Both my father and then my mother-in-law got some form of dementia. I was mortified when my father was diagnosed because I hadn't understood the symptoms - much like later with my son and schizophrenia - so my father had been ill for a year before it was discovered. He had been telling us he was eating and we didn't realise he wasn't actually eating or managing anything else.

When the same thing happened to my mother-in-law I was alert and on the case. But my husband's family wouldn't hear of it and three years later when the symptoms were very pronounced they were still refusing to believe it.

It's like mental illness - once you have seen it and know it you are better at recognising it but you have to read biographies and news reports about people who are clearly psychotic being judged and evaluated as if they were not ill. That boy that shot so many people on the US university campus was a loner playing music alone in his room for several years and wandering round the campus with no friends or associates - not attending class - family worried - university mentors worried - no one doing anything - and then he goes on a rampage and every one says - shock horror - why did he do that.

Let's hope Stacey gets some treatment in the end - would probably take years in reality - and let's hope lots of other families watching realise what they are dealing with. But they still won't have any way of getting help for their relative. The mentally ill person has to do that for themselves. You have to go along in person and say 'I have an illness that makes me incapable of running my own life and knowing I am ill and making and going to appointments'. So its a catch 22 and they don't go themselves so there is no way of getting them treated and families are powerless especially if the sick person covers up symptoms and the family have no experience of mental illness.

As the psychiatrist said when we were pleading with him to treat our son -"if he was ill he would come and see me". I bet his agoraphobia clinic is chock a block.

Not being able to get help for someone and not understanding is one of the most frightening out of control Kafkaesque experiences.
So I don't know how much I would trust any of these statistics on Alzheimers.

The cases of CJD at the younger ages that progress so fast and terribly seem much more likely to be diagnosed and documented to me with a much shorter trace back period to a cause.

Frances:

I found one statistic that shows Alzheimers prevalence in the US at 30.2 compared to 24.8 in western europe. The figures for elsewhere in the world are messed up because of the difficulty of diagnosing alzheimers in contrast to other forms of dementia, without autopsies. Autopsies are rare in the non-west. And it is known that there are many causes of dementia that are sometimes diagnosed as alzheimers that are likely to be caused by chemical pollutants and toxins used in industry and agriculture, and this cause is quite a problem in many countries, eg Latin America where published alzheimers prevalence is even higher than the USA. I must say that after surfing alzheimers websites for an hour or so, I would give very low validity and reliability to most of the prevalence data bases I saw. One one goes beyond dementia, the analyses are suspect.

But one interesting gem I did pick up for the balti-lovers among us. A number of recent research programmes have found that Curcumin may well account for the very low rates of dementia in India. Curcumin is tumeric. It has also been found that in some parts of Japan where they make tea from Curcumin roots, the rate of dementia and many other common western fatal diseases is very low and longevity remarkably high.

So eat balti...it may save your life !

The only thing Purnell has actually ever done in his political life is bring in the Welfare Reform Bill. Why doesn't he ever mention that in his endless ruminating about how his career went wrong? He never refers to it.

He says - 'One of the prejudices I have that I want to explore is that the state works best when individuals have the power to choose – whether between different parties, thanks to a new electoral system, or between different providers, thanks to choice in public services'

So how much choice are the sick getting at bootcamp where they are forced to do activities by officials under threat. The man brought in the nastiest most authoritarian legislation in our history and talks freedom. And he's supposed to be a thinker?

New Labour became too much of a sect. Which way forward for the left? It is time to unite around our common desire for a fairer society

James Purnell guardian.co.uk, Sunday 19 July 2009

'Where did it all go wrong? Why don't you write a book about that?" an agent asked me last week. Because it didn't all go wrong, I thought. I resigned because I am proud of what Labour has done and want it to continue, not because I think the past 12 years have been a failed project and I want it to stop.

More often than not, Britain is a policy model – for example, in Washington where the twin priorities of more charter schools and fewer bad teachers are inspired by our schools policy. But with distance comes perspective, too, and space to think about what did go wrong – and right.

My first lesson is the depth of what I don't know. Being a minister is a conspiracy against renewing your ideas. I ended up operating on a set of assumptions – prejudices, some might say – which may have been based in fact 10 years ago, but could be completely wrong today. I hope I got more right than wrong, but it's exciting to have a chance to explore the depths of my ignorance again.

Nevertheless, it does seem to me that we can say some big things about British politics, and the way it's changed. Both parties have had to learn lessons from each other. In the 1990s, Labour learned that it was wrong about methods – we thought public was better than private, that the state was better than markets. We learned the lesson that we should use markets or the private sector, where they achieved the relevant outcome.

Since 1997, the Tories have had to accept that voters want a different kind of society – hence George Osborne's quip about wanting to create a progressive society through conservative means. I don't know whether that's just a good press line, or what the Tories really believe. What I think is interesting is both the compliment and the challenge it contains. It's a compliment that the opposition feel they have to imitate our language. But it's also a challenge: is there anything distinctive about Labour's goals, if the Conservatives can say they share them? And is it really true that they can be achieved through conservative means?

The Demos project, which we launch today, will try to answer those questions. It starts by asking what it means to be on the left today. Of course, there are areas where different political traditions have overlapping goals. Instead of constructing straw men to exaggerate the differences, we should be comfortable with this pluralism. People come into politics to do good, and it's not surprising that they should often agree.

But my experience in government is that Labour and Conservative politicians have very different instincts. By defining clearly what it means to be on the left today, we hope to have more compelling arguments to convince voters to support us in those areas where we disagree with the Tories.

To me, two key differences stand out. First, the left believes in equality – we disagree about equality of what, but we agree that it should be a goal. For the right, equality may or may not be a consequence of their policies, but it's not an intrinsic goal. Second, the left is more optimistic about the ability of the state, the right more sceptical.

The right has a point here – governments do often fail, as do markets. But the answer is to have the courage to reform the state so it does work. One of the prejudices I have that I want to explore is that the state works best when individuals have the power to choose – whether between different parties, thanks to a new electoral system, or between different providers, thanks to choice in public services.

The left needs to be clearer about the kind of equality it wants to pursue. I think we need to widen out from a narrow focus on income, to aiming for equality of capability – giving everyone the power to pursue their goals.

Once we're clearer about our goals, we will be forced to be bolder about our methods. So, if allowing state schools to be run by profit-making companies encourages equality of capability, we will have to allow it. If educational selection by religion increases inequality, we will have to start a difficult debate about it. If child poverty wrecks any possibility of equality of capability, then we will have to make abolishing it our top priority.

But being clear that we want a more equal society may also allow that debate to be open rather than narrow. One of the most attractive things about New Labour in the 1990s was how pluralist it was – with many strands of leftwing thought coexisting, and learning from each other.

Over time, New Labour became too much of a sect – we went from big-tent politics to small-gazebo politics. Perhaps in response, the left has become balkanised into smaller groups, based on small differences. If we recognise that our common goal is a more equal society, we may be able to remember that there is more that unites us than separates us. And where there are differences, we may just see that as an inevitable but manageable pluralism, rather than a reason for division.

That is what the Open Left project aims to foster: with clarity about goals and candour about our record, we can once again rediscover the idealism from which good policies grow.

