Why David Cameron is not a compassionate conservative

David Cameron is legacy conscious, that is the take away from a speech he made earlier in the week. He wants to be remembered as more than an administrator in chief, someone who made a few reforms and reduced (but did not clear) the deficit. He wants to change society in a way he will be remembered for. Margaret Thatcher brought the language of the market into everyday life. Tony Blair oversaw huge social liberalisation. Cameron has survived three referendums and that is it.

Cameron started out wanting to be a moderniser. He wanted to ditch the Tory's "nasty party” image and occupy the centre ground of British politics the way Blair did for Labour in the 1990s. Now Cameron is legacy conscious; he is drawn back to the idea of compassionate conservatism that he championed in his early days as party leader. Cameron wants the Tory party to tackle the social ills and deep rooted problems of Britain.

I believe that Cameron really does want to tackle the country’s complex problems and leave office with more people from all walks of life better off than when he arrived. I also believe this goes further than a nebulous desire to help people and that he has ideas about how to tackle Britain’s social problems. However, these ideas have never come together into something tangible. Cameron has spent none of his political capital being a compassionate conservative.

The argument made by Cameron’s apologists is that he has not been compassionate because of circumstance. Cameron has had to jump from crisis to crisis, which has gotten in the way of his vision. I dispute this, as a lot of these crises were of Cameron's own creation. The EU referendum, Cameron's rebellious right wing backbenchers and the trouble with UKIP eating away at Tory marginal support were created by Cameron's timidity and his reluctance to confront the right of his own party. He has allowed the right of the party to consistently undermine him because it is easier than standing up to them. If Cameron really wanted to lead Britain to a future of compassionate conservatism then he should have started by convincing his own party to stay in line.

Other events (AV referendum, Scottish independence, etc) Cameron could also have avoided, had it not been convenient to allow them to happen at the time. The other obstacles to the compassionate conservative project, cited by its defenders, are part of the cut and thrust of politics. These are mainly elections and circumstances created by the opposition. Did Cameron expect to be able to govern in a vacuum? Did he think that the Labour Party would just allow him put his grand, but ill defined, vision in practice?

We have to evaluate governments on what they do, not what they say or what they intended to do in an ideal world. The Tories have introduced the Bedroom Tax, penalising benefit recipients whose family members die, which is the opposite of compassion. The Tories have created a blame culture which accuses the unemployed and disabled of being scroungers. People with bad luck who lose their jobs or who have medical and/or physical disabilities are people who need our compassion, but the Tories have created an atmosphere of accusation and imply that these people are just workshy and are therefore not deserving of our compassion.

The day to day governing of the country is filled with compromise and maybe Cameron felt these not so very compassionate moves were necessary. He may still intend on being a compassionate conservative, but I doubt this when I look at some of things Cameron attempted. Under Cameron the government proposed cutting tax relief to people in work who are struggling to get by as well as raising council rents for people in work but with low paying jobs. Surely people who are working hard but still cannot a pay their rent and put food on the table without government aid are people who need compassion. However in the eyes of the Tories the working poor and also scroungers who need to be bullied into making more money rather than being shown compassion.

In the last week Cameron has shown his lack of compassion as the Tories voted against an amendment to the housing bill to ensure that all rental properties are fit for human habitation. People living in substandard accommodation are apparently not deserving of compassion according to the Tories.

Then we come to Cameron’s greatest absence of compassion: child poverty. Even someone who blames the unemployed for being unemployed or the working poor for not having better paid jobs, must acknowledge that children are not responsibility for the poverty they are born into. The government should be compelled to tackle child poverty, to give every child in the country equality of opportunity.

Under Cameron’s government the number of children living in absolute poverty in the UK has increased by half a million Cameron’s response is to redefine child poverty as a social condition and not an economic one, thus dodging the government's obligation to tackle the issue. This is a shocking lack of compassion for children born into poverty and amount to Cameron turning his back on millions of poor children.

Cameron's flagship compassionate conservative policy is the Big Society. The most generous assessment that of this plan is that it aims to encourage ordinary people to take a stake in their community and local government and to use their expertise to improve local services by tailoring them to the needs of the community. It could be described as a plan to provide socialism without state interference. To make ordinary people care for each other and work together to improve the lives of others without the need for a draconian state that involves itself in the personal lives of its citizens.

That is when I am being generous. Most of the time I see the Big Society as a means to transfer services that were offered by the state to ordinary people and use social pressure as a means a to do this. The neo-liberal drive towards maximum labour market flexibility has created a society of workers disconnected from their communities, moving to where the work is (mainly London). The Tories have no plans to oppose this as it would involve standing up to private businesses who do quite well out of a flexible labour market. However in the towns and villages workers have vacated no one is available to look after the elderly people. The state could provide this service but that would be expensive.

