Labour's election - a failure of competence and courage

A visible lack of leadership.
Corbyn's virtual absence during the 2016 referendum campaign was a massive dereliction of duty.
Then  for a long time he refused to define his Brexit position, finally doing so simply to proclaim himself  “neutral“.  To be neutral on the most important decision facing the country since WWII struck me as politically suicidal. Rule 101 for a leader is…. to lead.  He needed to adopt a considered position, justify it in public, and persuade the unconvinced to follow. That’s what leaders do.  I made this point many times to people - including at the last Labour Conference. In vain.

Antisemitism.
Corbyn isn’t an antisemite. But when the former Labour MP Luciana Berger suffered antisemitic attacks - instead of getting on the next train to Liverpool, wrapping his arms around her, and working out with her what to do, Corbyn confined himself to stating that he had fought racism all his life. True but wholly inadequate; as was his muddled reaction to BBC interviewer Andrew Neil’s treacherous invitation for him to apologize for antisemitism. Another example of ineptness and lack of leadership.

The Flood of new party members
The huge influx of new Labour members and "registered supporters" was partly a consequence of a policy to allow anyone to join for £3 no questions asked. Some of those new entrants appear to have been spoilers, fifth columnists - and for sure there were some antisemites among them. Labour wasn’t geared to dealing with significant numbers of racists in its ranks and took far too long to meet the challenge.  More ineptness.

Jeremy Corbyn - integrity is not the same as ability
 I believe Corbyn is an honorable man with noble instincts. However, he is far from being an intellectual giant - and I found myself doubting his ability to manage either the country or the party. He is not especially articulate - good at reading prepared questions in parliament but poor on his feet, sincere but not quick witted, and definitely not a profound or well-informed thinker. Before he became party leader he had spent over 30 years as a backbencher, presumably a good constituency MP but without holding any senior cabinet or shadow cabinet position. He has never run a department - or indeed run anything requiring serious managerial competence.

Labour's Manifesto
The manifesto, allied to a plethora of supplementary policies, brought to mind the illusory dexterity of a conjuror pulling a succession of rabbits out of a hat. Both over the airwaves and on the stump the promises sounded more and more improbable, certainly for a first-term government. To accomplish all of them would require perhaps three or four terms in office - something that would have been clear to anyone who has ever tried to implement a complex initiative. The tabloids and the BBC, among others, fastened onto the cost of carrying out Labour’s manifesto pledges. In practice, that would have been a relatively trivial challenge as anyone with knowledge of macoreconomic history would know. The idea that the country couldn’t afford them is nonsense. Far trickier would have been the human and material (non-financial) resources required and, above all, the time. In politics, once you have promised something, the clock starts ticking and time is not on your side. A manifesto crowded with promises is a recipe for disbelief.

Metropolitan Myopia
 From the moment of Corbyn’s ascension, Labour’s inner circle has consisted almost entirely of London MPs: Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry, Keir Starmer, Barry Gardiner and Corbyn himself. I formed the impression - having spent the decade between 2004 and 2014 working outside the capital -  that this cosy entourage suffered from a kind of metropolitan myopia that limited their ability to see clearly beyond the M25. In a Newsnight interview with Barry Gardiner, the BBC's Emily Maitlis asked how often Corbyn had visited a hospital before or during the campaign; the answer was once. How often had he visited Wales? Also once.  Johnson surpassed the Labour leader on both counts - just as Trump had out-visited Clinton in the rust belt towns during the US presidential campaign.  Corbyn had three years to visit every part of the country from St Ives to John O’Groats. He seems not to have thought it necessary.
Le Royaume-Uni profond as the French might say (the UK’s beating heart)  has often seemed beyond the Labour hierarchy’s  experience, and present in their thoughts mainly as theory.

Authenticity and the Working Class
Of the role of Seamus Milne - Corbyn’s éminence grise - we know something but perhaps not enough. Born into privilege and educated at Winchester and Oxford, he seems to have supplied the left-wing intellectual grounding that Corbyn lacks; a grounding doubtless derived from a study of the literature (Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, etc.) and from familiarity with grand national and international politics - though poseessing, one suspects, only a theoretical, if any, knowedge of how “the other half lives”. As a scion of that “other half”, I am especially sensitive to questionable claims made on its behalf by people of more “elevated” background.  Corbyn is not entirely absolved in this respect, as he unwittingly demonstrated when he showed up at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day in 2018 wearing an anorak. I shuddered at the sight, not in misplaced harmony with the gutter press, but because had my working-class aunts and uncles been invited to attend, they would have worn their ceremonial best: shoes brightly polished, ties straight, dresses, shirts  and blouses spotless and crisply ironed.  No one would have a chance to look down on them. If Corbyn was showing himself to be a man of the people, he mistook the medium for the message. This example is less trivial than it might seem because it is redolent of middle-class posturing, of inauthenticity. He showed this again in claiming absurdly that he watched the Queen’s Christmas message in the morning, when everyone with a television in the living room knows that it is transmitted in the afternoon. When I was a youngster, we didn't have a television, but I remember the whole family gathering round the radio at 3pm on Christmas Day to listen to the monarch.
During the election campaign we heard how toxic Corbyn had become in some working-class constituencies. In part, I suggest, it was because he came over as a fake, an embarrassment who posed as one of them but had not taken the trouble to internalise their concerns.
Those of us of a certain age will recall that Labour leader Michael Foot was pilloried for a similar faux pas at the Cenotaph in 1981 when he reportedly showed up in a donkey jacket. The problem with this story is that he didn’t; it was fake news. He wore an elegant overcoat that differed from the conventional solemn garb in that neither the coat nor his tie were black. Unlike Corbyn, Foot was intellectually brilliant, if sometimes careless of his appearance - a bit like an absent-minded professor. What he shared with Corbyn was that he proved to be an electoral liability.

