Though Cowards Flinch

Brian Coleman, or Mr Toad, is now trending on twitter – the reason being is that he has “run out of patience with the FBU” and as the Evening Standard are reporting “will press ahead with [the London Fire Authority's] “fallback option” of re-employing staff under new terms and conditions.”

It’s hard to believe, but since the union does not want to be pressured into signing new contracts, and because Coleman wants it his way, 5,500 London firefighters could face the sack.

This is the kind of austere democracy we’ve come to expect from Coleman.

Though he wouldn’t like it up himself.

Coleman is Britain’s highest paid councillor (a different side to the EasyCouncil of Barnet). He’s been repeatedly caught out over his expense claims, which tallied up largely reveal expensive taxi fares.

For 2010-2011 this is no different, as his London Fire Brigade expenses will reveal. At a time when we’re all in this together, some notable claims made are:

• 21/11/2010 – Taxi (invoiced) – Taxi journey for Chairman and Chairman’s Lady – from the Cenotaph, Whitehall SW1 for Annual Service of Remembrance (£66.09)
• 12/11/2010 – Taxi (invoiced) – Taxi journeys: Chairman and Chairman’s Lady – to GLA Annual Remembrance Service at City Hall, SE1; Chairman only – from GLA City Hall to CLG Eland House, SW1 for Fire Futures Steering Group; from CLG Eland House to Bevis Marks Synagogue, Heneage Lane EC3 for Service of Thanksgiving; from Bevis Marks Synagogue to home (£145.93)
• 27/10/2010 – Taxi (invoiced) – Taxi journey from Houses of Parliament SW1 to Union St. (£19.20)
• 12/09/2010 – Taxi (invoiced) – Taxi journeys with Mrs Coleman – drop off at Church of St Bartholomew the Great, EC1; pick up from St Pauls Cathedral, EC4 – Firefighters Memorial Trust Annual Service of Remembrance (held in two different locations) (drop off at Church of St Bartholomew the Great, EC1; pick up from St Pauls Cathedral, EC4 – Firefighters Memorial Trust Annual Service of Remembrance (held in two different locations) (£140.55)

Anyone would think he didn’t get free travel around London worth £1,700.

But for all his misgivings about firefighters having two jobs, Mr Coleman in fact has four. And he’s not short of a few bob either (something to be considered when you think how much he costs the taxpayer for car mileage and the congestion charge – when we’re all in this together).

Investigative journalist David Hencke did some number crunching to reveal his income:

Brian Coleman holds down four jobs all funded by the taxpayer. They are:

Member of the London Assembly                                                      allowance: £53,439

Cabinet member Barnet Council                                                         allowance: £38,177

Chair London Fire Brigade                                                                   allowance: £26,883

Chair LGA* fire services management committee                    allowance: £10,365

Grand Total from the taxpayer                                                                                £128,864

*Local Government Association, a voluntary body funded by councils from council taxpayers.

And of course his expenses:

Brian is a great expense claimer never knowingly underclaimed. He can claim for expenses for three of his four jobs – the LGA don’t allow him.

He is a big patron of London cabbies claiming once over £10,000 a year  from the London Assembly on trips (2006-07). He is now more modest – claims have varied between £8000 -plus a £1700 travel card (2007-08) and £345 for 2009-10. All from the taxpayer.

His fire brigade expense claims are not much different.These include a £119 taxi fare to the Fire Service Awards Ceremony in  May 2009 and £143 to attend Westminster’s Lord Mayor’s reception for the Lord Mayor of London. He also spent £402 on a  rail ticket to go a LGA conference in Manchester. Little difference in 2011 -with a £145 taxi fare for him and his mum to go to a  firefighters service of remembrance  and meetings in London.

His red letter claims day is May 12 this year – where he managed to claim car mileage, congestion charge and over £67 in taxis  for a dinner -all on the same day.

His gifts include four dinners (three of them before the company won the contract) and a £350  Harvey Nichols hamper from the head of AssetCo, John Shannon, the company which has a £9m PFI deal with his authority and provided strike cover.