Enter the Big Society. By using social pressures of the 1950s, workers are encouraged to provide social care or management expertise to cut back state run services. We will still move to where the work is, but we are supposed do our bit for Blighty while we are there and to slot into a community care, health and education network that used to run by the state. It is social democracy without the state or a lot of people working long hours and then providing care services and running schools in their free time. The time we are supposed to spend with our children or being idle for the sheer joy of it are not accounted for as they have no value. Compassion has been removed from this equation. It is the worst combination of the strict social pressure of the past and the austere state of the present.

Cameron may want to be a compassionate conservative but by victimising the unemployed, the disabled and low paid workers he is behaving like the same old nasty party that he wanted to move the Tories away from. His Big Society dream is a means to create a state that does not care for its citizens and little England nightmare of social pressure where overworked people provide the services the state used to run. This is a compassionate conservative vision of a future without leisure time or any collective responsibility.

2015 a year in review - trends and the future

This is a review of the political events of 2015. Read my summary of the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader here.

Parliament and party politics were more interesting this year than for a long time, but there were important trends outside the Westminster bubble. Questions over Scottish independence were clearly not settled by last years referendum. The SNP will call another independence ballot, but only when they are certain they will win. If Britain leaves the EU because England votes to go and Scotland votes to stay then this will give the SNP the excuse they need to break up the country.

In America gun massacre followed gun massacre and still Obama cannot get any movement on gun control legislation. If you are depressed about the state of British politics, then take a look at the US to feel better about things. The race for the White House rumbles on with Trump frightening the world more and more and Hilary Clinton being so bland and boring that an openly socialist candidate is making headway in an American election – further proof, if any was needed, that 2015 was a surreal year for politics.

2015 was also the year that a lot of prominent feminists were accused of being transphobic, sparking social media spats. This led to a healthy public debate about no-platforming on university campuses. There are already too many people telling students what they should and should not do, but my opinion is that people should be allowed to express their opinions unless they are openly and explicitly encouraging violence.

Online abuse, passing itself off as free speech, has caused numerous people to examine the issue of the limits of free speech. We have a right to freedom of speech but we also have a responsibility to do no harm with it, as much as possible. After so much abuse has been dished out and then defended as “freedom of speech”, I can see why students want more emphasis on the responsibility aspect of our freedom of speech.

Many of these debates – and abuses - have taken place on social media and one trend of 2015 is fashionable social media bashing. Social media used to be means to gage public opinion or engage with the public. Now it’s viewed as a nest of hysterical people, who must be ignored in order for their to be sane political debate.

One recent example is people taking to Twitter after the Christmas floods to claim about Tory cuts to the flood defenses budget. Most people would think that a debate about cutting flood defenses after a preventable flood has damaged peoples’ lives is a good thing. However in the world of “sane political debate” verses social media these people were labeled as idiots, rather than listened too. Here is a good example of someone dismissing discussion on Twitter out of hand and here is a good response.

Some good articles were written about how social media can be a left wing echo chamber and this might have cost Labour the election. For every nuanced thought about the role of social media there were many people dismissing out of hand a platform that gives voice to people, mainly young people, who find it hard to get their voices heard.

Social media is a great tool for collective actions, spreading information and holding the powerful to account. It has been used to spread hatred and disinformation by people of all political persuasions. I feel that the current fashionable bashing of social media is a way for journalists and politicians to dismiss the voices of ordinary people as just cranks and bullies.

Elements of the political and journalistic establishment do not like the fact that ordinary people hold them to account and would very much prefer it if social media is thought of as the domain of idiots and that it is everyone’s best interests that they are ignored. You will encounter opinions you do not like on social media, some of them will be stupid and ill-informed. Everyone has a right to an opinion. Fashionable bashing of social media is way for the privileged to conveniently ignore the opinions of everyday people.

2015’s most annoying trend was self-righteous articles about people moving out of London, such as this by Rafael Behr in the Guardian and this by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. Yes we are all very pleased that you prefer Brighton to the capital but we really do not care. An opportunity to pop this balloon of pomposity was missed when one writer claimed that they cannot move out of London because the rest of the country is racist. Everyone looked like an idiot that week.

2016 will probably be as interesting as 2015, for better and for worse. There will be more social media spats and infighting in the Labour Party. There will also be more refugees than ever before arriving and we need a practical solution to what is to be done with all these people and we need it today. Terrorism is a fear, but I am hopefully that 2016 will not see a massacre in London similar to the ones we have seen in Paris.

The promised referendum of Britain’s European Union membership will most likely happen next year, because Cameron wants Britain to stay in the EU and he does not want this to be a vote on an unpopular midterm government – so the sooner the better from his point of view. The potential for both Labour and the Tories to trip over their own feet during the campaign is enormous and I am interested and slightly frightened to see how they both handle it. We can also expect sluggish economic growth and further cuts to public services. 2016 might finally be the year cuts and lack luster economic performance blows up in the Conservative Party’s faces.

