Tory Riots

After watching footage of the Tottenham riot I wondered about the inevitability of rioting under a Tory government. Since riots are a result of mass action it seems an obvious task to compare this with the macro level politics of government. It's easier to do this type of comparison in the UK as both parties have had long spans in power meaning that dissatisfaction with one government is less likely to spill over into the term of another. I used this list of riots which is problematic as it fails to mention what it defines as a riot. Due to this, I omitted one result (which occurred in a festival causing no public damage) and all riots occurring in Northern Ireland due to differences in politics. Therefore, please use these results as a rough guide only.

From 1970 there have been around 30 riots in mainland Britain. Labour have been in power for 10 of these during their 18 years of power. The Tories, in their 23 years (including coalitions), have been responsible for 20. If you divide the years by the number of riots you get a rough percentage of how likely a riot is going to occur per year under each party, under Labour you are 55% likely to see a riot a year whereas under the Tories it is 89%.

If you own a shop or small business in a city then it would be a bad idea to vote Tory. If your hobby is fighting the police and fire-bombing city centres however, then the Tories are 34% more likely to make that happen.

AV Vote and Local Council Elections– A Referendum on the Lib-Dems?

Unless you’re living under a rock or inside a hermetically-sealed chamber of some kind, you’ll know that yesterday the country went to the polls to vote in various local council elections as well as the referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote. We’ve already outlined the leftist argument against AV in a previous blog – that it could lead to people competing for the centre ground (which is now in fact located somewhere on the centre-right), creating even more bland candidates and even a potential consolidation of a right-wing, neo-liberal politics. The argument progressives and leftists in favour of AV would put is that it is a step closer to true proportional representation and that it would in fact lead to candidates attempting to stand out more rather than blend in as they would feel they had more appeal that way. As one of our commenters put it:

Do you have to be a dull generic centrist to win majority support? Is that what makes a candidate popular? Most parties used a form of AV to elect their leaders - are Ed Milliband, Nick Clegg and Caroline Lucas "dull centrists"? Are Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson who won mayoral elections under AV "dull centrists"? I think that to win high preferences you need to stand out. You need to understand problems and have creative solutions to them. It won't be enough to appeal to armchair ideology of a small faithful. More importantly, independents and smaller parties will no longer be squeezed by tactical voting. With new contenders having a fairer chance, I think that voters will have more choice.

It’s too early to call at the time of writing – the counting of the AV referendum votes doesn’t even begin until 4pm today – but the ramifications of both results will be felt for some time. If the Lib-Dems have a bad night in the local elections, which is looking very likely, the pressure on Clegg and the Lib-Dem leadership in Westminster will increase to distance themselves from their Tory bedfellows and put more strain on the coalition. Similarly, if the AV referendum returns a ‘No’ result Clegg will have failed to achieve one of his main aims in going into coalition with the Tories and risking – well, destroying is probably a better word – his party’s credibility. Conversely, if a ‘Yes’ result is returned this will bring its own strains for the Con-Dem government with the Conservatives most likely looking to put as many obstacles in the way of voting reform as they can. Whatever the results, the next few months are going to be turbulent times for the government and the country. With things in flux like this there has never been a better time for leftists of all stripes to come together and take control of the political agenda and fight back against the neo-liberal, free-marketeer dominated political landscape.

A Priceless War

Missing Manchester?

Manchester is a wonderful city, and outside the frenzied security island of the Labour Party Conference last week, there was a beautiful city waiting to be discovered.

Here's a few of the sights passed every day walking to and from the Conference venue.



Opponents to the ConDem cuts were also out in Manchester on the European day of action against cuts. It was good to see over 100 people marching against local cuts to Law Centres and Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit.



And of course, who will forget Ed Miliband's inaugural speech as leader of the Labour Party. Worth missing lunch to queue for it? Absolutely. Although we did manage some bloody-mary flavoured crisps, thanks to a random lady in the queue who offered to go in search of food.


Ed made a very good statement about taxing the (super-)rich. Here's a little sculpture I came across that puts the sentiment across nicely.

New is the New New

We were trying to write a short paragraph to sum up this blog and came across a problem. As we were attempting to pick appropriate adjectives we suddenly became aware that we sounded eerily like the Conservative manifesto. For a leftist blog this was a slight concern. Were we Tories all along? Luckily I have a politics degree so went through my extensive notes and happened across the answer below:

Great, that proves it then. Definitely not Tories. So why does every attempt to describe what we believe in sound like the result of some sort of overpaid PR yuppie? The answer unfortunately is that modern political debate has descended into lowest common denominator newspeak that is so simple it means everything and therefore nothing. The simplest message not only can be understood by the most people, it is also harder to challenge. A great example of this is “change”.

