Though Cowards Flinch

Sadly, I must inform TCF readers that I did not make it to the ballot paper for the National Policy Forum.  This is because I was not nominated by my home CLP, although I did receive nominations from other places.

I must assume this is because I have a very weak grasp of policy matters and how they pertain to the Labour party’s development of a coherent programme.

In other news, here’s an interesting post from Mark Ferguson at Labour list, suggesting that the Labour party may be addicted to ‘fixing’.

Matthew Barrett has an interesting piece up at Conservative Home introducing the work of Fresh Start, the initiative of three Eurosceptic Tory MPs, including one Chris Heaton-Harris:

The Fresh Start Project is in the process of comprehensively researching the different options for renegotiating and reforming – ie taking back – the areas of competency Britain currently cedes to the EU.

So far, so normal. Studying how best the UK can freeload on Europe as-it-is-now, rather than contribute to ‘research’ into how European institutions might be reformed/renegotiated so it benefits the whole of Europe, is a traditional Tory stance.

But then we get this :

The wider campaign for a new relationship with the EU takes the form of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for European Reform, which is open to all MPs, and which was set up in order to ensure that pro-reform voices from across the parties could be heard…… The pro-reform European think tank Open Europe acts as the APPG’s secretariat (my emphasis).

Regular TCF readers will remember Open Europe, and its relationship to Chris Heaton-Harris:

He [Chris H-H] doesn’t like regulation.  Especially EU regulation.  Especially things to do with workers’ rights.  His main source of evidence is the not-entirely-unbiased Open Europe:

“Based on over 2,300 of the government’s own impact assessments, an Open Europe study (2010) found that regulation has cost the UK economy £176 billion since 1998, a sum roughly equivalent to the UK’s entire budget deficit.”

It looks like Chris H-H may have got as far as the press release on this report. Otherwise he might have seen that this is a study of benefits/costs, not just costs:

“We estimate the benefit/cost ratio of the regulations we studied at 1.58. In other words, for every £1 of cost introduced by a regulation since 1998, it has delivered £1.58 of benefits” (p. 1).

Put simply, Open Europe is a rightwing attack job, happy to send out misleading press releases on the basis of twisted reports.   Just look at the website.

Why, then, would a solid leftwing MP like Kelvin Hopkins agree not just to sit on this All Parliamentary Working Group (alongside the odious Frank Field, naturally), but also accede to Open Europe as its ‘secretariat’;  surely Labour MPs sitting on this group simply legitimises Open Europe’s pernicious policy influence within Westminster.

There is a whole leftwing rationale out there for the reform of the European Union: rebalancing power between the Council of Ministers and Parliament, challenging neoliberal assumptions built in the EU treaties, ensuring that free trade development takes human rights into account, and so on.  In advance of any EU Referendum, it is vital that the left rises to this challenge.  

Unless I’m missing something, allowing Open Europe free reign in parliament is the opposite of seeking to achieve this.

Anthony Painter has an interesting article up at Labour List about Labour, and the possibility of an EU referendum if it comes to power in 2015. 

It’s good that the debate is now being had (I had first say on it a couple of weeks ago, but it does take other blogs a while to catch up), but I disagree wholly with Anthony when he advises the Labour leadership thus

Act irresponsibly and the consequences could be severe. This is one of the moments when indecision is justified. Don’t play political games with the national interest.

With this, he’s a bit too close for comfort to Alex Massie’s sneering rubbish at the Spectator:

The Better Off Outers at least have a respectable case for their beliefs and, rather importantly, actually believe Britain would be better off outside the EU…….That can’t be said of a party that so obviously makes a game of what might be thought quite an important issue.

The problem for both writers (and for Gabby Hinsliff/Mark Rusling) is that they fail to recognise that:

a) The European Union is not what it was pre-2008;

b) By consequence of a), it is perfectly admissible for the Labour party to adopt a wholly different stance to the EU from the one adopted in 1974, and that it does not need to be bound by its previous support for EU membership;

c) This would not be playing games with the national interest, the electorate, or anything else; it would be developing a coherent political position to put to the electorate.

