It’s going to get worse! The Americanisation of British politics.

I’m not sure when it really started. Was it Maggie bringing in Saatchi & Saatchi for the 1979 election? Certainly by the time Blair was aping Clinton with sound bites, spin doctors and the 24 hour grin we were well on our way. Even Blair’s career path of university to law to politics was the standard American one. Now I have nothing against America, I worked for US marine companies for most of my working life. I am even a republican in the sense that I would rather not have a monarchy. But I do not envy the US political system. Now, like them, the difference between our two major parties can be hard to define.

Recently I have begun to feel we were out doing the Americans at their own game. It’s the increase of twenty-something potential and actual election candidates who have moved directly from university to a political career. This isn’t only happening with our own party, but also with the Tories and Liberals. Although I don’t always agree with him the Ken Livingstone interview on the Labourlist blog does highlight what’s going on. See two of his answers below.

Q. “Do you mean Old Labour with a capital O and a capital L or…”

KL. “Both! The main weakness of the so-called New Labour project was that it was too young and too graduate middle class. I was surprised how many old right-wingers who had spent their lives trying to stop me ended up supporting me because of how bad things had got.”

Q. “You know you can be young and graduate and working class and on the left of the party…”

KL. “I’m sure there is one somewhere. But in the run up to the 1998 Borough council elections in London, they introduced al these tests. Instead of being selected, you had to write statements of your values and management experience. But it wasn’t just the left wing that was stripped down by that; it was the working class people, black and white. I thought that was absolutely disgraceful. Blair and Brown between them took a functioning, broadly working class party, but one that was also strongly middle class, and reduced it to a shell. They closed down all the channels by which working class people could express themselves, through their unions and their local parties. If they hadn’t closed down the Labour party in that way, they might not have made the catastrophic mistake in carrying on Thatcher’s ban on council house building, And they’re now surprised that working class people are angry? What fuels the anger of those working class voters is that their kids have got nowhere to live.”

We haven’t really seen this since WW2. Before that there were rural seats that were passed down through aristocratic families, but by the 1945 election many of the new MPs had been in the forces before. Even those who wanted a political career like Churchill 40 years before that started with another job.

These new members of the political class are the evil spawn of Blair, Cameron and Clegg. Blair had a pretend job in law while attempting to get into parliament. Cameron didn’t even do this, going straight into the Conservative Research Department. Clegg looks like he saw the opportunity to enter UK politics via Europe.

But what do these and the new crop bring to the table; what experiences have they had which will help the country move forward? I try to see something positive in the youth of these people and New Labour’s parachuting in the likes of Georgia Gould, but it’s not working for me. Just look at the photos of the posters in the left column of Labourlist’s home page. It scares me that these are our next Labour Party representatives. (Apologies to those who don’t feel they fit my description.)

What the expense scandal should tell us is that we can’t afford to have this type of candidate. The political class must know that eventually the public will revolt and not just by not voting, or by voting BNP. Maybe a study of the French revolution will give them some warning. The people are very angry.

Equality

Just put this over at Labourhome. Seems I'm blogging more there than here. Anyway this a copy of what I put up.

Why has it become such a dirty word. Roy Hattersley tells of it being a non-word in the early days of New Labour after Blair had gained the leadership. One of Blair’s groupies told him off for using it. How strange, but then again how strange that Hattersley found himself ending up to the left of the leadership.

What got me thinking about this was seeing the BBC management’s salary and expense figures being released under the freedom of information laws. On top of this we hear of another million pound plus package for the new boss of RBS.

Sure New Labour bought in the minimum wage but at the same time we saw the gap between the poorest in the UK and the top wage earners widen to levels it hasn’t been before. GPs are pulling in six figure salaries which also seems the norm for whole layers of management through the public sector. In the corporate world even failing companies pay top management seriously high salaries and bonuses. At the same time the vast majority of the population is now falling further behind.

Part of Labour’s business used to be attempting to iron out these differences but since New Labour this is no longer the case. They say follow the market forces, it’s no sin to be rich. We no longer look to politicians to be altruistic and working for the public good. Instead why shouldn’t they get as much out of the expenses as they can? After all as Gordon Gekko said “greed is good” and as Maggie said while be very honest, “there is no such thing as society.”

So before the usual Tories start adding their comments, let’s look at the downside of trying to engineer a little equality.