Ideological rigidity
Finally, there is something dark and unaccommodating at the heart of the current Labour hierarchy, an ideological purity and deafness to compromise that are in sharp contrast with the oft-repeated claims that the party functions as a democracy. I saw this in action at the Party Conference in Liverpool in 2018 when the leadership sidelined the majority position of the delegates on Brexit in favour of a fudge that has turned out to be a vacillating failure. In more brutal fashion, I became the butt of a very nasty insult from a Labour politician on election day by venturing to offer an opinion mildly at odds with his own. If the Party is to rediscover its roots and its purpose, it will have to do some serious introspection - beginning with defenestration of the leadership and its deeply misguided entourage. Following this, a little travelling is in order, and a large dose of humility.

Micro living...

This is a spoof I wrote in 2007/8). it appears in my book 'The Cauldron' published in 2009. I reprint it here with a wistfully ironical smile after reading this piece in The Guardian.


  Architectural Piles 
A double entendre meaning the practice of cramming as many dwellings as possible into the smallest square footage. The concept originated in Japan in the late twentieth century with the design of hotels in the form of multiple chests of drawers, with each drawer containing just sufficient room for one or two adults (luggage restrictions applied). After spending a night in one of these compartments and surviving a panic attack brought on by the sensation of having been caught fresh and packed for export, the great British architect Hilda Danegeld began work on the world’s first designed-from-the-ground-up, hot-wired, limited-headroom micro apartment.
    The idea came to her at thirty thousand feet during her return flight from Tokyo to London, when her eye fell on a newspaper article about a broom cupboard in the upscale district of Knightsbridge that sold for a tidy sum as a pied-à-terre. What was good for Knightsbridge, she realized, would be even better for less distinguished neighborhoods where the demand for accommodation came predominantly from single people and couples on modest incomes. Always content to squeeze the most from the least, building developers needed little persuasion to adopt the idea; while Government, anxious to increase what it optimistically referred to as “affordable housing”, joined in with the offer of subsidized mortgages to help key workers to buy their first home. Within a few years, micro-living became the norm for the less-well-off throughout the developed world.
    Hilda Danegeld was knighted in 2014 for architectural innovation in support of the homeless. By the time she died, however  in 2029, serious flaws in micro-living had become apparent. Suicides among UK micro apartment dwellers had risen to over twice the national average, and, on a per capita basis, were even higher in the United States, perhaps because living in a confined space seemed to be in flagrant conflict with the American dream of personal freedom.
    Observers noted that the architects who made fortunes out of designing micro apartments - and their work-place equivalent, micro-offices - neither lived nor worked in their own creations. For themselves, they preferred elegant country residences set in established gardens on the outskirts of picturesque villages, and offices in spacious high-tech towers, or converted city mansions designed by builders of a more gracious and stately age. In an interview at her Palladian mansion just outside Oxford some two years before her death, Dame Hilda  admitted that her experience in that Japanese hotel all those years before had made her determined never again to spend so much as a night in a confined space. “No modern architect worth her salt would live in a micro,” she confided. “Matter of fact, few would be seen dead in anything they’d designed.”

Democratic Deficit

A spoof from my book The Cauldron, published in 2009

The degree to which a political or social system ignores or suppresses the will of its constituents. Usually applied to nations or unions of nations, it serves equally for any collective established on principles of self-government.
In his famous study of democracies published in 2041[1], Dr Bambang Chamsyah of Indonesia’s Biak Foundation identified a close correlation between “democratic Deficit” and population size. According to Chamsyah’s findings, no country with a population of over 20 million is without serious democratic failings - and once a nation exceeds 70 million, the rate of democratic erosion tends to accelerate. Nor are politicians necessarily to blame for the deterioration. Administering democracy in heavily-populated countries presents problems of a different order to those facing governments of small nations. Despite the fact that the giants are invariably more heterogeneous, multi-ethnic and complex, they still have only one president or prime minister and one cabinet - in other words, the same number of senior political decision-makers. At around the 70 million mark, the complexities attendant upon size begin seriously to exceed the capacity of their leaders to understand still less to address them. Moreover, the value of each citizen’s vote decreases in proportion to the size of the electorate, so that in a country of 250 million voters, a ballot carries only one fiftieth of the weight of one where there are only 5 million voters. As populations grow, therefore, governments cease representing ever larger segments of their constituents.
The most common result is increasing political disenchantment and abstentionism, culminating in some cases in attempts to change the system by non-democratic means. Once this process has begun, governments find means to respond with repressive legislation - hence the accelerated democratic erosion that Chamsyah observed.
Drawing on the work of 20th Century anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Chamsyah recognized the possibility of a variety of sociopolitical responses to excessive population such as the one developed in India where the caste system demands passive acceptance of inequality and disenfranchisement of one social group altogether - the Harijans.[2] Lévi-Strauss summarized the Indian solution - which he called a failure of human organization - as follows:
 “...a society that becomes too numerous, survives only by creating servitude. When men start feeling squeezed geographically, socially and mentally, a simple solution may occur to them, namely to refuse to recognize the humanity of a portion of the species.”
 Nevertheless, Chamsyah claimed, by effectively setting India’s democratic deficit in concrete the caste system offered a clear demonstration of his central thesis. His conclusion? Forget world government, break up large countries into federations, disband the European Union, and make the United Nations a people’s forum from which political leaders are excluded. Dr Chamsyah was assassinated in 2048.
______________________
 [1] Democracy and the End of Freedom, U. Bambang Chamsyah, Biak foundation, 2041.
[2]“Children of God”, Gandhi’s graceful term for the “Untouchables”. “Dalits” (the “oppressed”) is now the more favoured term.