So, I’m sure readers will be asking, if I had the Labour leadership’s ear like Anthony has the Labour leadership’s ear, what would I advise and why?

My advice to Ed and Jon would go something like this.

First, clarify why Labour thinks a referendum in 2018 or so would be a good idea.  This is because, in the wake of both the 2008 crash and the Lisbon Treaty (1), the European Union is markedly different from the one that British voters chose to join and then remain in.  

This is the opportunity to differentiate Labour from the Tories over Europe.   Labour should be openly critical of the way the institutions of the European Union has been hijacked by the Right to set disastrous neoliberal policies in law.  

Unless this can be changed in the 2014-18 period, Labour should say, then it may well be that Britain will be better off outside the EU.

Second, make clear that for the reasons set out above Labour has not yet decided what position it will take when it comes to a referendum.  

The reason Labour wants to defer a referendum to 2018 or so is not because it is ‘playing games’, but because it is developing a clear strategy to engage with other centre-left governments and parties in Europe to change what how the EU operates; only when it has had a chance to do this will it be in a position to decide whether in or out is in the national interest.

In short, Labour should be showing that it’s leading the charge to change European institutions for the better, not simply accept it for what the Right has made it.

Third, recognise that 2018 is a long way away for voters.  After all,  around 8-10% of people voting now will be dead by then.  

Thus, a 2018 referendum promise must be tied explicitly to the 2014 European parliamentary elections.  Labour should be stressing right now how important these elections are;  the national parties that make up the Party of European Socialists (PES) has  a real opportunity to take an overall majority in Strasbourg, and with that majority comes the opportunity to amend European law currently stacked against the working class/ordinary people/the poor. (2)

Fourth, the importance of the 2014 election should in turn be linked to Labour’s selection process for those elections, likely to take place later this year/early 2013. 

As a display of  strong leadership combined with evidence that Europe really, really matters to Labour now, Ed Miliband should take to conference plans to rejig the selection process in the way Jon Worth suggests i.e. by opening up the list to non-incumbents as part of  wider process to re-energize Labour’s team in Strasbourg for a parliamentary period when fundamental battles will be fought about the nature of Europe’s institutions.  

It is an indictment of the current system that someone like Jon, a socialist who has lived and breathed Europe for a decade, feels he has absolutely no chance of being selected, primarily because he’s actually spent his time in Europe rather than oiling the selection wheels in London.

In summary, Labour needs to be bold on Europe, and go much further, much sooner, than the first tentative steps it has taken in the right direction.  It needs to see itself as a pro-active force on Europe, aggressively differentiating its own pro-activity from the reactionary little-Englander nonsenses of the Tories. 

Labour (and the commentators who support it) need to stop worrying that an EU referendum will ‘define’ Labour’s first parliamentary term (assumed to be in some way for the worse), and instead be confident that it will be seen by voters as an integral part of strong Labour party project.

Labour needs to enunciate clearly that Europe is not currently working for working class people, because its institutions have been captured by the Right, and it needs to have a clear plan for their recapture by the Left.  This is not an anti-Europe stance. This is an anti-rightwing Europe stance.

Labour needs to be clear on what it means by European democracy, and it needs to put in place the right people to make European democracy work. 

Finally, Labour needs to ensure that what Europe does now, and what it can do, is understood by the electorate, primarily through the prism of the financial mess we’re in now.  People now ‘get’ Europe, in a way they didn’t in 2008.  Labour’s job is to build on that new consciousness.

(1) In particular, Labour should focus on the need for a (centre)-left led redrafting of the Lisbon Treaty. 