At the Red Train blog 2016 we bring a new website design, new articles on a wider range of topics and a recommitment to cover as much politics as possible with our usual liberal dose of left wing bias.

Our society is still faced with some very large problems. I believe that the neo-liberal economics that underpin our current thinking and direction of our entire society is heading in is potentially disastrous. There are millions of people - poor people and social minorities - that no one cares about and have been left on the scrapheap by this government. The country needs an effective left wing alternative now more than ever. It is the only way we will meet the challenges of 2016.

2015 a year in review - Jeremy Corbyn

This is a review of the political events of 2015. Read my summary of the general election here.

If the election was a surprise than what happened afterwards was a shock. Jeremy Corbyn was given odds of 800 to 1 when he was nominated to stand for Labour leader but he won with nearly 60% of the membership backing him. Corbyn won a huge victory across all ages, demographics and types of Labour members, but all has not gone well since then. Corbyn’s victory has exposed huge divisions in the Labour party.

I voted for Corbyn, and his politics are the closest to mine of any Labour leader during my lifetime. It has been painful to read the writings of many left-wing journalists I respect, trashing him at every opportunity. There are certainly legitimate criticisms of Corbyn – I will come to these – but I feel many journalists made up their minds early on that they did not like him and nothing he can do will change this. This is because the election of Corbyn as Labour leader goes beyond what you think of Corbyn personally, his voting record, or even his policies. It is a question of what Labour stands for and what it should aim to be.

The division opening up across the Labour movement is a division between those who want radical change to our politics and our society, and those who want liberal reform to our current system. It is the difference between those who want capitalism with the worst excesses removed or those who want our entire relationship with capitalism reformed. I feel this divide is unbridgeable, by Corbyn or anyone else.

Corbyn’s victory is partly down to having an ideology at all in an ideologically bankrupt Labour, and partly down to inspiring young voters and many alienated leftists and Greens. But it is mainly because the rival Blairite and Brownite candidates were awful. None of them looked like they could win a general election so the party members preferred to make a principled stand, rather than choose a Prime Minister in waiting. The Blairite and Brownite factions need to take a hard look at themselves to work out why they lost so massively to the left of the party. They have nothing to offer apart from indigent cries of “it’s our party, we should be in charge”. Since Corbyn’s election they have continued down this route, doubtlessly helping keep Corbyn popular among Labour Party members.

Labour wins big when it can unite the working class trade-union supporting voters, the liberal metropolitan middle class voters and the aspirational voters who think they will be better off under Labour. Under Miliband, UKIP ate away at the first group, the Greens at the second and the Tories took a huge bite of out the third. Corbyn is losing the third group, but he has stopped the exodus of the second group and a question mark remains over his appeal to the first. In Oldham UKIP heavily targeted this group, hoping that accusing Corbyn of not being patriotic could win over these voters. It did not work, because of the issues with UKIP discussed above. The Tories are trying the same tactic on a bigger scale and that is where the real threat to Labour lies.

If the Tories can win over group 1 and 3, while holding onto their core support, they will win big in 2020. However I do not see a Labour front bench figure who can win over all three groups and Labour need all three. Yvette Cooper gets group 2 and 3, but loses group 1. Liz Kendall gets group 1 and 3, but loses 2. Stella Creasy gets group 2 and 3, but loses 1. David Miliband gets group 3, but loses 1 and 2. The only possibilities would be Lisa Nandy or Jess Phillips but they are not exposed enough for us to accurately judge how well they would do as party leader.

Corbyn and his new shadow cabinet have made some mistakes. Certainly having John McDonnell waving around Chairman Mao's Little Red Book was a bad idea, however over four years away from a general election these mistakes matter little to most voters. The few victories Corbyn has had have been the most widely noted, mainly Labour stopping Tory plans to cut working tax credits, which interim Labour leader Harriet Harman supported.

Then came a terrorist attack on Paris and the excuse Cameron had been looking for to start bombing Syria. This is a terrible idea and Corbyn was right to oppose it. However, parliament thought otherwise and a few in the Labour Party seized this as an opportunity to embarrass Corbyn; showing once and for all that Blairities care more about being proved right than they do about the Syrian civilians we will inevitably kill and how this will encourage others to flock to ISIS.

Even so, the Syria vote is a major defeat for Corbyn. I think ultimately he will be proved right and that this military intervention in Syria (and Iraq) will only increase support for ISIS. Unfortunately at the point when this becomes apparent everyone will have forgotten Corbyn’s stance on the issue as we will be focusing on a new political crisis. Sometimes it looks as if Corbyn cannot win whatever he does.

Parliament and party politics were more interesting this year than for a long time, but there were important trends outside the Westminster bubble. Read my summary of trends in 2015 and what to epxect in 2016 here.

2015 a year in review - the general election

I usually start the New Year with recommitting myself to writing this blog and standing up for left-wing values, so this year I decided to do something different and end the year with recommitting myself.