Buy to Let

I thought it a wild goose chase, but my wife pressed me to give it a go. She was worried about our financial situation, "If only we had a little security...."

"Security is a menace to the development of character." 

"What?"

"Henry Miller."

"If he's so clever, maybe he'd like to put bread on our table." 

"He's dead."

A bookkeeper friend had made a fortune by buying properties and renting them out. Lots of people were doing it; so why not us? She didn't mean "us", of course - she was working hard enough as it was - she meant "me".

Advice on the web recommended property auctions, so I did a little research and picked out Manchester and Blackpool as having good prospects. Our savings didn't amount to much, and I knew it was no use looking in London or the Cotswolds. Also Manchester and Blackpool were close together so I could visit both on the same trip. My thinking was pretty simple, I suppose, and muddled. But what did I know? A Lancashire auctioneer sent me a catalogue and a calendar of viewing dates.

During the train journey north I marked up the properties I thought might be interesting. It was wintry, mid-February. Rain fell unremittingly during the journey, and the clouds, low and heavy, cast a gloom over the countryside. Inside the train, passengers sat wrapped in overcoats and scarves against an icy current of air streaming from the ventilation system. No apology came from the rail operator for the lack of heating, nor when the train stopped for an hour and fifty-four minutes north west of Wolverhampton, though we did get an explanation: a dead dog on the line.

I'd been hoping to visit the auctioneer's office, but the train delay meant that it was closed by the time we drew in at Manchester. I booked into a small downtown hotel for the night and the next day took a taxi to my first viewing. 

Regenerated and with an air of prosperity, the city centre proved to be no more than a deceptive enclave. Beyond it, the urban landscape resembled an abandoned backstage lot, a wasteland of overflowing litter bins, polythene garbage bags, discarded pallets, empty shops and warehouses, shuttered pubs, houses boarded up with weather-stained plywood sheets. Vacant plots were strewn with rubble from demolished buildings. For the last mile of the journey, the driver had to dodge broken bricks, pieces of twisted iron and chunks of concrete left lying in the streets. "Wouldn't like to drive round 'ere in the dark," he said as I paid him. "If they 'ad any sense, they'd clear it all away and start again. Used to be lively round 'ere when I was a kid. Look at it now."

A handful of people had shown up for the viewing and were gathered in front of the house. 

"Agent's late as usual," one of them muttered. 

I glanced up and down the street of terraced redbricks. Half a dozen of the dwellings were vacant and creeping towards dereliction, but attempts had been made to brighten up the others. Front doors were painted in bright reds, yellows and greens. Several displayed vases of fresh flowers in their front windows. Crossing the road to take a perspective on the sale property, I spotted a tiny, middle-aged woman struggling along the pavement with shopping bags. I approached and offered to carry them.

"You're a big strapping lad," she said. "You're not going to run off with my groceries, are you?"

She spoke in a broad Lancashire brogue of gentle, unpasteurised vowels. "Just as far as number 12, then. It's very kind."        

I asked her if she liked living in the district.

 "B'in 'ere all me life, I 'ave. Wouldn't catch me no place else. Not no more. Too old to move now even if I could afford it. It's really quite nice. And the rent is ever so reasonable." 

We passed two women in curlers and housecoats, chatting. They, too, were tiny with skin and bone faces and spindle arms. Their clothes drooped from them in shapeless folds.

"Thanks for 'elping 'er love," one of them said. "Not as young as she used to be, are you our Aida?"

"Never mind my age," Aida retorted. "You'll be there afore you know't."

We reached Aida's house and I set her bags on the doorstep. 

"They shouldn't 'ave stopped the buses, mind you," she said. "Used to come every ten minutes, just up there in Pickling Street. All through the war we 'ad buses. Stopped 'em five year ago now. They don't care about the poor no more. You comin' to live 'ere?"

"Perhaps."

Aida rang the bell and the front door opened to reveal a spindly young man in jeans, hollow chested, face pale and pitted with acne scars. 

"Me son. He's a good lad really."

The good lad glanced at me briefly then, without saying a word, took the bags inside. I turned to go.

"You'll like it 'ere," Aida called after me. "People are ever so nice."

A battered red Ford drew up in front of the house I had come to see. Two men got out. One wore a cloth cap and a threadbare overcoat, the other a padded nylon jacket and grey trousers shiny with age.

"I'm the agent's man," the latter said to the assembled group of viewers. "Name's Jack. Sorry I'm late. Bit of trouble with the car. That right Derek?"

Derek, his companion nodded.