At the heart of the mush-that-is-now-Europe is the establishment of the Council of Ministers as a decision and law-making body in direct competition with the European parliament, as evidenced that we now have two sets of laws concerned with fiscal management of the Union – one an (unratified) intergovernmental treaty in the form of the Fiscal Compact, and the other the ‘six pack’ of regulations already made law by the European parliament.  Officially the European Commission says that these will work ‘in parallel’, but in reality they reflect a power struggle between two competing ideas of what European-level democracy is supposed to be.

Labour should therefore be clear that it favours the European Parliament as the supreme lawmaking body, while also making it clear that it is committed to ensuring that it has the best possible MEP team in there, rather than allowing the (strong) perception to continue that being a Labour MEP is a ‘gravy-train’ job for people who have served the party loyally. 

Part of this overall process should be a strong commitment – noticeably lacking to date – to the PES ‘fundamental programme’ review and ensuing manifesto development, such that all PES parties across Europe enter the 2014 election with a common manifesto for socialist change in a bold attempt to make the elections something other than a mid-term referendum on domestic government.

(2) I have already covered two areas of European law that I think should be subject to radical socialist amendment in the event of a PES majority in 2014.  Of course there are others (notably around sustainable agriculture and the CAP) but I’d want to see these at the top of my new-style MEP’s priority list.

First, and as noted above, the six-pack regulations on the implementation of the Stability & Growth Pact, which currently enshrine in law neoliberal economic orthodoxy, should be dismantled and replaced with a set of Keynesian prescriptions for management of the economic cycle (or the law simply annulled and macro-economic management handed back to national governments in the event of the end of the euro).

Second, PES should impose through its majority the amendments it failed to get through in 2011 on the human rights safeguards needed when it comes to the development of (free) trade with the developing world.

If I had to start from scratch gleaning gossip to write about, I’d imagine carefully constructed narratives using “sources” in order to give the illusion I was someone that insiders already go to – the illusion might well pay off to the extent that insiders do start sending me gossip. That’s how I would do it.

Anyway, enough about that. Here’s Dan Hodges’ latest piece for the Telegraph.

In June 2014, the people of Europe will go the polls to elect its MEPs for a five-year term.  This will be the 8th time it’s happened, but – courtesy of the crisis and ensuing austerity - for many voters it will be the first European election about Europe, as opposed to a mid-term vote on the domestic government.

There is a big opportunity for the Left here. 

The mainly ignorant media focus is on whether Hollande can persuade Merkel to give way on the as yet unratified Fiscal Pact (aka. the Fiscal Compact) concocted in late 2011 by Merkel and Sarkozy (no, he can’t, is the simple answer).

But the actual opportunity to set the European Union on a different course lies in potential for radical amendment of the regulatory ‘six-pack’ (to be followed by a monitoring ‘two-pack’ this summer), designed to ensure the proper implementation of the original Stability and Growth Pact, and passed into law in November 2011.

If you’re confused by two apparently parallel (com)pacts, don’t worry.  You’re supposed to be. 

There are relatively few people (other than me) who do understand it. Charlemagne at the Economist appears to be one, as does Peter Spiegel at the FT, who says about the less-known six-pack:

Almost unnoticed by the public, the European Union has already begun transforming itself into an organisation with far more central power over national economic decision-making. The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has been given authority to demand spending cuts under threat of large fines….

Indeed, it is all so confusing that the European Commission has had to provide its own guide Six-pack? Two-pack? Fiscal compact? A short guide to the new EU fiscal governance, which states helpfully:

The Fiscal Compact, which is the fiscal part of the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (TSCG) – once it enters into force – and the six-pack will run in parallel.

It’s difficult to work out exactly why we have two parallel systems (other than the obvious explanation that the Compact was a late play by Sarkozy to stave off defeat by looking tough). 

My suspicion is that it’s part of a quiet power struggle between the European Parliament and its Executive, who have passed the six-pack into law (in November 2011), and the European Council (basically the heads of the 27 states), which only became a formal part of the EU structure in 2009 under the Lisbon Treaty. 