There’s also some interesting details on his home life, and his landlords the Methodist Church in Finchley.

Colman justifies all this by saying he works 100-hour weeks with few days off, but this hasn’t been enough to convince the website, aptly called Is Brian Coleman a tedious cock?, who remind us that:

• Brian Coleman thinks peaceful, friendly, good-natured political protests scare off tourists.
• Brian Coleman, as head of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, lied about when you should dial 999, to smear a political opponent. The London Fire Brigade called him out on it.
• Since July 2006, Brian Coleman has run up over £14,000 in taxi fares, paid for by London tax payers — who already pay £1,700 for his travelcard.
• What do ordinary members of his own party think about Brian Coleman? Here’s how they reacted to his views on one of their former leaders.
• Brian Coleman has received more free gifts of dinner than any other Greater London Assembly member. Instead of being grateful, he publicly complains.

How long will he get away with it for?

What I missed

I’ve enjoyed some of the more balanced reports about this weekend’s first Netroots UK. 

I was absent because I felt my priorities lay with a) the Oldham byelection b) local constituency work c) childcare.  I was not absent because I wanted, like some other bloggers I can mention, to express my puritan leftwinger scorn for people coming together to discuss stuff and have an enjoyable time to boot. 

Yes, it may have strayed into Guardianista waffleshop at times, and yes it may have had people for whom I have not the slightest respect droning on for yonks, but bringing together 500 people to discuss how to be better at leftwingish stuff, even if you can’t get them all to agree on stuff, by the time everybody agrees it’s time to go to the pub, is not that bad an idea, surely. 

So I look forward to being able to make it to another one of the shindigs. 

Of course, I’ll get frustrated if people insist on telling me stuff I know better than them, and have spent 20 years longer than them doing (if they ever did it in the first place), and I’d certainly like to see future events simply leave out the speeches from the self-appointed arbiters of what it is to be appropriately leftwing, thus leaving more time for people who actually do stuff  ’on the ground’ (I’ll leave that term and the other highly contestable term ‘grassroots’, uncontested for now) to make specific demands for support of those same arbiters.

But if I can I’ll be at Netroots 2.0, and show the willingness to engage that I sometimes hope other lefties would show. 

Let me then say for the record that some people, inclusive of those who actually took what Netroots 1.0 had to offer them for their own personal aggrandisement, could do with being a but more comradely (I use the word advisedly) in their support, and bit less in the way of sour grapes-y towards the people who actually got on and organised an event.  This was an event which, by the accounts I’ve read, may not have been perfect, but was pretty stimulating, allowed loads of people to bash ideas around, some of which may well end up being enacted on streets and in other public places in the months to come.

What I’ll not miss

In the meantime, I’ll be hosting a special Netroots 1.5 in the Rocket Tavern, Euston Road, London Town, at 6pm on Wednesday 12th January 2011.

This specially condensed event (my train leaves at 7.30pm) will be a tigthtly run but non-hierachical workshop covering the following two discrete themes:

• going to the bar to get Paul a beer;
• discussing the emerging social enterprise/co-operative business plan for the development of local/hyperlocal media ventures, modelled broadly on local independent newspapers like the Hackney Citizen, but with added political organisation and bite.

The project aim is to build on some of the ideas originally set out here about developing radical local new media, initially offline but with specific measures around ‘driving’ traffic online over time.  In terms of model and ethos, the new venture is as much Robert Blantchford’s uncompromising ’The Clarion’ of the late 19th century as it is new media, but there, I suggest, lies the strength.

If you think you want to be a part of this, then try to make it down the Rocket on Wednesday.  At this stage it would be useful if you could ready to provide outline ideas about how it might work in your local area, the catchment area (numbers and type of area), who you might work with to provide the initial journalistic input (but also how you might engage local people in providing their own copy), what political organising force it all might link to, and any innovative income streams you may have in mind beyond the (crucial) local adverstising and subscription/support fee structure.