It has been a rollercoaster of a year in every sense. 12 months ago if you told me that by December 2015 Jeremy Corbyn would be leader of the Labour Party, Charles Kennedy would be no longer with us, David Cameron would have taken us into another Middle Eastern war of dubious legality and that the biggest political hash tag of the year would be in French, then I’d have claimed you had one too many eggnogs over Christmas.

However that’s the political landscape we find ourselves in at the end of 2015. It has been an unfortunate year for Paris, bookended with twin tragedies of the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the Paris massacre in November. Terrorism and security have been major themes of this year; partly because the Tories want to make it the subject of the next general election, in the same the way that economic competency was the subject of this year’s election – more on that later.

The refugee crisis reached a critical point this year as over a million people entered Europe from the Middle East, South West Asia and North Africa. How Europe responds to this crisis will be the defining debate of our generation. Britain’s offering to this debate was frosty indifference until the Independent put the picture of a drowned child on their front page and before long we had a commitment from Cameron to take in “thousands” more Syrian refugees. I was more surprised than anyone by this. It goes to show that maybe people do care about what happens outside our borders and that we not a selfish island of little Englander UKIP voters, whatever that demographic of squeaky wheels claims.

Insulting UKIP bring me neatly to the biggest British political event of this year, the general election. For people who follow politics like it is a sport it was both fascinating and dull. The polls were too close to all (up until the BBC’s exit poll) and it looked like another hung parliament, with coalition negotiations going on in the public view. However there were no moments of controversy, no gaffs and no defining moments of brilliance. The TV debates were interesting but ultimately changed nothing.

Small left-wing(ish) parties did well out of the TV debates. I was very impressed by Leanne Wood from Plaid Cymru and Nicola Sturgeon from the SNP. Sadly Natalie Bennett from the Greens failed to make much of an impression. She did manage produce the worst gaff of the election with a terrible interview for LBC.

I thought that we could face a “Green Moment” when the Greens steal large number of voters from Labour’s metropolitan liberal left and become a serious player in parliament. It did not happen. I have a soft spot for the Greens but while they are seen as the party of the self-satisfied, middle class, Guardian reading set - the people with their own compost heap in the garden but take three holidays aboard a year – they will fail to capture the broad based support they need in order to return more than a handful of MPs.

Lack of effective leadership for the Greens remains a major problem for them. Caroline Lucas is a good politician to have at the front. Natalie Bennett is not and I do not see her leading the party to electoral success. It must be said that the first past the post electoral system is a huge hindrance to parties like the Greens – and UKIP. A fairer electoral system would have given the Greens more seats for the one million votes they got in the general election. However it would have also returned a Tory UKIP coalition government. I think this is right, it is what we voted for and it was what we should get.

It is interesting that, in May, I thought that the general election was the death of major parties and first past the post system, that electoral reform was imminent, and that coalitions would be the future. With the poor performance of small parties this year, a Tory majority government and huge numbers of new members of the Labour Party, it looks like big parties are as strong as ever and that binary left/right politics is here to stay.

The general election also saw the annihilation of the Lib Dems, justly deserved for breaking so many manifesto commitments and alienating a new generation of voters who they courted in 2010. Many of the 2010 Lib Dem voters went over to the Tories, which cost Labour the election. This should finally put to bed the idea of the Lib Dems as a credible left-wing party. They are and always have been centrist party.

The only small party to do well out of the first past the post system was the SNP, who swept through Scotland like wildfire. This should concern Cameron more than it does. The Tories are great at ignoring places that do not return Tory MPs and Cameron is bad for this even by Tory standards. The huge popular support for the SNP means another referendum on Scottish independence is likely and it is possible that this Tory government will be the last of a united kingdom.

No one expected it, but the Tories eeked over the line to form a majority government. The public rejected coalitions, majority rule is back. It was the first Tory budget in nearly 20 years but it is a majority smaller than John Major’s in 1992, and look how well that went. Sluggish but present economic growth saved the Tories bacon at the polling booth. Growth was strong enough that the government could claim that they were doing well, but not so strong that the electorate could trust Labour to turn on the spending taps. Everyone hated the Lib Dem so the Tories were in – narrowly.

I hate the Tories, but I do have to acknowledge their clever electoral maneuvering. Back in 2010 I thought that austerity could keep the Tories out of office for 20 years, that when people felt the impact of the cuts it would mean a Labour landslide. It did not happen. Homelessness is up, child poverty is up, inequality and personal debt are at an all time high, yet the Tories remain popular. They have convinced enough people to win an election and hats off to them.

Having popular support from many newspapers helped, but I lay the blame squarely at the feet of Labour. By supporting austerity, by making it their top manifesto commitment, they handed victory over to the Tories. The Tories lost three elections to New Labour by promising to match Labour spending and deliver tax cuts. Similarly, Labour cannot win by offering spending cuts and better public services. The argument needs to change.