First then, “if we don’t pay these people the fat pay packets we will lose them to other companies or countries”. Not sure if there are that many of either ready to pay Mark Thompson his 600,000+ and if there are banks willing to hire away some of our senior management then good to luck to them. If all our GPs want to go private, fine, but how many will be able to pull in 100,000+ in a saturated private market. Go to the US by all means, but you may not find the health industry there is willing to pay quite like it did in the past.

Second, “we would hurt entrepreneurship in the UK”. Sorry these people are not entrepreneurs. They are corporate and public sector bureaucrats. Successful entrepreneurs will always find a way of making the big money. You only have to look at Mandelson’s mates among the Russian oligarchs. Anyone who has ever dealt with the corporate world will know that talent seldom rises to the top. Instead a level of mediocrity reigns as higher levels worry about competition from below.

For Labour to get back on track and offer the public something different to the Tories we need to be using words like equality again. If we leave it to New Labour we will be trying to prove we are nicer Tories than the real Tories yet again.

Another post at Labourhome

I do like seeing where our politicians came from. Gordon Brown turned his thesis on the Scottish socialist James Maxton into a book. At the time he considered him a hero. Now I suspect he would expel him from the Labour Party if he had a chance. I posted this on http://www.labourhome.org/.

I read someone accusing Tony Blair of being a new Ramsay MacDonald a few years back. I think it's more Gordon Brown who has a bit of MacDonald (see picture) in him. His 'government of all the talents' was sure to make historians think of MacDonald's National Government.

From "Maxton" by Gordon Brown 1986

"The Clydeside Brigade* travelled to Westminster as a group. With salaries of only £400 a year, and no travelling expenses paid, most travelled down sleeping on the seats and floors of third class compartments."

Back in a time when to be a Labour MP was a vocation not a career choice. There are still Labour members who would do this for their beliefs, but they don’t get on the shortlists. I hope Blears, Purnell and the rest read this and feel shame, but I doubt they will do either.

* This was the group of Glasgow Labour MPs, including James Maxton, elected in the 1922 election.

From the Labourhome blog

This is a copy of the first article I posted over at http://www.labourhome.org/. I thought I had better keep a record of them here too. Like the post before this, it's me feeling that the New Labour idea has lost any momentum and we just watching it die now.

Is the experiment coming to an end?

In 1994 the biggest experiment in British politics since the Second World War began. 15 years down the line it looks like it’s coming to the end. Back then the Labour Party made a deal with Blair, Brown and those about them like Campbell and Mandelson. The deal was Labour would be electable if it gave total control of the party to these people and dropped its old ideals, traditions and ways of working.

Now before we all berate ourselves it should be remembered that at the previous election Kinnock had led the party to defeat against Major, and prior to that Thatcher had been punishing every Labour attempt to regain power. In hindsight we could say we didn’t really need a Blair to win the next election as the Tory government was in meltdown, much like the present Labour one.

What should be said is that Blair went on to win two more elections, but again it could be argued that the Tories were still in a suicidal frame of mind during this period. Looking back on this deal between the Labour Party and its new leadership we see the latter mostly lived up to their part. One part of the deal that they didn’t though was the promise of more party democracy, which has since been curtailed so much by the leadership. What activist hadn’t reckoned on was how little would be achieved in 13 years of Labour power. Trying to find progressive policies amongst the many conservative ones is quite hard. Compared to the six years of Atlee’s first government they have done next to nothing.

As with any experiment, we are testing a theory to see if it is correct. When the New Labour idea was finally tested it failed miserably. First test was whether it could hand over power to a new leader. From this we ended up with a PLP coronation. Next was its first financial crisis and recession while in power and it had no policies for the situation. The only answer was to dump the free market policies it had been following, shore up the banks and return to Keynesian ideas the party had followed before they came along. The third test was the trust that Labour MPs are basically honest. This was destroyed as the expenses scandals came out and one after another Blair follower was found with their hands in the till.

Let’s look at what New Labour bought us. Of course we should have been suspicious when Blair and Mandelson started their campaign before John Smith was in the ground. It was a pointer to the total lack of principles of this new movement with many more to come. It was to Americanise politics in the UK. To have two main parties with no basic policy differences, just a difference in compassion. To make elections almost presidential with the charisma of the leaders the main vote catcher. (Aren’t Cameron and Clegg just Blair clones?) To have people like Campbell to spin, lie and create the sound-bites instead of sensible discussion. Was it any wonder that the MPs that signed up to this new deal with no principles or ideals ended up stealing from the public through their expenses?