Of course, I’m not guaranteeing anyone who turns up a part in all this.  There’s not going to be much scope for timewasters, so if you want in to this stage of development you’ll have to prove your serious.  This isn’t  through financial input, as the whole point is about developing a coherent (social enterprise) investment package to make it work, but it will mean devotion of time and energy.

Of course, if you can’t make it tomorrow, send me an email for more details. 

Though not, I hasten to add, if you’re just going to whinge.

Yesterday Nick Cohen said, based upon a report by Freedom House, that:

Islamic states and religious vigilantes use blasphemy laws to persecute Christians, Ahmadis and Muslims who believe that Muhammad was not the final prophet and, of course, ex-Muslims such as Rushdie who decide to change or renounce their faith, as free men and women should be entitled to do.

This is an abuse of power by any yardstick, and yet there seems to be no foreseeable end to it.

Cohen continues:

In Iran and Egypt, blasphemy is used to prosecute political opponents of the regime [...] Blasphemy is not a protector of religious freedom, as the UN maintains, but its mortal enemy. If free speech is absent, citizens are not free to argue for and practise their beliefs without the fear of state or clerical intimidation.

Blasphemy was used as an excuse to kill Salmaan Taseer – and sure it is incumbent upon good people in the Middle East and elsewhere to condemn the persecution of minorities everywhere, but too many times regressive governments resort to ridiculous defenses to back up their bigoted ways.

Maybe it’s about time the UN seriously considers withdrawing nation states’ representation when they abuse human rights – in this day and age it is beyond belief that human rights abuses are ignored, or worse condoned, by national governments in the name of majority rights or blatant prejudice.

Yesterday I attended the Netroots UK event hosted by False Economy, Liberal Conspiracy, TUC, Netroots Nation and many more. The nature of the event, and the standard of the speakers, proved it would be an enjoyable day, but this in itself did not determine how effective it would be for the next steps in activism, and how faithful it would be to the promise that this was not an event “to have long-winded discussions, but create useful spaces where people can discuss strategy drawing on their experience of local campaigns: what works and what doesn’t.”

Even before the event took place some sceptical voices made themselves heard (such as my from my friend HarpyMarx – see in particular the debate on the comments thread) arguing that the grouping of “soft lefts” and dinosaur union bureaucrats would do little to influence the kind of engagement that you can find in the community “fighting against closures of libraries, council services, playgroups, care facilities, attacks on benefits, jobs…and so on”.

Also on the sceptical side, Jacob at The Third Estate blog noted yesterday that while he doesn’t claim “social media is not useful, [or claim] that it hasn’t given a voice to people who previously were unconnected to activist movements, [he does] think we need a level of suspicion about claims that technology can be the political basis for new movements.”

Taking those thoughts on board, it has been my contention that an event like this should take place so as to crowd source from a room of activists – whether they are online or offline – what kind of movement can be built against the cuts and the government (a good judge of this is whether party or parliamentary politics has a place in the fight, or whether leaderless organisations can build themselves up from the bottom up) and what the longer term goals are that can be agreed on, not just by a panel of experts, but by people are who engaged in it.

It’s no small task to agree on such things – if you can ever, truly, agree on such things at all – and so while criticising the day for not building the immediate capabilities of a government takeover is wide of the mark, what it did succeed in doing however was sharing practical lessons on where next for activists, armed with social technologies, as well as focusing on some of the lessons already learnt in our recent history (MyDavidCameron for example, the UCL occupation, anti-cuts movements in local communities).

For me one of the most useful elements of the day had been a brief “fringe event”, which took place to a handful of people while they were eating lunch, about Swedish lessons on blogging. While many “Westminster village” bloggers like to boast about their traffic, the important lesson is getting the right people to hear your practical opposition/propositions. Johan Ulvenlöv, one Swedish blogger who addressed us, told us that fewer MPs in Sweden have blogs than in the UK (though some those MP blogs are more like cheap noticeboards) though many more Swedish MPs read and engage with them. Part of Ulvenlöv‘s job (he works for the social democrats in Sweden – who he said were less hated in his country than the Labour Party are at this conference) is to act as a point of call between bloggers and politicians – a profession almost incomparable in this country.