I think I agree with what Jon Cruddas is saying here. I think I do. It all depends on how much of NewLabour we are supposed to keep in the new mix. A healthy respect for the political realities of the modern world is one thing - Labour has always had a right wing that made accommodation with the electorate and the external political realities - but actually believing in US style marketry and all that goes with it and the philosophy of neo liberalism/conservatism as Purnell does is a step too far. Those beleivers have no place in the party.

we have to be brutally honest - agree


Both Ramsay MacDonald and Tony Blair were fatally attracted to wealth and power, and both allowed Labour's ambivalent political identity to escape containment and thereby threaten its existence as a coherent political form -

if escape containment means go over to the enemy and start believing - then agree

"The gravest weakness of British Labour is ... its lack of creed. The Labour party is hesitant in action, because divided in mind" - agree - NewLabour gave up our creed and so you could say we are a party divided agaisnt ourselves until we get rid of them

Personally I think the answers lie with a return to Tawney himself, together with the more contemporary ethical socialism put forward by the likes of philosopher Charles Taylor, which take the best of social liberalism and keep the socialism of solidarity and interdependency -

So Jon Cruddas wants us to get over our divided mind and get together and fuse together a coalition that works and believes in something again. So it comes dowwn to who is going to be in this new coalition.

I'm happy reverting to the 'socialism of solidarity and interdependency' and bringing in everyone from the left who wants to be in. BBut its the right which worries me because that is where it all went wrong.

How much of NewLabour are we supposed to keep? That seems to be the BIG question. People prepared to make an accommodation with political reality of a world dominated by US thinking is fine but I don't want people in the party who have gone further than that and gone over to believing in it. That's a step too far.

So let's be brutally honest. It comes down to Paul Mc's accusation (which I don't believe) that Compass is a way of rehabilitating NewLabour with all its ideological fervour and belief in US thinking and adding on socialism as cosmetic cover - or the opposite which is reverting to being a left wing party and including people who will make a practical realistic accommodation with the big bad US led world. Stan in fact. Stan is my absolutely last possible inclusion. Purnell is beyond my pale.

What you can't do is bring fervent believers in 'let market forces rip' into a coalition with socialists and have this fundamental battle raging within the party. You have to choose a side in this or you aren't a party with any sort of creed and will always be a party divided against itself.

Tony Blair gave us the most authoritarian and interfering government of the modern period and Cruddas writes that Blair's big achievement was to:

'Both Ramsay MacDonald and Tony Blair shifted the centre of gravity of the party toward liberalism'

This man does not understand even basic concepts and obvious shifts in power (away from people to the governement) - he doesn't know the difference between left and right, and digging out irrelevant points - made by a Chrisitian Socilalist from before WW2, about a very different era (partly thanks to the workfare and market fundamentalist policies of a government he has so loyally supported).

Now I'm beginning to see why so many Labour MPs are so ineffectual and right wing - they clearly don't understand what they are dealing with.

Student fees for those who live at home should be axed – report

Mandelson expected to support reform
Patrick Wintour, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 19 July 2009

Universities must do more to end elitism in Britain by admitting thousands more students from poorer backgrounds, according to a new report commissioned by Gordon Brown.

The leading 13 universities are still failing to give enough preferential treatment to bright pupils from lower-income homes, the study will say.

It also proposes no-fee degrees for students who stay at home, a controversial initiative likely to be accepted by Lord Mandelson, who took on responsibility for higher education when his department was expanded last month.

The all-party report, written by 20 experts and chaired by former cabinet minister Alan Milburn, was the idea of the prime minister and is due to be published on Tuesday.

*********

Milburn said the committee would not call for tuition fees to be reversed.


Remember top up fees. Remember how we fought against them telling the government that they would disadvantage poorer students. Remember all the token bursaries and sweetners as the ideology of Newlabour ploughed on.

Oh, look, poor students are falling even further behind. How could that have happened?

Look at all this back peddling and patching up. We've done this dreadful thing and now we really want to help you cope with our horrible deeds. Especially the Prime Minister and Lord Mandelson. Of course we weren't wrong in charging fees but there's an election coming so we want to lead the fight against what we did so we have a story to tell when you challenge us on it. Absolutely pathetic.

James Purnell drove through legislation which is now in report stage in the Lords which 'requires' every seriously sick person in the country to attend for retraining for work under sanctions of losing benefit. It needs stopping now before people find out the true horror of it and it becomes Labour's Poll Tax. Purnell must have some kind of evil genuius charisma that works on some people like Mr Cruddas. It doesn't work on me.

MS, Parkinsons, cancer, stroke, severe mental illnes, autism every thing you don't want to have yourself and in your family. He did this with ideological zeal. When the Tories rescued single mothers with toddlers from his boot camp at the second reading he threw a fit and had a temper tantrum in the House. Watch the video. He said the Tories let him down. Then he had another temper tantrum and walked out altogether.

He isn't a safe person to have a duty of care on vulnerable people. He has every seriously sick person in this country terrified. They are currently being called in under threat and processed through ATOS medicals by the US computer and 90% are being told they are fit for work. A letter telling them this is dropping through their door sending them in to shock. Is that how a decent country treats seriously ill people?

The letter demands they show up for boot camp. If they are seriously ill this is truly terrifying for them. It is happening every day all round the country to vulnerable people who no one knows about who are now faced not only with serious illness and disability but with a fight on their hands with the DWP that now has extraordinary powers over them that the law Lords say are unconstitutional. And it was all delivered by this man. Does he care what fear and damage and misery he has caused. No he's off doing more thinking.

It is the Welfare Reform Bill that will be his political legacy and as people eventually find out the sheer horror of it his reputation hopefully will be destroyed. If Blair is a war criminal then Purnell is a social criminal. You only need to glance at history to see that thinkers who have no compassion, no humanity and no common sense are very dangerous. How they get this power over others is a great mystery to me.

You will notice dear comrades, that we have a new name. its called:

Open Left Project

Here is the companion piece from Purnell associate Jon Cruddas:
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Beware the liberal drift. Equality, always
Which way forward for the left? We must tackle society's glaring wealth and income inequalities

Jon Cruddas guardian.co.uk

James Purnell is right. Now is indeed the time to return to first principles and redefine what Labour is for. And these debates must allow for a plurality of views and debate to take place with courtesy and respect. Yet we also have to be brutally honest.

The results at the recent elections were our worst since 1910. Millions of people simply have no idea what Labour stands for. Yes, the Blair and Brown governments have plenty of positive achievements to their name, but Britain is more unequal than it was 12 years ago. Most tragically, our response to an era-defining economic crisis often appears timid, informed by the strange notion that we will soon return to normal. The result is disorientation, desperately low morale – and, worse still, a kind of resigned fatalism.

I've just read RH Tawney's essay, The Choice before the Labour Party – the best analysis of the current crisis facing Labour, yet written in 1932. It highlights the dilemma at the heart of the party – the unresolved conflict between strands of liberalism and socialism – which marked its founding moments.

This tension is apparent in two significant party crises. The first is the period of national government between 1929 and 1931, and the second is now. Both Ramsay MacDonald and Tony Blair shifted the centre of gravity of the party toward liberalism. Both men were fatally attracted to wealth and power, and both allowed Labour's ambivalent political identity to escape containment and thereby threaten its existence as a coherent political form.

