Look Left, Look Right

About ten years ago, whenever I visited Europe, I always used to look the wrong way when crossing the road. But not, as you might think, just out of habit and instinct; it's slightly odder than that. I consciously thought about which way to look but still got it wrong. It was just the dumbest thing. I would actually stop, think about the way I should be looking, and still somehow look the wrong way.

Eventually I came to realise what was going wrong in my head. Basically, I had TWO instructions going on: one was (a) here in France, you need to look left as you cross the road, and (b) here in France, you need to look in the opposite direction from what you think. Both of these instructions are fine and each would on their own likely produce the right result. But both of these instructions together are a disaster; they cancel each other out. I'd think 'look right' then the other instruction would suggest I reverse that, so I'd look left. You have to choose one.

And which one? Well, (a) is actually much better than (b), because (b) is ultimately self-cancelling. If it works and becomes instinctive, then it will at some point come to feed on itself. You start by using the instruction to look left when habit told you to look right; but once you're now instinctively looking left, the instruction tells you to look right again.

Strangely enough, it's simpler when there's more than two options, when changing currency or learning a new language and it's not simply a binary. No one speaks French by thinking 'fromage is just the opposite of cheese'. You just learn to say fromage. In other words, you need to teach yourself to do what's right, not what's different.

I bring this up because of the Labour leadership elections. A whole series of candidates have put themselves forward (and some have already taken themselves back) for the job. But look what's happening: candidate after candidate has denounced the 2015 manifesto, the manifesto that they all signed up to and on which they all campaigned. Most of the candidates have been insisting that what the Labour Party needs to do is ditch their former policies and do the opposite. Liz Kendall has declared that Miliband's Labour was not 'aspirational' enough, that it should distance itself from the trade unions, and embrace privatisation in the NHS, the school system and in university teaching. Andy Burnham has complained that Miliband's Labour was anti-business and that the party needs to 'celebrate the spirit of enterprise'. He's also said it was a mistake to be running a deficit before the crash of 2008, as does Mary Creagh. Yvette Cooper also thinks Miliband was anti-business and has pledged to support cuts in Corporation Tax and to set up a advisory group of business leaders. Caroline Flint, standing for the Deputy Leadership, has suggested that the party should give a 'kick up the backside' to people on benefits.

All of these positions seem to be based on ditching the principles on which they fought the election. This is stupid for many reasons: Labour got 9.3 million votes last month. The Tories got 11.3 million. It was hardly a landslide; it was close. In fact, as this chart shows, only twice in the last forty years has it been closer. Why this rush to sweep everything away?

General Elections since 1979: 2nd-placed party as a proportion of 1st

A widely-circulated article in The Mirror suggested that - due to the vagaries of our first past the post system - the votes of only 900 people secured Cameron his majority. Why go for Tory policies?  11.3m people voted for the Tories but 19.4m voted for other parties. That hardly says to me that there's electoral gold in them policy hills. It also makes the candidates look absurd: how can we take seriously someone who believes in a Mansion Tax in March but fulminates against it in May?

But most of all, the stupidity is that they are doing (b). They're looking at where we were and just doing the opposite. We wanted to rein in the fatcats? Let's encourage the fatcats. We wanted to protect the unemployed? Let's kick the unemployed. We opposed NHS privatisation? Let's support NHS privatisation.  We rejected Tory claims that Labour ruined the economy? Let's agree that we did.

I think we're being misled by the topography. In 1789, during the French Revolution, when the Assemblée Nationale was founded, supporters of Liberty tended to gather on the left side of the room (relative to the Chair), leaving supporters of the King on the right. This more-or-less spontaneous grouping slowly became sedimented into French political life: when the Legislative Assembly was formed in 1791 and again, a year later, when the National Convention met these divisions were duplicated. and by 1815, after the Restoration of the Monarchy, the left-right axis had become an established way of identifying not just the broad political groupings, but, within them, the level of radicalism (with the terms far right, far left, centre right and centre left coming into usage). The left-right axis spread through the press and by the 1820s spread out of the chamber to the public who began to identify themselves as being on the left or the right.*

Labour has to get out of this left-right thinking. In part, because it has no option. Labour faces twin threats of SNP and UKIP. The SNP has, on the whole, a much more leftish programme; UKIP have a much more right-wing programme. The more Labour moves to the left, the more it risks shedding voters to UKIP; the more it moves to the right, the more it entrenches its incredible losses to the SNP. There is no future for Labour in repositioning; it needs to reject the whole topography. 

