A Momentous Day, Again.

The pace of British politics in recent times has, frankly, blown most of us away. In the last month we have had a referendum with era-changing consequences, a Conservative leadership race (or at least half of one!), a Labour party coup of never-before-seen potency and complexity, and now this. Andrea Leadsom has stepped down as leadership contender, and the Conservative Party’s 1922 committee have decided that May will now be unopposed. The leadership battle, as quickly as it began, is over. Theresa May will be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and First Lord of the Treasury.

A few things to think about that won’t have been covered extensively by the mainstream press during the course of today’s events; firstly, think of poor old Dave! After getting booed by the crowd at Wimbledon yesterday so overwhelmingly that Andy Murray had to leap to his defence, he has now found his time as Prime Minister (minus responsibilities) cut drastically short. He had been hoping to attend a few more international events in the coming weeks, cementing his legacy as a statesman, but it already seems that he is old news. He now has one more decision to make, before Wednesday’s PMQs session and his official resignation before the Queen. How and when will he move his belongings out of Downing Street?

Secondly, what about Angela Eagle? She stood up to begin her “I’m announcing a leadership challenge” speech 3 minutes before Andrea Leadsom announced that she was dropping out of the race. By the time Eagle had been introduced, three quarters of the journalists in the room had left, sprinting around the corner to Leadsom’s house for her announcement, leading to this frankly excruciating scene-

And, finally, to Leadsom herself. The surprise contender surpassed all expectations by getting through to the final 2 in the Tory leadership contest, but the last nail was slammed firmly into her coffin on Saturday when an interview that she gave to Times journalist Rachel Sylvester seemed to imply that she would be a better PM than May because of her experience as a mother. Theresa May herself has been unable to have children, and has spoken at length about how this has affected her and her family; it would have been a very sore nerve indeed for Leadsom to poke. Looking back at the interview it seems clear that this implication was not, remotely, what Leadsom had intended, but it was enough to allow the entire Blue Quarter press (read by the vast majority of Conservative Party members) to brand her as nasty and unfit to lead. As a result, this morning she accepted defeat and sent a letter to the Chairman of the Party withdrawing from the contest, and the rest, as they say, is history. Another scalp was claimed for the Murdoch empire, and once again News Corp had decided the course of British politics.

David Cameron, himself, will hold his last cabinet meeting tomorrow, and his last PMQs on Wednesday. He will then drive up to Buckingham Palace in the Prime Ministerial jag, present his resignation to the Queen (who will presumably purr with delight), and on Wednesday evening Theresa May will be having dinner prepared in one of Downing Street’s multiple kitchens.

And that’s that. I’ve been waiting to cover what is happening in the Labour party since late last week, but the situation is moving so fast that I have been unable to pin a story down for more than a few hours. At the time of writing, the negotiations between Jeremy Corbyn’s team and everybody else in the party have failed drastically, and Len McCluskey has accepted that he may not be able to broker a peace. The party will go to the polls to try and oust Corbyn, and now that a leadership challenge has been officially announced the next battle awaits; will Jeremy Corbyn even make it on the ballot?

Labour’s NEC will decide tomorrow on their own interpretation of the rules, and assuming as I am that they agree that Corbyn must achieve 51 nominations from the Parliamentary Party to be included in the leadership contest, he will be excluded from his own leadership battle. This, whilst seeming like a ludicrous situation, is the most likely interpretation of the rules; however Corbyn’s team have their own army of lawyers that argue exactly the opposite, so expect a legal challenge if this is the final decision of the NEC. This Labour fiasco will not be over any time soon, and if Corbyn does manage to make it onto the ballot he will likely win again, causing a split in the party which may very well mean the end of the Labour movement as we know it.

It’s all kicking off, and it doesn’t show signs of stopping any time soon. We must wait and see what happens in the coming days and weeks (months no longer seem like a viable timescale in our politics), but expect that every political party of note in our country will have a new leader by Christmas. In the shorter term, our second female Prime Minister will ascend in 48 hours, and presumably initiate what will likely be a tense and difficult divorce negotiation with a very affronted European Union.

 

Corbyn’s Alive!