So when the experiment ends what will come next? If the Labour party ends up as some European style Social Democrat party that Roy Jenkins wanted it will fight for the same ground that the Liberals now have, as Jenkins found out. Was the party under the leadership of Kinnock and Smith a better place to be? I suspect so, even with all the infighting, it still had some of that broad church feel. Is there another place we should be heading; is there another ‘new’ experiment to come? Maybe, but we had better be a bit more cautious this time.

Is the New Labour experiment finally over?

It's had 15 years but with the first recession they have faced while being the government New Labour is falling to pieces. Now their spin doctors are trying to remove the "New"; if anyone's to blame, let it be the whole Labour Party. The Blairites are biding their time to put the knife into the Brown. Hazel Blears who has managed to fiddle £13,000 in taxes owed, goes in such a way as to make Gordon Brown suffer the most. Rumours are that she is organizing the rebellion.

The truth is once tested New Labour failed. The reason I think is it was always a grouping that turned its back on Labour's history and traditions and had no real principles to replace the old ones with. What Blair and Brown were offering the public was a better Tory party and while the Tories were committing suicide with sleaze and right wing policies it left a space for New Labour. As the Tories moved back to a center right position, this spot got crowded. We find the Liberals to left of the Labour Party which just shouldn't be.

The lack of principles gave the Parliamentary Labour Party a yuppie careerist look that Cameron's Tories now do better. I feel it was this lack of principles that sees so many of these New Labour MPs in deep expense trouble. The lack of internal party democracy will for a time support the New Labour leadership but eventually it will have to be replaced.

We need to look at why Blair and Brown managed to take over the party because there were reasons that allowed this. Michael Foot was a disaster and Neil Kinnock not much better. We must also not forget that Militant gave them an excuse to curtail the internal democracy. If we acknowledge what went wrong before it makes it less likely it will happen again.

What we should learn is we must never trade principles for power and hopefully the experiment is coming to an end.

Poor Little Georgia!

Again I have to admit my interest in the Labour Party going-ons in the Erith and Thamesmead constituency is because for most of the time I lived in the UK my home was there. Yesterday's Evening Standard interview with Georgia Gould must give you a chuckle. Guessing that most things she does follow Daddy and his friends advice, the Blairite spin doctors got it wrong yet again.

The Standard allows Georgia to whinge about how she was smeared during the selection process without any questions from the Standard's 'reporters'. In fact it looks like a celebrity press release from Max Clifford rather than an interview. Were reporters David Cohen and Joe Murphy actually there.

Let's read a paragraph in her 'own' words as she does her poor little rich girl act. "I was the victim of a well orchestrated and vicious smear campaign," she said. "Every day, I'd wake to articles in the media, and they came from both the Left and the Right, assailing me for being too rich, too young, too inexperienced, but mostly — too well connected. There were days the flak got so bad that I became quite depressed, which is really quite unlike me, and I never wanted to get out of bed."

What she doesn't mention is that in order to help her the local constituency party chairman was removed and her helpers started a campaign to misuse postal votes so she could win without having to get the majority of those who actually turn up for the party selection meeting. (The rules on postal voting at this stage are they should only be used when there are good reasons for not being able to attend the meeting.)

I love this bit. "It's not about Old Labour or New Labour, or Blairites or Brownites any more," she said. "These are old divides, a false split, a dead language, and they speak of a moribund politics that totally misses the point." So I guess Georgia doesn't work for the Blair Faith Foundation then and the papers got it wrong. Who was it that got her on the shortlist one wonders?

Whatever the aims of this piece of New Labour spin, and whether it was done by Alistair Campbell or not, the outcome was it didn't work. Just look at the comments under the article. It seems to be running at 90% against poor Georgia. (A note to the spin doctors - it just doesn't work any more. With the MP expenses scandal people just don't believe in you. They won't clap their hands to bring back Tinkerbelle, or Campbell, or Mandelson.)

Sadly where the article is correct is that Georgia Gould will probably turn up again as a candidate for a Labour seat at the next election and it will probably be through a women only shortlist in a 'safe' Labour seat.

Return the power to the people.

So Gordon Brown has asked Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) to decide which MPs should be deselected. The sub-committee which will do this will chaired by Blairite Kath Speight, (see picture), the NEC's chairperson. We can expect then that those close to Brown and Blair will escape punishment by the party. I would be very surprised if the NEC went after Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith, Tony McNulty, Ed Balls & wife, Geoff Hoon and the chief whip, Nick Brown.