Each of these crises has been blamed on external events, not least serious economic recession. But this is to deny Labour's inability to resolve the contradiction – not so much a broad church as fragments in search of unity. Tawney captures this dilemma. Writing about the debacle of the Labour party in 1931, he describes how the government "did not fall with a crash, in a tornado from the blue. It crawled slowly to its doom."

He challenges those who looked for the causes of political disaster in outside events. "It will not soothe the pain of defeat with the flattering illusion that it is the innocent victim of faults not its own. It is nothing of the kind. It is the author, the unintending and pitiable author, of its own misfortunes."

Tawney's words echo down from the past. "The gravest weakness of British Labour is ... its lack of creed. The Labour party is hesitant in action, because divided in mind. It does not achieve what it could, because it does not know what it wants." He doesn't pull his punches." There is, he says, a "void in the mind of the Labour party" which leads us into "intellectual timidity, conservatism and conventionality, which keeps policy trailing tardily in the rear of realities".

What has been learned since then? Purnell would draw solutions from Amartya Sen and a re-presentation of liberalism; personally I think the answers lie with a return to Tawney himself, together with the more contemporary ethical socialism put forward by the likes of philosopher Charles Taylor, which take the best of social liberalism and keep the socialism of solidarity and interdependency.

A couple of basic points need to be made as James develops his ideas. First, the suggestion that Cameron's attempt to clothe himself in progressive garb is some kind of compliment to Blairism must be challenged. Cameron is doing this because pointing out the government's failings on social justice is an easy hit. His attempt to outflank us on the left is a sign of our failure, not of success.

Second, Purnell's idea of equality of capability is very interesting – if, and only if, it is more than just a reworking of the promise of equality of opportunity, another way of ignoring questions of distributional justice. Wide disparities of wealth create a maldistribution of opportunity, which no amount of supply side tinkering can compensate for.

Along with a belief that the market has self-evident limits, equality is surely Labour's most fundamental idea – to return to Tawney, its creed. Moreover, as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett prove in their much-acclaimed book The Spirit Level, a society as unequal as ours is simply dysfunctional. Purnell says he thinks "we need to widen out from a narrow focus on income", which is true – but what follows only highlights a glaring omission. Why no mention of wealth?

All of this plays into the moment in which we find ourselves. With a supposed age of austerity looming, we have to reinvigorate social democracy. If sacrifices are to be made, will people really tolerate glaring inequalities in income and wealth remaining untouched? Is now really the time to be hesitant about top-end issues such as tax avoidance, or the imperative to take millions of low-paid people out of tax altogether?

I believe in the possibility of a progressive realignment. Both James and I watched it come together in 1997 but then fracture and fail. But the basis of such realignment has to be the idea whose abandonment explains a good deal of Labour's current crisis: equality – first, last and always.

Jon Cruddas is Labour MP for Dagenham. He ran for deputy leader in 2007 cruddasj@parliament.uk

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BIG LAUNCHING DAY !! So what do ou all think ???

Good morning and happy Monday to all my comrades. Here friends, are the results of the intellectual mining of Labour traditions that Jon Cruddas announced a month or so back. We know of course that the "newnewnew-sort-of-left" triumverate consists of David Miliband, James Purnell, and Jon Cruddas. So here, for your edification are the first fruits. I will post the Purnell piece first:
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New Labour became too much of a sect: Which way forward for the left? It is time to unite around our common desire for a fairer society James Purnell guardian.co.uk

'Where did it all go wrong? Why don't you write a book about that?" an agent asked me last week. Because it didn't all go wrong, I thought. I resigned because I am proud of what Labour has done and want it to continue, not because I think the past 12 years have been a failed project and I want it to stop.

More often than not, Britain is a policy model – for example, in Washington where the twin priorities of more charter schools and fewer bad teachers are inspired by our schools policy. But with distance comes perspective, too, and space to think about what did go wrong – and right.

My first lesson is the depth of what I don't know. Being a minister is a conspiracy against renewing your ideas. I ended up operating on a set of assumptions – prejudices, some might say – which may have been based in fact 10 years ago, but could be completely wrong today. I hope I got more right than wrong, but it's exciting to have a chance to explore the depths of my ignorance again.

Nevertheless, it does seem to me that we can say some big things about British politics, and the way it's changed.Both parties have had to learn lessons from each other. In the 1990s, Labour learned that it was wrong about methods – we thought public was better than private, that the state was better than markets. We learned the lesson that we should use markets or the private sector, where they achieved the relevant outcome.

Since 1997, the Tories have had to accept that voters want a different kind of society – hence George Osborne's quip about wanting to create a progressive society through conservative means. <<I don't know whether that's just a good press line, or what the Tories really believe. What I think is interesting is both the compliment and the challenge it contains.» » It's a compliment that the opposition feel they have to imitate our language. But it's also a challenge: is there anything distinctive about Labour's goals, if the Conservatives can say they share them? And is it really true that they can be achieved through conservative means?

The Demos project, which we launch today, will try to answer those questions. It starts by asking what it means to be on the left today. Of course, there are areas where different political traditions have overlapping goals. Instead of constructing straw men to exaggerate the differences, we should be comfortable with this pluralism. People come into politics to do good, and it's not surprising that they should often agree.

But my experience in government is that Labour and Conservative politicians have very different instincts. By defining clearly what it means to be on the left today, we hope to have more compelling arguments to convince voters to support us in those areas where we disagree with the Tories.

To me, two key differences stand out. First, the left believes in equality – we disagree about equality of what, but we agree that it should be a goal. For the right, equality may or may not be a consequence of their policies, but it's not an intrinsic goal. Second, the left is more optimistic about the ability of the state, the right more sceptical.

The right has a point here – governments do often fail, as do markets. But the answer is to have the courage to reform the state so it does work. One of the prejudices I have that I want to explore is that the state works best when individuals have the power to choose – whether between different parties, thanks to a new electoral system, or between different providers, thanks to choice in public services.

The left needs to be clearer about the kind of equality it wants to pursue. I think we need to widen out from a narrow focus on income, to aiming for equality of capability – giving everyone the power to pursue their goals.

Once we're clearer about our goals, we will be forced to be bolder about our methods. So, if allowing state schools to be run by profit-making companies encourages equality of capability, we will have to allow it. If educational selection by religion increases inequality, we will have to start a difficult debate about it. If child poverty wrecks any possibility of equality of capability, then we will have to make abolishing it our top priority.

But being clear that we want a more equal society may also allow that debate to be open rather than narrow. One of the most attractive things about New Labour in the 1990s was how pluralist it was – with many strands of leftwing thought coexisting, and learning from each other.

Over time, New Labour became too much of a sect – we went from big-tent politics to small-gazebo politics. Perhaps in response, the left has become balkanised into smaller groups, based on small differences. If we recognise that our common goal is a more equal society, we may be able to remember that there is more that unites us than separates us. And where there are differences, we may just see that as an inevitable but manageable pluralism, rather than a reason for division.

That is what the Open Left project aims to foster: with clarity about goals and candour about our record, we can once again rediscover the idealism from which good policies grow.