The possibility of a UKIP surge - long predicted but never appearing - was something that worried me during the election. UKIP came second in a lot of safe Labour seats and this should worry Labour, but these seats remain safe Labour seats as the Oldham by-election demonstrates. UKIP have claimed they are parking their tanks of Labour’s lawn, that their popular anti-EU, anti-immigrant, straight talking politics will bring them massive electoral victory. It has not and I see now that it will not.

This is partly because if a voter agrees with UKIP, there are plenty of Tories who share their views. It is also partly because of our British dislike of anyone seen as extreme. However it is mainly because UKIP are, at most, a dual issue party. Those who hate the EU and are frightened of immigrants care about the economy, healthcare, educating and housing and they want a party that has comprehensive policies on all of these fronts. UKIP does not and the Tories remain the main party of the right.

If the election was a surprise then what happened afterwards was a shock. Read my summary of the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader here.

Invisible Britain

One night, after a particularly heavy pub session, we all piled back to a friend’s flat for more beer and music. In his inebriated state, a music blogger friend of mine insisted we listen to a new record called Divide and Exit by East Midlands group Sleaford Mods. He characterized them as hip-hop, not a genre of music I know particularly well, but Sleaford Mods’ combination of grinding mod guitars and anger filled lyrics captivated me instantly. This was the soundtrack to the age of government austerity. This was how people felt when punk first exploded onto the music scene in the mid 1970s. I wanted to recreate the scene from 24 Hour Party People, when after first seeing the Sex Pistols play, Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan) claims that all the music that had come before this was dead. I wanted to jump to my feet and rip down Oasis, Stereophonics and Arctic Monkeys posters. That was the soundtrack of the prosperous, optimistic New Labour era. Sleaford Mods is the soundtrack of NHS privatization, benefit sanctions and Etonian rule. I was instantly a fan.

Sleaford Mods are breathing some much-needed fresh air into popular music. They are different, crude and rude, but also shine a light onto the lives of ordinary people reminiscent of the work of L. S. Lowry. In an age when popular culture is dominated by Dragon’s Den and Benefits Street, Sleaford Mods show that we can aspire to more than the hollow worship of capitalism. They have been compared to the Sex Pistols and to the Specials, but I think it is a disservice to give them retro comparisons. We have too many throwbacks right now. Sleaford Mods are an original outfit, a product of 21st century Britain.

Mainstream popular culture often ignores the problems and challenges faced by ordinary people in a time of high unemployment, high cost of living, stagnant wages and benefit cuts. There is a growing middle class dominance of media and culture. Oasis and The Stone Roses came from Manchester council estates. Now we have the privately educated Frank Turner and Mumford and Sons. Sleaford Mods reflect ordinary people and everyday situations. Now, they are taking this a step further with a documentary called Invisible Britain, which looks at the places and people the middle class cultural hegemony overlooks. Invisible Britain puts the deindustrialisation, rising poverty and unemployment of places like Scunthorpe into a wider political and cultural context. It also documents the group’s tour of British towns overlooked by popular bands and the mainstream media. From decaying arts centers to boarded-up houses, this is a portrait of Britain as it is for most people, a million miles away from the pop-up shops or leafy suburbs of middle class life.

Invisible Britain articulates the social and economic problems of contemporary Britain very well. We are showed how our economic system is set up for the benefit of the few, that many lose out and that some people are thrown completely onto the scrap heap. Issues of social class are discussed overtly, which is refreshing. Our current political discourse is lacking a discussion of social class. This is partly because if we discuss social class, it would involve acknowledging that we are going backwards, that inequality is growing and that we becoming a more economically divided society. As barriers related to other forms of social exclusion come down, barriers between the social classes are rising. This is one of the few films that put inequality and the class divide front and centre.

Not only are working class people ignored by newspapers, TV shows , music and other popular culture mediums but working class people’s expressions of anger are being ignored. Sleaford Mods are loud and angry. Their music demands attention, they cannot be ignored and thus they are showing middle class Britain what they want to overlook: the growing class divide, the rising poverty, the growing sense of alienation and anger.

Most of the people who are interviewed for Invisible Britain are middle class. The film is stronger for focusing on Sleaford Mods’ fans, rather than lining up music journalists, but it does show that Sleaford Mods have a very middle class following. This is music by, and about, working class people but it is connecting with a liberal middle class audience. It is certainly good that middle class people have exposure to the working class other than Benefits Street - that is what the Tory government would prefer. The middle class presides over a popular culture industry that spreads ignorance other people, especially people outside the South East or the middle class. This is what allows the Tories to cut benefits, close Sure Start centres and axe preventive healthcare. This is what allows inequality to grow and for class divides to become more entrenched.