Change is generally used to combat incumbent administrations and was used effectively both by Obama and David Cameron. You can’t argue against change. Everyone wants it. If I lived under a government that gave me alone one million pounds a day I would still want change. I would want a million and one pounds a day.

“Progressive” is the newest gem. In the 90s Clinton’s New Democrats found that if you are “new” you are again beyond criticism. New has no precedent that can be held down and scrutinised. This was then copied by New Labour and then again by David Cameron. However, Labour’s new third way was very different to the modern Conservative approach. Whilst they genuinely tried to reposition themselves to straddle the centre ground (leaving them with an ideological deficit), the Tories have instead adopted the language of progressive politics without changing at all. This does mean though that occasionally they tie themselves in knots though. They are carrying out age old Tory policy under banners of “choice”, “responsibility” and “progressive politics”. The ConDem coalition helps them immensely in this regard as it can be sold as a new progressive system of government.

So where does that leave the young writers of a blog who find party politics unrepresentative of their knowledge and beliefs, who are trying to engage in a genuine debate to find left of centre answers? Well just as that sentence demonstrates, by using words like “engage” and “genuine debate” it leaves them looking like a bunch of Tories.

Dismembering the NHS

On the surface, the government’s planned NHS reforms sound like a positive step forward. Greater freedom for staff on the front line to be involved in decision-making – good idea. A patient-orientated NHS – great. Getting rid of unnecessary bureaucracy – excellent. All of these things would, on paper, make for a streamlined, well-targeted NHS. However, in practice what this will actually mean is our old friend privatisation creeping in through the back door. It’s important to note that Labour opened the door and invited privatisation into the NHS to start with through PFI, but it is the Tories who will set the table, make its bed and give it the key to the safe.

The best way to understand the true nature of these measures is through the eyes of a party which has pledged to ‘ring-fence’ the NHS but is ideologically driven to privatise as many public services as possible. It would be indefensible for any government, ring-fence pledge or not, to come to power and simply say “We’ve had quite enough of this free healthcare malarkey so we’re selling it off to the private sector. Anyone who has a problem with that can go fuck themselves.” Unable to do this (and I think we can be certain that many Tories would very much like to) the only option is that of privatisation through covert means. Using the “cloak of GP commissioning,” as Jeremy Corbyn puts it, the Tories plan to put 80% of the NHS budget under the control of multiple ‘consortia’ of GPs. This move, the government would have us believe, will give local practitioners more say over what treatments and equipment are required in their areas by giving them control of service commissioning and remove the restrictive grip of centralised government. What they actually want is well demonstrated by an extract from a summary of the key changes on the BBC News website: “Hospitals - Encouraged to move outside the NHS to become "vibrant" industry of social enterprises.” Combined with ministers stating that it shouldn’t matter which sector service providers come from – public, private or voluntary – and the emphasis on ‘choice’, the message here is clear: the government want more competition in the NHS.

As stated above, Labour brought elements of this privatisation in with their own policies which arguably led to the squandering of much of their record investment in healthcare on private companies’ middleman and consultancy services when pumping the money directly into actual, state-run services would have been far more effective. This has led to a narrowing of the debate on the desired direction of the NHS. Now the choice seems to be “Do you want a little bit of private involvement or a lot?” No major party seems to be suggesting that an entirely state-run NHS with public health at its heart would be the way forward – all debates seem to revolve around ‘patient choice’ and who is in charge of commissioning.

The danger here, and arguably the Con-Dem intention, is that these local GP consortia will preside over the coming ‘austerity’ measures and be forced to make the ‘tough decisions’ the government loves reminding us are necessary, meaning that the blame if anything goes wrong will be laid squarely at the door of local mismanagement rather than flawed centralised policy. Another effect of these measures will be to force these groups of GPs to commission the cheapest possible service providers who will ostensibly come from the private sector and be of a far lower quality (see the multiple problems hospitals have had with cleaning companies over the years) and the privatisation of one of our most important public services will seem to have been a logical, decentralised decision. But what are we worried about, anyway? This approach worked really well with the railways, didn’t it?