Apollo - Dance

Coming from the DJ booth this evening is a little number from 2002. Place your handbag on the floor and ... dance.

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Politics After Newark

The morning after the night before. Across the land, the hundreds who made their by-election pilgrimage to Newark blinked at the results with bleary eyes. Tory vote down, but proportion up. UKIP up but not a contender. Labour down into third place and, for the second time in a space of a week, the LibDems slip behind the Greens. Hangovers all round, right? Wrong.

Politics is an art, not a science. Yet it has rhythms sufficient enough to venture predictions. And one forecast you could have made yesterday about the result coverage was that a) the Tory win shows they're on course for victory in 2015, b) UKIP are a busted flush, and c) it's a disaster for Labour. The ever-reliable Dan Hodges manages to distill all three in his too-smug summary of the results. With a bit more expert weight, John Curtice more or less says the same thing. Who am I to challenge this providence?

I'm going to anyway. First off, UKIP are not in terminal decline. They haven't jumped the shark. They are not about to transition into an ex-party. For the time being, they're here to stay. This is why Dan & co. are Westminster watchers par excellence. They see there are no upcoming events, apart from unforeseen by-elections, that UKIP can exploit to keep the momentum going. And come next May when the three main parliamentary parties present their programme of government, the so-called people's army will be out of sorts. That UKIP is a movement, a sociological phenomenon responding to economic restructuring, and the rewiring of culture and gender, passes them by. They're guilty of viewing icebergs to the exclusion of the nine tenths below the water line. And these not-immediately visible features are still exerting an influence. UKIP has thrown its anchor into the depths and snagged the subterranean structures, and they will hold the ship steady until such a time another force comes along and breaks their chain. Therefore reducing UKIP's success to the seasons of the political calendar is a philistine argument. This isn't to say political opportunities are without their efficacy; it is equally as daft to pretend otherwise. So yes, their anti-politics wildfire is due a dose of drizzle. Their flame will burn less brightly in polls between now and May. Furthermore, UKIP's over-exposure is starting to mobilise an anti-UKIP vote. Protesting a protest party by voting for the incumbent, as anecdote suggests, is something novel. So, in sum, Newark says nothing new about UKIP that we didn't already know. It's here. Deal with it.

Let's talk about the Conservatives. In the real world a nine per cent swing away from them has happened, but now it's getting spun as a triumph. Newark was the sea defence that turned back the UKIP tide. And you should think so too. Four visits from the PM, every minister and Tory MP in the land, 600 activists out last weekend (I wonder how many were constituency staff "volunteered" by their bosses?). Basically, the country's entire Conservative Party apparatus relocated and set up shop. There is lobbing the kitchen sink, but this was something else. When was the last time so much effort was put in to defend a super safe seat? Newark is a constituency where some districts still weigh the Conservative vote - using imperial measures, of course. The effort expended is proportional to the depths of desperation the Tories have sunk too. Their media friends are slapping them on the back for a job well done. In fact, there has seldom been a starker demonstration of their political and organisational weakness.

And now Labour. On the one hand, we have people telling us we now live in the era of four-party politics (three, if you want to discount the LibDems). On the other, Labour isn't doing good enough to win next year. Looking at John Curtice again, he says:

The truth is that they [Labour] should be on tenterhooks as to whether they will win the seat. That swing that they would need, it is less than the Labour Party achieved in Norwich, less than the Conservatives achieved in Norwich in the last Parliament, less than Labour achieved in Dudley West, Wirrel South just before they won the 1997 election. When oppositions look as though they are on course for government, the kind of swing that is required for Labour to win has been relatively common. To that extent, we have to ask ourselves, why is it we are not asking the question, could Labour win this? It is all of a piece, as a result of the recent elections, Labour do not have the enthusiasm and depth of support in the electorate that make them look like an alternative government.