James Purnell is Labour MP for Stalybridge and Hyde. He resigned from the cabinet last month purnellj@parliament.uk

I still don't think we have got to the deepest drivers for this sense of care for the people in Britain.

The East End of London was called by Engels the largest working class ghetto in the world. London was the greatest trading port in the world, the City of Lnndon did the deals and the workers loaded and unloaded at the docks in the ghetto at the City gates. People came from all over the world to look for work there because they knew the City of London Guilds did enormous charitable work in the ghetto.

You could say that this is because they needed fit workers and at root self interest drives hardest but I can see a sense in which the Queen knows to care and not push her wealth too far in the faces of the people to keep her status which is still attached to land. They know modesty and service and all the aristocratic spin. The people have to love their Queen and then the people got votes and they were supposed to love their leaders. We have never had a revolution.

I don't know exactly what it is but leaving people destitute is not our way. We have taken a particular root which is more elegant because it has been fine tuned for a thousand years.

I wrote: "As long as the factory owner had an ample supply of replacement labour, especially child and women labour, the owner no longer had to be concerned about the health, welfare, or survival of his workers."

I left out a major element...immigrant labour. It was the need to create an oversupply of labour so that wages and benefits could be held down, that fueled America's great immigrant tradition. To ensure their speedy absorption into the US labour market, immigrants were pressured to "become American" as rapidly as possible and retain their cultural heritage simply as noninvasive customs that would cause no problems in the work-place. Hence the great American melting pot, in which immigrants are American before anything else. That is what the Statue of Liberty stands for. Its an invention of the American capitalist ideal.
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Dugsie and Paul Mc: Marxist critique please. Lewis, more poems. Its Sunday so I need them.

frances
on 19 July 2009, 1:28:17 PM
We have a deep sense of duty to the poor in our culture and perhaps it does come from feudal times. People held land from Lords and were expected to go and fight for the Lord and he was supposed to keep the land good. It had elements of a family about it.

These American type attacks on the NHS and welfare are very alien and I don't think people have understood them yet.

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It was quite functional for the barons and landowners to ensure that their peasants and tenants received some level of social support, medical help, and education, because these were sources of their wealth, an in earlier times, troops for their armies. It was a (albeit highly unbalanced and exploitative) symbiotic relationship. The same was true of slavery on American plantations. A slave was a replicating investment, and a source of wealth. A slave-owner who killed or incapacitated his own slave was acting entirely against his own self-interest.

The advent of the industrial revolution both in the UK and America changed those relationships completely. Slaves in America were freed because the export market for agricultural produce had become highly competitive (mainly but not exclusively from Latin America) and plantations were no longer the most profitable and secure source of wealth. It is impossible to run an industrial system through slavery...it is far too costly. It was essential therefore to convert slaves into wage labourers, encouraging as large as possible a labour market so that wages could be depressed. As long as the factory owner had an ample supply of replacement labour, especially child and women labour, the owner no longer had to be concerned about the health, welfare, or survival of his workers. There was no ethical compulsion either. The social welfare movements in America, run almost exclusively by women, were tiny in their moral persuasiveness and impact. The church in America, strong supporters of racist and eugenics outlooks, was excellently harnessed to the aims of capital, so there was nary a complaint from them. It was only the emergence of the labour movement in America that applied any kind of brakes to the system of worker exploitation.

In Britain there had always been some level of moral suasion, combined of course with the pragmatism of naked capitalism. The Anglican church was also a brake on untrammelled exploitation. Britain also had a much more powerful liberal tradition among its writers and opinion leaders than America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is interesting that Mark Twain had far more influence in Europe than he did in America in his lifetime.

Parliament in Britain has always been far more heterogeneous with a far larger social spectrum than the US congress, which from its inception has always been right of center with an almost non existent political spectrum. Whatever existed of the left in America always worked at the margins. It never penetrated the official political domain, and America turned out to have the least left-wing unions in the western worlds, heavily corrupted by crime, and businesses in their own right.

We have a deep sense of duty to the poor in our culture and perhaps it does come from feudal times. People held land from Lords and were expected to go and fight for the Lord and he was supposed to keep the land good. It had elements of a family about it.

These American type attacks on the NHS and welfare are very alien and I don't think people have understood them yet.

Frances: that pretty well says it.

What is remarkable about America compared to everywhere else in the west is that while its technology has advanced dramatically, its socio-political systems are almost identical today to that established by the founding fathers at the constitutional convention.

Their vision was a plutocracy, a country run by the people who own it. The enlightened stuff, declarations etc, were intended to make the case for independence from Britain...they were never intended as a blue-print for America's social and political future. As you know, they were all copied and pasted from France. America was to be run by and for wealthy white men, and its still the same today. There were only two or three people at the constitutional convention that were not, in equivalent terms, millionaires; they were businessmen, plantation owners, and lawyers. Congress today is identical. Only millionaires have any chance of getting elected with a few exceptions, and they quickly become millionaires once they are elected.

The Founding Fathers werent even particularly anti-royalist..after all they offered George Washington (the richest man in America at the time,.. land speculator) the crown. What they hated was the inherited wealth and social dominance system in Britain, and wanted to create their own dynasties based purely on wealth and not on social pedigree. That, and a fear of the progress being made by the emancipation movement in the UK, were the main triggers for the timing of the declaration of independence. America held onto slavery longer than almost all other countries in the Americas..a little known fact, and long after it was abolished in the British colonies.

The dominance of the market in the USA is not a modern phenomenon...it was the bedrock of the system established by the Founding Fathers. The welfare system, small as it was, established by FRD was a grave deviation, decried as communism at the time, and every administration since FDR has been demolishing it, including the Democrats and now Obama. Clinton was one of the major demolition forces and he inspired Tony Blair and his poodle James Purnell, Tony's loyal amanuensis.

The American Dream is about getting rich, and the system is one that has removed almost all scruples and ethical principles from the path to wealth. When American leaders talk about FREEDOM, what they mean is freedom from scruple, constraints and regulation...the right for anyone to do whatever it takes to get rich. Its a system proud of the fact that its for winners, and not for losers. Winners are heroes, losers are losers. Losers can be useful though as struts on the ladder to the American Dream.

If one were prone to indulge in eschatological thinking, the American Dream could be seen as the three-headed beast of the apocalypse propelling the world into social, economic, and environmental melt-down. For me, the American Dream ranks right up there with fascism as one of the world's most evil philosophies. But as we all know, posing as American is awfully fashionable among the campari progressives that flock to tentland celebrations. And the American Dream has been made pervasive in Britain by New Labour and the Tories alike.

Isn't that what right means now - the American way?

Did the US ever have the idea of the state supporting you in sickness with medical care and income or in poverty with income and housing. What is the US history on this?

Is the difference rooted in our feudal system where aristocrats were nearer to kings and had a duty to the poor - and the US kicked off with new money and no concept of noblesse oblige. Or is that fanciful.

Its the same "choice" that Obama is making the central plank of his "healthcare reform".. everyone has a choice of buying a brain operation from the private sector at market rates and take their insurance comapny to court for refusing to pay....its a choice given to rich and poor alike with no discrimination. He calls it a "unique American solution". Sounds like Blond's inspiration may come from across the Atlantic.