As most of you know, I only strapped the defibrillator to this blog yesterday, after nearly ten months of absence, and so I feel it is worth a quick recap of everything that has happened to the Labour party since I left. As I recall, Jeremy Corbyn had just become leader of the Labour Party (thanks to the new “£3 a pop” membership rules implemented by Ed Miliband, suspected entryism and the return of a wave of young, naïve lefties like myself to the party), and all of his many critics had scurried away into the woodwork. We, and indeed Jeremy himself, couldn’t quite believe it; he had been the most popular candidate by a country mile, having only made it onto the ballot paper by the grace of a few Blairite Labour MPs attempting to “widen the debate”.

In the months that have followed, what has appeared on our TV screens and in the national press has been, to say the least, lacklustre. Although it is clear that this country’s right-wing press (The Murdoch/Dacre papers in particular) have not made it easy for him, he has failed to stick the knife in when the Conservatives have been weak, and it has cost him. There are others, like me, who had thought he might be just what we needed to shift the tone of public policy away from the state-slashing and multinational-coddling that has characterised the last 7 years of our debate, but after his failure to capitalise on the tax credits U-turn, the junior doctor’s contract fiasco, and the resignation of Champion of the destitute Ian Duncan Smith, it began to become clear that he was not.

What he has managed to do very successfully indeed, and all credit to him, is instil his anti-austerity brand into the heart of the parliamentary party, and helped the Labour party to move away from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s hug-a-banker attitude. The party now has a clear message on the economy, and even if it is simply “borrow to invest” economics, it’s a start. This in my opinion has garnered enough support from the PLP that regardless of what happens to Jeremy, he will have a legacy of some sort to speak of.

However, since the EU referendum, things have really begun to fall apart. All those Blairites and “moderates”, some of whom have been waiting for this opportunity since day 1 and some of whom were willing to give Jeremy the benefit of the doubt on the off-chance that he would double their share of the vote, have had enough. Like rats from a sinking ship, 80% of the parliamentary Labour Party have expressed no confidence in his leadership. His response has been both shocking and grimly predictable; to barricade the doors of his office and fire up the Momentum social media machine to drum up his support amongst members in preparation for a leadership challenge.

The problem for the overwhelming majority of MPs who want to oust him, partially because of his politics and partially because they’d all rather like to have a shot at government in their lifetimes, is that the new leadership election rules make it nigh on impossible to unseat him. All those middle-of-the-road voters that shifted from the Tories to vote for new Labour have long since moved back, or just given up voting altogether. The active Labour membership is comprised overwhelmingly of lefties, and of those who joined up a year ago to vote him in in the first place. This is why almost every Labour MP you can think of his been begging him to resign, and why nobody has stepped forward to challenge him. If there is another contest, and he can get himself on the ballot paper, he will most likely win again. And if that happens, what options are left open to the PLP?

The answer, unfortunately, is a split in the Labour party. It’s happened before; in 1981 Shirley Williams and 3 other Labour MPs (who became known as the gang of four) left the party because of the rising influence of Tony Benn and the feeling that the party was moving leftward; they were also worried about the influence of trade unions on the leadership of the party (sound familiar?). They ultimately started their own party, the SDP, which eventually merged with the then Liberal party to form what we now know as the Lib Dems. The whole story is incredibly interesting and very reminiscent of today’s situation, and is well worth researching if you have the time, however the crux of the matter is that if the PLP cannot unseat Jeremy Corbyn in time for the next election they may well have a similar moment themselves; although the “gang of four” this time around may consist of hundreds.

With Angela Eagle and Owen Smith both threatening to challenge him as potential stalking horse candidates if he doesn’t eat the poisoned apple soon, it remains to be seen whether a compromise can be found to save his leadership in time; John Prescott and Len McCluskey have both been suggested as “honest broker” for negotiations going forward, but rumour has it that Jeremy is refusing to meet with most of his MPs lest they convince him of the need to stand down. His parliamentary aides (including the shady Seumas Milne) have closed ranks around him, he has not done interviews for the media in days, and when he does leave his office or his house it is to stand up in front of Momentum rallies and espouse his usual brand of anti-austerity politics, almost as if he didn’t have a referendum to react to. It’s a real shame, particularly in times like this, that the government doesn’t have a functioning opposition and that Corbyn can’t fill his front bench, as it leads to situations like this written question from his new shadow international development secretary-

Diane Abbott:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps she has taken to assist people in the Indonesian province of Davao del Norte affected by the drought in that province.

Justine Greening:

There is no province called Davao del Norte in Indonesia.