If this was before 2010, the good professor may have had a point. Yes, Labour's vote share is down. But Curtice has forgotten that the past is a foreign country. The four party dynamic for second order elections does not allow past behaviour to serve as an accurate predictor, as used to be the case. UKIP is an entirely new factor. Think about it like this. Did the LibDems holding on in Eastleigh augur well for them? No. How about the Tories coming third in Sunderland - does extinction loom? No. It's fair to say every by-election since Labour won Corby in 2012 has departed from conventional wisdom. Incumbents have won with a reduced majority, and with UKIP not that far behind. Hence UKIP is the go-to protest vote everywhere in England and Wales, regardless of who holds the seat because what is being protested isn't one party, but all three mainstream parties. Quite why no commentator has taken this sequence of by-elections together and read it for what it is - a protest against establishment politics - is beyond me. As a "sod the lot of you" protest against Westminster politics, it's a mistake to extrapolate and/or cast doubt on who will and won't win next year. A good proportion of that vote will stick with UKIP, as polls suggest. But where it doesn't and how that is distributed across the country, that's the great unknown. All anyone can say with confidence is that the result will be close.

We're in genuinely new territory. Instead of relying on old maps it's time to explore - and fight - anew.

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Why the Tories Want Fracking

While the bulk of the commentariat have picked up on the recall plans in yesterday's Queen's speech, the government's single-minded pursuit of fracking has caused less excitement. Philip Pearson of the TUC sums it up:

* Removing the responsibility for companies to notify individual landowners of their intention to frack.
* Underground access: proposing changes to trespass laws that would give fracking companies the right to drill under homes and businesses
without permission.
* Proposing to introduce “standard” environmental permits which will normally remove the right of local people to be consulted.
* Failing to consult on planning practice guidance which means planning rules override the interests of communities.

Let's call this what it is: a fracker's charter.

It is an absolute failure of our politics that the close relationship between the Tories and the fossil fuel lobby is a) not widely known about, and b) seized upon by the opposition. Evidence isn't hard to find. He who pays the piper ...

A lot of political opinion about fracking is informed by the stupidest of stupid empiricism. It really goes no deeper than "oh look, the American economy is enjoying cheaper fuel bills and a manufacturing renaissance thanks to shale oil and gas - let's have some of that!" That US shale has been consumed domestically because the export infrastructure doesn't exist, that the UK's geology is more complex, that fracking will not reduce fuel bills is barely, if at all recognised by the government. And this is before you start talking about subsidence, ground water poisoning, carbon emissions and climate change. You can only conclude their ignorance is studied, a stance that not so much borders but trespasses fully into the willful.

In the Tories case, their zeal for fracking, their granting of no-holds-barred rights to their mates has an undercurrent of desperation to it. In their more honest moments, away from the microphones and earwigging of the press, Dave, Osborne, and the rest know that the much-trumpeted "fastest-growing economy in Europe" is lop-sided and based on fundamental weaknesses. Selling houses to each other is not the recipe for a sustained recovery. But unleashing fracking ticks a number of boxes for this most short-termist, poll-obsessed of governments. It rings the bell for energy independence and (non-existent) bill decreases; it employs new people in primary industry, contributing to some rebalancing metric or another; and every exploratory well counts toward those practically deified GDP figures. In short, a rapid spate of exploratory drills and building of a shale infrastructure helps compensate for the structural economic weaknesses this government has done nothing to address.

The thinking is that economic growth will save their bacon next May, so they are scrambling for every positive indicator they can find. In their haste, however, they have overlooked how fracking - at least its initial wave - will be blighting the South East, the one English region that has consistently awarded them poll leads this parliament. Hence not only is the Tory party, as the preferred party of the ruling class, utterly incapable of attending to the long-term interests of British capital, it is dangerously cavalier about its own narrow interests.

Let's make sure fracking does them some serious damage before a single drill is sunk.

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Is Labour for Independence a SNP Front?

Naughty, naughty.

Source

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TUSC's Exercises in Self-Deception

Under-appreciated they may be, but local elections are a vital component of any party-building project. UKIP certainly accept this wisdom. They know that a base in local government can give them a foundation on which to build. And theirs is an ambitious project. It's not about taking Britain out of the EU, but replacing the Tories. As such, their 161 new councillors give them a start for 2015 and beyond. The far left have cottoned on to this too. In addition to haphazardly standing in the European elections as No2EU, the Socialist Party-led Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition stood in 554 council seats - apparently, a record for a left-of-Labour challenge. How did it do?

