Tag Archives: politics

Only Corbyn can save the Left

Labour go into this election with the dice stacked against Corbyn, as the Tories intended. But here’s the thing – he’s only an election liability *if* you believe he can win.

But in fact everyone – surely even the man himself – can see there is *no chance* of Corbyn being the next PM, even in coalition.

On the 8th June the nation will choose not ‘May or Corbyn’ but ‘big or humungous Tory majority’.

The Lib Dems can’t win either, and again, the whole world knows it. So Brexit is most definitely happening.

Those two facts mean the left can neutralise Tory scaremongering on a ‘PM Corbyn’ or ‘Brexit backsliding’. That’s how we move the conversation on to what kind of country we want. There the Tories are on a much weaker foundation. The fact is, NINE years after the banking crisis, and seven years after they took power, the Tories have cut and wrecked at every opportunity, the longest, most savage swipe at living standards in memory. They will keep on, and on, and on at our pockets because they are ideologically unable to think of anything else.

So if the left can only acknowledge that no, they can’t win this time, no, they can’t stop Brexit, and no, Corbyn won’t be PM, they can turn on to arguments that are winnable. Better yet, a tacit pact to collaborate (perhaps supporting Compass to produce a social-media-friendly ‘tactical voting app’ based on postcodes or similar) would lay the necessary foundations for a proper power grab in 2022 – when the Tories will have been in power for over a decade.

I suspect this would be the Tories’ worst nightmare. May’s gamble would completely backfire – winning the election (narrowly) but losing the national argument.

The key is only Corbyn, or those close to him, can trigger this. Perhaps the Easter significance will inspire them…

Labour’s Corbyn election – ten thoughts.

Riiiight so both Corbyn and Angela Eagle can run for Labour Leader, so the election’s on. Labour’s turn to agonise about runners, riders, the gap between party members, the MPs who they volunteer for, and the public who might (or might not) reward them with power. This time round the stakes couldn’t be higher, with a Brexit to influence, likely Scottish independence, and possible general election. Labour’s problems will be acute and more so than the Tories (their spin machine has somehow turned their own fortnight of indecision and ineptitude into an object lesson in ruthlessness… amazing.) This is because Labour’s problems – shifting support bases, policy fracture points, and the large and apparently increasing disconnects between voters, MPs, and a large membership* – are deeper, older, and until recently less-discussed than the Tories’ main weak points on Europe and social liberalism. Here’s my tuppence on this, all collected in one place, in no real order of logic/emphasis:

1) This isn’t the 80s. It isn’t a re-run of Militant, a long-term plan of an external party; Corbyn (at the last election) got a massive majority of Labour Members and Labour Registered Supporters.

2) This isn’t the 90s, or even the Noughties, either. Two-party politics in the UK is dead, dead, dead. Not least because the UK itself as a political entity is heading for the dustbin faster than Cameron’s ‘DC – UK PM’ business cards.

3) It isn’t a ‘Corbyn cult’. Lots of people, me included switched onto Corbyn because of his policies, not the other way round.

4) That ‘7, 7-and-a-half’ performance. Watch the full interview: Did Corbyn bang the EU drum as loudly and clearly as Cameron, Brown, Blair and Major? No. He articulated a nuanced, balanced, fact-based opinion (essentially “I’m broadly in favour of the EU and many of the benefits, but we shouldn’t ignore the problems”) in the way that we kept being told other campaigners weren’t doing – and got castigated for it. Naïve? He’s been into politics for 40-odd years. I think he was just doing what he was elected for, saying what he believes the truth to be, simply.

5) Will Corbyn ever be PM? I personally don’t think so. But the future of UK politics is probably coalitions – see (2) above – so the views he’s highlighted and continues to champion will be (I believe) represented by a coalition or leftist grouping in power.

6) If the problem is style, Angela Eagle isn’t the answer. A bit more centrist… a bit more electable… a bit less weird… a bit less Marxist… sure. But if the problem is that Corbyn isn’t enough like Blair, Eagle isn’t the answer. PM May will utterly decimate her, in seconds.

7) The policies are belters: Renationalising railways; reversing NHS privatisation; A Brexit that prioritises EEA access and freedom of movement over border control; a genuine national living wage, properly enforced; scrapping tuition fees and expanding apprenticeships; environmental protection; socially liberal. Fair personal, corporate, financial and ecological taxation to pay for it. These are all massive and proven winners amongst (variously) from 50+ to 85% of the electorate.