(courtesy Guido Fawkes blog)

On top of all this, Labour could be scoring points on a daily basis if they were on the top of their game, with Theresa May threatening to use EU citizens living in the UK as bargaining chips in her referendum negotiations, George Osbourne rowing back from his “surplus by 2020” commitment (leaving many of us wondering what all the austerity economics were for in the first place), and a government that seems to want to perpetually re-fight the referendum campaign until it tears itself apart.

We can only hope either that some settlement is reached whereby Corbyn is kept in place and beaten into shape until he is electable, or that he bows to the pressure after getting his life’s ambition to call for the trial of Tony Blair from the despatch box tomorrow, and resigns so that the party can find a more credible alternative before the Tories call a snap general election at the close of the year.

I can only apologise, dear reader, after combing back through this, for my long-winded style. I hope you stuck with me until the end- if so, tomorrow I’ll bring you the latest from the Chilcot revelations (or whitewash, depending on your point of view), and a summary of the Tory candidates left in the race to become our next Prime Minister. One of those candidates should fall off the ticket within a few hours of my posting this article; with any luck it’ll be Michael Gove.

Health and happiness in these turbulent times.

“Just for a handful of silver” Post-Brexit summary and analysis

Where the hell do I start? How can I possibly make up for being absent through the most tumultuous time for British politics in living memory? I can only apologise. Far deeper divisions fester within the Labour Party than were ever present during the days of the Gang of Four and the SDP split, we have a Conservative Party running out of cutlery due to the sheer volume of high-profile assassinations in the last week, and our formerly esteemed Prime Minister has resigned.

Oh, and if you hadn’t heard, last week Britain voted to leave the European Union, and stand on our own two feet, arthritic though they may be.

Those of you who know me or have read my little rants before will be more than aware of my stance on these issues (writing as I am from my parent’s house in France), but in order to avoid omitting anything of potential importance I thought I’d put together a run-down of events since the referendum vote, as well as some ideas as to where we could potentially go from here.

• The Brexit vote saw the economy hit by severe shocks and massive uncertainty, in every way reflective of the “fearmongering” economic predictions made by the remain side and almost everyone who could count throughout the referendum campaign. We are still unsure about the medium to long term effects of our vote to leave, but within the next few months the true extent of the damage will become clear. Anecdotal evidence suggests that businesses are holding off on investing in the UK, that multinationals with their EU headquarters here are planning to withdraw to Paris or Berlin, and that at street level consumers are holding off buying big-ticket items like cars and household appliances in the hopes that the markets will settle… Making the markets even less likely to settle.
• Again, the evidence is purely anecdotal, but police forces are reporting an increase in both physical and verbal attacks on almost every minority group in the country since the vote. Mosques and polish community centres have been defaced with graffiti to the tune of “go home”, immigrants have been shouted at in the street, and yesterday Michael Foot’s memorial in Plymouth has been covered in Swastikas. It’s almost as if the isolationist, reductionist attitude of the leave campaign has given licence to racism and xenophobia on a national level. Who’d have thought it?
• EU leaders are begging us to leave as soon as possible to avoid an economic “contagion” spreading across the channel, and to stop the rise of far-right movements in their own individual countries. Meanwhile, the swashbuckling brexiteers who promised to cut immigration and pour EU subscription money back into public services have now assured us that that wasn’t what they said at all, and that we should have read the small print. Most are trying their hardest to convince us that we can stay in the EU as long as we like whilst we get “the best deal for Britain”, which presumably means receiving all the benefits we had before without any of the perceived negatives of membership, including free movement. Best of luck to them.
• David Cameron has resigned, presumably deciding that after causing this entire fiasco in order to get elected last year that it was no longer his problem to deal with, and Conservative party members now have to choose us a new Prime Minister based on what kind of Brexit they would like to see.
• Theresa May is a shoe-in for the job after the last few days; Boris Johnson had been the favourite but was smote across the proverbial mountainside by his friend and fellow Brexiteer Michael “I’m not going to stand” Gove, who then proceeded to, you guessed it, stand. On the plus side, if there’s one thing the Tories hate it’s unpredictable treachery, so the likelihood of anyone from the leave campaign being our next prime minister is basically nil. Oh, and Andrea Leadsom is standing, presumably because she too had not received a decent job offer from Boris’ camp. Rumour has it that we may have a snap general election by the end of the year to legitimise our new glorious leader, but Theresa May has confirmed that if she is chosen she will stay on until the end of the parliament in 2020, to avoid “further uncertainty”. Hmm.
• The Labour Party is, if anything, even worse off following the result of the referendum. 80% of MPs have expressed no confidence in their leader Jeremy Corbyn, in the hope that they can oust him before a general election. His response has been to hole himself up in the leader’s office, surrounded by his lieutenants, and barricade the door, so that nobody can persuade him to resign. Rumours abound that he is only sticking around until Wednesday’s Chilcot Report to call out Tony Blair as a war criminal in the House of Commons; meanwhile his aides are telling journalists that they can’t let him be interviewed because “He’s nearly 70 and we have a duty of care”. I’ll give you all more on the Labour rumblings in the next few days because it really does deserve its own analysis, and summation is the mother of omission.
• It is also worth pointing out that the Lib Dems are standing on a platform to reverse the referendum result and keep us in the European Union. How this squares with their “democrat” brand I’ve yet to work out, but with everything in such a state of flux I expect we’ll hear more from them during the parliamentary recess.
• The SNP are beginning to put plans in motion for a second independence referendum, with Scotland having predictably voted to remain in the European Union. This could happen within a year or two, depending on when Article 50 is invoked and we begin the process of leaving the EU in earnest.
• You must also remember that with three simultaneous leadership elections on the cards, the House of Commons shuts down next week so that they can all take a well deserved excursion to the south of France, Rhodes, or in the case of Boris Johnson, Milton Keynes. This is the reason for the rushed nature of British Politics in the last week, and the months to come. Things are moving faster than ever, and many fear that the Brexit vote is a sign of things to come, with French, German and US elections in the next 12 months each presenting their own brand of right-wing difficulties.
• This morning marked the resignation of Nigel Farage, and with it supposedly the death of UKIP. Unless, that is, they can shift the worship of the “cult of the personality” onto the shoulders of another candidate. My bet would be a dead heat between Douglas Carswell MP and Paul Nuttall MEP, in a sort of “Who’s less creepy?” battle to the death. Whether or not UKIP can stay relevant in the coming weeks and months remains to be seen.