During a breakout session on blogging and the left in 2011, the editor of Conservative Home Tim Montgomerie – a surprise guest – made note of the fact that he never gets invited to similar events on the right. The planning potential of the left certainly surpasses that of the right, but to say Netroots UK was free from navel-gazing would be an impudent lie. Polly Toynbee (who got it in the neck a few times yesterday) dines out every week not because of community-based planning, or for formulating next stages for mass movements utilising social media tools, but owing to her frequent polemics against the government (and sometimes for the benefits of outsourcing public sector contracts and Serco). What she has to offer is a reassertion of why we were there in the first place (something which we were promised would not happen) – and it was neither helpful nor useful, nor universally appreciated (see the following tweets here; here; here; here; here; here; here).

The silver-lining came from the Q&A session after Polly had been ushered off the podium – while audience members were asking questions of the panel, Sunny Hundal intervened and asked audience members to raise their hands if they had any answers to audience questions. Some people around me overtly sniffed at such a proposition, but this intervention had it halfway right. Next time speaker invitations should be withdrawn from the Toynbees and the usual mess of thinkies, and the platform given to participants, who are then invited to answer queries from the floor – not out of any frustration with hierarchies, but because real best practice on this subject is likely to come from people who do not always appear in newspapers or academic anthologies, but who’ve taken to the streets in anger at the coalition government’s ideological cuts agenda and have seen first hand what works and what does not, what groups people together and what puts people off.

In short, the event was at its best when it invited best practice and expert opinion from the floor – and it’s important to remember that this was a strategy event; this is not the strategy in action, so if the government doesn’t collapse under the weight of Netroots don’t be disappointed.

(For more links to videos and information on Netroots than you could imagine, see Next Left)

Being on the other side of the wagon, I tend not to think the pro-cuts, pro-student-fee-increase lot have a leg to stand on with their sums, but of course there are to every argument good and bad.

The following example, from tonight’s Basildon Echo, represents the bad, nay, utter nutbag daft corner. The article is titled ‘Tuition fee rise could boost our college’ and is an interview with the principal of my old college which I left 6 years ago. I’ll fisk as appropriate.

On the subject of “riots in central London, MPs quitting frontbench positions and an attack on the royal car”:

These incidents … dominated the news agenda towards the end of last year and attracted a lot of criticism.

I ought to point out for reference, this particular paper, with its award-wnning estate agent turned journalist Jon Austin, spends most of its time waxing hysterical about the local travellers. It didn’t cause too much fuss about the election of the Tory MP Stephen Metcalfe, who when I emailed to ask him, in vain, to vote against tuition fee rises, replied – in short – no! In short, the paper will probably make no bones about stating all the criticism without the amount of PRAISE the students received.

Jan Hodges, college principal and cheif executive, said higher university tuition fees mean more people may choose to study locally.

Surely the only logic here is that people will not be able to afford to move out, which while this may be a good guess, is pulled straight out of the wind. Also, it’s rather perverse; the notion that your poverty could keep you in Southend will not be pleasing anybody.

In her, slight, defense, Hodges is quoted as saying:

The increase is not a good thing, but it might be something we capitalise on.

Do we suspect Ms Hodges isn’t taking this, backdoor creeping financial exclusivity seriously? She goes on:

It might be the case the tuition fees increase means people look to study locally instead of at university – the local education offer is a strong one.

Is that really the two alternatives? Does this even make sense? At this stage I wonder whether Hodges actually said this, or whether the journalist was making shit up. To draw a serious comment from this, is it good to keep local people taking up local education? From her perspective shouldn’t it be about retaining numbers? Instead of making inglorious attempts to address how the fee rises could help benefit college – which really is contestable – would it not be better to address how bad the fee rises are generally? As old wisdom will tell you, if you have nothing sensible to say keep your trap shut – so what if the local education offer is a strong one if, in her words, “the increase is not  a good thing”.