8) Trident is a red herring. Forget it. I’m not sure how I feel about unilateral disarmament personally. But given he’s unlikely to be a majority PM (see above) Corbyn’s stance on nuclear weapons doesn’t really rate in importance for me compared to Brexit, the NHS and taxation. In any case the lifespan of the current system can be extended to postpone that discussion past 2020 – the MoD are actually quite good at kicking stuff like this into the long grass for a bit. By then the left (hard- and centre-) can get themselves into shape for that debate. Dividing ourselves now over something the right are utterly united on, and a clear majority of the public support, is madness (Corbyn even acknowledged so with his defence review). There’s much better reasons to argue…

9) Honest votes are more powerful. By that I mean both that the recent UK referendums showed – to every single person in the country better than a lecture ever could – that first-past-the-post is rotten**, that tactical voting or second-guessing your fellow electors is stupid, dangerous and counterproductive, and that (shock, horror) voting for something you believe in is an energising and rewarding experience in its own right. This is also true of leadership elections, don’t forget; how many Tories egging on Boris now wished they hadn’t? Or backed Gove instead of Leadsom? And lastly…

10) The ‘split risk’…

Tensions in  what used to be a millions-strong Labour movement between left-behind poor and optimistic urbanites have become unendurable. They might not lead to a party split (although the press have started to publicly contemplate what lots of us have been saying for a year, or more) but equally might. Should you vote for Corbyn if you want a split, or if you want unity? It’s impossible to know, so see (9) above and vote for the person/policies you prefer.

As to the desirability of a split, well, tensions are often resolved by fractures. There need not be a SDP-type irrelevance created – the political landscape is completely different now, with smaller parties proven and established, and many more proportional elections apart from Westminster in play. More importantly, figures in the Greens, Lib Dems and Labour have already spoken overtly in the press about the need for a new, broad centre-left coalition, which both Labour descendent parties could contribute to without antagonising each other’s supporters. Probably more happily and successfully!

It’s also important to remember that the ‘unite and fight’ ethos that animates the Labour Party – which (especially) Blairite PLP are mobilising to justify opposition to Corbyn, disingenuously I feel – predates the Labour Party by a century or more. Recall the Diggers, Levellers, Abolitionists, various religious groups, Socialists, Trade Unionists… lefty-ness has always been necessarily a big tent, but which poles are placed firmly in the earth and the strength of the storm define how big the canvas is. Progressive movements which want to redistribute power and wealth from the self-protecting, actual, ever-present, and very real, ruling class can’t always be populist, and span acres of political ground, and find expression in a single monolithic electoral party. Sometimes two, but rarely three of those. If it’s time to move the poles around to firmer ground, we should.

So that’s my take. If you can vote, I hope you do…

*However much the PLP might want to, they can’t ignore the fact that a progressive party needs vast numbers of volunteers in their millions, far more than a right-wing party which can afford paid helpers. Substituting volunteers for better fundraising adverts and more millionaire backers is a symptom of the root cause, not a solution.

**Imagine how different our democracy would look if we’d had compulsory voting for the last 20 years, with county-wide party votes used to fill a proportionally-elected House of Lords. How much healthier would we be, then?

On schools testing

Schools testing has been in the news again recently… are SATS etc useful objective measures of a school’s performance? Or do they add unnecessary stress and bureaucracy?

Well I think we can all agree more objectivity and less stress are good things, and most of us would probably go further and say that SATS aren’t doing either of those jobs. But kids are so unique! And testing is so essential! How on earth can we do both?!

Well, sorry. If there’s one field that is actually good at summarising hundreds of thousands of individuals in a heterogeneous population, it’s biology. So here’s A Biologist’s Alternative to SATS. Let’s call it… STATS:

  • Pick 5-10 measures that are easy to test and cover a wide range of measurable markers of kids’ lives – say, a couple each of literacy and numeracy tests, some critical thinking, standard IQ and general knowledge. Plus, happiness / wellbeing and physical health.
  • Assemble a mixed team of inspectors, governors, academics and teachers. Have them sample, say, 20 schools from a wide range of areas and rank them.
  • Then test the kids in those schools using our metrics. Also collect information on their dates of birth, sociological factors (parents’ status, wealth, postcode, commuting distance, screen time – there’s loads of ways to do this), etc.
  • Now we can construct a GLMM (a slightly-but-not-too complicated statistical model – or else use machine learning stuff like HMMs or neural networks, although I suspect getting enough data would be hard) to model each kid’s scores as a function of their school’s ranked quality given their sociological background.
  • Here’s the important bit: we take the test scores of the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles and label them ‘below’, ‘on’ and ‘above’ average respectively. But we won’t translate these expected quartile scores directly into national targets because we know the makeup and weighting of school sizes and types across the country will vary greatly and nonlinearly.
  • Instead the model itself provides a national benchmark, not a standard. This will be used to model the expected scores for a given school (and students) given the same sociological information, most of which can be imputed from child benefit statements, addresses and the like.