So hopefully, folks, I’ve covered everything. It’s not my task to judge how you voted, but provide you with information in the aftermath. If you’ve missed any of this or want more information on anything, feel free to ask me by email, on social media, or in the comments below. Alternatively, it’ll be forensically covered by the national media online and in print. I myself will be continuing to pick apart events as and when they happen, beginning with an analysis of the storms battering the Labour Party to be published in the next few days (tomorrow if I can), followed by a summation of the Conservative leadership candidates as they are whittled down to 2.

Thanks for reading, to old subscribers and new. I hope you’re as glad as I am that The Politics Problem is back on its feet. I wish I could be returning under happier circumstances, but regardless, it’s good to be back.

Cameron rules out another Independence Referendum for Scotland

Amid comments by the former leader of the SNP Alex Salmond that another Scots’ referendum is “inevitable” given the approach of a vote on our membership of the EU, and the advance of legislation regarding English Votes for English Laws (EVEL), David Cameron has made a statement ruling out another independence vote in the next five years.

This has ignited a massive argument amongst the Commons about who has the right to instigate a referendum, and indeed whether Mr Cameron has the right to veto one. The belief had always been that the SNP would propose another vote in their 2016 manifesto for the Scottish devolved parliament; if they were to then win that election they would have a mandate to call a referendum, and Cameron could do very little to stop it.

There is a wider question here, wrapped up in the mock-outrage and posturing; who is in charge of the SNP? Since Salmond’s comments the current leader Nicola Sturgeon has reiterated her position that “something significant would have to change” for there to be another referendum in the near future, and that “now is not the time to disclose the contents of our 2016 manifesto”. This is not the first time that Salmond has spoken well beyond his brief and caused embarrassment to the party, and it seems that he cannot relinquish the power he possessed as Leader of the party. 

This is Hubris in the extreme; it was Sturgeon who led the party to the biggest election win in its history, an unprecedented landslide victory that swept the whole of Scotland away with the sheer force of change. Salmond fought multiple elections on a similar platform and failed to make a significant impact. He spearheaded the referendum campaign and lost, and he should allow the party to move on from his reign. As a figure he is too divisive, whereas Sturgeon is a fresh face with fresh ideas and little political baggage.

The row is due to continue, and with the house on summer recess it will continue to bubble and broil in the press until September, when Cameron plans to start pushing through his EVEL proposals. 