What Labour must do is reassert and argue firmly, clearly and uncompromisingly for its basic values, of making the UK a fairer, more just, more creative and open society. Let's not fall into the delusion that because we looked left last time we have to look right the next. Conceding Tory policies to send out a signal that Labour is listening will actually just send out the signal that the party has no values and its members no integrity. The whole 'repositioning' debate is a distraction. Labour must do (a) not (b): what's right, not just what's different.

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* Marcel Gauchet, 'Right and Left,' Translated by Arthur Goldhammer, In Realms of Memory, Volume I: Conflicts and Divisions, edited by Pierre Nora and Lawrence D Kritzman, Rethinking the French Past, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, pp. 241-98 is a rather brilliant history of these terms.

The Bishop Who Killed Those People

The bishop who killed those people
Was in the wrong compartment. 
After they ejected him from first class 
He sat in his golden hat and asked
If I would take his confession.
I said that’s not my department.

Careful, or I'll kill you too, he laughed.
But can you tell the truth, I asked 
Without a confession booth?
So me in the train toilet, him outside,
The door open a crack, he spilled
About those people he killed.

I guess he was a little loud
Because he drew a crowd 
Some angry, some needing the loo.
And the bishop gave me his hat
And said turn your back
I have work to do.

He was quite a fighter
And taking back his mitre
Warned, this stays between me and you.
I said, God would forgive and forget
But he replied, I haven't told you yet
And he said why he killed those people.

I tried to listen blankly,
But frankly I failed.
His account was very detailed
Those people, he said
Were better off dead.
They try to kid you all

By talking of the individual 
Instead of the violence that constitutes the social.
He’d read Zizek and was emphatic
That radical violence is homeopathic,
A way of curing a prior violence that is pervasive.
The bishop was quite persuasive.

After he was done I conceded
We all logically needed
To kill some people too.
But these were lies and in his eyes
As he smoked on the platform at Crewe
The bishop had tears.

He called me often over the next two years.
He didn't speak but that was fine
And I thought it kind to stay on line
To see if he had something to say
And we spent several hours that way.
Me listening, him not saying a word.

A few years later I heard
The bishop had thrown
Himself from his own steeple
Nothing to do with those people
I was told
He just got old.

No Taxation Without Representation

David Cameron has just announced who will be able to vote in the forthcoming EU Referendum. The rules will exclude EU citizens who have settled in the UK, even if they've been here for a decade or more. This has some affinities with his proposed changes to welfare legislation, which would make it impossible for EU migrants to Britain to claim welfare for the first four years.

The 'principle' here seems to be that only British-born citizens have a moral right to decide on Britain's relationship to Europe. The problem here is that this is exactly the sort of narrow nationalistic thinking, turning its back on the international, global forces that connect us, that the EU was formed to transcend. It's a decision that has built into it a kind of anti-EU bias. The decision's actually been taken as an offering to Cameron's Eurosceptic wing and the right-wing press. (Imagine how the Daily Mail would react to 1m EU migrants in Britain having a say in Britain's future! Oh wait, you don't have to imagine.)

And the Eurosceptics have seized on this decision with relish. John Redwood and Liam Fox have claimed that to include EU migrants would be to 'hijack' the referendum and would be an 'unacceptable dilution of the voice of the British people'. No arguments, you notice, just the assertion of these political opinions as if they were simple facts. In fact, it's a systematic exclusion of a substantial part of the electorate who have real experience of the benefits of the EU and its principled support for the free movement of people. It significantly increases the chance of Brexit.