According to TUSC's official report, 12% of all council seats were contested by the coalition, up from five, four, and two per cent in 2013, 12, and 11 respectively. This was also an electoral challenge with social weight.

There were 53 candidates who were members of the RMT transport workers' union, one of the constituent organisations, of course, of TUSC. But then there were 19 Communication Workers' Union members who were candidates, 18 members of the National Union of Teachers, 16 PCS members, and 20 members of the University and College Union. From the big Labour-affiliated unions, there were 74 Unison members standing for TUSC and 130 members of Unite.

TUSC polled 68,152 votes and saw its anti-cuts councillor, Keith Morrell retain his seat in Southampton. According to Hannah Sell, the SP's deputy general secretary, this represented the anger of an "important minority of workers" ignored by the media. Nevertheless "the achievements in this election - particularly the breadth of TUSC's local election challenge - mark an important step on the road to building such a force" that can challenge Labour and stand up for working class people.

There's nothing wrong with ambition, but to achieve something you have to appraise where you are and how you might meet your destination. An honest reflection on TUSC's results would set it in the context of labour movement weakness, the - unfortunately - wide indifference to austerity, the ongoing restructuring of the British labour market, the crisis of mainstream politics, and the continued acceptance of neoliberal common sense. It also means having a sense of history - where does TUSC sit in relation to and how does it compare with the preceding regroupment projects of the previous 20 years? Has it developed any since it was founded in early 2010? It has to ask discomfiting questions such as why does it continue to poll less than spectacularly, why have the comrades who formed Left Unity given TUSC a wide berth, and why do Labour-affiliated unions remain stubbornly Labour loyal? It has to ponder on where the new party SP/TUSC want to see is likely to come from, and how their coalition is a step toward it. To answer these questions, to perform an analysis that takes all this in requires honesty. Alas, the official line coming from the SP/TUSC is fundamentally dishonest.

Take the victory of Keith Morrell in Southampton, for instance. This was one of the few areas TUSC or, to be more accurate, Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts, ran candidates in all wards. All wards that is save one: the Coxford seat. Coxford happens to be the ward which brother Morrell won. See for yourself - he was down on the ballot paper as 'Independent'. You might say it doesn't matter - the significant point was that his "bold stand" was rewarded by the electorate. Nevertheless, it does require an explanation. Did Keith think the TUSAC label would have weighed him down like a corpulent albatross? Were TUSC happy to have one of their few "star turns" spurn their label? Why have the SP/TUSC kept mum about it - is it because Keith winning can be read as legitimation of their strategy? As he himself puts it, "this result ... shows what is possible. Other significant results across the city for TUSC candidates show the potential that exists for a new party that stands up for working people." These "significant results" were coming last in all but one ward, and polling between the 15 of them gave TUSC just 40 more votes than what Keith received alone.

Let's have a look at the national "significance" of the TUSC result. 68,152 votes split between 554 candidates is an average of 123 votes. Not bad by far left standards. But putting that in perspective, the Labour Party's 95 candidates in May's by-elections got 72,754 votes. Across the local elections as a whole it won the popular vote with 2.9m votes, or just under 36%. In contrast, TUSC won 0.8%. To be fair, you might say TUSC were hampered by standing in far fewer seats. That much is true, but this comes with a caveat. Given the very limited resources available - and going from previous experience - TUSC go for seats they think are particularly favourable, and these tend to be Labour-held seats. If they consistently perform badly here, they will consistently perform badly everywhere else. If these results are genuinely about putting down a marker, those seats have to be worked repeatedly. Alas, if past behaviour is the best indicator of future behaviour only a very small number of those wards will be so worked, and then it will - in the vast majority of cases - be as the SP, until TUSC/TUSAC is dusted down for the next set of elections.