Witness, as evidence, how Olli Rehn, Commssioner for Finance (and working through the Parliament,  referred only to the Growth & stability Pact provisions in his speech at the weekend, while Merkel’s Finance Minister prefers to reference the intergovernmental aspects of the Fiscal Compact in the wake of Hollande’s victory.

It is also difficult to know which precise version of  austerity legislation will win out in time.  On balance, though, the fact that the six-pack is in place, while the Fiscal Compact still awaits ratification (notably in Ireland, which may vote ‘no’), means that the real political opportunities for the left probably lie within the Parliament, rather than (via Hollande) the European Council.  Hollande’s team probably knows this, which is why it is content to soft-soap Merkel for the moment.

Of course, the drawback is that the European Parliament will remain under the control of the Right until June 2014.  That’s a long time for Hollande to wait before he can deliver, via the European Socialist Party (PES) MEPs, a radical change in direction, if it gains a majority (although even the prospect of post-election change may be enough to slow up its implementation pre-election).

Nevertheless, the opportunity for PES is to put together a legislative manifesto which has as its centre-point precisely such a change in direction, through a ‘Keynesian’ amendment to the six/two pack regulations.  Such amendments might, for example, include a requirement on the EIB (or individual countries) to fund large-scale investment works when the economic cycle requires it.

The result could be a European election campaign like no other: a central manifesto commitment to sensible anti-austerity macro-economic management, circulated across 27 countries in countless leaflets, seeking a socialist, pan-European mandate.  

Perhaps we might even, by then, be seeing British campaigners on porte-a-porte campaigns in Cergy-Pontoise, while our French comrades hit the streets of Skelmersdale (the towns are twinned).

I’m a geek, but even I thought it was a bit geeky for the PES to launch a two year manifesto development programme, in which socialist activists across Europe are invited to put forward policy proposals (the next stage is a forum in June to collate and assess ideas).  

Now though, I understand absolutely where they were coming from, and will be forwarding a version of this post under both the ‘Fair Economy’ and the ‘Active Democracy’ themes.  There is a real chance, I contend, to put what happens in Strasbourg at the heart of our campaigning in the UK, (probably) one year before a general election, in a way which both creates a route for anti-austerity that not even Merkel can scupper AND shows up just how murky and undemocratic the European Union has been to date.

I like Michael Meacher MP, and I agree with the general tenor of his article on the growing wealth of the Sunday Times rich list people.

But this bit by Michael really doesn’t help the credibility of the article:

[T]he 1,000 richest persons in the UK have increased their wealth by so much in the last 3 years – £155bn – that they themselves alone could pay off the entire UK budget deficit and still leave themselves with £30bn to spare which should be enough to keep the wolf from the door.  

Yes, the deficit may well be £185 billion or so, but that’s the flow – the annual gap between national income and expenditure.  The debt, which is the stock that is actually “paid off”, is in the region of £1.3 trillion the last time I looked.

We have, of course been here before, with both Johann Hari and even the SWP making the same elementary error (the SWP denied it, to be fair).

As Kalecki once warned:

I have found what economics is; it is the science of confusing stocks with flows.

The Left has a good argument for wealth redistribution.  Let’s not muck it up by getting the basics wrong.  Let’s leave the economic illiteracy to the Right.

Carl on this blog has just today touted his idea that the BNP are finished, backing it up with a Martin Goodman article from the Guardian site about the BNP getting pretty much annihilated at the May 2012 local elections. It’s entirely possible that they are right, and that the BNP is finished as an electoral force, and that some role was played by Hope Not Hate and other campaigns which used their manpower to get out an anti-BNP vote.

There are some cautionary notes to be sounded. First, the degree to which it matters how well the BNP do is limited. Their efforts to turn mainstream are not about to be abandoned, and there are other groups out there which have learned some of the lessons – and which have in turn had a right-wards drag upon Labour’s leadership courtesy of “Blue Labour”. I mean, of course, the English Defence League and their new political aspirations.