Why would this system – more complex to set up and quite data-intensive – be any better than the current one? Here’s a few reasons:

  1. We know development is multifactorial. So is this model.
  2. We know sociology greatly affects kids’ life chances, so let’s explicitly account for it. If the upshot on that is more effort alleviating poverty than endlessly tweaking the school system, great.
  3. We can publish the tests’ relative weightings in the model so teachers/parents know which should be more emphasised.
  4. Grade inflation would be easy to abolish, simply by updating the model every year or so.
  5. The grading of schools would be simpler and integrated. Most schools will be ‘on-average’ – this is implicit – so the horrific postcode lottery will end and parents can agree to focus on improving their local school, which is better for their commute and their kids’ sanity.
  6. Regional or municipal variations due to differences in sociology will also be apparent, and can be evidenced and tackled.

The Channel – a generation gap.

So Cameron has caved in to the Eurosceptics, and they all want us to move away from the rest of the EU.

In my travels around the world, and business/academic dealings with the Americans or Chinese / Japanese, I’m reminded of just how culturally different we Europeans are to them. I’m proud of our cultural achievements, of ESA, CERN and Airbus, and our messy multiparty democracies – more unwieldy but more representative than the grotesquely polarised US system. Speaking only from experience my academic work has benefited from EU structures and funding, and neither of my businesses has ever been ‘hampered by Brussels bureaucrats’ as far as I can tell (but maybe I am a blinkered irrational Europhile.) I do know that I am British, English and European. At the same time.

I see the EU as a collaborative project, not a zero-sum game, and in the long run we only stand to lose out if we are not represented well at the EU. I accept that Cameron’s options on Thursday were limited, but I feel that that restricted position owed more to mistakes made months ago, inadequate diplomatic investment over time (cocking a snook at Sarkozy repeatedly and Merkel earlier this year) and his decision to leave the centre-right European Peoples’ Party grouping (including Merkel and Sarkozy) for a fringe ultra-right one including parties with neo-Nazi links. He became a hostage to events and lost influence with our colleagues in other EU member states. From the accounts I’ve read, Cameron (who has only been in the job 18 months or so) essentially miscalculated and botched the summit in a fairly amateurish way, preferring to play to the far-right eurosceptics at home instead. I can’t imagine a Churchill, a Gladstone, a Pitt or, yes, even a Thatcher would have manoeuvered so poorly.

I don’t see how the City will actually prosper if the eurozone moves ahead with harmonisation – it seems far more likely that Frankfurt will benefit more as the geographical and social centre of a revitalised Euro. After all, if you were a Far Eastern investor would you rather be in London, with (some) lower taxes and regulation (potentially) but restricted access to the main European market, or Frankfurt? Long-term the answer seems obvious to me. The comparison with Switzerland seems dodgy at best: they have a deposit-based banking sector driving a $500bn economy of 7m people, versus our financial-services sector contributing 10-20% of a $2,200bn economy of 62m people.

And what of national soverignty? Of Trafalgar, Nelson, England’s wooden walls; the Battle of Britain; the Blitz spirit – the lone bulldog standing resolute against the storms of the world? I’m not sure if that imagery is helpful or even relevant any more. After all, launching a cruise missile, refuelling a fighter jet, or even firing a rifle requires the logistical support of dozens of private companies, many of whom are not British and any number of which might be bought or sold by persons or governments unknown. And if defence really is your thing, remember we are still the leading European player in NATO; that the US is increasingly turning towards the pacific and will not guarantee our security much longer; and that further European defence co-operation (which seems the only real route to strategic security) has been blocked by us, not facilitated. Of course the 27 member states all have different priorities (French agriculture, Italian design and luxury goods, German / Polish manufacturing, etc) but we can’t all have our special interests entirely protected. The point of the european project is to trade some national decision-making for european solidarity. To be clear – I am in favour of that.

Lastly – we know economic fortunes are always changing. To attempt, essentially, to enshrine our financial sector’s position in international treaty frameworks at the expense of our other interest may well be illogical as well as unpopular. Suppose, in 40 years, our comparative advantage lies in manufacturing again, or even tourism or some other industry? Would we then have sought to re-write the rules again? To me it seems far more sensible for the long-term so set rules that are equal and fair to all, and let the best man (which, currently, is us as far as financial services are concerned) win.

But then the older generations know best, so perhaps we should let them drag us out of the EU. After all, all our generation and our children have to do is live with the consequences.