Comrade Corbyn's Last Chance

Labour's losses in yesterday's local elections came as little surprise; and nor for anyone reflecting on how our first-past-the -post voting system works was the collapse of UKIP to just one councillor (from 145) a true shock. Even the Tory resurgence in Scotland was predictable given their showing in last year's Scottish Parliamentary elections (and nor was it that spectacular - one "incredible" result was on the basis of 629 votes on the tenth count to win the last seat in a 4-member ward; not the stuff of revolutions, or perhaps more appropriately reaction).

Unsurprising too was Jeremy Corbyn's vow to fight on and John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, explaining it all away as not as bad as expected. What politician doesn't try that - UKIP after all claim their losses were because they are victims of their own success, while the Lib Dems "Tiny" Tim Farron hailed their net loss of 42 councillors as a stunning success. Among opposition parties, only the Greens (up 6) and Plaid Cymru (up 33) actually had any concrete good news, but both were studiously written out of nearly all news stories.

What is surprising is Labour's attitude, both before but especially now after their bad local showing, to those smaller opposition parties given Corbyn's previous calls for political pluralism. In the face of all reality, they continue to talk as if it is still 1950 and the Tories and Labour stand to poll 97% of the vote between them.

The Greens have debated the idea of working with Labour and others in a "Progressive Alliance". The objectives of such a beast - was it to gain electoral reform or simply beat the Tories? - generated more greenhouse  heat than light at times, as did the vexed question of whether or not the Lib Dems might be welcomed to root among the progressive compost. But with Theresa May's snap election called three weeks ago, the overtures to Labour gained a real urgency given the Tories' commanding lead in the polls.

Green leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley both offered to talk with Jeremy Corbyn, while in almost every region of the country, local Green parties offered to consider local accommodations where Green voters are numerous enough to make a possible difference to the outcome. So far, a couple of agreements have been reached in Brighton Kemptown and in Ealing where the Greens will back the Labour candidate in return, among other things, for a commitment to support proportional representation. Greens have also stood down in Shipley, along with the local Lib Dems, to back the Women's Equality Party against the odious Tory incumbent Philip Davies, but so far Labour are adamant they will stand in spite of having little prospect of success. With a few honourable exceptions such as Clive Lewis, this is typical of their national stance: Labour are prepared to stand down absolutely nowhere at all, for any one else. Period.

On Radio 4 just yesterday, Labour's Lord Faulkener insisted the "minor parties" have been wiped aside and it is a straight contest between Tory and Labour ignoring the fact that these same parties had just won almost exactly the same number of council seats as Labour. A few days previously, speaking in Batley (where, ironically, all the major parties stood down in favour of Labour after Jo Cox's murder), Labour Front Bencher Emily Thornberry responded to a question asking if she felt only two parties - Labour and Tory - should be standing in the elections with a plain, "Yes."

So much for Corbyn's pluralism. And so much for any chances of stopping a Tory tidal wave.

We are where we are in good part because of our undemocratic voting system: first-past-the-post, with its winner-take-all outcomes, had repeatedly produced election results completely at odds with the wishes of voters. Time and time again, Government's have gained outright power with a minority of votes cast - only once since the war, in 1955, has the winning party achieved over half the vote.

Keir Hardie, the first leader of the Labour Party, recognised this. He declared first-past-the-post as unfit for purpose, especially outside a two-party system, and the Labour Government of 1929-31 actually introduced a Bill for electoral reform which was held up by the House of Lords until the Government collapsed. With Labour's success in 1945, the party's commitment to a fairer voting system was quietly forgotten.

And so we are left with this impasse: Labour decry those on the Left who stand against them as stooges for the Tories because of how the voting system works. And yet they refuse to change that system for all sorts of spurious reasons, but at its core is the repeated mantra that we are a two-party country and the choice we face is purely binary.

These claims however are a denial of reality. While in 1951 97% did indeed vote Tory or Labour, in 2015 that figure was just 65%, with more people (35%) voting for "minor parties" compared to Labour's total of just 29%. Just look at Scotland, where the SNP virtually eliminated Labour and where the party continues to fall relentlessly and the claim that UK politics are binary is immediately swept away. And while UKIP is clearly on the wane in England, this is largely because the hard right Tories have adopted their agenda - there is no dividend for Labour. The Greens, meantime, while not at breakthrough, have continued to grow steadily in elected representatives and their current poll ratings show them at least likely to equal if not just yet better their record 2015 showing.