But EU migrants pay their taxes. (The evidence, actually, is that as a group they pay way more in taxes than they receive in benefits.) The great slogan of the American Revolution was 'no taxation without representation' - the principle that it is fundamentally unjust for a government to tax its citizens without being democratically accountable to them. So why should EU migrants not have a say in the future of the country to which they pay their taxes and in which, let's remember, they have chosen to settle? Notice that UK emigrants to Europe will get the vote: people who have chosen to leave Britain who may have spent 15 years in Spain will have more say over the future of this country than somewhere who has lived and worked and paid taxes here for a lifetime.

Here's a thought, Mr Cameron. To be consistent, why not announce this: EU migrants will not be able to claim benefits for four years - but nor will they be required to pay tax or National Insurance contributions. This would be a real incentive to promote movement in the workforce, encourage the job market to be as mobile as that for goods and services; it would reward people for their incentive in upping sticks and finding new employment in the place that's right for them. It would provide a motivation to move that would counterbalance the inertia of home and familiarity. 

Of course this would only work if there were reciprocal arrangements across Europe or we'd be a magnet for tax-avoidance, and I know you hate that. There would also have to be recompense for the tax loss this would produce for the Treasury or there wouldn't be any welfare to withhold; businesses would benefit hugely from this liberated job market, because they'd suddenly get more access to the skilled workforce from right across the continent, so it would be reasonable to expect them to pick up the shortfall.

In addition, if the quid pro quo for avoiding tax is to not benefit from our welfare system, that should apply to businesses too. Any business that avoids paying its full corporation tax in this country should also not get any kinds of benefit from the government: they should have to pay directly for any treatment their employees receive on the NHS and child benefit too; if they lay their workers off, they'll have to pay their unemployment benefits; if their employees are entitled to Housing Benefit, they'll have to provide that; and a tax-avoiding business won't be eligible to reclaim maternity pay or sick pay or anything like that; I think these migrants would probably have to pay a supplement if they go to a subsidised theatre or concert hall. Fair's fair.

This is actually the sort of madness that comes out of right-wing think tanks all the time, demolishing tax and transferring the functions of the state to private enterprise. So David Cameron should like it.

But you can see the problem, can't you, Mr Cameron? Would it be a good idea to invite large numbers of people to enter the UK - whether migrants or businesses - who would have so little stake in the country? Maybe people and businesses would move here purely for the tax breaks and they'd have little care for the civil society everyone else is building. Excluding someone from taxation and representation is to disengage them from our common culture. That doesn't sound like the recipe for a healthy society.

But you can't have it both ways. How can we expect people to come here, contribute to the workforce, contribute to our culture, contribute to the Treasury, but still tell them they have no right to contribute to decisions about what this country should be?

I am lucky. I work in academia and I know hundreds of people - students, colleagues, fellow academics - who have come from the EU to Britain and made invaluable, extraordinary contributions. I'm talking about Peter Boenisch, Margherita Laera, Vicky Angelaki, Marilena Zaroulia, Sylwia Dobkowska, Marissia Fragkou, and more and more and more. These have demonstrated every bit as much commitment to this country as I ever have. Perhaps more so: I didn't choose to come here.

It's grotesque and immoral to exclude EU migrants from this debate. It's another grim sign of how much we will risk every time David Cameron has to pander to his lunatic fringe.

Getting Europe Wrong

David Cameron has this policy which is that he's offering an in/out EU referendum after he's negotiated some reforms to its treaties and ways of working. This is a terrible idea for all sorts of reasons. Let me say why.

First, I should be clear: I'm in favour of staying in the EU, reformed or unreformed. Of course, we'd all like it to be reformed, if by reformed we mean 'better'. So 'staying in a reformed EU' sounds like a good slogan. But it's not good if it means an EU where there are no barriers to money, goods and services but there are huge barriers to the movement of people. I don't want to be in an EU where a wax replica of me has more freedom of movement than I do. 