Both men were in their fifties. Jack, the taller by a head, carried a bunch of keys. He tried several before he found one that fitted.

"I'm in charge, right Derek?" He pushed open the door and ushered us in.

A two-up and two-down worker's cottage, it smelled musty and damp. On both floors,  the rear wall bulged with crumbling mortar.

"Better to knock these houses down," someone remarked.

“They were going to do that according to what I heard," Jack volunteered. 

In ten minutes we were all outside again. 

Jack led us to a second house in the next block. This too was damp, empty and dispiriting.

"Waste of time." One of our group said, in a voice redolent of the Indian sub-continent. "Came round just to see. But we're sticking to the better areas nowadays. All this lot should be condemned and the sooner it goes the better if you ask me."

He got into a silver BMW, and roared off. Gradually, the other viewers also left. Lacking transportation of my own I asked Jack if could give me a lift to the next house on his list.

"Dunno about that," said Jack. "I've already got Derek, and there's not much room."

He was right. The rear seat of his car was occupied by a miscellany of tools, a large cardboard box, several pairs old shoes, bundles of magazines and newspapers.

"Still," said Jack, "It's only Derek, He'll manage in the back, that right Derek?"

Derek managed, and I got into the front passenger seat, placing my feet on a pile of oily rags. The interior stank of petrol fumes. Jack started the car, but stopped it again.

"Fuel leak."

He jumped out and raised the bonnet.

Derek and I got out too.

"What do you think, Derek?" Jack asked.

Derek stuck his head into the bonnet for a moment and muttered unintelligibly.

"You may well think that, Derek," said Jack, "But I think otherwise. No offence meant Derek. But you're no mechanic, are you? Fetch my tool box Derek, there's a good man. It's in the boot."

Derek duly complied. Jack selected a trio of spanners of different gauges with which he adjusted nuts on the carburettor and fuel filter, alternatively tightening then loosening them. 

"That'll 'ave to do," he said at length. 

We clambered in and set off. 

"Still smells of fuel," said Jack. "Right Derek?"

Derek mumbled what sounded like assent.

At the next house, in a neighbourhood called Moston, scarcely less dreary than the first though as yet unassailed by demolition crews, a women was waiting in a green two-seater MG. An ashtray full of butts rested on the passenger seat beside her.

"Thought you weren't coming," she said to Jack. 

In her mid-fifties, she was dressed in a red woollen suit flecked with grey cigarette ash. "Bought a property last year in Brighouse and it's doing ever so well," she said, taking a last long draw of her cigarette before dropping the butt on the pavement. Her yellowed-stained fingers shook nervously.

The house we had come to see was occupied but the tenants were out. This one too smelled of damp and wood rot. Mould grew on the ceilings. Wallpaper hung limply from walls that glistened with moisture and salts. Beds stood in every room except the kitchen which was furnished with a hot plate, an upholstered armchair with a broken arm, four upright chairs, and a formica table on which lay a partially completed application form for entry to a local college of nursing. The applicant's name - Miss Mumtoza Butalezi - was written in blue ballpoint at the top of the page.

"They'll all be blacks in this house," said the woman in red. "You can smell them."

Last house of the tour was in yet another district, Gorton, whose streetscape of dreary terraces and decaying shops was by now familiar. I was struck by the absence of vegetation: no hedges, or shrubs in front gardens, no parks, no playgrounds for children, no evidence of civic pride. People in the street looked undernourished, like trees clinging to life on a blasted heath. Even the buildings looked gaunt and cold as if the sun never warmed them.

We had not yet reached our destination when the car's engine began to scream. Jack shifted into neutral, cut the ignition and steered us into the roadside. 

"Problem this time we have Derek."

The accelerator pedal had jettisoned its spring and now lay flat and loose beneath Jack's feet. For a moment he was nonplussed. I offered a few suggestions from the encyclopaedia of my ignorance and when these were rejected, proposed that we call a breakdown service.

"They'll charge more than the car's worth," Jack said. "I didn't buy it new, you know. Twenty-five years old is this car. Pretty good for its age. We can fix this. No trouble at all." 

He turned to Derek.

"Now then, young man, look sharp. There's a ball of twine back there somewhere."

Derek mumbled, and it occurred to me that his slurred speech was probably the result of a stroke. He flapped around inconclusively until Jack directed him to the cardboard box.

"There you are," Jack said his confidence evidently intact. "You just have to use your eyes."

Derek handed him the ball of twine which he flourished as if it were a lottery win.

"Look and you shall find, Derek. Look and you shall find."

Derek's role, I understood, was not to contribute but to stand as evidence that there was someone in Jack's world who stood below him in life's pecking order. 

Jack busied himself with the repair. He attached a line to the throttle which he then threaded first through the side of the bonnet and then the window on the driver's side. By pulling or slackening the line he was able control the tension on the throttle. We climbed in, Jack restarted the engine and we move off. Somehow he managed to change gears, maintain steering, and control the revs all with his hands. His timing was so excellent that it was hard to tell he wasn't using a conventional accelerator.

When at length we arrived at the next house, last of the day, we were already an hour behind schedule. No one was waiting. Pinned to the front door was a notice stating that the building was structurally dangerous and warning people not to enter. 

"You can see it from the outside," Jack said. 

I pretended to look but lacked stomach for the fight.