Invisible Britain shows the expressions of anger by the marginalised. The film talks to relatives of Mark Wood, who starved to death after being found fit to work by Atos and thus losing most of his benefits. The film also focuses on the campaign against joint enterprise convictions, which are disproportionately high in the black and Asian community. The film also shows the futility of the alternatives to the current government, a strong feeling of political disenfranchisement comes from the interviewees. The fans interviewed say that voting changes nothing and that Labour are as bad as the Tories. Invisible Britain shows the growing sense of alienation with politics that many people feel.

Some hope is are offered, Invisible Britain talks to local artist co-operatives, grass roots campaigners, food bank volunteers and trade union activists. However there is no wider political ideology mentioned that could bring about change. Sleaford Mods are expressly not a political band and the film shows an interesting distinction between the social commentary of the music of Sleaford Mods and other overtly political artists.

Britain needs a political solution to the problems shown in Invisible Britain. We need a consensus to tackle the problems of growing inequality, class divisions, middle class domination of popular culture and racist laws. One step towards a political solution would be distribute Invisible Britain as far and wide as possible. Many people should watch this film is to see what life is like outside their middle class metropolitan centrist bubble. Then maybe the shouts of anger will not be ignored.

Why we should not attack the Islamic State

The situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq is dire. The tyrannical rule that the Islamic State - or IS - imposes in the areas of Syria and Iraq which it controls are chilling. Their persecution of the Yazidi and other minorities is an affront to our common human decency. Now they are exporting murder to their neighbours, in Beirut and in Ankara, and more recently in Paris. I can understand the calls to do something, to use the West’s massive military power to help those who suffer under IS. A lot of people calling for intervention in Syria have the best intentions of civilians at heart. However, that does not make their desire to intervene is correct and I feel it could do much more harm than good.

What is typically meant by intervention against IS is usually bombing. Britain is currently bombing IS territory in Iraq. France, Russia and the US are heavily bombing IS in Syria and in Iraq. Our involvement in the regional conflict between IS, secular rebels and the governments of Iraq and Syria makes it more difficult to bring about a diplomatic solution. We can hardly argue against violence while using violence ourselves. We can hardly encourage any side to stop spreading the chaos and carnage, while we are spreading the chaos and change. At the same time chaos and destruction created by our bombing is the environment in which IS thrives.

I do not think there is an example of when bombing a Middle Eastern country has improved the situation for civilians. Our military has been heavily involved in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and the situation has deteriorated to the point where a medieval death cult controls vast swathes of land. When it was argued that we should not attack the Saddam regime, the counter argument was: "it can't get any worse". It can and it did. Now the same argument is being used to support attacking IS. It can get worse than IS and it will get worse the more we bomb. The west has been bombing this area of the world off and on for the last 25 years and it is in a worse state now than ever. Eventually we have to try something else.

It is difficult to talk about intervening against IS without looking at the wider issues. Firstly, Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria. No one in favour of attacking IS can clearly say what Assad's role in their downfall should be. To some he is our natural regional ally; to others he is as much a part of the problem as IS. Russia supports Assad, but Britain and America want him to go. Assad's actions are clearly fanning the flames of IS, but fighting a war on two fronts in Syria would be much more difficult. If we must throw our military weight around, the Assad question has to be resolved first.

Secondly, IS needs to be put in the wider regional context. Looking beyond Syria and Iraq, we can see the wider Sunni Muslim world is in revolt against many factors: the secular governments which ignore the religion of their citizens, tyrannical regimes controlling the holy sites of Islam, the growing power of Shia Iran, heavy-handed Western foreign policy, artificial borders between nations which make no sense on the ground - some of which date back to the Sykes-Picot treaty in 1916 - and many other factors. Bombing IS to dust will not pacify an entire region. We are entering a long phase of conflict in the Middle East that cannot end until the above issues and others are resolved. This goes beyond religion, nationality and ideology, but involves all of these. A lasting and just peace for the region - which is what everyone really wants - cannot be brought about by the destruction of one group of fighters.

Another question that has yet to be resolved is what form should intervention take? We are currently bombing IS and have been for a while, but this has had little effect. I am not sure what more bombing by Britain can achieve that bombing by the US, France and Russia cannot. However the main question I would put to those who support bombing IS is how far do we go if bombing does not stop them?

Do those who support bombing believe that the British government should support a Turkish ground invasion? This will most likely result in heavy casualties for the Kurdish minority in the region, who are frequently targeted by the Turkish army. When that comes, it make may bombing supporters choke on their brown flakes when they read their Sunday Times.

Would those who support bombing IS, support a British and American ground invasion of Syria? Simon Jenkins of the Guardian claimed on the Moral Maze that it would take a deployment of 500,000 allied troops and the occupation of most of the region to defeat IS. Do we have the stomach for that? Do we think that re-creating the British Mandates in the Middle East will bring a just and lasting peace? Is that what is in everyone's wider interest? Will the Syrians who object to being ruled by Assad or IS welcome British rule with open arms? I think not. Most likely we would make an enemy of every side in the conflict and unite them all against us. This would destroy any chance of a negotiated peace.