Sturgeon still vehemently denies that she is planning to call another referendum, but she has been put in a position where she looks evasive because of Salmond’s comments on the Marr show on Sunday. He needs to find his place in the newly-reinforced parliamentary SNP, and stop speaking out of place. The alternative is a scenario in which Salmond lingers over her like a shadow, second-guessing and redefining her decisions and exposing the party to serious in-fighting.

As an aside, growth figures today show the UK economy grew by 0.7% in the last quarter, giving credence to rumours that interest rates may rise in the new year. I’ll continue to keep you updated as the news comes in.

Summer Budget 2015- Summary and Analysis

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s first fully Conservative budget was a chance for him to play a few political games, to steal some ideas and to revise the approach that he pretended to take in his Autumn Statement 2014, and his final Budget of the last Parliament in March. He had, for example, been expecting to cut hard, and then vastly increasing public spending in 2019/2020 to compensate. The OBR called it “a roller coaster” at the time, and it was suspected that it was a final dig at the Lib Dems and Labour to match the Tories’ fiscal responsibility in the run-up to the General Election. All that being out of the way, we had a first glance at what this Parliament will yield for us all.

Here follows a summary of the announcements and measures introduced in the budget, and what they mean for you.

• Growth in 2014 revised up to 3%, from the 2.6% that was previously forecast
• A well-written budget speech, containing references to Greece, the gift that keeps on giving for the Chancellor. A lot of the PM’s one-nation rhetoric employed, with Osborne calling it a “Big budget for a country with big ambitions”, and chiding Labour by suggesting that “Britain has… Left the age of irresponsibility behind”
• He announced a “Smoother” approach to cuts, and is now planning to end austerity a year later than planned, predicting a surplus by 2019/20 instead of 2018/19.
• He is also proposing to enshrine in law a measure to ensure that Governments always run budget surpluses during times of economic stability. This is a purely political move to draw out Labour and expose them to some ridicule; although they should vote against this restrictive legislation, if they do they will be spun into a corner and look like they are against economic responsibility. The vote is in the autumn so we haven’t heard the last of this one.
• He has committed to fully funding the “Stevens Plan” (a report by the Head of NHS England as to the amount of money they will need in the immediate future), as long as the NHS can find nearly 20bn in “efficiency savings” (i.e Cuts).
• Changes to Non-Dom status mean that it will no longer be a hereditary privilege, and that after 15 years of residence in the UK it is removed. This is a blatant rip-off from Miliband’s Labour election campaign, ruthlessly re-branded as a staple of the Conservative diet.
• Public sector pay rises 1%PA FOR 4years (this doesn’t compensate for the losses these people will feel from changes to tax credits though, low and middle income families WILL be squeezed hard by this budget).
• £7.2Bn predicted to be raised by HMRC tackling tax avoidance, although God knows how they will actually achieve this; Chancellor has promised them nearly £1Bn in extra funding to do so.
• He had a massive, calculated dig at Boris Johnson, offering funding to fix the Battle of Britain HQ in his constituency of Uxbridge whilst mocking him for his floundering campaign to block a third runway at Heathrow airport, saying “let its renovation stand as a monument to… The days when aeroplanes flew freely over the skies of West London”
• Decreasing Bank Levy over next five years is a barely-veiled incentive to keep HSBC’s headquarters in London.
• Student finance- removing cap on student numbers. Maintenance Grant will turn into a loan from 2016/17 and be added to overall debt, increased to £8200 per year available to borrow for maintenance. Student fee cap linked to inflation for “those institutions who can ensure they have a high standard of teaching”, so £9000 is no longer the maximum you can expect to pay per year. (as a footnote, this is what happens when young people don’t vote, and all policy is targeted towards the older generations)
• Cuts to inheritance tax that had the Chancellor proclaiming “The left will never understand this”, funded by pension tax relief cut on those earning over £150,000 per year.
• Corporation tax cut again, from 20% to 18% by 2020, making the UK a magnet for the heavy burden of corporate influence.
• BBC will shoulder the burden of free TV Licences to over-75s (the first in a series of measures expected to “Cut down” the BBC’s link with the taxpayer)
• 18-21s obliged to “Earn or Learn” with a new Youth Obligation
• Abolishing automatic availability of housing benefit for 18-21 year olds.
• WRAG (work related activity group) will no longer be funded (aside from current claimants), and those who would have qualified will receive regular Jobseeker’s Allowance.
• Tax Credits- working age benefits frozen for 4 years. Cuts to working tax credits (the extent of which will be announced later). Child Tax credits capped after the second child from April 2017 (Unless you have twins!)
• “Joint security fund” between Intelligence services and MOD, £1.5Bn to help counter extremism and radicalisation
• The Chancellor finally, after much to-ing and fro-ing within the cabinet, committed to spending 2% of GDP on Defence, in order to meet a NATO target set by Mr Cameron last year. This is doubtless partially in response to the Tunisia attacks last week.
• The Tories have decided to raise the minimum wage for over 25-year olds, and call it a “Living Wage”. It will be compulsory, and should reach £9ph by 2020. This starts in April 2016 at £7.20ph, and is regulated by the low pay commission. The OBR suggest the effect on jobs will not be significant, with 60,000 fewer jobs as a result by 2020 (due to companies simply not being able to pay the wages). Small business national insurance contributions will be cut further to compensate, so that small companies can still compete.