"Second, social conservatism would be endorsed to advance the creation of a society of stability by recognising the need for community autonomy." - Philip Blond

Which roughly translates to **** off you're poor and we're living in a gated community. Blond has no conception of the idea of common cause, common provision of services, I heard him speak in the Demos meeting at the Compass conference and I've read his Guardian articles, it's entirely based around the poor gaining assets which can then be used to purchase services from range of private providers giving them "choice". What a misappropriated word that has become - "choice". The right have taken for their own use to mean if you can afford to you have choice, if you can't then **** off we're not paying.

The irony is that in his verbose attempts to come across as on the left of the party all he does is end up sounding dangerously far to the right. Privatise everything.

Dugsie (Yorks)
on 18 July 2009, 1:25:03 PM
There's plenty there Lee. Your heart is in the right place and you have lots of good ideas. Those of us who have grown up hard, and who still have it hard, find it hard to resist a target. If I had been posting on a carers' board the smiley face would probably have been there, but I don't do that here.
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That's a relief, because I am so damn wordy, I hate to think all I do is bore people's pants off. I regard it a privilege to be here. A smiley face for you too.

There's plenty there Lee. Your heart is in the right place and you have lots of good ideas. Those of us who have grown up hard, and who still have it hard, find it hard to resist a target. If I had been posting on a carers' board the smiley face would probably have been there, but I don't do that here.

Lee: 'I can imagine Dugsie concluding that I am just too maverick, off all the walls, in need of structure and discipline. I just dont believe the solutions have been found.'

Not at all Lee, I am most grateful to you for sharing your confusion with us.

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Wow, Dugsie, that is pretty devastating feedback. I hope you had a bit of a wry smile as you wrote that. I am not defensive; I want to learn. Do you see anything there except confusion ?

Lee: 'I can imagine Dugsie concluding that I am just too maverick, off all the walls, in need of structure and discipline. I just dont believe the solutions have been found.'

Not at all Lee, I am most grateful to you for sharing your confusion with us.

The death of Leszek Kolakowski has jus been announced. I did not agree with his analysis of the CPSU and the USSR, but he is a great loss to socialism and all efforts towards working class emancipation. In all the years I have known Dugsie, his bringing LK to my attention has been his greatest service. – Even if I do remain unreconstructed at times. Anyone who does not have a copy of, The Main Currents of Marxism, should try and get one.

Jon, Dugsie, Paul Mc:

I worry about orthodoxy. Most great philosophers and political economists have tended to focus on boiler-plate definitions of the path to results (be they maximum liberty, social fairness, end of worker exploitation, avoidance of destructive capitalist cycle [I wont add 'good society' here].

There seem to be two broad approaches. One is creation of a power appropriate to the results wanted, operating from the center: democracy, benign paternalism, dictatorship of the proletariat, constructive statism,fascism etc. The other is a reaction against all forms of centrally managed power and proposes maximum levels of autonomy at the local/community level, through cooperative action (As I understand him, Marx saw the socialist phase as being directed from the center [and conceded that all central control is oppressive], and the subsequent phase, the withering away of the state into a form of constructive anarchy...he would have found the term "communist state" ludicrous)

Back to my concerns about orthodoxies, especially on the left. They almost always include an understandable focus on governance mechanisms, on the way power is attained and managed. I have searched without success in Marx for an awareness of the potential for power to corrupt. Somehow his dictatorship of the proletariat would comprise noble , incorruptible people. Yet the various socialist experiments have come to grief for almost the same reasons as capitalist failures...the nature of the people who wield the power. Where socialism has been deemed to have failed it is almost never because socialism as a social and economic system has proven impossible, but because the leadership has been corrupt, dogmatic, arrogant, self-protecting, or whatever.

Having been through and come out of a very doctrinaire Marxist family background, I have become very suspicious of orthodoxies. I know that the kind of society I would like to see in Britain would require partnerships (not between pretend born-again Blairites and campari-progressives) but among working people across a wide spectrum. These groups will have power if they launch a direct attack on the neo-liberal market and the way in which neo-liberalism has made us stereotype consumers. Because as consumers neo-liberalism and all its ghastly derivatives, depends almost entirely on us, we do have immense power. We have the power to support only local markets and small producers, we have the power to destroy exploitative national chains through boycott, we have the power to bring down prices, and we have the power to replace corporate structures that feed off us. We have the power to refuse to live on credit and debt. We have the power to refuse to but junk so that the corporate system can swing back into gear.

How we move from exercising our power in the market to taking power in government is another matter. I do not trust central government and large political parties. In that sense I really get in people's hair, because almost all the solutions they offer require big controlling central government and large political parties, and these soon become instruments of oppression. But the communitarianism that the Tories and Cruddites propose would do little more than enable local people to make small decisions within the prevailing neo-liberal corporate structure. Maybe they could insist that TESCO is painted lavender and has a swimming pool out front for the kids. I am far more ambitious than that.

I can imagine Dugsie concluding that I am just too maverick, off all the walls, in need of structure and discipline. I just dont believe the solutions have been found.

Dugsie

Leninism (Bolshevism) is exactly the demarcation I am referring to, which as you are so right to make clear has very little to do with Marxism. What may have seemed just another internal and parochial spat from the outside, may have obscured how utterly revolutionary Lenin and Trotsky's (and buy association Stalin and all) break was with what marx actually wrote. Because crucially Lein was influenced by Nechayev - who exchanged humanist compassion for nihilistic terrorism. The means justifies the ends.

I completely endorse direct action - and as a libertarian socialist I am against authoritarian and coercive institutions - which may mean breaking the law (for example those repressive anti-Union laws still extant from Thatcher's Regime). But this is part of the wider effort to reform the system - which includes representative democracy, until at least particpatory parts can be added - after a national debate etc.

Class is as important as ever - but it is very complicated and far more dynamic than many doctrinaire Marxists seem to allow. The trouble with democratic centralism is that it encourages a big fish in a very small pool symdrome - to often hilarious if sometimes alarming results. (So one over bearing personality can dominate a few hundred activists?) But it also weakens one of the strenghs of a small unit - adaptabiltiy and autonomy.

(Doctrinaire anarchists of course don't see parliamnetary politics as even a posible means).

But the more debate there is where terms can be openly discussed and questioned , but using a language which is consistent and 'universal' as can be reasonably expected - can only be for the good. It is the real oxygen of democracy and people controlling their own lives; because until you can be confident of using political language and ideas in a meaningful way - you are barred from participating in this country's democratic process, and extremely vulnerable to abuse.

You and Paul (and others) contribute to all this in a very open nad constructive way - despite some recent claims to the contrary.

Jon

I think that you are thinking of Leninists in general, what used to be called orthodox communists and Trotskyists ? Their relationship with Marxism is debatable. I don't regard Paul di Leeds as 'orthodox' although he does sound a little unreconstructed at times. My attitude to social democracy, as an approach to socialism within capitalism, came out of discussions I had with Paul in another place, although he may not agree with me. Is democratic centralism an issue here ? I would like to see a much richer form of democracy than parliamentary democracy myself, although it may be the best we can achieve for the moment, so we should certainly improve it as much as we can. However, as long as there are class divisions in society, class will remain the major issue in politics for me.

I attended the Communitarian debate on Wednesday and I may well have been the only conservative fellow there apart from Oliver and Philip.