Second, BNP councillors by and large voted just like Tories, so in terms of the actual presence of these 57 (and now a damn sight fewer) people in council chambers, the practical effect is like eliminating that number of Tories. Though it bears mentioning that in one of the six wards the BNP just lost, it was lost to a Tory, who will almost certainly continue a record of voting for privatisation, cuts to services and piss-poor planning decisions.

This is quite an important point, as it gives the answer to those people who condone working with Tories if it means getting rid of the BNP. Tories, being the immediate political face of capitalism, cause fascism. They attack every means of working class subsistence and culture that can’t turn their mates a profit and then when the workers complain, they blame it on human rights, political correctness, immigrants, homosexuals and Jews, or Muslims these days.

Third, and linked to point number two, electoral armageddon or no, the physical force mob of the BNP will almost certainly go nowhere, except to other parties or groups who can offer them the same sort of opportunity for getting their bald heads and beer bellies on national television. This is a serious issue, as these people are the shock troops who can break up opposition to fascism at a community level.

Fourth, this defeat might not have the morale impact we expect, thanks to the parallels with the electoral eclipse of the NF post-1979, and the cautionary tale that will give to any thinking fascists out there, contradiction in terms though that may be. Griffin and his crew are bound to be aware of this, most of them having lived through it. Even if these aren’t the lessons they draw, the survival of Griffin as leader indicates that he’s found some means of innoculating himself.

The historical parallels I mention have even more importance for us socialists however, and our political understanding. The election of a Conservative government starkly poses the issue of class. Then as now, a Tory government cut social spending and attempted to extort ever greater productivity out of workers, through the threat of unemployment.

The most politically aware layers of the working class, perceiving the attacks, moved to galvanise resistance through the unions, through anti-cuts groups and through socialist organisations.This socialist and working class resurgence can, by bringing in new layers of workers to political activism, demoralise and push out the fascists.

Labour, offering an immediate electoral alternative will be the key beneficiaries in the early stage of this process, by virtue of being not-Conservative, and will claim back all those who voted Lib-Dem in 2008, since the Lib-Dems no longer have the political space to pretend to an alternative. This is hardly any different to the elections of 1981 in which the Ken Livingtone-led GLC was elected; the NF share of the vote dropped there too.

That Labour’s alternative cuts, “not so far, not so deep”, are not a viable long-term option beyond the first euphoric wave of having dispensed with the arch-enemy is neither here nor there. Hence in Burnley, where another BNP councillor has bitten the dust, Labour have also reclaimed at least four seats from the Liberal Democrats, who won them in 2008.

In the Amber Valley wards of Heanor East and Heanor West, the voting figures stack up as follows; the Tories in 2008 scored 482-412, then 391-381 in 2012. Labour scored 454-560 in 2008, then 744-838 in 2012. Meanwhile the BNP went from 537-727 in 2008 to 284-272 in 2012. The left-wing party, such as it is, gained from both the right-wing parties, and this gain was replicated across the country, by and large, and is a cause for a small celebration.

It is only a small celebration because Labour’s resurgence can be halted in its tracks by the short, sharp demoralisation of the organised working class, in the form of defeats of the industrial action sweeping the country. Despite the electoral jubilation, this is a defeat which the Labour Party is doing nothing to avoid and is in fact actively encouraging, with constant disparaging remarks in the press not to mention obstructionist tactics by Labour bureaucrats in the unions.

It’s also a small celebration because Labour’s political strategy is akin to blowing their own heads off, should they actually win the next election. They will immediately and massively undermine their own working class support by instituting cuts across the board; if these are not so deep as the Conservatives, I’m sure that will be of some consolation to the people having their wages cut by £900 instead of £1000, or who are one of nine hundred and not one of a thousand made redundant as public services are cut to the bone.

Such a strategy is all Labour has, and this will not change, period. It will definitely result in a much bigger Tory government being returned to office shortly thereafter, unless something changes drastically – or, as in Greece, some new force emerges from the chaos to challenge Labour from the left.