A few steps away, on the main road, was a little cafe with a menu board outside. I invited my companions to lunch as a way of thanking them for taking me as passenger. Jack responded with enthusiasm. It was hungry work showing all these houses, what with the car breaking down and all that.

The cafe consisted of half a dozen tables covered with plastic red and white cloths. A counter divided the dining area from the kitchen at the rear. Steam mingled with the odour of lard and tobacco smoke. Jack and Derek ordered egg and chips; I less wisely opted for the day's special - Irish stew - which came as a mélange of soggy cabbage, unseasoned dumplings and thin gravy. Afterwards we all had suet pudding and custard and a mug of tea.

Jack gave me his card, one side of which had a telephone number and a message: “If you have a problem. I can help. Just call Jack.” Printed on the reverse were a sketch of an angel and the words: “Complaints Department”.

“Anything that needs doing, I can do it," Jack said. "Derek here will vouch for that." 

We parted outside the café: Jack - with Derek's moral support - to make a more permanent fix for the accelerator pedal, and I to the bus stop across the road from where the number 34 would take me to the railway station and thence to Blackpool.

"You won't mention the car problems to Pethers & Wilson?" Jack asked as we shook hands. "They won't pay me if they find out I was late for the some of the viewings." 

My reassurances brought a smile to his lips.

"Don't forget," he said, "You can always come to the Complaints Department. Jack'll solve the problem."

I spent the night in one of Blackpool's featureless B&Bs, a charmless, draughty warren with red flower-pattern carpet, red flower-pattern wallpaper and cream curtains printed with red flowers. The landlords, a young couple who had just acquired the premises were worried about covering their mortgage payments and begged me to write them a recommendation. They seemed to think it would help them qualify for a seal of approval from the local chamber of commerce, or the tourist board. After an uncomfortable night in a tiny bed, a lukewarm shower in front of a window that wouldn't close, and a squalid breakfast of egg and sausage drenched in fat, I wrote them a glowing testimonial. On leaving, I wished them good luck, for in a town where every other building offered accommodation, and where theirs had so little to recommend it, luck was about all they had to fall back on.

Blackpool was rumoured to be the next - the first - British Las Vegas. Casinos occupied a central plank of the government's latest economic strategy - a means of counteracting the city's and the nation's terminal industrial decline. Where better to re-create Las Vegas than Blackpool, playground of the people, host of annual Party conferences, bingo-hall capital of little England? Soon the town would be humming with gamblers, and with carpetbaggers vying for ways to relieve them of their money. Property prices would sky-rocket. In no time, the demand for accommodation would exceed even the immense supply already available. 

You couldn't lose in Blackpool.

This confident assessment came courtesy of a middle-aged businessman wearing designer jeans and an expensive leather coat whom I met on the doorstep of the house we had both come to see.

One block from the southerly - less fashionable - end of Blackpool's immense beachfront, it stood in a line of Victorian semis whose flaking paint, cracked cornices and sagging roof-gutters could not disguise that they had once been the castle keep of respectable middle-class families. After Manchester's dank terraces, I could hardly contain my excitement that here, at last, was a house worth the inspection, a house for all that it might have come down in the world since the Empress of India had presided over an empire on which the sun never set, still stood as evidence of a more gracious era and would surely require little more than a lick of paint and a new carpet to put it in condition to earn a handsome rent.

The businessman had arrived at the wheel of a shiny black Mercedes with tinted windows. He was smoking a large cigar.

"Bloody estate agent's not here again," he said.

"Again?"

"They often don't bother with crummy properties. Too embarrassed."

He knocked loudly on the door and then pushed it open. I followed him in. A young man greeted us and offered to show us round. Painfully thin, he wore loose sweat pants that hung from him like sails in a calm, and a fleece with a large hole in the right sleeve. He led us along a dark corridor to an empty room at the back of the house. 

"Supposed to be the kitchen," our guide informed us, "but we can't afford a cooker and the landlord won't put one in. The downstairs toilet's in there." He indicated a door to the left of the corridor. "Don't work though. We have to use the public toilets on the sea front."

My companion had seen enough. He turned on his heels and left, leaving behind a parting comment that the place was falling down and he had better things to do."

According to the catalogue, the house was divided into two apartments. I asked the young man how they were arranged.

"No flats here," he said, "Just one house. Look here."

He led me part of the way back along the corridor to another room partitioned with a plastic curtain.

"I put this shower in. Runs on a hose from the garden tap. We had nowhere to wash. I mean you can't live like that, can you?"

The young man's father was sitting on an upright armchair in the front room before a single-bar electric fire.

"My dad's got cancer. He's still working mind you. Can't afford to retire." 

My guide raised his voice to address his father as if the latter were hard of hearing.

"All right dad? This man's come to look at the house."

The old man looked at me with defeated eyes, but he held out his hand and I grasped it.

"Going to buy the place, are you?” 

His son answered for me. "He's just looking ,dad." 

"Hope it works for you," the father said.

Upstairs was a warren of mainly empty rooms divided by plywood partitions. The floors sloped uniformly to one side like the deck of sailboat in a breeze.

"My sister had this room," said my guide, showing me a bare space with a torn curtain over the window. "Left last week. Gone to Manchester."

"No bed?"

"Slept on the floor."

We moved to the only furnished room on the second floor - a double bed with a sheet over the window. 

"This is where I sleep. It's dry in here. All the other rooms leak."

I asked him about the rent.