What I wanted to draw people's attention to was a programme that the BBC aired last night called The Death of Respect:

Type the name into Google and click the BBC link or search for it on iplayer, as for some reason this blog doesn't allow people to post web links.

I urge the many readers of this article to view it, as the show gave an brilliant analysis of how Liberalism has infiltrated both Left and Right ideologies via 60's social liberalism and 80's economic liberalism and how this has led to a breakdown of societal bonds.

I will not go on any longer about the merits if this programme, but only to say that it produces one of the most powerful justifications for Communitarianism. The question that is left is whether Society chooses a Socialist or Conservative view of community to recreate.

Please let me know your thoughts after watching the show, it should be a great point of debate.

In my view any Left group which persists with retaining any links with Bolshevik 'politics' are irrelevant in the context of Parlaimentary politics - with all its faults and necessary reforms. (This does not take anything away from the very real contribution these groups make through direct action and practical single issue campaigns).

These groups can be considered 'extreme' left - because for them democracy is just a means - not an end as it is for a genunine democrat.
Clearly it includes all the descendants from the original Communist Party, the SWP and doctrinaire anarchists.

The ineffectual soft left - in the sense of the committment to left politics as opposed to their ability to attravt support - is any group who persists in trying to carve out a 'progressive alternative, within the very limited parameters of the economic consensus as defined by Thatcher (and consequently Blair). These groups consciously or not, collude in There Is No Alternative, which of course rules out any genuine socialist policies whatsover.

This includes most of the Labour Party, Compass management and anyone who sees communitarianism as a viable alternative - as opposed to a surrender to centre right economics, with a different name.

Which is why social democrats and democratic socialists - both inside and outside the Labour Party - will have to try and work together, to try and at least let people in general know that TINA is elitist propaganda to force counter-intuitive economic systems on communities and individuals.

Jonathon, I doubt that my views are as orthodox Marxist as you seem to think: but if you must compare me to a hard right Thatcherite, then I suppose you must. Certainly for the foreseeable future I’m more than happy to support Clause IV as expressed in the LRC Constitution. Quite simply it expresses a genuinely progressive social democratic aspiration and purpose. I would certainly agree that there are other softer, (more rightwing and less progressive, if you like,) strands of social democracy; and that these are legitimately part of the Labour Party. I do not necessarily agree with them. But given the current neo-liberal hegemony, (part reformist, part decidedly not,) within the Labour Party, I’m quite prepared, for example, to defend labourism and economism, when they are attacked, or otherwise found wanting, by ‘new labour’ or its fellow travellers and assorted beneficiaries.

Politics is ultimately about state power; and power in class society. You say that Messrs Lawson and Cruddas are seeking some kind of social democratic society: ‘retuning to a stakeholder model.’ Social democracy even in its least socialist form was never ever based on the stakeholder model. With all of its failings, all of its shortcomings, social democracy is firmly founded on the democratic foundations of citizenship et al, as listed in my posting of yesterday. The Stakeholder Model is the product of the structural economic and political changes wrought by neo-liberalism and is designed to sustain it. As I have sought to explain on this site time after time Stakeholder Democracy is utterly antithetical to social democracy. - Not least because it empowers and emancipates strata of the sociologically middle class at the expense of the great majority of the rest of the working class.

Given its slightly reformist stance within the neo-liberal hegemony, if those who hold effective sway over Compass reflect the interests of anyone, it is of the elites-The more socially liberal of the Stakeholders neo-liberalism has created and depends upon: - particularly in managing the economy and civil society. These Stakeholder Democrats are an indispensable part of the emerging Corporatist State.

Jonathon, as you were present at the conference consider it for a moment from Oliver Letwin’s perspective. He is a bourgeois. The real thing. He is one of that small minority who do actually own the Means of Production. In this, he is not unusual in the Tory Party: but he is unusual in wider society. Labour neo-liberals are particularly noisesome in denouncing Thatcherism. Oliver Letwin knows that the Tory Party’s stated aim of transforming Labour so that it fights the Conservatives on the Common Ground that they share, has succeeded. For Letwin, that is an important part of what is meant by Thatcherism.

And what does Letwin do? He looks across to Neal Lawson and and Jon Cruddas and sees Thatcherism personified. You can see the man almost pinching himself as he thinks, as he most have done daily in Parliament and other public fora: My goodness, we really did succeed

Roger (East Sussex)

Wish I knew how Lee can be so undisenchanted after a much longer innings - perhaps its living in Scotland rather than a particularly benighted Tory Shire in England?

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Balance in life...I realise that try as one may, the individual life accomplishes only modest things unless you are one picked out by the gods. If I get pissed off with politics, I can paint, work on my novel, see friends, walk in lovely countryside, go and collect mussels on the beach, read poetry or classic fiction (I sill have some Shakespeare I havent read), go and see the lambs and hairy coos, take photographs, cook something interesting, tidy up (rarely), drink a dram, drive to places I have never seen, exercise, listen to music, watch the otters and the birds, go somewhere really spooky if the weather is appropriate, look at art books, go to Edinburgh and do the galleries, browse antique shops in Glasgow, go to Leakey's secong hand bookshop in Inverness, sit in a church, read old newspapers at Newspaper Archive.com, nap.

I have always (genuinely, not pretending) felt that the human species is highly over-rated. It is one of the main reasons I have never been able to take organised religion seriously..if we are made in God's image, that is pretty effing pathetic. Nature is full of amazing and beautiful creation, and if I were the only person left alive, I would still have a wonderful life.

More than you wanted to know !

"But if its to be real localism doesn't resolve but heightens the post-code lottery issues you mention - even a proper variable local income tax cannot resolve the problem that some places are vastly richer than others and need massive central govt subsidies."

Strangely, in the first instance, localism will tend to heighten some post-code lottery issues and diminish others - which depends both on the current base point (ie, what's in place now) and voter preferences. Subsequently, many differences will be ironed out to a considerable degree because of competition between areas to attract both business, local tax payers, seasonal residents (eg, students) and tourists. Many problems will be seen to lend themselves to innovative local integrated solutions - joined up government, to mint a cliche - much as with Chamberlain's brand of municipal socialism. We can also expect to see best practice established empirically in a piecemeal fashion and then transferred by imitation laterally to other authorities when something is seen to work, and probably improved upon in the process - unlike the top down/screw up model that's been the cancer of British government for the last half century, and which has perfected by New Labour in my lifetime.

I'm less sure than you are on the tax and subsidy implications for richer/poorer areas. Chamberlain whipped the iron masters into compliance in Birmingham but the coal owning aristocracy - much like their descendants who populate the financial sector - got away with murder and still didn't pay enough taxes to cover the funeral costs. But that's the virtue of reforming the Lords to create a second house composed solely of one representative from each county and each borough to generate a political solution on payments transfers. It will also act as an effective check on the willingness of the house of commons to subsidise central government pork from central taxation and borrowings.

It is a solution which, I suspect, will look even better if we really wish "to localise, not globalise" and really get a handle on the economic levers controlling climate change.

SG - autodidactic pedant though I am I can't claim to have all or indeed any of the provisions of the 1888 Local Government Act committed to memory.