So what on earth possesses Labour, including Jeremy Corbyn, like some sort of Death Wish?

The announcement of a Progressive Alliance and real reciprocation between Labour, Greens, Plaid and the SNP up to the close of nominations on Thursday would produce a wave of support far beyond the current sum of its parts. The Tories have decried such an entity as a "Coalition of Chaos", but it is in fact the thing they fear most - because far more unites these parties than divides them. Faced off against the lacklustre Tory campaign, an alliance would catch the popular imagination and reinvigorate the political landscape.

And yet, although it is technically possible even now, there is little sign of it from the Labour ranks. Regrettably, and almost certainly in vain, Corbyn puts his party's tenuous and frankly impossible unity ahead of the needs of the country. For the sake of trying to conjure up the illusion of a two-party contest, Labour risk delivering Britain into the grim reality of a One Party state.

#fairdebate2015

As we run up to the General Election in May next year, the main TV broadcasters - the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and SKY - have made a joint proposal for three leaders' debates in a sort of World Cup eliminator style (except the winners have already been decided).

They want three debates: the first with UKIP's Nigel Farage, Lib Dem Nick Clegg, Labour's Ed Miliband and Tory PM David Cameron.
Round Two would be Clegg, Miliband and Cameron; while Round Three just Tweedledum Ed and Tweedledee Dave by themselves.

Riveting stuff: four besuited white middle aged men with barely a cigarette paper between their views of the ideal neoliberal society droning on about how in fact there are really, honestly massive differences between them all and it is so exciting, etc, etc.

"Crowd-pulling" Lib Dems get a place but not Greens & SNP

No space for the Greens, who outpolled the Lib Dems at the last nationwide election - the Euros - in May and have been jostling with them in the polls for fourth place party ever since. No space for the SNP, now the third largest in terms of membership and with six times as many MPs as UKIP. No voice for anyone but the Westminster parties, with a reluctant nod to UKIP, the Licenced Opposition-by-Appointment to the Establishment. Rather, the format is set up to reinforce the status quo, to regulate and direct voters' choices.

Still Better Together?

The Greens and SNP are threatening legal action if they are not included - their two female leaders would provide perhaps the only left of centre voices as well as an added dimension to the gender of the Lads' debate.

Arguably of course the Leader's debates themselves are not welcome - shifting focus in a parliamentary democracy to the live performances of just a few individuals - but if they are taking place, then it is only right that all shades of opinion are included.

There are a couple of petitions circulating so please sign up and help to open just a chink of light on the debate. On Twitter, follow the hashtag #fairdebate2015

To include the Green Party:
CHANGE.ORG - INVITE THE GREENS 

To include all parties:
38 DEGREES - INVITE ALL PARTIES TO THE TV DEBATES

The Last Days of the United Kingdom

Glasgow's George Square had a certain balmy calm when I arrived on Friday afternoon. The late summer heat had cast a faint grey mist across the sky, and there was a certain air of poignant expectancy as I wandered by the statues in front of the City Chambers, the great Victorian building that has for over a century and a quarter housed the council of Scotland's largest city. I reflected how, with the polls becoming ever tighter, it might be the last Friday that the city would see as truly part of the United Kingdom; for even if a Yes to independence vote still leaves months of negotiations before formal separation, no one would doubt that by Friday coming everything would have changed anyhow. "Scotland on the cusp of  making history" read the news-ticker above the corner of St Vincent Place.

Reaching for the future; Glasgow 13 September 2014

And on Saturday, the relaxed atmosphere of Friday evening transformed into something else - still oddly relaxed, yet passionate and positive too. Thousands of YES SCOTLAND supporters, swathed in blue saltires, or blue and white hats, scarves (in spite of the heat), tee shirts and tops, with balloons and flags, gathered on the steps of the Concert Hall. Cheery, singing everything from Flower of Scotland through Proclaimers' melodies to Singing I-i-yippy-ippy-i, there was almost two hours of simple communion. And smiles. Even when two BETTER TOGETHER supporters made their way into the middle of the crowd to hold up their Vote NO placards, the reaction was of  mutual amusement and pantomine, not the subliminal violence that the media has darkly suggested. But that didn't stop the Sunday Times the next day characterising the campaign as just so, in spite of offering little beyond some damaged posters and an egg broken across Labour MP Jim Murphy's highly sensitive shoulders.