"My dad pays £95 a week and I pay £45. My sister paid £50 because they said she had a better room. Don't ask me how they work these things out. When it rained she had water running down her wall."

"Been here long?"

"More than four years now. We lost our council house. It's terrible here but we can't afford nothing else. I've got a pregnant wife, but how can she live like this?"

"Is she here?" 

"Went home to her mum. I mean she couldn't stay here, could she? Not with the baby coming."

 "Couldn't you get the owner to fix a few things at least?"

"Dunno who owns the place. Some company in Liverpool they say. I only know the rent collector. Says it's nothing to do with him. Just does what he's told"

"If I buy the house I'll fix it up for you," I said. But we both knew I wasn't going to buy it.

Nor did I attend the auction. There seemed no point.

Democratic Accountability

 A spoof on what passes for democracy in a capitalist universe.

Historically,  Democratic Accountability denoted the obligation of those who govern to respond to the electorate either directly - through the ballot-box - or indirectly through congressional or parliamentary procedures.
    The phrase has retained its traditional meaning in the formal discourse of politicians and sections of the media. Elsewhere - and notably in the corporate sector - it refers to the rendering of accounts by politicians to those who provide funds to their party or to their electoral campaigns.
    Once considered scandalous, the practice was redefined in a famous paper by Professor Hiram B. von Schuchenfeld[1]  in which he showed that in a free society, where goods and services of every conceivable kind should be available for sale, it was illogical to  make an exception of democracy.  People should be at liberty, he argued, to spend as much money as they liked on the political party of their choice and to receive a return on their investment. Preventing them from doing so made a mockery of the democratic process. Schuchenfelt’s ideas encountered fierce opposition from rank-and-file sectors of the populace but gained wide acceptance where it counted most -  from corporations and the better-off. In 2035, after a period of tussle between the two contending groups, restrictions against the privatization of political parties were lifted; and all the major league parties duly incorporated. They now operate openly as businesses, serving - or promising to serve - the electorate as customers, while working to satisfy the demands of shareholders and financiers.
    Schuchenfelt went on to become the highest-paid corporate consultant in the history of the profession. Several of his aphorisms have entered the public lexicon, perhaps the most famous of which is: “What you can’t buy ain’t worth voting for”.

[1] H.B von Schuchenfeld: Is Democracy Democratic?, NRA Press,  Spartanburg, 2022.

Note: This is an extract from a book I wrote some years ago. It seems ever more relevant...

Sightlines from Labour's 2018 Conference

Contrasting emotions coursed through the 2018 Conference. Excitement abounded at the prospect of power that to some seemed almost close enough to touch. In the peroration of his closing speech to a packed auditorium, Jeremy Corbyn gave voice to that excitement by expressing the hope that by next year’s conference Labour would be in goverment. A confident prediction? Or premature euphoria with the potential for disappointment or frustration of a kind familiar to those who have experienced an unsuccessful coupling or failed a driving test?
At a fringe event for business people, I met a cluster of closet Tories happy to swallow their ideological pride in exchange for a chance to cosy up to Labour politicians. Coaxed into revealing their political affiliation, two of them assured me sotto voce that there would be no general election before 2022. Such without doubt, is the fervent wish of the incumbent of 10 Downing Street and her followers - and doubtless of even those Tories who would like to see the back of Mrs May and her replacement by a rebellious Brexit hardliner.
Indignation was the other predominant emotion and it came in several guises: anger at the ravages wrought on vulnerable communities by Tory austerity, revulsion at Theresa May’s “hostile environment” for so-called illegal immigrants which had resulted in the cruelties of Windrush, and dismay with a touch of Schadenfreude at the government’s shambolic mishandlng of Brexit.

Anguish at the plight of the Palestinians and support for the creation of a Palestinian state found expression not only in speeches by senior Labour figures, but in many conference attendees, Jews among them, who swapped the lanyard that came with their credential for one in the colours of the Palestinian flag.

Solidarity with the Palestinian people was a theme of the Conference for JVL (Jewish Voices for Labour), as was clear rejection of the accusations of antisemitism directed at Jeremy Corbyn by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, most of the UK media including the BBC, more than a few Tories, and even some Labour MPs. Nor was JVL alone in rejecting those accusations. Handing out pro-Corbyn leaflets at the entrance to the Conference Centre on the final day were two representatives of Naturei Karta - an Orthodox, anti-Zionist/anti-Israel Jewish sect considered extremist and even reviled by many Jews, including (full disclosure) some members of my own family. Naturei Karta are - be it said - no less Jewish for being a minority and, like JVL, they are a living refutation of the trope put out by the media of a single, unified Jewish community convinced that Corbyn and his entourage are antisemitic.