Whether you like some of the measures in this budget or not (and it seems that there is literally something for everyone to love and hate), the Chancellor’s about-turn with regards to the pace of austerity marks an increase in projected spending from the Autumn Statement spending forecast of a cool £83Bn. Smoothing out the roller coaster nature of the plan has vastly changed the outlook for the immediate term.

What is clear, above all, from this budget is that the Tories will continue to heap our country’s woes on the backs of the young, and those who they deem “lazy” or “stagnant”, and continue to ease the burden for those who, in the round, vote Tory. The IFS has said this morning that 13 Million families in the UK will lose an average of £260 a year as a result of the tax credit freeze, and that that may well end up being a disincentive to work. It remains to be seen how many of these policies actually happen, but it is a stark reminder of how an ideological lunge to the right has gripped our politics since the departure of Liberal voices from the cabinet table.

Greece totters on the edge as Tsipras enforces Capital Controls

I had been intending to take a two-week hiatus from politics, and since I took that decision it seems like everything momentous has been happening all at once. Three Daesh-related terrorist attacks in just a few hours rocked the whole world this weekend, with tragic deaths in Kuwait, Tunisia and France constituting the biggest loss of British life in attacks of Terror since the London 7/7 Bombings.

And now, after kicking the can as far down the road as humanly possible, the Greek debt renegotiations are fast disintegrating. A few days ago, with Alexis Tsipras’ government finally putting forward proposals that indicated some compromise, there was hope that a deal would be reached with their Troika of creditors. This situation seems a lifetime away now.

When some reforms had been settled upon and an agreement was in sight, Tsipras played a very political move indeed. Elected on a platform to end austerity policy and stop pursuing economic reform, he would have had a coup on his hands if he had brought back his compromises to Greece. Instead, he called a snap-referendum on the proposals to allow the Greek people to decide what they were and weren’t willing to give to end the deadlock.

The money, however, has now run out. The Referendum is to be the 5th of July, but in the meantime Greece has gone broke. The liquidity lifeline from the Troika (sustaining the country until an agreement could be reached) has now been closed, and so tough measures must follow.

Capital Controls on the economy came into force this morning. Cashpoints are allowed to dispense no more than €60 per day in order to stop the public clearing out the banks, and the branches are all closed until after the vote. 

Foreign transfers to countries outside of Greece are banned (although the rich moved all their money abroad weeks ago), and people have been rushing to stock up on food and petrol to such an extent that Hellenic Petroleum, the main provider in Greece, has called for calm, claiming to have months in reserve. 

The referendum becomes tangibly important as it nears. It is, as the opposition in Greece claim, really a referendum on the country’s membership of the Eurozone, given what will happen if they reject the proposals of the European Commision. Stock markets across the world took a big hit this weekend, opening at around 2-4% down on average, as everybody reacts to try and limit their own losses. 

Some international commentators now predict Greece’s likelihood of ‘accidental’ exit from the EU at 85%. While I myself believe there is a chance that the Greeks (tired of fighting the European Commision) will accept the compromise and retreat to lick their wounds, it is becoming more and more difficult to define the point at which the two sides could meet and yet both proclaim a victory to their own electorate (which is of course the purpose of the talks). But when Tsipras is holding meetings with Putin while his country’s money slips down the drain, and the Troika refuse to at least accommodate Greece’s mandate for change, the result of an exit could be a threat to us all; Russia will happily fund Greece’s debt, but at what cost it remains to be seen.

