Labour Leadership Election 2016; Why I'm Team Jezza

A few minutes ago I received my online ballot for the labour leadership election: Anyone I have ever had a political discussion with will probably assume I voted for JC.... You are right. Yes I did.

Throughout the leadership election I was inclined to vote JC because he was the man who inspired me to join the labour party to begin with, and because I view the election we are going through as a attack on him & an anti-democratic coup rather than an election to exercise a democratic right.

Before JC became leader I looked at the labour party and saw what looked to me like a shell of its former self, and doubted that it could play more than a minimalistic role in the workers movement leading to a fairer, more egalitarian society. JC's commitment to restoring that party to a party of social change, a party about standing up for the metaphorical 'little guy' and a party of the most fundamental of socialist values; equality, liberty, democracy and peace made me re-evaluate that belief; I now believe that the labour party can be saved, and I stand by my belief that the leader best placed to do that is now and will be for the foreseeable future JC.

In the interest of fairness I read the statement provided by Owen Smith on the voting form and wasn't that impressed. Namely because I don't actually believe that he is the 'unity' candidate that the 'anyone but Jezza' crowd are demanding.

Jezza is who I voted for because he IS a unity candidate in my view; namely because of his his pledge to democratise the party and his willingness to work with those who have made it perfectly clear that they don't agree with his views despite there open and destructive opposition - it beggars belief that an open hand was treated like a clenched fist simply because it was JC who held it out.

Not only do I have every faith that JC has the skill and the determination to unify the labour party, I believe that he has the skill, the drive and the compassion to unify the country and deliver a labour victory in the 2020 general election.

Communism, Rebellion & Animal Farm

Despite the intent of the author, the book and film animal farm does not serve well as a criticism of communism & socialist revolution. The storyline of the book and film (for those who are not familiar with it) is based upon animals of a farm who overthrow the farmer who is mistreating them and under the guise of equality and liberation from servitude a rebellion against the farmer takes place (as a result of the provocation of not being fed) & the pigs take over and appoint themselves as the new rulers. The pigs then collaborate with other neighbouring farmers, and together they share the profits from the farm with the pigs as the visible rulers and the farmers, invisible abusers, who stay out of sight of the rest of the animals. This resembles the situation currently in most liberal-capitalist western nations; a government is separate from the wealthy minority, but it is run on their behalf thus they are in effect one and the same, despite formally being separate entities.

Despite the claims that this depicts the revolutionary transition from capitalism to communism, the storyline better reflects a revolutionary transition from feudalism to capitalism, in Marxian terms a bourgeois revolution, not a proletarian revolution. The distinction between the two types of revolution is the transition from a single absolute ruler (the aristocrat class), to a government whose power is supported by the capitalists (the former aristocracy) who together from what is now considered to be a societies ‘upper class’ or ‘the 1%’. In the story a specific pig (Napoleon) gains much of his influence through the exile and scapegoating his a fellow revolutionist (Snowball), this looks far more like the relationship which currently exists in the UK between our primary party of capitalists (the Tory Party) and the parties of the political left and allied trade unions, who the Tory party use as scapegoats. The inequality of resources within animal farm closely resembles the situation under the current government’s austerity programme; the workers are given less and less, while the rich who have become an elite class of masters sleep comfortably with full bellies.

According to the story at first there is a democracy, which gives way to a single ruler making unilateral decisions, the pigs begin breaking the laws which they themselves have written, and another pig Squealer is able to convince the other animals that pigs are always morally correct.

Comparing this to the demonization of the poor in Britain; we condemn those people who are out of work as lazy, even in areas where during the financial crisis beginning in 2008 large swaths of industry closed and new jobs were never created. We still demonise people born in different nations as criminals who steal what they want including the jobs of the British.

Is the pack of dogs mentioned in the story which Napoleon used to chase Snowball away so different to the right-wing press who would demonise and convince the people to ostracise any working class hero who would stand up for them? Is this so different from the trade union movement being blamed for lost work days when the number of days lost to striking workers is at an all-time low despite the abuses of our current government?

And with the electoral system, legal system, and degree of wealth inequality we have still alive and strong, are we not still living in a nation where adapting a commandment of animal farm “all people are equal, but some are more equal than others” representative of the nation and world we live in. The value of all people as people is equal, however when it is considered that we blame people who fall on hard times for their own misfortune, the legal system is so expensive to access for poorer people that legal remedy is not open to them are we really so far removed from the idea that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others?

In order for animal farm to represent a socialist society (post-revolution) the society which emerged would not have had a political class, or governance in the form which appeared. For a society the size of a farm, democracy could have occurred on a show-of-hands (or paws) basis, so under the control of the workers or animals whether the society would be socialist, communist or anarchist is an academic distinction, because both communist and anarchist ideals (in there purest form) would not have resulted in one group in total control, having replaced one form of totalitarianism, but with each ‘trade’ (egg production, milk production, machinery operation) would have a representative in the governing body of their own choosing, who could be replaced at any time by the group they were supposed to represent.