Reading through the government’s new ‘Giving Green Paper’ I came upon this wild idea:

We want to explore funding opportunities outside of government. For example, private foundations are already a major source of funds for voluntary and community organisations.

Some suggest that foundations should make a minimum pay out annually, as is the case in some other countries, as this could result in extra income for charities. Others suggest that a requirement would not help charities in the long term, and could generate unintended consequences (p18, my link, my emphasis).

One of the other countries being referred to here, and I suspect the principal model, is the US, where the following applies:

The purpose behind the minimum payout requirement is to prevent foundations from simply receiving gifts, investing the assets and never spending any funds on charitable purposes. The basic rule can be stated simply, but its calculation is complex: Each year every private foundation must make eligible charitable expenditures that equal or exceed approximately 5 percent of the value of its endowment.

Here is not the place to go into the complexities of the US tax code where this requirement is set out, other than to say that because this 5% can include running expenses etc., it doesn’t seem generally to be too onerous a requirement on properly run charitable and philanthropic foundations in the US.  It is a measure to stop abuse of the legal status of a foundation rather than a way – as is suggested in the ‘green paper’ – to get extra cash out into the voluntary and community sector. 

This seems to suggest that, if the plan were really to extract more readies from foundations than they have given out to date, rather than simply ensure that they properly meet their charitable objective, then the ‘minimum payout’ might have to be higher than 5% of the foundation’s assets. 

If the minimum were high enough, foundations would find themselves with reducing capital levels for investment and therefore consistently reduced amounts of cash to give away.  This in the longer term, it might be argued, would act as a disincentive to set up charitable foundations in the first place.

Now there’s a bit of me that actually quite likes the idea of the forcible expropriation of the billions of quid held by charitable foundations, though of course that would depend on who then gets to decide how the cash is used. 

However, that’s not really the point here.

The point is that for the government ever to consider legislating in this way seems incredibly hypocritical.

On the one hand, they seem to be saying it may be ok to use the authority of the state to tell a legally autonmous organisation what to do with money which it has been given by a wealthy individual – most commonly a wealthy individual who gained that wealth from their business endeavours and know-how.

On the other hand, the government accepts that they have pretty well no control over the massive bonuses paid out by banks whose continued existence has been, lest we forget, guaranteed by the tax payer.  Moreover, the government seems incapable of making the banks play their essential economic role of actually lending to UK businesses in the real economy. As Peston says:

[E]ven reaching agreement on business lending isn’t easy. For example, shareholders in HSBC might well query why on earth that bank should allocate precious capital to what they would see as relatively risky and low-return lending to small British companies, when there are arguably far better opportunities for a bank with global reach in India, or China or the Middle East.

Of course, in this respect, Paul Sagar is right:

[G]lobal capitalism has bred megacorporations that are bigger – and more powerful – than sovereign nation states.

That much we knew already.

But what I think these few sentences in a slightly obscure government consultation paper reveal is actually something quite important about this government.  

This is a government which is not interested in the logics of capitalism (and the associated singular importance of property rights) for their own sake, though they will certainly use those logics where it helps there case – as they do when they say reining in bankers bonuses will simply drive away the banks. 

This is actually a government which has moved past the relative ‘purity’ of neoliberal doctrine, and is wielding what David Harvery describes as ‘naked class power’. 

This explains perfectly why they are quite content with the idea of ordering foundations to prop up a minimal ‘big society’ state infrastructure wiit their (generally dead) capitalists’ money, while at the same time bending over backwards to let their (very much alive and skiing) banker friends to keep theirs.

This is, as I’ve argued, the New Conservatism in action, and it makes me alm0st nostalgic  – at the huge risk of sounding like Tim Worstall – for the utterly wrongheaded, but to some extent at least internal consistencies of Thatcherism.