But this policy is a typical example of Cameron's chronic short-termism. How did it come about? In the middle of the last parliament, with UKIP really hitting the Tories in the polls, it was Cameron's attempt to shore up his support. He did this by kicking the can down the road; promising an EU referendum in the next parliament. He couldn't do it in the last parliament, I guess, because the Lib Dems wouldn't have let him. So he promised it for the next one. I guess he thought he probably wouldn't get in or he'd be in coalition with the Lib Dems again and wouldn't have to act on it.

But now we're further down the road and here's the can. We have a referendum looming at some point in the next two years. This is going to be a nightmare as it is, because the press will be full of scare stories about EU bureaucracy and all the everyday racists are going to be vox popping their way into our brains. It's going to be Idiot Hour for the next two years.

And to add stupid to stupid, Cameron's also made this meaningless promise about getting reforms. Well, maybe he will get some reforms. Actually, having gained this surprise majority means he's got a pretty good mandate to demand serious reforms from the EU. Whatever they say, the EU don't want us to leave, so we probably have quite a bit of leverage at the moment. 

But still, what kind of reforms are we realistically going to get? Surely there is not the slightest chance of the EU tearing up the fundamental principle of the free movement of labour? There may be a bit of tinkering around welfare rights, but they won't be able to stop EU citizens coming here. And quite right too. The problem for Cameron is that clear and evident limits to immigration are surely the only reform that will dent the UKIP-led support for leaving the EU.

Which means that Cameron will probably come back from these negotiations with a few vague promises of reform, some of them technical and difficult to intuitively grasp. The EU's enemies will be able to scorn them very easily and it will be hard for Cameron to say 'I now recommend staying in this reformed EU' because there will be confusion and doubt over whether there have been any reforms at all.

I am fairly confident that the UK will vote to stay in. Fairly confident. But then I was fairly confident there'd be a hung parliament so what do I know? I'm concerned that the pro-EU campaign will suffer from the same lack of imagination as the No campaign in Scotland, with the same resort to scare stories and strategy of fear. Maybe this is the fate of all campaigns to preserve the status quo. But they have to start thinking now. It cannot be led by business. It should not be led by the usual faces in the political class. It can't be a matter of a few celebs. It must not be dry economics.

We need to celebrate the cultural and philosophical vision behind the EU from the moment it was founded, that dream of a great continent coming together to heal what has divided us and celebrate what connects  us, building bridges, welcoming our neighbours, learning from each other. If we can sell a few more things to each other, great, that's a bonus, but it's this glimpse of common humanity, cultural dialogue and civil rights that is at the heart of the ongoing EU project, which makes it all the more infuriating that Cameron's habitual short-termism has put it all at risk.

A Massive Waste of Time

We have a new government. Which looks much like the old government, only without any nice people in it. It's very early days but a few policy announcements were made in the campaign and have been confirmed since. Quite a lot of them are a complete waste of time.

In the campaign, Cameron promised a 'five year "tax lock"' to prevent himself from raising the level of income tax, VAT or National Insurance contributions. This is as ridiculous as Labour's policy monolith. A government really shouldn't need to legislate to stop itself doing something it doesn't want to do. If anything, it makes it look like he has tax-raising instincts that need to be forcibly restrained, like putting bromide in your own tea. It's a complete gimmick. And we know it's a gimmick because how would it work? Such an act can be repealed - which might be politically embarrassing to do, but not much more embarrassing than, say, promising not to introduce university tuition fees on the front page of your manifesto and then doing it anyway. In fact, it might make it even easier to raise taxes, because the government would be able to make some story about the economic picture being so important they have to introduce new legislation to raise taxes, thus giving a more convincing picture of national emergency. Possibly Cameron is thinking he might 'entrench' the legislation (i.e. make it difficult to repeal by including clauses to prevent that, like saying that it would require a two-thirds majority to do so or saying it can't be repealed before a certain date), but it's not clear that such entrenchments are legally enforceable. (There's a really helpful piece by Mark Elliott on this.) And, once again, if you don't want to raise taxes, Prime Minister, it might be easier just to not raise taxes.