Corbyn makes the cut by a whisker

After a nail biting conclusion to the nomination saga, it appears that there will be a left-wing candidate on the ballot paper for the upcoming Labour Leadership election after all. 

Jeremy Corbyn, a seasoned backbencher and left-wing Labour radical, had previously not been supported by enough MPs to achieve a nomination (the required number being 35). However a few hours before the deadline today, he gathered the support of some of Mary Creagh’s former followers, newly liberated since she withdrew her candidacy, and crossed the line with literally minutes to spare.

This puts Corbyn, having spent years as a backbencher, in the race to become the next Labour leader and in a fantastic position from which to plug his own brand of anti-austerity thinking, which at least deserves a voice in the parliamentary Labour Party. He knows that if it were down to the party, he would have no chance whatsoever; most of the Labour MPs in the policy-making circles are sure that they lost the election because they abandoned the centre-ground, and that Britain despises the left. There are those in the party that disagree, but the real decider in this election will be the party membership and union votes from the general public. If Corbyn plays his cards right, he will at least be able to influence the direction of travel of Labour’s comeback, and hopefully convince the party that this country grew weary of Old Labour, and weary of New Labour, and that a far more forward-thinking long-termist policy portfolio will need to be crafted if they have any chance of even regaining their lost ground in 2020.

It is not at all an acceptable state of affairs for the only left-leaning party in the House of Commons to be a nationalist and anti-unionist party that only represents one of the four constituent nations of our country. Labour mustn’t be afraid to take a step out into the darkness, to be bold and pioneering in its politics, and to present a viable economic alternative to the one presented to us in “efficiency savings” and “streamlining” doublespeak by the party of Government. If it does that, then maybe the “Tory-light” mantle will be shaken off, and they can stand up on May 8th 2020 with their heads held high. One could look at it as a roll of the dice, but it seems to me that they have very little left to lose.

“Don’t Mention The War”

David Cameron kicked off the latest leg of his “schmooze offensive” on European leaders yesterday with a meeting of the G7 group of nations in Bavaria, hosted by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The festivities involved beer and bratwurst (Obama was in fact pictured swigging a lager at 11 in the morning on a work day, but we’ll let him off), and some of the high-level tactical discussions that will always take place when you put several powerful and dimetrically opposed politicians in a room.

They decided, thankfully, that they were going to end humanity’s contribution to climate change by 2100 (so we can all rest easy in our beds), by switching to completely sustainable sources of energy and ending reliance on fossil fuels as a priority. They apparently did not discuss Greece to any serious extent, but that is hardly surprising as the Germans seem to be moving nowhere on the issue of their finances and the reforms that must be implemented before it can lend Greece more money, to pay back the money it already owes. 

A thankfully staunchly held position by Merkel was the absence of Russian President Putin at the talks. When asked if Russia will ever rejoin the group, she responded that she thought not. “There are channels available for the G7 to easily communicate and negotiate with Russia”, she said, agreeing with President Obama that Russia have isolated themselves, despite the pleas of the European Union for a cessation of Putin’s empirical aspirations.

The hot topic at the event, and one which will remain on the agenda for some weeks yet, was the package of reforms being sought by the Conservatives before the Referendum in 2017. The PM is looking to end the payments of in-work benefits to EU migrants from poorer countries in the union, and an end to the right to claim out of work benefits, child tax credits etc. upon arrival. The problem with these reforms is that they would be severely discriminatory to immigrants from certain, particularly former Eastern Bloc EU countries like Romania and Poland. The PM requires the agreement of all 28 member states of the EU to pass these reforms, and since the last time Cameron put his foot down in the EU (over the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker) he lost his vote 26 nations to 2, that will be a very hard sell indeed.

Regardless of whether he gets what he wants or not, you can be sure that Mr Cameron will step down from an aircraft in a few weeks time, returning from Europe waving a list of his achievements like Chamberlain, and claiming “peace in our time”; he wants to back the In campaign, and although half his party would happily leave Europe today I cannot see him changing his position. 

The current polls suggest that the UK is around 2:1 in favour of staying in the EU in the referendum, with 70% of people saying that they could still be persuaded either way. This battle will be long and hard, but make no mistake, it can be won if the campaign is fought positively. Let us fervently hope that whoever is running the Yes campaign will be thorough, charismatic and engaging, rather than dry, uninteresting and Conservative.