Ironically, it’s this very threat of a Tory government which would be used against PLP backbenchers to shore up the leadership. And the reason Labour goes around and around in these circles is because it has no class-based analysis and cannot see any further than the wafer thin difference between Labour and the Tories, or any further than the next election for that matter.

Class is the fundamental, unavoidable division in capitalism, created by the very structure of how we produce everything of which the modern world consists. At times of crisis in capitalism, all other questions become subordinate to this one fault line. This is one fault line which Labour cannot understand, even as it is pushed to defend the working class by virtue of its historical traditions. It is intrinsic to capitalism, outside of which Labour refuses to step. It can and will only be solved by a revolutionary party that unites the working class to abolish capitalism.

A litter of Labour’s known online commentators have decided not to put Ken as their first option in the mayoral elections today, one deciding to vote Green with a tactical eye on granting Livingstone his second preference, while the other this morning decided to accept a blue rosette given to him and do Boris’ counting with activists.

Various Lords have given Ken the snub, MPs are not actively out campaigning for him and some well-known journalists such as Jonathan Freedland long ago decided that Livingstone and the Jewish question was a touch too far.

I agree this should be near the top of our heads when voting for a mayor. After all the Mayor of London engages with international figures and therefore has to have a rigorous internal conversation about how to conduct oneself on matters of world political issues.

The meeting, therefore, with Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi plays havoc. Further, Ken’s present failure to recognise a problem here gives us reason never to trust him again, let alone trust him with political office.

But also the recent “beacon of Islam” political theatre, along with dalliances with PressTV, under rule of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s clan of autocratic criminals, doesn’t sit well alongside his comments that Jews are “rich” and “wouldn’t vote for him anyway.”

Why does he feel the need to say he’ll make London a “beacon of Islam” anyway? At best that was the foulest form of political posturing; at worst it is divide and rule politics.

All these things should give us reason to kick up a fuss – but as Ken is “our man” we should keep Mum, lest we tread on our own supposedly tribal instincts.

The Economist in their recent editorial, supporting Boris, said that the Blonde blue candidate is the right candidate for the wrong job, and that the role of mayor should cover far more important ground.

I agree, but obviously not for Boris. But, then, not for Ken either.

Peter Hain, in his recent autobiography, said:

…I wanted to be effective, to be able to make a real difference. And that meant learning what not to do from Ken Livingstone … he seemed to go out of his way to make enemies…

And this holds true today. A London mayor should not be one whose sole aim it is to make enemies, in fact the opposite is true.

If Ken becomes mayor again, which he very much could do tomorrow, then he is more likely to stand next time. Even more, if he wins, the Labour party will find it nearly impossible to throw him out – and I think it’s time they did.

Ken isn’t simply a renegade who cannot be tamed, but his politics and demeanor have become embarrassing and offensive. And we haven’t even raised the tax situation, yet.

There is also something in what Andrew Gilligan, another ex-PressTV partner in crime with links to the Father of Syria’s President Assad, said recently, on what would happen if Ken lost:

If Ken loses again this week, in a city where Labour is currently 19 per cent ahead in the polls, Labour will have no option but to face all these realities.

Boris on the other hand will use a mayoral reelection to further boost his designs on Conservative party leader.

(Could we foresee a lightbulb fight between Yvette Cooper and Boris Johnson yet?)

Boris is clearly not in this for the right reasons, whereas Ken thinks he is doing the right thing, really means it, and is often left looking foolish as a result.

Dan Hodges probably has this right: it is a fight between Ken and Boris. That seems obvious. But he is wrong to support the latter.

I can’t say anything other than vote Ken. I’m not tribal, it’s just I don’t want to see Boris back as Mayor. But I’ll be honest nor do I want to see Ken back either. Sadly, there is no other way. Vote Ken, then insist he is sacked immediately. This inharmonious position seems to be all we have in the sensible camp. I blame politics.