Even if we send in the troops, as I have seen many people argue for, and defeat IS – what happens after that? What is our wider plan for the region? If there is anything we have learned from our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is that our post-invasion plan needs to be a lot better. Look at what happened in Libya: it would be generous to say that the post-Gaddafi plans for Libya were drawn up on the back of a cigarette packet. Now the country is in a state of chaos with violent clashes between different factions, including IS who were not present in Libya before. If we are intervening in Syria and Iraq in anyway, we need to have a clear understand of the type of society we are trying to build, who will be our allies in this process and how we cleanly transition to this. None of these criteria have been satisfied.

What we have right now is a rush to find a solution to IS. When you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. When you have a billion pound military based heavily on air superiority, then every problem starts to look like one you can bomb with jet planes. From most of the commentators in favour of bombing, I have heard a lot of "bombing is definitely the solution, we just need to find out why". We are currently sleepwalking into a half-century long conflict in the Middle East and we cannot let a sudden desire enact our revenge on IS dictate regional foreign policy.

None of this answers the question of what we should do about IS? Simon Jenkins says nothing. I would recommend discontinuing military operations to give the maximum weight to diplomacy. If we must do something militarily, then we should support the Kurds who are currently fighting on the frontline against IS. This support for the Kurds should include supporting their desire for a state and standing up to Turkey who oppresses them.

Above all, I would counsel caution at a time like this. We cannot be selective in our foreign policy and still claim to stand on the moral high ground. We cannot oppose the tyranny and brutality of IS while supporting the tyranny and brutality of Assad. We cannot say we are opposed to the spread of chaos and fear while using our military to spread chaos and fear. We cannot say we oppose religious nihilism while offering nothing more than a power vacuum and more dead bodies as an alternative. It is okay to admit that we do not have the answers and cannot act now. It is far worse to admit we do not have the answers and act anyway.

The decline of the steel industry raises real questions for the left?

“If L S Lowry was painting today he’d be painting [in Notting Hill], not Manchester. Because this area is the dormitory for the biggest factory in this country: the factory of finance.” These are the words of Henry Mayhew, a City employee and Notting Hill residence interviewed in the BBC documentary The Secret History of our Streets. Manchester was once been the driving force behind the industrial revolution, but today most of the economic activity of the country is generated in one square mile.

Whatever you think of the bankers of the City of London, they are the economic engine of the UK and generate most of the wealth in the UK. This wealth does not make it far out of the South East or through many social classes, but the fact remains that we have traded factories for financial models.

This is mainly because our economy has been pivoted toward the City, through decades of privatization and financial deregulation. The 2008 financial crash and the subsequent recession has only increased our relevance on the City to generate economic activity. Neo-liberal economists would argue that this is because we have a competitive advantage - literally an advantage that makes you better than the competition - in banking and financial services. In Lowry's day, our competitive advantage was in steelmaking or coal mining. Things have changed. Time marches on. However, we cannot all be bankers and move to London, so we should probably think about the jobs everyone else is going to do.

A thousand people currently employed in an industry where the UK does not have a competitive advantage are about to lose their jobs as the Teesside Steelworks in Redcar closes down. With the closure of Tata Steel as well, it is clear that the UK steel industry cannot compete in the global steel market - especially against cheap steel being produced in China. Only the coldest neoliberal economist would dismiss the problems of these thousand people, their families and communities. Clearly something has to be done for them but retraining unemployed workers in their 40s and over is not something we have been historically good at in the UK and no one is talking about how we can change this.

Faced with the mass closure of steel plants, the conventional free-market wisdom is to rebalance the economy towards an area where we have a competitive advantage. The idea is that the government invests in science, engineering and computing education, to train young people in work in the high tech industries of the future. This is writing off the steel workers losing their jobs, but offering them the chance that their children can work in new industries.

Put this in the wider context of decreasing social mobility and we see how empty this promise is. People from poor backgrounds with unemployed parents have not historically done well in a liberalised labour market. Even if we created thousands of high tech jobs in former steel towns then these jobs would not go to the children of steel workers, because by taking their parents jobs away we are giving these children a competitive disadvantage in the labour market. Given the current state of social mobility and the labour market, what is left for these people or their children? The only jobs being created in these areas are working in a distribution centre - in other words low paid and insecure. In the current labour market the future does not look good for the people of Redcar.

The closure of Teesside Steelworks and the Tory's recent agreement with China to build a new nuclear power plant are often mentioned in the same breath. Opening up our domestic markets to global completion has destroyed the steel industry. There is no shortage of demand for steel in the UK, however it is much cheaper to import it than to buy it from Tata Steel, the company which owns the Teesside Steelworks. The fact that the Tories need to make a deal with China to build a new nuclear power plant is because the twin snakes of deindustrialisation and globalisation has got rid of all the British firms that could have built the new power stations. Any jobs created by opening our construction industry up to China will be offset by the job losses caused by opening our steel industry up to China.