So much for the traditions of Scottish politics where banter and flour bombs harmlessly demonstrated the passion at their heart. My own great uncle was arrested for impersonating former PM Asquith during the Paisley by-election of 1920 in a stunt that involved driving a coach and two horses through a crowd and ended with an evening in the police station. It was tame stuff compared to some of the events of those days, but likely to have seen him demonised as a menace to public order, or worse, in our era of corporately-owned, sanitised and paranoid politics.

Now, you shouldn't get too passionate about anything, because you need to be reconciled to nothing changing. Now, with this referendum, you are to vote NO out of fear of not being able to get a mortgage/ losing your job/ paying more for your milk and bread/ not being able to see Dr Who on the TV/ your telephones not working/ being more prey to terrorist attack/ facing border posts at Gretna Green/ experiencing massive economic collapse/ oil running out/ zombie plague attack...

But in the end, it isn't actually much about Scotland being separate or not. Not really. It is about a polity, a community democratically voting to defy the wishes of the Establishment - not just the political one, but the economic, the financial, above all the Corporate one too. They could countenance Scotland going - and some Tory MPs such as Nadine Dorries have sarcastically reiterated the old myth of Scottish dependency culture to ask "Why are we paying them to eat deep-fried Mars Bars when we don't have a decent NHS (in England)?"

But what they can't countenance is the massive blow to the Establishment a YES vote would be: at least in part because what has become an extraordinary mass movement might inspire similar demands  in other parts of the remainder of the UK, and even beyond - Catalonia especially is following the campaign closely, and on social and regional media the talk is increasingly of who next? Northern Ireland seems likely. Wales, possibly. But also there are stirrings for greater local governance in Cornwall, the North East, Yorkshire, and onwards, reflecting a reaction to the messy hodge podge of half baked devolution arrangements put in place by Labour and untouched by the Coalition.

YES supporters gathered at the Concert Hall

And so, in typical technocrat fashion, a plethora of tired out grey men in grey suits trooped up to Scotland to utter a myriad of panicky promises of future powers to the Holyrood Parliament. Lots of technical details about at least three if not more possible amendments to the remit of the Scottish legislature - a timetable even for its consideration; but nothing concrete, nothing agreed. And just as their pitch has been one of relentless fear of the future beyond a Yes vote, equally they have offered nothing meaningful in return - and nothing at all to foster any notion of a shared future, or celebrate the UK's achievements. It reached a culmination in a performance today by David Cameron in which the Prime Minister pleaded on behalf of the Union - supposedly the most successful democracy in the world, stopping slavery in the 19th century and facists in the 20th. 

But no mention of now - no mention of our becoming the second most unequal society on the planet; no mention of his Government's privatisation of our health service (hobbled with tens of billions of debt by the last Labour Government's Private Finance Initiative); no mention of the tax cuts for millionaires and the continuing assault on the poor which have been the hallmarks of the Tory-Lib Dem regime, and are set to continue with Labour signed up to the same spending agenda. And no mention of the true history of the British people - of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, or the Peterloo massacre, or the Matchstick strikes, or the sufragettes, of the men, women and children who fought tooth and nail against Cameron's predecessors to wrest democratic rights and some limited form of social justice from an ever resistant elite.

And so on Thursday, Scotland's voters - people of all religions, origins and social classes -will  have a dual potency. First, to Scotland and deciding on a choice to retake their lost sovereignty; and second, to deliver a body blow to the smug, corrupt complacency of the British political class.Whatever the outcome, the political system of the UK is broken irreparably. The three Westminster parties will be - already are - in existential crisis. Fixed parliaments or not, the end of the Coalition and a General Election may be just a few weeks away.

These are the last days of the United Kingdom. However the vote goes - and it is to be hoped it will be "Yes" - nothing will be the same again. Whichever side of the Border we find ourselves on, the challenge is how we fashion what comes next and make it better for all our people, for the poor and the vulnerable, for the creative and, above all, for the generations to come. Whether Britain continues to exist as a political entity or not, surely that would truly be a legacy worthy of the best of what has gone before - the Britain of the NHS, of the welfare state, of free education and of social change?  A largely vanished Britain of compassion and progress, now little more than a finally fading memory. A golden isle set in a silver sea, a hope of what might have been, but sadly never was.