I tend not to take much interest in paid lobbyists, regarding them as verminous scum. Still, when people I talk to on stalls mention something, I take an interest and it just so happened yesterday that one ex-Lib Dem (left because of leadership treason) brought up the subject of Lord Bell’s “attack” on lobbyists.

Apparently the ex-owner of Bell Pottinger made a speech the other day in which he admitted that they were “a lightning rod for mistrust”. It says something about the type of wet drips who join the Lib-Dems that this guy thought Lord Bell was making an attack on his own profession; far from it. He was in full throated defence.

“The fact remains that, taking on a client good or bad, it is our reputation at stake,” says Bell, and “everybody has the right to representation”. Defending Bell Pottinger’s PR work for the repressive dictatorship of Belarus, Bell says that “Good PR needs substance”, intimating that his firm only held up real good things that were happening there.

Let’s deconstruct this a bit. Not everybody has the right to representation; only those who can pay have the right to representation. Hence it’s the dictatorship of Belarus and not its starved, oppressed people who hired Bell Pottinger. Likewise, it’s capitalist firms and not their workers who hire PR firms, political “leaders” and not activists and so on.

The essence of paid political lobbying is the elevation of those who exist at points where money is concentrated – i.e. the already institutionally powerful and wealthy. So the whole edifice is biased from the beginning. More than that, whilst lobbyists don’t have to lie, the nature of their job is to distort the truth, holding up the good things and explaining away the bad things. Amusingly, Lord Bell actually gets indignant over Belarus, “No attempt was made to understand what we were doing”. Quite the opposite; surely the problem was that everyone knew precisely what Bell Pottinger were doing?

Asked why he thought he was being attacked, Lord Bell’s giant ego moved to obscure the sunlight;

I have absolutely no idea. I think I’m absolutely lovely. But some people don’t think I am, so they attack me. The answer is because I’m at the top of the tree. I say that immodestly, I’m somewhere near the top of the tree and I have been for some time. Tall poppy syndrome applies to our industry the same as everything else. What’s the point of attacking somebody nobody’s ever heard of? It’s much more fun to attack me, or the Saatchi brothers, or Matthew Freud, or Max Clifford. Attack somebody who’s visible.

Attacking somebody who’s visible…and supports murderous dictatorships, oppressive Thatcherite governments and the like, perhaps?

There’s a nugget in all of this which shows that paid lobbying is not to blame for the ills of our political system. There are parallels which exist between people like Lord Bell (i.e. smug rich arseholes) and, say, David Cameron. They occupy a similar ideological universe.

Bell seems to suggest a democracy of the marketplace with his “everyone has the right to representation” spiel. This is hardly different to the Tory equation of corporate donations to their party with union donations to the Labour Party.

Both stories are about attempts to buy power by interest groups. Both treat potential funders as individuals, the better to make all potential funders look like equals and obscure the very real differences in wealth, power and numbers.

The Bell/Cameron model favours small cliques who can more easily use wealth and power over mass organisations of millions (e.g. the people of Belarus or the 7 million workers in unions). Implying any equivalence is ridiculous. Numerous figures in the Labour heirarchy are no strangers to this model, nor are the Lib-Dems. And this is my point. It is natural for them to think this way, to favour the wealthy and still see some balance in their views.

It doesn’t require lobbying. It simply requires that we workers lie down and take it, over and over and over again.

As disappointing as it may be to some long-time blogofriends, who really despise him, I am resolutely indifferent to George Galloway. This might be seen as some political lapse on my part. After all, only the other week I was expressing my sympathy for Peter Cruddas, the Tory apparatchik caught trying to sell access to our dearly beloved PM.

Even so, when reading the headlines over my cornflakes today, I did laugh very hard indeed at Galloway’s absolutely massive victory in Bradford West. I laughed harder still at the lightning speed responses from Labour people on Twitter, which amounted to “Bloody [insert ethnic or religious minority]“. I’m not joking there. That’s really what it came down to.