What I do recall about late Victorian local government is that its units were generally much larger - none of this multi-tier nonsense - and were able to entirely finance themselves from rates.

Now if you were arguing that bigger county-size units are better and that we should abolish district councils and joke unitary authorities like Brighton and Hove you are probably right.

But if its to be real localism doesn't resolve but heightens the post-code lottery issues you mention - even a proper variable local income tax cannot resolve the problem that some places are vastly richer than others and need massive central govt subsidies.

My own preference would be real regional govt as per the German Lander (which Boris's antics apart does more or less work in London) - but as with so many other things we had that opportunity and New Labour bottled it.

Actually I am still just short of 50 - but started in left-wing politics young so have a good 35 years of futile faction-fighting to look back in anger on.

Wish I knew how Lee can be so undisenchanted after a much longer innings - perhaps its living in Scotland rather than a particularly benighted Tory Shire in England?

Jon T

'With the extreme left stuck in a time warp and the soft left lost in maze of unsubstantial wishful thinking, the Corporatist State is just going to get worse and more inhumane and authoritarian. '

I think that this needs some unpacking Jon. Who qualifies for inclusion in the two categories of the left you identify, in your view ?

"Most important of all is the break between home and work..."

Even more important is the complete breakdown between geographical communities and the political and adminitrative structures which govern their lives, and the consequent lack of accountability for the decisions which contribute directly to destroying the quality of life - the school place lottery, fortnightly wet refuse collection, the globalised "free" market in pharmaceutical supplies and the attendant pot luck when it comes to the elderly getting their daily medication in calendar packs, the insane corruption of PFI, the even more insane de-regulation of alcohol, the most Godawful underground system in the world, the London Olympics, and so on.

One of the reasons the political system has failed us is that politics is no longer local nor is it an activity that's immediately relevant to the lives of ordinary people. Even if we vote dutifully in each and every election, we only do so in the knowledge that our vote will not influence in any way what happens down our street - utilities, each in turn, deciding they need to dig up the road or pavement, or both; planning permission for yet another supermarket which is rejected locally but comes back rubberstamped with approval from central government, police patrols which are at the whim of who-really-knows-because-whoever-it-is-obviously-doesn't-give-a-damn, license applications for brothels posing as public houses, to name a but a few.

What might be the most sensible - and truly revolutionary - solution to the lack of democratic legitimacy and the general contempt of the electorate, is to move towards an improved local democracy by reverting to the provisions of the Local Government Act 1888 after tacking on a clause which enables one representative from every county and every borough, and those only, to take a seat with voting rights in the House of Lords. Starting again with something which worked is a bit of a no-brainer, really.

Roger has spotted the flaw in communitarianism - whatever spin is put on it, it starts from the premise that the post-Thatcherite consensus is essentailly unalterable and off limits as far as meaningful reform is concerned.

Which leaves so little move to manoevre, that the whole concept is doomed to be futile from the outset - whatever the good intentions or Chrisitian motivation which lies behind the entire scheme.

With the extreme left stuck in a time warp and the soft left lost in maze of unsubstantial wishful thinking, the Corporatist State is just going to get worse and more inhumane and authoritarian.

You are right to place the emphasis on power Lee. Without a proper understanding of where power lies and how it is exercised in our present society, we can't hope to change things. We must also understand that power is not all about brute physical control. The power of ideas is also important, that is why forms of ideological control need to be understood. Post-Marxism, in its various forms, is interesting and many a successful academic career has been built upon it. However, understanding is only a first stage. To build a genuinely democratic society we need to understand how to change things in the face of fiece opposition from those who exploit the working class for their own advantage.

Dugsie (Yorks)

My word you must be old to be so disenchanted Roger. I'm grateful that I'm still only a septuagenarian. It's amusing that all these familiar ideas can be endlessly re-cycled, in the spirit of the present age, and that pundits imagine that they are being original.

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Indeed. We biddies know that originality is the first encounter with the banal.

Do you also sometimes get depressed watching teenagers discovering things like cures for constipation and the fact that advertisements lie ?

I thought the indicator of how good a society was was how it treated its most vulnerable citizens.

Things might be going round in circles as you say but on that measure they are spiralling down and have recently gone in to a nose dive.

My word you must be old to be so disenchanted Roger. I'm grateful that I'm still only a septuagenarian. It's amusing that all these familiar ideas can be endlessly re-cycled, in the spirit of the present age, and that pundits imagine that they are being original.

One of the most depressing parts of getting old is the overwhelming sense of deja vu one gets from debates like this.

Pretty much all the same things were said back in the early-mid nineties when communitarianism was supposed to be the wave that New Labour would ride into govt - in reality we got a lot of rhetoric and 12 years of stalinistic centralisation (with the one exception of devolution which New Labour hardly had much choice about implementing).

We also had a not dissimilar debate back in the days of Kinnock and Gould's first remodelling of Labour in the mid-late 80s.

Even the Tories have been down this road several times before with the likes of Ferdinand Mount banging on about property-owning democracy back in the 80s - and while I took no interest whatsoever in their policy debates after 1997 I have no doubt that people like Letwin and Blond would have said exactly the same things back then.

And of course the Lib-Dems have been plowing this furrow for longer than even I can remember.

The reason none of this discussion ever yields any practical results is that to adapt Thatcher there really is no such thing as community.

Most middle class and if they can afford it working class Britons will as soon as they can flee whatever vibrant urban communities they start out in for anonymous suburbs and exurbs where they can safely spend as little time as possible associating with their neighbours.

Most important of all is the break between home and work - with the average employee living 9 miles from his work, most of us will divide our lives between two quite different local 'communities' and have no vote in the borough or district where we spend most of our 'public' time.

And in the only areas of life where we do have a direct (if often rather fleeting) interest in something local - our children's schools and our local hospitals and GP services - all three parties are united on the need to eliminate all vestiges of local democratic control in the name of 'choice'.

The Welfare Refom Bill is the sensational shock change in our covenant between government and the people in 2009. The seriously sick for example are to be subject to threats, sanctions and workfare. Sanctions to take away their minimal survival income are to be put on people by private contractors on targets like parking tickets.

Let's be topical and see how these philosophical ideas line up with this horrific new legislation.

Oliver Letwin, MP
'there needed to be work done on schools, hospitals, prisons, welfare, the environment and the list goes on. These issues, Letwin said, should be tackled through conservative means. This meant that organizations should be, more or less, set free to manage themselves, not ‘micro-managed from the centre.' Frameworks should be set up to encourage people to work together and the state should support and aid that, not direct it.

I would have thought contracting out the bullying of the sick and calling it welfare fitted quite well with this.


Jon Cruddas, MP
'His main point was that Thatcher style politics toward a free-market could not be aptly applied to social policy. It would not result in what was desired, and so Cruddas believed that the government should be the one to set up the frameworks to achieve a more community-based society in Britain.'

I would think wants to keep welfare as a community responsiblity.


Phillip Blond
'Conservatism, according to Blond, is best positioned to take the opportunity to create the individualist society. Blond outlined two ways that the conservatives would change the society. First, a ‘transformative economy' that promoted the notion of the ownership society would be established.'

I would think not much sympathy here for the long term sick especially if they are poor.