Abolish the Human Rights Act: A Red Herring

Since the election there has been much confusion and concern from the public, particularly on social media, regarding the scrapping of the Human Rights Act of the Blair years. The pledge was in the Tory manifesto, the public voted for it, and now it’ll probably happen. But are they really planning on making up their own human rights, ignoring Geneva and plunging us into an INGSOC-style dystopia? Funnily enough, they aren’t.

To say that you are going to “abolish the Human Rights Act” does sound fairly inflammatory, and it is easy to see where people would get the idea that their freedoms will be reduced. The act, however, only serves to enshrine in British Law the judgements and precedents of the European court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, and this does seem a tiny bit mad when we spend public money paying our own Supreme Court to make judgements, that can then be second-guessed and changed by an external third party. 

The next thing you must take into account is the reasoning behind the decision. It is in almost direct response to the attempted extradition of Abu Qatada, the hate preacher and Islamic extremist who is wanted in Jordan on terror offences. 

The opposition to this policy is almost entirely rooted in the rhetoric surrounding it, and even a left-leaning commentator such as myself can see that the Tories, or at least the majority of them, are not trying to be evil here. They are trying to repatriate powers that should, in all honesty, reside in our own judicial system. We can still be signatories of the European Convention of Human Rights, without treating the judgements of that court as more important than those of our own. It is not Euroscepticism, it’s common sense.

Now there are some Tories (unsurprisingly on the right of the party) who want to withdraw from the convention altogether. This sets a dangerous precedent; the only two countries in Europe who have not ratified the ECHR are Kazakhstan and Belarus, both of which have serious histories of human rights abuses. This is not a club we should be aspiring to join, and in a climate in which Cameron is cozying up to every European leader for separate concessions, it is clear that to isolate ourselves in this respect would be detrimental to our bargaining position in the EU. 

The rest of Europe certainly does not want us to leave, and so Cameron must be perceived to have got what he wanted from each of them. There will be no treaty change, that’s for sure. There is much more for us to be worried about over the next five years than the abolition of the Human Rights Act, as long as it is replaced by a British Bill of Rights that enshrines all of the freedoms we enjoy in British law.

Queen’s Speech 2015: Breakdown and Analysis

Yesterday (26th May 2015) featured the Queen’s opening of Parliament, and the Speech in which she set out the Conservative party’s policy agenda for the next five years. The speech is obviously written for her by David Cameron, as it would be highly inappropriate for her to have any actually influence on the running of the country, but it gives us a flavour of what the next five years will feel like. What follows is a breakdown of the key policies announced, and an analysis of the what they could mean for you.

• Ban on Income tax, VAT and National Insurance rises for a five-year period (a result of an electoral gimmick by Cameron that now must be enforced)
• 30 Hours of free child are per week for 3 and 4 year olds, a significant increase from the current figure which will give support to families with children of those ages. It won’t come in until 2017 though, so if your children are 3 or 4 now, hard cheese.
• Working age, tax credit and child benefit freeze until the end of 2017, so no extra help for the disabled, the elderly or the victims of crime regardless of the state of the economy
• A household benefit cap of £23,000 per year, making sure that benefit-reliant families are receiving only the minimum wage.
• “Devo max” for Scotland, and more powers for the Welsh and Irish National Assemblies. Scotland wants full fiscal autonomy (the power to set income tax and control their own finances), but they don’t want it yet, because it would leave them with a £7.5Bn funding gap (IFS), so this is a bit of a shot in the foot for the SNP.
• A ban on legal highs, which is incredibly difficult to legislate for; the current supposed wording is “any substance intended for human consumption that is capable of producing a psychoactive effect” which obviously would also ban Alcohol, Tobacco and Coffee, so this will be a difficult area.
• A so-called “English votes for English Laws” bill, which would give English MPs the power to veto decisions which only affect England. This will, again, greatly distress the SNP.
• 500 new free schools and more conversions to academies for failing secondary schools.
• A seven-day NHS by 2020
• A referendum on EU membership by December 2017. This is the big one, folks. It will dominate your TV screens for many months to come; in fact their are many rumours that Mr Cameron will attempt to pull it forward to May 2016, in line with the London Mayoral elections.

With all this and more to look forward to over the next five years, and an opposition that can barely hold itself together, the future looks bleak for the left. All we can do, for now, is make damn sure that we stay in the EU, and attempt to rebuild from there. On the plus side, there is very little left to be lost.

There will be a post at some point in the next few weeks finally detailing the pros and cons of the EU referendum, so if the subject interests you watch this space.