Who will not get any say in deselection are the constituencies these people represent via their constituency parties (CLPs). The power to choose Labour Party candidates was taken away from the local parties years ago, but Kinnock, Blair and company made it even more difficult as a way of stopping entrists like Militant choosing. That may or may not have been correct at the time, but now there is no need to guard the central leadership's power quite so closely. This power has been misused badly with shortlists and cronies parachuted in.

Let the CLPs decide if they want to deselect these and other expense thieves in the party. If the party feels it necessary they can have the right to refuse a prospective replacement but they must stop the forcing of favourites on the local parties. Even Blair had to go through this process. No more shortcuts! No more Georgia Goulds.

At last a choice.

I have been getting a little too one-eyed recently and allowing my dislike of New Labour and the sleaze around them to miss some important choices coming up ahead. The Tories and New Labour are beginning to split away in how to deal with the economic crisis. Up until now Brown, and Blair before him, have been following the economic ideas of Milton Friedman who inspired Thatcher and Reagan. This did not give David Cameron much room to maneuver. John Maynard Keynes, pictured, and his ideas were consigned to the dustbin of history. Now it's beginning to change. As Brown starts to look for Keynesian answers to the crisis Cameron has stayed true to Thatcherism.

As much as the Tories would rather not get tied down on policies before the election, and many of the voters will let their dislike of New Labour control their vote, the election will have an enormous effect on the standard of living of most British voters. Now I cannot pretend to be an expert on economics, but seeing that the experts have got it so wrong recently I will try and explain what I feel is the difference between the parties policies and the results this might give.

I will start with the Tories as this is the easy one. It's now clear that David Cameron will not try and spend his way out of the recession/depression. This is the pure laissez-faire much favoured in the past by the likes of Thatcher and Enoch Powell. Companies and banks in trouble will be allowed to fold. As less people are at work and able to pay tax, social services will be cut. The government will rely on charities to support the weakest. We will start to see deflation and a depression like that of the 1930's will occur. We will see strife on the streets. Those with considerable cash savings will benefit although house prices will tumble as more default on their mortgages. In the end the middle class will be hurt along with those underneath but the very rich will get away without too much pain. This will be explained by Cameron as not allowing future generation to be saddled with the enormous debt.

Now to New Labour. Brown and some of the others seem to have had a road to Damascus moment and are seeing the dangers in a Thatcherite answer to the crisis which following those ideas has led them into. It might be that some of these New Labour ministers can't bring themselves to break from old ideas and there are rumours that Alistair Darling may resign if forced to keep on spending. So what is the Keynesian response to the crisis? Basically it is to spend our way out of the recession. It will need money printed and acceptance of inflation to work. What they are attempting is to buy growth. This was how FDR pulled the US out of the depression, although the war may have contributed also.

What effect would New Labour's policies have? Well because of inflation, unless interest rates rise fast, those with cash savings will see the real value decline. It will be hard to see this policy propping up housing prices, or at least the real property value after inflation, but the fall could be less than that with depression and deflation. If we get the desired growth, then those in the middle class and lower may see a smaller drop in their standard of living than otherwise. Inflation will of course make the government debt smaller in real value. The danger is stagflation where we have the inflation but no growth which is a possibility as the damage to the economy is already so great. That could put us into a pre-war German-like situation. One of the problems that could lead us in that direction would be if the government was forced to protect the exchange rate or get finance for the government debt by raising interest rates.

So we are caught between a rock and a hard place and a decision will have to be made. The Tories would much rather we didn't think about the outcome of their policies while Labour has no guarantee that theirs will work. I know what way I'm leaning, but I suspect that Brown and Blair have created such a bad smell that it will make no difference.

Guilty Men

Guilty Men was published in 1940 naming and calling for the retirement of those politicians responsible for the policy of appeasement with Hitler's Germany. Within weeks it had sold over 200,000 copies. It would be interesting today to see who would be named for responsibility of today's economic crisis.

James Crosby, pictured right, would be an easy target. He was in charge of HBOS during its most badly managed period and managed to fire the compliance manager who tried to warn the bank of the problems it was getting into. Yes the bankers are responsible but they couldn't have done what they did with the help of the politicians. Both in the UK and the US politicians from Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan through to the Blair/Brown and GW Bush have done all they could to remove regulation that controlled the worst of the financial industry's scams and frauds.