He's going to repeal the ban on fox-hunting. Why? To appease a tiny group of core Tory voters, some MPs with rural constituencies and the PM's own 'Chipping Norton Set'. It's not going to be a popular move: a poll taken on the eve of the Boxing Day hunt in December 2012 suggested that 76% of the public are opposed to the Act's repeal (rising to 81% for deer hunting and 83% for hare coursing). It's a sign of contempt for public opinion and a nod to a world of privilege and cruelty. Given that our economy is in poor shape and there are 20 constituencies with child poverty at 39% or more, this should not be a priority. It's a waste of time.

Cameron has also committed to an EU Referendum. He doesn't want an EU Referendum. He wants to stay in the EU. It's going to be horribly disruptive and divisive; it will bring out the worst in our press, the worst in our backbenchers, and, I suspect, will damage the nature of our collective life. It will bring all other business to a standstill as MPs are off campaigning on one side or the other. It will cause a disastrous pause in investment as people hold their fire waiting to see which way we jump. All of this to preserve the status quo. It's a damaging waste of time.

And he's going to abolish the Human Rights Act. And he's appointed one of the most hated members of his senior team, Michael Gove, to do it. Why? It's true that the Government has been frustrated by some decisions taken by the Supreme Court in their interpretation of the Act (particularly the barriers put in the way of deporting terrorist suspects) and Cameron has been frustrated by Strasbourg's advice that prisoners cannot be denied the right to vote. But first of all, let's not just pretend these are bad decisions. We should not just be able to deport someone without regard to their human rights. We are supposed to be better than the terrorists. And the right to vote seems to me a fundamental civil right; committing a crime does not obviously deny every aspect of your civil identity. Cameron likes to suggest that this is an example of Strasbourg being out of control and exceeding its authority, but in fact the fundamental right to vote was signed up to by the British Government in 1952. And repealing the Human Rights Act will be almost meaningless without withdrawing from the Convention on Human Rights, which would surely mean we would have to leave the Council of Europe. Without doing those things, Strasbourg would actually be stronger rather than weaker. At the moment our highest court of appeal is the Supreme Court. If we abolish the Human Rights Act, under the Convention, people are once again free to appeal to the European Court. The European Court does not force us to change our laws; we have to take account of its rulings but we are not forced to accept them - that is for the Supreme Court to decide. And anyway, what is a British Bill of Rights? What are the human and civil rights that the British don't need? Surely, if this Bill is going to be meaningful, it would have to set out a series of principles on which judges must act and how are these going to be different from the Human Rights Act? Apart from some exception for deporting terrorist suspects which will undoubtedly be eaten away at by precedents and exceptions, it'll be exactly the same as before. In which case, a huge amount of time and effort is going to go into introducing a law that is unnecessary and will leave everything where it is. It's a complete waste of time.

Why is he doing all this? Why is he going to waste weeks and months of parliamentary time on these pointless and foolish bits of legislation? Why go to so much effort to change nothing? 

The depressing answer is that David Cameron as Prime Minister is all about giving the impression of being decisive rather than being decisive, about looking like you're doing something rather than doing it. He's going to repeal the fox-hunting ban to 'send a message' to his High Tory rural backbenchers. He's going to repeal the Human Rights Act to appease his Eurosceptics. He's going to legislate for a five year tax lock, because it'll look like he's determined to cut the tax bill. And he'll put this whole country through a referendum on the EU so he can look like he's listening to what the tabloids tell us are the genuine concerns of ordinary hard-working people. All of this while food banks proliferate, child poverty deepens, crises break out in NHS A&E Departments every weekend.

This is a terrible waste of parliamentary time - as well as, inevitably, your time and my time - and a dreadful sign of the skewed party-political priorities of this public relations prime minister.