united around a neoliberal programme and the people who understand and experience the realities of austerity – who see their livelihoods destroyed, their experience devalued, their votes ignored.  Five million people have walked away from Labour since 1997; quite a lot more will walk away from the Liberal Democrats in 2015.  But the anti-austerity case is not necessarily a left-wing one; its advocates include people like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, former Clinton advisers and no socialists; the authors of the Spirit Level, whose programme looks like a traditional centrist social democracy; increasingly the IMF appears to be accepting the anti-austerity logic.

I have written here many times before that a political system based on a main-party consensus that does not reflect wider opinion cannot be a healthy democracy.  Yesterday, in Hyde Park, accompanied by all the accoutrements of the traditional Labour-TUC link, that conflict was manifested in a very obvious way.  There is a very strong, evidenced and clear case against austerity economics, based on fairness and economic justice.  The people who marched yesterday understand that case.  Labour lacks the intellectual and moral courage to articulate it. Those who want real social and economic justice in Britain need to look elsewhere.

Some thoughts on 26 March

Yesterday saw one of the largest protest marches in London in modern times against the Coalitions cuts in public services – and incidents at Fortnum and Mason and Trafalgar Square which are being portrayed as acts of gratuitous violence by a minority of anarchists and troublemakers.  Predictably enough, most of the British media are leading on the second group.

Here are a few random thoughts:

• Following the main march the Coalition should be very afraid - nearly half a million people marched in London on Saturday.  I would have been one of them had it not been for a family illness.  As journalist Paul Mason points out in an excellent piece for the BBC (not an organisation that covered themselves in glory yesterday – see below) this was emphatically not the usual suspects.  This was a demonstration, Mason writes, whose sheer size and breadth should give the coalition pause for thought.  The cuts have yet to take effect in many cases, and in others, such as those related to incapacity benefitl, appear to be being implemented with considerable brutality and incompetence.  And people are realising that despite Cameron’s assurances before the election, the NHS is being privatised. Resistance is creating a new coalition.

• The media coverage – most notably from the BBC – was utterly disgraceful - at home watching the BBC’s rolling news coverage, it was obvious that journalists were salivating to be able to report violence.  There is something very disturbing about the gung-ho egotism of the BBC correspondent on the ground, and in this case it was Tim Willcocks, running around London displaying his ignorance, who was the chief offender.  The BBC agenda became all too clear when their reporter in the Metropolitan Police control centre kept badgering the operation commander to talk about the threat of violence.  And as soon as skirmishes broke out in Oxford Street, the BBC News Channel switched straight from Ed Miliband’s speech and stayed there.  Nearly half a million marched but the BBC’s sole interest was in the minority.  I’m no fan of conspiracy theories, but I believe the Coalition has a powerful interest in ensuring that the activities of a minority who can be represented as violent hog the headlines at the expense of the half-million who marched.  We know that early in the coalition the BBC was called in to No 10 to discuss its coverage of the cuts, and we know that the Coalition’s closeness to Murdoch is perceived (rightly) by the BBC as a threat.  I would like to think that yesterday’s failures at the BBC were due more to incompetence and a consensual mindset than a conscious response to political pressure – but watching their coverage leads me to think otherwise.

• The police response to the Fortnum and Mason occupation was a disgrace – the UK Uncut protesters inside Fortnum’s were peaceful.  Whatever may have happened outside, photographs published on social media show people inside reciting poetry, juggling, playing pictionary and knitting.  And it’s not surprising – UK Uncut have never been violent.  Beyond minor damage to property (e.g. protesters gluing themselves to shop windows) and the inconvenience they cause to tax-dodging retailers, they have done nothing which could be construed as criminal, as this video of the occupation (from about 1’10″) shows.  The comparison with Cameron, Osborne and Boris Johnson’s Bullingdon Club – rich kids at Oxford smashing up restaurants for fun -  is instructive.  Moreover UK Uncut’s  actions always attract widespread support from passers-by.  To offer them the opportunity to leave and then kettle them outside the store and arrest them one by one for aggravated trespass was a disgraceful tactic. At the time of writing there have been no charges but it’s quite difficult to see how they could stick – the prosecution would need to prove intent to obstruct or intimidate in each case – so the police action looks like an act of simple intimidation of peaceful and popular protestors.  For those who are seeking an agenda it’s easy to find.

• Kettling is an aggressive and political action, not a means of crowd control – the sensible way to deal with a large crowd is to allow it to disperse.  Kettling is always going to increase tension and provoke a reaction – and, once again, it is an act of intimidation.  It is indiscriminate and in a public place is likely to be a form of collective punishment in which people are deprived of liberty simply for the offence of being in a public place. There is currently a case before the ECHR which could see the tactic ruled illegal, leaving the Met to field the litigation from an overtly political tactic.

My main conclusion is very simple – the Coalition, the bankers, the tax avoiders, the media and the private sector companies looking to carve up the NHS and social provision needed the march to be overshadowed by reports of violence.  It was always going to happen.  And one thing that the Left must avoid is getting into mutual recriminations about “legitimate” protest.  We may not like what some people did in the streets of London yesterday, but the moment we start using the language of condemnation we’re playing Cameron’s game.

So … why isn’t Caroline speaking?

Saturday’s big London demonstration against the cuts matters.  It matters more in the face of a Budget that, predictably enough, has favoured big business and non-doms at the expense of ordinary people – and following economic indicators showing that Osborne’s slash-and-burn economic policies are failing.  Yes, marches don’t change the world. The biggest demonstration in London in recent years didn’t stop Blair going to war in Iraq.  But they can and do send important messages – especially where there is more than one party of Government.

So it’s unfortunate that, by playing party politics, the TUC appears to be setting itself up to reducing the impact of that march. It appears that the only politician invited to address the rally is Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.  Whether deliberate or not, the effect of that decision is to give the impression that the march is linked to the Labour Party.

But it needs to be bigger than that.  The movement against cuts is vast and inclusive – involving public sector workers, people defending their libraries in small towns in middle England, passers-by cheering on activists closing down Vodafone stores.  Many of those people voted for parties other than Labour – not a few voted Liberal Democrat, some will even have voted Tory on the basis of Cameron’s lies about defending the NHS.

Moreover, as the student demonstrations in London late last year showed, the game is changing.  Those who said that those demonstrations meant that we were entering post-party politics were, I think, wrong; but they did show that politics, especially the politics of opposition, is being re-moulded in a way that transcends traditional party politics.  The way in which the Liberal Democrats ditched overnight almost every commitment on which they fought the elections and became eager supporters of the Tory economic shock doctrine is part of that dynamic – the fact that their betrayal hit hardest an emerging generation of new voters was a key factor.

And this is about uniting all those who reject the economics of cuts and deficit extremism, and taking the economic debate into a different and new place. It’s actually a place where the Labour leadership – which fought the last election on a manifesto drafted by Ed Miliband that proposed cuts – is not yet comfortable, and is probably lagging behind its activists.

So, why just Ed Miliband?  Why not Caroline Lucas, who has become a far more consistent critic of the deficit consensus than Labour?  Why not other political groups like UK Uncut who have transcended the party system?  It seems to me that either you have a pluralism of party political speakers, or none at all.  I freely admit I have an interest in this; I’m a Green Party member (although circumstances mean my activism is about pounding the keys on my laptop than pounding the streets), and I’m proud that Caroline Lucas is my MP.  But what seems to me crucial is that the TUC recognise the strength that comes from diversity and pluralism in a situation where the big issues do not split along easy political lines.