Chris Dillow is often right, but today he could not be more wrong:

We find that candidates on the right look better than candidates on the left. Second, we find a greater effect of good looks, in terms of more votes, for candidates on the right.

Absolute bollox.

1. I’m leftwing, by Labour standards (not TCF standards).

2. I won my seat for Labour, for the first time ever, with a 600% in the Labour vote, with one of the highest turnouts in the country.

3. Have you seen the state of me?

And that’s with the make-up on.

Lenin wrote in 1920:

In [a] speech [on March 18, 1920] Lloyd George entered into a polemic with [Herbert Henry] Asquith (who had been especially invited to this meeting but declined to attend) and with those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer relations with the Labour Party. (In the above-quoted letter, Comrade Gallacher also points to the fact that Liberals are joining the Independent Labour Party.) Lloyd George argued that a coalition—and a close coalition at that—between the Liberals and the Conservatives was essential, otherwise there might be a victory for the Labour Party…

Sounds familiar. However, his reason for not wanting a Labour victory was because the party “which Lloyd George prefers to call “Socialist” … is working for the “common ownership” of the means of production.”

Well he couldn’t pre-empt everything.

Hopi Sen, in his intellectually impure and prosaic manner, said on twitter last night:

Oh-ho, has the new left thingummy reached stage three of all left wing movements then (tedious internal bickering?) / Campaign model for all leftie “revolutionary “groups – Stage 1: Campaign. Stage 2: overblown rhetoric about transforming world. / Stage 3: Internal bickering. Stage 4: Assign blame for failure to achieve stage 2. Stage 5. Appear on Newsnight to criticise Labour party.

Droll, I’m sure. But what has been characterised here as ‘internal bickering’ is a vital component of assessing next stages of any successful movement of people.

Questions on whether applying theory to practice is necessary anymore have emerged (see NLP here, SWP) as well as questions on whether leadership is necessary in such an organised gathering of protesters (see Seymour; Seymour; and Seymour’s apology) – particularly concerning UK Uncut (a better summary of events can be found at The Great Unrest blog).

The argument against discussing theory – characterised by some as meaningless intellectual masturbation – and against leadership – characterised by some as the adoption of old, stale bureaucratic structures – is made while drawing on the current success of the movement (see Laurie Penny and Marcus Malarky on this, then see Owen Jones on the problems of leaderless youth). But to pretend these structures are unnecessary, and that the movement is unique and distinct from other movements, is a grave error, and one which has been host to so many casualties. Take for example the struggle of German labor movements from 1912 to 1923. Paul Mattick had this to say about them in 1947, and it sounds very familiar to the place where the student movement is at now:

In retrospect, the struggle of the German proletariat from 1912 to 1923 appeared as minor frictions that accompanied the capitalistic re-organization process which followed the war-crisis. But there has always been a tendency to consider the by-products of violent changes in the capitalistic structure as expressions of the revolutionary will of the proletariat. The radical optimists, however, were merely whistling in the dark. The darkness was real, to be sure, and the noise was encouraging, yet at this late hour there is no need to take it seriously. As exciting as it is to recall the days of proletarian actions in Germany – the mass meetings, demonstrations, strikes, street fights, the heated discussions, the hopes, fears, and disappointments, the bitterness of defeat and the pain of prison and death – yet no lessons but negative ones can now be drawn from all these undertakings. All the energy and all the enthusiasm were not enough to bring about a social change or to alter the contemporary mind. The lesson learned was how not to proceed. How to realize the revolutionary needs of the proletariat was not discovered.

Mattick recalls the excitement of the actions; I fear the excitement of the actions taking place during current demonstrations and direct actions today make it difficult to see the necessity of assessing next steps, theory and leadership. But so as to ensure nobody today is “whistling in the dark” internal dialogue must remain – even if Hopi Sen and the other New Labour Dinosaurs laugh about it.