Let me clarify. A lot of people are talking about the “machine politics” practised by some Asian communities, and suggesting that Galloway has appeased the powers that be there, to win the votes they can command – a little like Tammany Hall. It is entirely possible that Galloway benefitted here (and I make no claim to authority in the matter) but it is rather hypocritical for Labour to attack it, as if it is true that Galloway benefits from it, then in many areas Labour also benefits from it. Or the whole conception might be a vaguely racist appraisal by people who stand outside those communities.

In any case, an 18,000 strong vote, based on slogans like “Real Labour not New Labour”, “Stop this Cuts Madness” and “Stop the Break Up of the NHS” (as well as the expected “Bring Our Boys Home” tropes), is not easily dismissed.

I am not a Respect supporter; I think they are a dead-end, and I think Galloway is an unaccountable, uncontrollable celebrity personality, rather than the sort of local campaigner I’d be more comfortable voting for (see TUSC for further details). But in the Bradford West by-election there was no one else to vote for, if deciding purely on the basis of what the candidates said in their electoral material, which is presumably the only contact most people had with the matter.

The key question is, having won this by-election, what is Galloway going to do now? Those who enjoy ridiculing him have made much of  his Celebrity Big Brother shenanigans, as being “disrespectful” to his constituents etc etc. Again I’m seized by indifference over the matter – though it might give a tell-tale indication as to what sort of MP Galloway might be. It bears saying, however, that as with the “machine politics” stuff, Labour people voicing their discontent are somewhat hypocritical. I’m sure Ed Miliband would jump on any TV show going if he thought he would win the election as a result – only he’d probably have to call in at Hackett’s for a bespoke personality and not just his usual custom-made suits.

Is Galloway, on the other hand, being the darling of the media because he seems immune to embarrassment, going to run a media-luvvy orientated campaign henceforth, or is he going to be in Bradford High St, manning the anti-cuts stalls? He should be. Such a high profile victory, allied to the right campaigning strategy, could galvanise the whole working class of Bradford to come out and fight the cuts. There are practical tasks at stake; the coordination of local union action, the preparation of anti-cuts candidates for council, on a “needs-budget” slate, and the extension of cooperative efforts to other nearby areas, such as Leeds, where the cuts are biting just as hard.

A high profile figure can lend weight to that strategy, which is really the only strategy.

Is that to be George Galloway’s role? We don’t yet know, so we don’t yet know what the significance of this by-election will be. We know it shows discontent – but whether or not that discontent can be turned from a passive kind, that results in one-off by election votes, into an active kind that will defeat the cuts…therein lies the real question mark over Bradford. Everywhere on the Left can be felt Labour’s ebb, particularly from those unions which move into struggle whilst Ed Miliband talks about “resolution at any cost” (which means “at any cost to workers”, as we know from experience).

What force will replace it is still up for debate – and replace it something will. Bradford notwithstanding, Labour are still the main repository for the votes of the passive resistance. As workplaces move into active struggle, Labour people find themselves standing by the wayside. People don’t forget that the pickets of the last year or so were not that long ago pickets erected against the policies of a Labour government. Moreover, that active struggle demands answers which Labour cannot supply. The election of a Labour government is only the end of Round One in the battle against the cuts – the battle against capitalism.

Round two will be the creation, through the struggle against that Labour government and its equally repugnant cuts, of the organs of an alternative, unifying and representative seat of working class power.

In Bradford, the local paper reported in 2009 that 41% percent of the areas in the district are among the most deprived in the country. Labour people can do all the whinging they want about machine politics – but there are very good reasons for the people in this area not to vote Labour; a Labour council, tarred by Galloway with the same cuts-loving brush as the Tories, could not save a Labour candidate from being absolutely annihilated. That is telling enough as to the continuing abysmal state of the Labour Party.

Lastly, the Lib-Dems apparently lost their deposit. May there be heaps more of that, thank you very much.