Gordon Brown must carry some of this blame, but I suspect we will never hear him say he's sorry. He will continue to say it was an international problem outside of his control. Crosby was his favourite banker and Brown made him 2nd. in command of the regulators, the FSA, that should have been monitoring what the banks were up to. Now making a poacher the gamekeeper is fine and often works but it does rely on the poacher knowing that poaching was wrong. For the promotion and honours given to James Crosby, Brown should at least apologise.

For being a bad driver you can be sent to prison even if an accident wasn't intentional. Let's see some bankers in prison for the bad management they gave while driving the country into this economic crisis.

Blair Groupies Now Like Gordon

Yesterday I posted that Mandelson coming back into the cabinet must have meant that the ultra-Blairites had cut a deal with Brown. To add strength to that supposition we have one of the Blairites, George Howarth, on the BBC's website saying that he no longer wants a leadership election. Are there really no Labour MPs that will at least put up a fight, even if just over fear of losing their seats?

Brown and Blair were not the first.

Gordon Brown, and Tony Blair, were not the first Labour leaders to continue Thatcher-like policies after they replaced a Tory leader. In fact Thatcher-like policies didn't start with Thatcher but were a throwback to a much earlier age.

For some reason UK TV is going through a period of re-examining Doctor Richard Beeching's destruction of the postwar nationalized British railways. It's about 45 years since his first report that started the axing of so much of the railway infrastructure. The Wilson government of 1964 continued his policies although in their election statements they said they would save the axed lines.

Beeching was a appointed as the highest paid UK civil servant of the time, 1961, by the conservative Minister of Transport and crook, Ernest Marples. Marples had interests in road building companies that he moved into his wife's name while as Minister of Transport, he did his best to increase road transport and decrease that on rail. He had to live the last few years of his life in the tax shelter of Monaco on the run from the UK tax authorities and various court cases started against him. He was a typical Thacherite conservative long before Thatcher's takeover of the party came about.

The person who most resembles Marples today is actually the US vice-president. I wonder if Dick Cheney will spend the last few years of his life in the tax shelter of Dubai, the new head office town of Haliburton, on the run from the US legal system?

The lesson from the Beeching reports, which led to the closure of 25% of the UK's railway mileage and 50% of the stations, were not learnt by governments up until this day. If you close basic infrastructure for purely economic reasons without taking any public need into account, it is very hard to get it back later. Whether it's railways or national health services, profit should not be the governing force. The needs of the public should have the highest priority.

Better Late Than Never - A Windfall Profits Tax

This week we had two major oil companies declaring extra high profits, Shell and Exxon. Exxon actually set a record high profit in the US for all industries, not just oil. There had never been a profit result that high before.

This blog in March gave the head of Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, the title of "an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism" first awarded to Tiny Rowland by Edward Heath. My argument then was that van der Veer was trying to fight off any talk of a windfall profits tax. Big oil knew it had friends at the very top of the US political system in Bush and Cheney, but must have been a bit nervous in the UK of some of the Labour backbenchers.

A windfall profits tax on the oil companies was introduced in 1980 by Jimmy Carter on the oil companies who were gouging the public after the OPEC oil embargo. Now it seems that even some cabinet ministers in the UK are talking about it. See the BBC story "Ministers 'consider' windfall tax". Now the chances are that Brown will be against it, but for the next Labour leader in the Autumn it is important to get some basic Labour ideas across and this is one. Even Barak Obama is talking windfall taxes.

So will it be John Hutton who leads the first revolt against Brown in the government. Much as it doesn't taste very nice, the next Labour leader will be one of the Blair groupies, male or female, but it's not the person that's important but the policies that must change from the Blair/Brown Thatcherite ones in present use.

Reasons to Dump Brown - Part 4

Labour is in danger of matching its 1931 election results if it can not hang onto the safe seats in Scotland. Back then, after Ramsey MacDonald had deserted the party, they were reduced to 52 seats. With the Gordon Brown impersonator, Wendy Alexander, as leader of the Scottish Labour Party is it any surprise that Labour lost its traditional support in Glasgow? (I wrote this without even realizing she had alreay resigned almost a month before because of sleaze. Things are looking up.)

Today we have union leaders Paul Kenny and Tony Woodley calling for change, one for a new party leader and the other for a return to more traditional policies. In reality one without the other will not save the party from a terrible disaster in the next election. So what has gone wrong?