Phil at AVPS reckons Laurie Penny, who no longer needs one of those linky underliney things, is odds on for the Orwell Prize 2011:

The judges know a zeitgeist when they see one and I would be very surprised if the feted face of the new generation doesn’t romp home with the award. And why not? She knows how to turn a phrase.

Phil is quite wrong. 

This year’s zeitgeist is very much the dull, ageing, inveterately moderate democratic socialist with bureaucratic tendencies, and I am hence an absolute shoe-in for the big prize and the slap-up meal for two in London town.

I realised this soon after an email conversation with my not quite so zeitgeitisch, but still pretty zeitgeistisch, blogging comrades Dave and Carl about the general direction of Though Cowards Flinch (of which more anon). 

This conversation led me to review the 446 posts I wrote in 2010 (around 300 at TCF and 150 at the Bickerstaffe Record) in a somewhat different light, and it dawned on my that not only am I a quite brilliant blogger, but that a significant number of my posts actually have been ‘ahead of the curve’, as the young people say.

A number the posts in my final selection of 10 reflect that curve-headingness.  But they should also be seen as part of what all the TCF writers offer – a distinctively socialist take on events, combined with a willingness to espouse both a style and type of blogpost which makes unapologetic demands of its readers.

Well, that’s what Dave and Carl told me to say.  I just batter ‘em out when I feel like it.

My Orwell Prize entry list

1.   Sheer class: How the Labour party won the general election Three days after Labour lost the general election, I touched a chord with many readers, when I set out how the working class of Skelmersdale had ‘come home’ to Labour, its party for better or for worse.  It’s early days, but some in the Labour party, and some of those in other sections of the Left that will touch Labour with a barge pole, are recognising that this is where our future lies.

2.  The political economy of high-speed rail    Back in February I challenged the conventional cross-party wisdom about high-speed rail, on the basis of the UK’s distinctive economic geography.  Now Ed Miliband is heading in the same direction.  I’m a few stops up the line, Ed.

3.  When Labour lost it on immigration: 24th October 2006 Taking the 9th century Oaths of Strasbourg as my starting point, I debunk modern myth-making about Labour’s attitude to immigration .  Yes, it went badly and shamefully and wrong, but it wasn’t hardwired into New Labour.  This means there’s hope.

4.  What are students for again? Many months before the student movement began to take shape, I was challenging the conventional cross-party ‘wisdom’ about the need for individual charging of students for their tuition.  I was doing so not just on the basis that individual charging for a public good is illogical, but because the challenge students bring us is our future.  That’s what the student movement is saying now.

5.  Understanding the new Conservatism  Before and after the general election, many people talked of a return to the dark days of Thatcherism under Cameron. They were wrong. If  you look at the elite tradition from which Cameron and his coterie emerged, rather than the more formally constructed political ideologies they claim to espouse, a different, much darker picture emerges of this new Conservatism.  People are recognising that now, but TCF said it first.

6.  Credit and credibility  In years to come this post is likely to be seen as the post that introduced the counter-intuitive complexities of Modern Monetary Theory to a socialist audience desperate to move beyond the constraints of conservative Keynesianism.  The transatlantic comments weren’t bad either.

7.  Effective local blogging (3): creating the interface between Habermasian ‘lifeworld’ and anti-hegemonic narrative A satirical take on how the Left think the Right think the Left view the Right.  The Left got it. The Right just swore at it because they didn’t understand.  It’s also got a sex scene.

8. Why the Labour left should support Ed Balls feat. the elephant in the room  The post that made it legitimate for the Left to think of Ed Balls as something other than a New Labour thug.  He may still be Prime Minister one day.  I hope he remembers.

9.  Clegg needs a pre-school education  Detail counts when it comes to assessing the unintended consequences of Nick Clegg’s desperation to front a good news story.  When childcare businesses start to close next year because of the new bureaucracies, remember who told you they would 

10.  What a drip  Look, I used to save people’s lives, and I’m proud of that.  Ok?

Oh god, what have I become?