While the official Conference speeches and debates received the bulk of media coverage, most of the activity takes place at fringe events. On a full day, there are over 150 of these. They begin as early as 7am and continue late into the evening, with dozens underway simultaneously. Impossible, therefore, to cover the ground, to take in the full range of topics, debates, disputes, ideas, analyses and opinions on offer. The standard format consists of brief speeches from four or five panelists followed by a discussion with the audience. MPs - including shadow ministers - participate fully, some of them dashing from one meeting to the next like couriers on a delivery round.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell seemed to be everywhere, sometimes a little breathless, but indefatigable, and concealing whatever exhaustion he might have felt behind a bon mot and an easy command of his brief.
That brief - honed over years of opposition, battleground defeats and strategic revision - is the most radical since the Labour government of 1945 under Clement Attlee. It includes renationalisation of public utilities and the railways, legislation to force large companies to allocate shares to employees and to have worker representation on boards of directors, an end to ruinously expensive PFI contracts, major infrastructural invesment in all regions of the UK, an end to free schools and the fragmentation of our educational system, and so on. Its fundamental principles are twofold: to launch a counterattack against neoliberalism, which has governed public policy since Thatcher and has catalysed a savage rise in inequality; and to restore a sense of empowerment and economic dignity to those millions who have been betrayed and impoverished by Tory austerity. Popular in the Conference auditorium and doubtless among many voters, Labour’s ambitious programme of economic reform evokes alarm and contempt in sections of the right-wing media, and perhaps a degree of panic in Tory ranks.
What of Brexit, dangerous ground for both Labour and Tories alike? At a hearts-on-sleeve fringe session, I heard MPs Ben Bradshaw, Caroline Flint and Stephen Kinnock plus Professor Anand Menon offer opposing views of what the party should do when Mrs May returns from Brussels with or without a deal. Ben Bradshaw favoured a second referendum with ‘Remain’ among the options on the ballot paper, a posture that Caroline Flint argued against because she felt it would fail to unite the country, while Stephen Kinnock advocated membership of EFTA (the European Free Trade Association) - the so-called Norway option with access to the EEA (European Economic Area). Anand Menon spoke learnedly but left his listeners unclear as to what, if anything, he was recommending. The variety of views on Brexit reportedly led to a six-hour tussle among MPs and delegates that ended with a position to which none of the contending parties could withhold consent, namely to leave all options on the table. Conference was thus left with what looked like a pecking order of initiatives:
- acceptance of May’s deal in the unlikely event she achieves a slam dunk negotiation;
- a call for fresh elections if she fails to get her deal through parliament;
- a second referendum if parliament - like the main parties - is unable to agree on an alternative course of action.
In his Conference address, the Labour leader, after an oblique reference to the arduousness of the negotiation that produced this sequence, stated that the Party now had a settled Brexit position. Well…. maybe.
Despite the superabundance of meetings, Labour’s 2018 Conference showed a disappointing lack of concern for the globalised world in which we now we live. Conflict in the Middle East, the issue of Israel and the Palestinians, and British arms sales to belligerent states received attention. But I heard little on the refugee crisis, and on the burning question of the UK’s relationship with Russia. Other regions of the world - Africa, the Far East, Latin America - were absent from Labour’s agenda, while Canada and USA were acknowledged merely as targets or models for trade deals. Europe figured in terms of Brexit, but not otherwise. Two scheduled meetings on foreign policy - the only two - were cancelled without explanation. A correspondent from Austria asked me why no one at the Conference seemed interested in or even know much about the rest of Europe. “Islanders,” I replied, “are insular.” Post Brexit we are supposed to be reaching out to the world; but so far Labour has shown scant evidence of understanding what that might imply.

And the denouement? Brexit aside, Corbyn’s closing address conveyed a sense of direction that it had lacked at the Brighton Conference a year earlier. He is not a natural orator, but he has worked hard at the arts of timing and emphasis, and he now has a programme to deliver that is radical, well-thought-out and thoroughly rehearsed. At the end he left his audience stirred by the prospect, under a Labour government, of a better, more egalitarian, more humane , more honest, more principled, more socially responsible country. Labour’s programme is at once ambitious and for Party members, at least, both credible and inspiring.
Leaving the Conference precinct after Corbyn’s speech I made my way through Liverpool One - the city’s magnificent, traffic-free retail and leisure zone. It was crowded with shoppers, strollers, people relaxing on benches, or enjoying the hospitality of bars and restaurants.

Street musicians entertained - competing with each other for attention and coin. Like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, I stopped a few pedestrians to ask what they knew or thought of the Labour Party Conference. A few said they aware of it, but most were not, and none showed much interest in the event, nor trust in the promises of politicians. Therein, perhaps, lies the true challenge not just for Labour but for all political parties. Annual Party Conferences are bubbles of purpose, passion, and of a shared sense of hope and solidarity among the faithful. In the world outside, however, life goes on as before, and what most people learn of Party manifestos comes not from participation in conferences, but from snippets of news, and sound-bites from commentators more anxious to provoke than to enlighten. Labour now has a coherent programme and a corps of conviction politicians ready to work on implemention. The task that remains is to convince.