I suspect it all started with Kinnock. The moment the party lost the balance of three power centers in the party, the constituency party, the parliamentary party and the unions making decision and gave instead the parliamentary party absolute power in all but words the rot set in. Of course it looked so good when Blair could win elections after years of Tory governments but it was based on policies without principles.

In 1997 Labour just had to be there. The Tories were committing suicide over Europe and with sleaze, and the public wanted them gone. In 2001 and just about in 2005 Blair could show that New Labour made better Tories than the Tories themselves. Now it looks like the Tories are back to being the best right wing party in the UK.

There was a hope that Brown might change direction after Blair went, but this was a false hope as it was Brown who had been inventing the policies of the Blair governments. For the leadership contest only 29 of the 356 Labour MPs had the courage to try and force a leadership election which included the other sections of the party. This was 16 shy of the minimum needed.

Of course most MPs are pretty selfish individuals who will do what is best for themselves but now they must realize they have not only hurt the party but also put those, even with what had been regarded as safe seats, in danger of not getting re-elected, even as opposition MPs next time.

This year there must be a leadership challenge and it must go out to the whole party. Are there 45 MPs who will do the job? Here's what the union bosses are now saying.

Tony Woodley - "The change people want - in Glasgow and around the country - is a change of political approach. Blairism should finally be buried in Glasgow's East End."

"For too long the government has put all its eggs in the free-market basket. People are now looking for more support and protection from government as we face serious economic difficulties rooted in City excesses."

Paul Kenny - "The MPs have got to make a strong decision as to whether they want to go into an election with Gordon Brown or have a [leadership] contest."

1968 Revisited

First a couple of direct links to posts about 1968 on Jakartass's blog, his own and a post from David Jardine.

Reading the both the blogs and the comments made me think a little deeper on what did happen back then. Of course just one year didn't change the world as we know it. What made the change was something that had already started by then. When people criticize the often flawed heroes of sixties youth they are missing the point. Probably Alexander Dubček was a better man than Ho Chi Minh but it was Ho's name being called out in the protests that year. Che probably did end up with a blood lust that caused the executions of good people.

The revolution in 1968 wasn't based on class, although it was certainly against the ruling class. The communist party had no leadership role in it. In fact the French Communist Party spurned the chance of really taking on De Gaulle. Those involved were looking for alternatives to the old Stalinist ideas of the traditional communist parties, hence the explosion in Trotskyite and anarchist parties.

So what was 1968? It was the political side of the youth movement that had really got going earlier in the decade. If there was a class part to it, you would have to say the political side was predominately middle class. But the 1968 students had a connection to the Mod movement and the beginnings of the hippie movement much more than any political party or ideal. This was the first time I know of that a generation was in revolt against another mainly on the grounds that the older could no longer be trusted with running the world.

If there was no 1968 there could be no Tony Blair, no Bill Clinton, no Barack Obama and, sorry to say, probably no David Cameron in leadership positions at their age. The cultural changes that have happened since then would have been fewer. Why? Because the older generation found that, just like Charles 1st., they had no divine right to rule. So for all their mixed up political thinking, we should thank Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Rudi Dutschke, Bernadette Devlin and Tariq Ali. Problem is that we are now that older generation. We sowed the seeds of our own destruction;-)

JPMorgan buys mortgages from Northern Rock

From the BBC website - Rock sells off £2.2bn mortgages.

So JPMorgan starts to buy the assets of Northern Rock which is in debt to the government. No, surely not anything to do with Tony getting the bank clerk's job there?

The Evolution of Corruption

When I first arrived in this country it was very common to give small gifts to low level government officials to get things done. A bag of apples for the girls at the driving license office, a small amount for the upcountry policeman who pulled you over on an empty road for some sort of infringement or a New Year bottle of whiskey to the local municipal office.

I didn't really mind as I could afford it and these workers were on low wages. I had seen it all before in many third world countries. Now, as the country becomes wealthier, petty corruption at this level has almost disappeared. We even get number queuing tickets in government offices.

But corruption hasn't gone away. In fact there is probably more money involved than ever before but it is done mainly at the very top level of politicians and civil servants. It is done on payment for government contracts and people on both sides of the transactions become very wealthy. Word leaks out and we all know it is going on.

We will eventually reach the level where corruption becomes almost invisible; where all top government deals are done between friends, and friends of friends; where the old school tie rules; in fact we will become like the UK, but this will make the corruption even more costly to the country.