The distinction (in my view) between whether the workers cooperative which the farm functioned as was effectively a self-sufficient micro-state (or commune) where the procedure was for internal consumption, which would make it communist, or whether it was for both internal consumption and trade with a network of other cooperatives with full internal democracy under direct control of the workers (the animals) which would make it anarchist it would be functioning as a part of a network of cooperatives without the oversight of a ‘state’ (the pigs) to rule over it.  

Comrades: It's Time to Come Home.....

Hello again.

I has been a while I know since I’ve written a blog article about what I’ve been up to, so this one is going to double up as a confession. About an hour after Jeremy Corbyn was elected the leader of the labour party I joined the party and then I e-mailed the Green Party to inform them I was leaving.

The reason I joined the Green Party was actually simple; it was my way of telling the labour party off. The labour party had basically lost its mojo; Blair’s government was almost as right-wing as the Conservative Party, and up until a few days ago had been committed to political centrism believing the only way to victory was a programme of ‘small C conservativism’ rather than embracing Left-Libertarianism & Democratic Socialism as it’s way forward.

I joined the greens as I was becoming increasingly political since the ConDem government took over in 2010 and I could see the effects of their policies first hand, from friends who had been sanctioned, to poverty wages and now since the Conservative majority government’s attacks on trade unions, however I could not in good conscience join the labour party as it was failing to outright refuse to cooperate with the Conservative government’s austerity programme; a programme which has hurt the most vulnerable members of our society causing many people to die or commit suicide through reckless economic policies.

The fact that the labour party has since elected its most left wing candidate in its leadership election, and has its own surge of support shows that a great many people in the British public want an alternative to austerity and that they are more willing to support a left-wing labour party; myself included. As I said earlier I joined the Green’s to give the labour party a kick up the arse – I am myself the stereotypical labour party member; a working class northerner, and I joined the Greens because despite their reputation as a single issue environmentalist party there policies were far more socialist than the pre-Corbyn Labour party.

This is in my opinion what caused the green surge, the phenomenon where over a relatively short period of time the Green Party managed to quadruple its membership; not because people suddenly started believing that environmentalism would stop poverty, because they were socialists and the Green Party was preaching anti-austerity & social justice. Don’t get me wrong; protecting the environment is a necessity and to quote my barber “as the caretakers of this world we are doing a shite job”, but if someone is going hungry to feed their children then I highly doubt they will have the luxury of thinking of long term issues like wind farms & climate change (despite the fact that they are important issues). But with a red surge which has put the green surge to shame in terms of the numbers of members who have joined it is my view that it is now the Labour party who is best suited to represent the views of members of the British left & be the voice of trade unions in government as it was meant to do, while campaigning as the leader of Britain’s anti-austerity movement instead of leaving that task to minor parties.

The green surge served its purpose; it gave a platform to people who wanted to speak out against the conservative government who couldn’t bring themselves to do it on the labour party’s ticket, and it made it clear to the labour party that if it wasn’t going to listen to its supporters then it could be replaced. But now the desired effect has happened; a party which will once again be the voice for the voiceless & hold out a hand to those in need. But now I can’t help but think that those socialists who joined the green party, like myself, would now do better stepping sideways into the Labour Party. Come 2020 Labour is the party which will be able to mount the campaign most likely to unseat the conservatives and the more lefties which join now the more the members of the parliamentary labour party who might attempt a coup against its new leader Jezza will be deterred by the knowledge that a left wing party is absolutely most definitely the wish of the members and the British left.

Dear Tory’s… Don’t you trust us with all the facts about tax?

Something that really pissed me off on an episode of BBC’s Question Time was opposition to the 50% tax rate, because when national insurance contributions are added this means that a person would be paying 52% tax, which might apparently be a hindrance to an individual’s aspiration to try to earn a salary over £150,000.

Well most people don’t pay 2% national insurance contributions they pay 12%; only people earning over £797 per week pay 2% and people earning under it pay 12%. £797 per week equals 41,444 per year. However as the 40% tax band kicks in at £31,886 per year, this means that when 40% income tax plus 12% national insurance are added, people are paying 52% tax on all earnings between £31,886 and £41,444 per year already.

This also means that people earning between £41,444.01 and £150,000 are paying 42% on earning’s in this range and people earning over £150,000 are at present paying 47% tax on earnings over £150,000.

And I always thought that a progressive tax system was where richer people paid more not less because they could afford it, but as we see here people earning over £41,444 are paying a lower rate than people earning less than £41,444. The only thing which is even more stupid than this is that the people who reduced the 50% tax rate down to 45% didn't think we’d notice this.

This proves where the typical Tory’s priorities lie; making middle earners pay more to give a tax cut to their millionaire mates…

Well I have an idea; instead of increasing the 45% tax rate back to 50%, increase tax on the rich by replacing the regressive national insurance bands with a flat rate of 10%, then people earning between £31,996 and £41,444 won’t be paying a higher rate than the minority earning a six figure salary; thus nullifying in the process the argument that high taxes on the rich are bad for business because thousands of smaller business owners will have been given a slight tax cut in the process. The tax difference may be small, 2% opposed to 5% but it would positively impact far more people so there’s a much better chance of someone being able to do some good with it, and the reduction would (at least partly) be cancelled out by the fact that people who were once paying 2% would now be paying 10%.