As for the rest, well. Let's just say cherry picking the least worst results is as embarrassing as it is silly. For example, while noting TUSC chair Dave Nellist got a "very good 974 votes" and coming second, it "forgot" to mention this was once a ward where the SP had all three councillors and that, unfortunately for Dave and his comrades, his vote share is in decline. Across Coventry too, once something of a crown jewel for the SP, in the 13 clashes with the decrepit and near-extinct BNP, the fascists outpolled TUSC in all but three of them. While it might be keen to talk up how in Birmingham 1,766 votes  were won (lower than what the LibDems polled in a number of single wards), where's the chin stroking and furrowed brows over the 12 votes here, and 19 votes there. What point is an analysis if it fights shy of setbacks and disappointments?

What about the social weight, the dozens of trade unionists and community campaigners that decided to stand for TUSC? After all, didn't Lenin once note that elections were the lowest form of class struggle? For those turned on politically by such things, the beauty pageant of candidates with union membership by their names sounds impressive. However, the one significant set of initials missing from the bulk of prospective councillors was (SP). All party members are expected to be members of their unions and certainly, the SP pulled out all the stops, urging as many members as it could to stand. This is your real reason for the preponderance of trade unionists on the list - it is factually accurate, but does not represent large numbers breaking with Labour which, of course, is the intended impression it wants to convey.

No one is naive enough to think the SP leadership are interested in a sober analysis of where its flagship project stands. Their treatment of TUSC's results are exercises in self-deception. It's fodder to keep the troops marching, to demonstrate to them that the campaign was worth it and that real successes were made. Sure, TUSC was squeezed by UKIP mania and there was a media blackout but 68,000 votes represent a real echo among the class. Etcetera, etcetera. More importantly, however, the SP desperately need to keep the RMT on board. With a crunch election coming in 2015, whoever wins September's ballot, the new boss will be under pressure to back Labour next May, a pressure made all the stronger now there are clear, discernible differences between it and Dave's hapless, vicious Tories. Talking up TUSC's "achievements" and the absence of any kind of open, critical reflection has to be seen in this context. The SP and its eternal general secretary knows as well as I that if the RMT goes, not only will the TUSC project be sunk but it will have a profoundly demoralising impact on a whole layer of party activists. In short, it would be a disaster and back to square one.

Overall, contrast the SP's analysis and commentary with the heavy load of words expended by Labour people looking at last Thursday's results. One set of comment has been asking searching questions about their party's levels of support - whether it's enough to win next year, whether the electoral base is fraying, whether it too is prone to UKIP's predations. Meanwhile, the other content themselves with a self-satisfied mangled marriage of boosterism and excuses. It is, yet again, another symptom of an avowedly Trotskyist organisation unable or unwilling to use the categories they lay claim to make sense of their own position. What's going on when the sell-out Labourites are more Marxist than the Marxists?

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Dave's Desperate Referendum Stunt

This post begins with a quiz. Who here is the biggest cynic? Me, your host of some seven-and-a-half years. Or Dave, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Don't answer yet! Let's examine the evidence first.

You might have noticed that an election took place last week, one that saw an unprecedented number of votes go to the hard and the far right across Europe. You may also have caught a little bit of coverage about something called UKIP. However, the biggest bloc in the new European Parliament is the so-called European People's Party. This Soviet-sounding formation is the main grouping for the EU's centre right parties, such as Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU and the French UMP (ex-of Sarkozy). Programmatically it shares with the centre left's Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats a commitment to deepening the EU project, both economically and politically. For this reason, Dave took the Tories out of the EPP to found the European Conservatives and Reformists group in 2009 - to all intents and purposes a eurosceptic lash up with Polish and Czech rightists.

Shortly after the election of a new parliament, a new president of the European Commission is appointed/confirmed. The EC is the EU's executive body and operates not unlike a government. Its "cabinet" comprises 28 members from each of the member states. This is where it gets a bit confusing. Candidates for the president are put forward by yet another body, the European Council, which is an institution made up by heads of state/heads of governments. Confusingly, it also acts as a sort of clearing house for collective decision-making in competition with and superior to the commission. Its president, Herman Van Rompuy, should not be confused with the EC president. The council therefore puts forward its favoured candidates, which are then voted on by MEPs.