Neal Lawson
Lawson expressed the need to humanize the politics of the community, taking a step-back from the politics of pure individualism. The ‘broken society' being debated was due to the conservative government which had allowed the markets to eat up the economy and break it up all in the name of profit. Instead, Lawson argued for a more civically-minded government, one that would regulate capitalism to ‘save it from itself.'

Probably wouldn't like the way this welfare reform is distancing the government from the covenant to look after the sick.


The lines are now open - I'll be voting for Jon Cruddas and Neal Lawson.

Which brings me to the question as to why NewLabour are the ones bringing in this Welfare Reform Bill to the delight of the Tories.

Lee: '... I have no certainty whatsoever about the way forward...'

Indeed. Yet you feel entitled to make adverse comments about the Labour Left, who do have a strategy and are able to demonstrate some ability to oppose New Labour in parliament. The situation is inherently intractable. There is no clear way forward. Yet we can't just allow the forces of the centre-right to continue to dominate British politics. You do not hold any position of epistemological privilege. I could be just as snotty about your support for nationalism in Scotland, but we can all only do our best. The reality is that we have no credible social democratic/socialist party at the moment.

No Jonathan, there was really no deliberate misconstrual. I understand your position. I have no certainty whatsoever about the way forward. I participate here as a full Brit, although my political landscape is Scotland, and although the SNP is far from perfect, at least I do have a real option, which I dont believe the English have. Its all, in my view, going to be much of a muchness. But I wish you well...I would like to see your mission succeed.

Absolute jokers. The best double act since Morecambe and Wise and Laurel and Hardy. Another fine mess your are attempting to direct gullable compass members towards, Neal

"No need for a new party - the party I'm very proud to be a member of has been through much - the history of 1994 (and particularly 2001) onwards need not, in my view dictate how we move forward."

I (and others) had the same problem that you have now, Jonathon, and most of us came to the opposite conclusion. A post 2010 election Labour party will be even more riven by discord than the post 1979 election Labour party, and even its natural supporters will have less confidence in it than the electorate as a whole has had in the post 1993 Tory party (and let's remember that Cameron's Tories have not cleared the trust hurdle yet; it's just that Labour has the greatest antipathy quotient, and that won't change for a generation). A raddled, split Labour party, saddled with debts no-one wants to pick up will be even less attractive to the potential activist, let alone the electorate, if it relies on union support. And, although the Tories will accept individual parliamentary rats, and some not, and similarly the LibDems, it's unlikely that either will accept a nest of parliamentary rats as an organised faction or a potentially organised faction in its midst.

Both the Tories and the LibDems will accept the rump(s) of the parliamentary Labour party as very, very junior menbers of a coalition as they both seek to come to terms with a hung parliament but that's about it. There may be a prospect of a seperate Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party associating itself with the LibDems, and the SNP will go for the best bargain for a Scotland perhaps in the United Kingdom or, perhaps within the framework of a Dual monarchy, or neither, while the little Englander Tories will go for whatever deal gives them FPTP in English elections regardless of cost and its leadership will not (until dragged kicking and screaming, etc). In this scenario, Europe will, itself, whether it wishes it so or not, will become central to the solutions (intentional plural) to the constitutional problems which will need to be resolved, most likely by referendum and treaty revision, whether or not the Queen chooses to grant an election if a government with a clear majority in the House of Commons cannot be formed. My guess is, if this were the case, she would may well be inclined to follow the precedent set by the Scottish Parliament.

Where would Labour, ex-Labour, or whatever, fit into this increasingly likely scenario given its record of total incompetence in government, its dishonesty, and its complete lack of any sensible policies for the future? What is the point of staying on - the vicarious thrill of the symbolic kamekazi? What? Labour has already lost control at local level where it has a minimal political presence, so what's the point? You really want to take the opportunity to gaze at your navel and then discuss it argumentitively, no doubt with with increasing excitement, with others engaged in equivalent acts of introspective self-indulgence?

All very Polly Toynbee and much too much for me to stomach, I'm afraid. But good luck with whatever you finally end up choosing.

I suspect you willfully misconstrue - but that's fine.

No need for a new party - the party I'm very proud to be a member of has been through much - the history of 1994 (and particularly 2001) onwards need not, in my view dictate how we move forward.

I don't expect to convince you Lee. If it is any worth to you - I don't underestimate the size of the task. However, I do see a positive direction to be followed - Compass have led that debate and it is ongoing. If you want to take a very factionlised, entrenched position, then please do. But I suspect, you will be even more likely to fail in promoting and securing a progressive agenda than you suspect I will.

Thanks Jonathan. So to be sure I understand....the way this change happens is through a creation of a new party that takes with it the best traditions of non-Blairite Labour and invites other progressives to join or actively participates. This reformed party, which I guess could be Labour or some other name, benefits from the introduction of proportional representation, wins power, and enacts an agenda which essentially creates the good society envisaged in Compass think-pieces, a moderate form of social democracy that avoids the outmoded Marxist ideologies.

Would this be a fair summary ?

Well, you wouldn't have been poorer if it hadn't happened - that doesn't mean it wasn't a worthwhile event though. I'm always of the opinion that any chance to discuss, debate and move the debate on is worth taking, so I'm glad for these events. They are engaging and useful.

How could it happen - well, I've no great faith in utopias Lee, I'm more a direction of travel man, but here is a scenario for you that may be a little more positive than the usual 'funeral pyre' stuff I read far too regularly on this forum. A post- Brown Labour party finds space to reassess it's values and direction - a broad centre left consensus - Harman, Cruddas, the traditional left and even the more creative people on the centre right accept new labour is dead and begin to rebuld the party from the roots up. Ideas around electoral reform are promoted. In conjunction, the party begins to seek ideas and input from non Labour progressives (greens, PC) - with a change in the voting system it's not impossible to see how a progressive consensus could be built. I'm not saying that this is an inevitable outcome - we would need to work and fight very hard against the still strong Blairite agenda. But you asked for a scenario - that one is not totally out of reach in my view.

Jonathon Hawkes

The consensus from those of us who attended the event, judging by the comments in the hall and followed up here would indicate a valuable addition to the debate.

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In what ways was this a "valuable addition " ? How would we have been the poorer had it not happened ?


Neal's vision of a democratic state emerging to replace both the discredited free market and statist authoritarian models was interesting.
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How do you imagine that happening ? Can you paint a scenario ? Suggest a strategy ?

I don't know Paul, other than to raise your profile on this site, what was the point of your comment? You have consistantly made clear your own opposition to Compass and the ideas that arise from Compass events and publications from an orthodox Marxist standpoint. That's fine - but as that is your position, I would no more expect constructive comment from you on this subject than I would from a member of the Thatcherite hard Tory right.

The consensus from those of us who attended the event, judging by the comments in the hall and followed up here would indicate a valuable addition to the debate. What was clear from the comments of Neal and Jon C was that for a progressive agenda to emerge in the 21st century, we need to seek ideas beyond the old orhodoxies of both left and right. Neals vision of a democratic state emerging to replace both the discredited free market and statist authoritarian models was interesting. A society that seeks to return to (and take forward and enhance) the stakeholder model, a true 'social' democracy seems worthy of further exploration to me. And that kind of model would signal a break from the current neo-liberal agenda stifling current mainstream political debate.