The aforementioned neo-liberal economist's solution to this issue would be to move the entire county up the supply chain. Rather than competing in making huge amounts of raw materials at a low price, focus on making more complex products that China does not produce. The only problem with this is that China also wants to move up the supply chain and in the future we will be competing against cheaper Chinese software or financial products. Even if China does change, none of this will help the newly unemployed steel workers or their children, for the reasons mentioned above.

Cameron and Osborne clearly have not thought this through. As they open the country up to increasing competition from globalisation more and more businesses will be forced to close. Cameron and Osborne, like the neo-liberal economist, insist that job losses are a temporary and are a necessary pain to pass through as we move to more prosperous future economy, much the same way that they justify their spending cuts. The problem with this approach to globalisation, like austerity, is that it is never Cameron or Osborne or anyone they know or anyone in their constituencies who loses their jobs or tax credits. Their set are always the one to benefit from globalisation but never the ones to pay for it.

Ignoring the problems of globalisation is not a trend which began with Cameron and Osborne. Since the 1980s the UK has moved away from manufacturing and towards financial services and job losses have been dismissed as the cost of structural readjustment. This dismissal of the problems of globalisation has led to under investment in our manufacturing, which has meant closures and job losses. The proof of all this is in the China power plant deal. No firm in Britain can build it, because we have no invested in these skills in the race towards our competitive advantage in finance.

Globalisation, deindustrialisation and the problems it has cerated for communities has been met with a shoulder shrug from society as a whole. In Britain we are more than willing to throw thousands of steelworkers under the bus to have cheaper smartphones and holidays abroad. When we choose to think about the poor people who lose out we shake our heads and say there is nothing to be done.

No one on the left has a solution to this problem. Corbyn is critical of the free market which created the problem but he does not have a solution. He talks about investing in infrastructure but you cannot talk about infrastructure without talking about industrial infrastructure. There is a difference between what we can produce and the economic capacity of the country, i.e. having roads and railways are pointless without factories or services to generate economic activity. Using state spending to give these declining industries a competitive advantage will not work either, the government already spent £1 billion on the Teesside Steelworks and could not make it produce steel at a competitive price.

So, we come back to the same problem. What are these communities supposed to do as their jobs disappear? Move to London? Clearly not an option for everyone. Invest in a Northern Powerhouse to create new employment outside London? Good idea and something I support, but there are four problems:

1. There is a lot of talk about this but nothing is actually happening.

2. It does not help the people who are losing their jobs today.

3. Making Manchester or Liverpool a bit more like London will not help Blackpool or Whitehaven or Workington. The brain drain will just have less far to travel

4. By the time all these new industries are established in the Northern Powerhouse they will have to close because China will have moved into these industries in a big way and the North will have gone from being unable to produce steel a competitive price to being unable to produce software or microcircuits at a competitive price.

Maybe the solution is an L S Lowry type figure taking pictures, or making films about these towns and their people, so that it becomes harder to dismiss them. We need to have more understanding and sympathy for the people who are losing their jobs. That is the best idea I have and calls of compassion have a poor track record at tackling economic problems.

We need to do something about the loss of these jobs, we cannot just leave these people and communities to slide into absolute poverty because it is what our neo-liberal, free market ideology demands. The left does not have an answers to this questions, these industries their workers and unions used to be the backbone of the labour movement, why is there not a left wing clamer to do something about these job losses? Corbyn's retro approach to politics will not work in this situation. We need new thinking.

The middle class should pay attention to what is happening in Redcar, as the twin snakes of globalisation and automation are coming for their jobs too. We can try and move up the supply chain to protect the jobs we still have but China is also doing so and competing against China in a liberalised global market has not gone well so far.

Putting up trade barriers is not the solution, that is the same as pretending the world economy has not become globalised. Retraining workers who lose their jobs under the current system is not a solution, not unless we redesign our education system and spend a lot more money on it. Shrugging your shoulders and saying there is nothing that can be done for these people is not a solution either. We need radical new thinking to tackle this problem. We need thinking that questions the established orthodoxies of the free market but also accept some of the aspects of globalisation that cannot be changed.

The lesson from what is happening at the Teesside Steelworks is that during the time of Lowry the work which sustained our economy was done by many people in unionised and relatively well paid and more secure jobs. Now the work is done by a few people and everyone has less secure jobs. We have gone from factory workers to bankers and cleaners. We need to tackle this issue of deindustrialisation, economic change and globalisation before we become a country with only a few highly specialised City jobs, which still make money in the one specific competitive nieche China has not priced us out of, while the rest of us work in low skilled, insecure and low paid jobs.