Shame, but at least Tony Blair can't legally start lobbying the government on behalf of JPMorgan for another six months, and he wouldn't break the law would he? And that Young Liberal, Peter Hain, wasn't promising any favours for that money he collected in the Labour deputy leader's election was he?

J. P. Morgan or is it JPMorgan?

Today on the BBC website they tell us that Tony Blair is joining that citadel of laissez-faire capitalism, JPMorgan. Why doesn't that come as a surprise?

Meanwhile I have just started Gordon Brown's biography of James Maxton, the Glasgow socialist and leader of the Independent Labour Party. I suspect Brown's move to Thatcherism must have been harder than Tony's because he at least must have believed a little bit in socialism as a young man. So what bank gets Gordon?

James Maxton

The Real King of Britain

Rupert Murdoch's first royal visit to the UK

The problem with monarchs is we don't get to elect them and changing them can be quite a bloody business. I do think that as a majority in the UK would keep the monarchy, a compromise with republican sentiments would be to elect a monarch with some sort of recall if the enough signed a petition. Surely there must be better than Charles and Diana's two boys to come.

In the 15th. Century Wikipedia refers to the real ruler of England being Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, also know as the Kingmaker. Today's Kingmaker must be Rupert Murdoch. UK politicians beg his support. His power over the media is overwhelming. In 1992, using the Sun newspaper, he kept the Tories in power. Blair considered he had to make deals with Murdoch to win his election. Gordon Brown's spin doctors must live in fear of him backing Cameron.

But Murdoch is not even British. He was born Australian but because US laws forbid non-US nationals owning the media he became American. He is credited, and credits himself I suspect, in keeping Britain out of the Euro. How can we let this un-elected man have so much power.

Of course there is a long history of foreign press barons in the UK, from Beaverbrook to Conrad Black. Brown's people must be worried what way the Sun will lean. In a close election it will make the difference and like a poor maid who has given up her virginity what else has Gordon got to offer Murdoch.

Might be time to look back in history. The Earl of Warwick finally got his on the battlefield. Maybe Gordon Brown can take on Rupert Murdoch before he gets to pick another king. Push some US style laws through parliament and limit how much media a man or company can own. Take away his newspapers or television companies. Send his son packing. Get in first Gordon because Rupert is probably planning on doing it to you.

First Hitler Youth and now Tony Blair

The poor Catholic Church now has Tony Blair as a member. Just like the Labour Party it has swung to the right. The previous pope set it up so he would be followed by a conservative and we ended up with an ex-Hitler Youth member as the new pope. Well I guess if you are going to have that you may as well invite Blair to the party also.

The Labour Party Part 3

In the 1980s sitting Labour MPs found themselves in danger from the reforms the Constituency Labour Parties, CLP, were pushing through. The ability of the local parties to de-select their MP meant they could be pushed off the gravy train. (I heard Shirley Williams, no friend of left, describing how when looking for a constituency Tony Blair called the local party members 'comrade' to show what a good socialist he was. Re-selection does seem a good idea when faced with such blatant ambition and opportunism;-)

The Parliamentary Labour Party fought back against this attack on their job security and won. To win they had two big weapons. First a left-wing leader, Neil Kinnock, to take on the far left, and second, a good target for media in the Militant Tendency. He attacked them relentlessly and had them expelled from the party. From here on in the power of the CLP was drastically reduced and the PLP wrote the rules.

The birth of New Labour comes out of this destruction of the traditional balance of power within the party. It was not that much later that the power of the unions was also reduced. (The outcome of this we see today with all sleaze related to the major financing of the party by wealthy individuals instead of the unions.) With no opposition within the party the PLP was able to turn its back on Labour's history and any socialist ideology.

There are a few myths around that don't really stand up to scrutiny. First that Kinnock, Smith, Blair and Brown were making the party more democratic. In fact they made it more centralized and self-serving for the leadership. That the unions were somehow to blame when in truth they were never that far to the left. And lastly that it needed this move to the right to be able to take on Tories and win. The truth was that the Tories beat themselves in the end with internal fighting and sleaze.

Were the Militant Tendency to blame? Partly, as they gave Kinnock and company the target to destroy the CLP's power. As revolutionary socialists they saw nothing wrong with the strategy they used, but in hindsight all they did was open door to the right. Probably the most important lesson to be learnt was that most Labour MPs were, and are now, there for things other than socialist principles. Britain's main socialist party was and is represented in parliament by people who were not socialist in the slightest.