Dave is reportedly annoyed that the candidate favoured by the EPP is the Merkel-backed Jean-Claude Juncker. If he ascends to the EC presidency, Dave is "threatening" to bring forward the EU referendum. What is then so offensive about this man? Is it that during his 18 years as Luxembourg's prime minister he twice formed a governing coalition with the Socialist Workers Party? Alas, it comes down to his record as an out-and-out Europhile, specifically his roles in drawing up the Maastricht Treaty and laying the groundwork for monetary union. For this he won the Vision for Europe award in 1998. However, in so doing Juncker was merely pursuing Luxembourg's national interest. As a small (some might say petty) state sandwiched between France, Belgium and Germany, positioning oneself as a politician driving integration has amplified Luxembourg's standing in continental affairs.

As EC presidential candidates go, there's nothing remarkable about Juncker. It's not as if he'd spend a term of office picketing the European Council demanding a single foreign policy and a single military. Not that any of this matters to Dave.

While the headlines last week were all about UKIP, Labour and the LibDems, the Conservatives were badly rattled by the local and European election results. Losing flagship councils, coming third in a national election for the first time ever, that's going to hurt. And they are a party that cannot come up with a coherent strategy for fighting its the two-front election war - concentrating fire on Labour leaves their right flank dangerously exposed to an increasingly emboldened and insufferable Nigel Farage. And vice versa. Take on UKIP and Labour will pull the marginals from under you. Like its non-existent "long-term economic plan", the Tories have taken laissez-faire to their political hearts - as the GDP figures tick upwards they pray the invisible hand will deliver them five more years. Politics for them is now a series of disconnected set-pieces, sometimes aimed at Labour, sometimes aimed at UKIP. The hope is the Tories will be come up trumps in both.

Dave's song and dance about Juncker's presidency is the first in this recurring pattern of "political stands". In this particular case, Dave is playing fast and loose with Britain's national interests to reap short-term points in the polls. Inexplicably, despite being a consistently weak leader of his party vs his Labour opponent, the appellations are switched around. Therefore drawing a line in the sand by threatening an in/out referendum allows his media mates to draw him as "standing up for Britain" against the EU (or, if you prefer, Germany) and being "prime ministerial". Even though there is absolutely no risk to British sovereignty should his appointment happen. Politically, it is a very clumsy move. You don't threaten the nuclear option unless the stakes are high. Even Kim Jong-un knows that. But ah, you see, this isn't Downing Street's official line. It is a suggestion that has been touted to Der Spiegel, but with the affectation of plausible deniability. In all, it's desperate, desperate stuff. Yet what place Britain's immediate interests vs the Conservatives' need to win the next election.

So, returning to the question I opened with, who's the cynic?

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Five Most Popular Posts for May

The five most popular posts last month were:

1. The Meaning of Conchita Wurst
2. UKIP's Lizzy Vaid and Revenge Porn
3. The Coming Death of the New Misogyny
4. Why the BBC Loves UKIP
5. Lazy Thinking and the Election Results

Amazing, nothing about the far left made it into the top five! It's all good, old fashioned commentary about the cultural and political issues that have exercised the popular imagination. While it makes a nice change, I am especially gratified to see the misogyny post do well - especially in light of the murderous hate crimes committed by its new poster boy, Elliot Rodger.

Understandably, given the boost UKIP have had this month a couple of related pieces clambered up the pile. How will they fair in Newark this Thursday? Will it come within a whisker of taking the seat, demonstrating that - again - had Farage not lost his bottle he'd be packing up his Brussels office and heading to Westminster? And more importantly, how will Elvis Loves Pets poll?

As ever, a couple of things deserve a second look. First is yesterday's post on the perverse games Stoke City Council (and all local authorities) have to play to attract investment and spur regeneration. The second is UKIP as an outpouring of English nationalism - though winning a Euro seat in Scotland and coming second in Wales shows it might not be as English as commentators tend to think it is.

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