Venezuela's Presidential Election

If there’s such a thing as a ‘nation non grata’, Venezuela in its current political configuration would be near the top of the list on both sides of the North Atlantic. From the moment when Hugo Chavez first won the presidency in 1998 - he was twice re-elected and died in office in 2013 - Western governments and the media viewed him with a combination of alarm and contempt. Charismatic, left-wing, deeply hostile to neoliberalism, Chavez made clear that his aim was to transform Venezuela’s social, economic and political landscape. At the core of his domestic programme lay a determination to provide the two-thirds of the population then living below the UN official poverty line with access to health care, education and the prospect of a dignified life. Revenues from oil during a period of high world prices furnished the necessary funds and, as UN Human Development Reports show, the programme achieved some, at least, of its initial objectives. Internationally, Chavez aimed to reduce if not eliminate what he felt to be the economic and the political domination of his country by the United States; and he collaborated with other like-minded governments in Latin America to achieve the same at continental level. He called his political programme, the “Bolivarian Revolution” and even changed the country’s formal name to the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” - in honour of Simón Bolívar, the great 19th century leader of South America’s independence from Spain. Romantic certainly, but a permanent reminder that independence - the right of a nation to choose its own destiny lay - and continues to lie - at the heart of the “Chavista” project.
For some within the country, the Bolivarian Revolution has always been an anathema. An attempt to unseat Chavez by force in 2002 nearly succeeded. It was foiled by the army which has remained a stout defender of the country’s democracy. Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’ successor, has met with a different kind of resistance: street violence and calls from opponents for the United States to help topple Maduro and his “regime”. Maduro is a substantial figure, with an impressive command of the stage; but he came to power during an economic downturn brought on by a dramatic fall in the price of oil; and he won the 2013 election - with very narrow majority - to cries of fraud from the supporters of his right-wing opponent, Henrique Capriles. Without the oil revenues that had financed Chavez’s social policies, Venezuela’s ill-balanced economy with its heavy dependence on oil became evident. Imports of food, medicines and consumer goods fell away, creating shortages that severely affected the less-well-off.
Devaluation of the national currency - the Bolívar - began then and has continued at an increasingly rapid pace. At the time of writing, the unofficial exchange rate is 1 million Bolívares to US$1, down from 250 thousand Bolívares a month ago. Tomorrow there may be a further fall. Long queues form daily outside supermarkets and banks - evidence of the acute shortage of both goods and currency. Distribution of food and household products is largely controlled by the private sector and there is evidence of hoarding and reluctance to supply poorer neighbourhoods. A US embargo on trade and financial transactions with Venezuela has made it difficult to import essential goods and has probably done more to impoverish the less-well-off than to damage the Maduro government. Compounding the economic distress is the permanent insecurity caused by casual gun crime, robberies in the street at gunpoint, and “express kidnaps” in which victims are invited to empty their bank accounts in exchange for their lives. Such was the societal context of the May 20 elections.
Equally disquieting has been the attitude of the so-called West. Canada, the United States and the European Union have dismissed the elections as invalid, despite having called for them. Urged on by the Trump administration, six Latin-American countries have followed suit. For these international accusers, Nicolás Maduro is a ruthless, corrupt dictator, the elections a breach of Venezuela’s constitution, and the results de facto fraudulent.
Unsurprisingly Maduro’s opponents don’t approve of him and they’re alarmed at the state of the country. But as the campaign drew to a close, none - even under close questioning - repeated the accusations against him made by the United States and the EU. And all expressed confidence in an electoral system that US President Carter has described as the best in the world, though that didn’t prevent Henri Falcón, Maduro’s closest rival, from crying foul moments after learning of his defeat. Entirely digital, but with an automated manual verification back-up, the electoral system is designed with multiple safeguards against fraud. As an international observer, I had the opportunity not only to watch the system in action but to explore its workings. It is impressively efficient, with results available within a few hours of the closure of the polls. Among our observer group were officials responsible for electoral processes in their own country. They could find no fault in Venezuela’s system. Maduro’s electoral victory with just over two-thirds of the vote was more than comfortable; though the turnout at 46% was dangerously low by Venezuelan standards and has given rise to charges both within and beyond the country that the election lacked legitimacy. An abstention campaign by the right-wing MUD coalition (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática) undoubtedly had some negative effect on turnout, but general disaffection with politics and politicians in the face of increasing economic hardship will also have played a role in discouraging participation, not least because none of the candidates took the trouble to explain how they proposed to pull the country out of its current mess.
Meanwhile, foreign media have been making hay with defamatory rhetoric - much of it consisting of outright fabrications. On May 20th, Venezuela’s election day, we international observers, who had spent a week investigating Venezuela’s electoral procedures and meeting with campaign managers of all four candidates, learned from the Guardian/Observer website that we had been barred from the country and were not really there. “Venezuela has fallen to a dictator” screamed a Guardian headline two days later, assuring readers that the elections were fraudulent, and that among the methods employed by the regime to remain in power was “violent censorship of the press,” an assertion especially remarkable because most of the Venezuelan newspapers are openly hostile to Maduro. Perhaps the Guardian doesn’t read them. Milder, though no less larded with prejudice, was the Telegraph’s May 21st headline: “Nicolás Maduro filmed victoriously waving to an empty plaza after a ‘sham’ election,” the editor having apparently forgotten that on the previous day his newspaper had described Maduro speaking to a crowd of cheering supporters after his election victory. Similarly threadbare complaints against Venezuela are available courtesy of The Economist, the New Statesman, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and no doubt many others.
Most of the media venom directed at the Venezuelan government is evidence-free and based on little more than rote copying from press releases issued by the United States, the European Union and other hostile governments. All decline to acknowledge that despite the intense international pressure on the country and its disquieting economic situation, Venezuelans have spoken, and have demonstrated more than anything that they do not wish to be told what to think and do by foreign governments and media.
The freshly-elected government’s immediate task, a huge one, will be to rebuild Venezuela’s shattered economy. Whether Maduro and his team are able to accomplish this while maintaining peace within the country remains to be seen. Some would undoubtedly prefer to see them fail. What they and the people of Venezuela need and deserve from the rest of the world, however, is not hostility but respect , support and recognition of their right as a soveign people to decide their future for themselves.