Why Corbyn needs to be a positive defender of Britain in the EU

There are plenty of papers covering the "he said, she said" of the EU referendum. I want to take a step back and look at the campaign as a whole. As well the referendum being an important decision for the future of the country, it is an important political opportunity for Labour. As such, it is important that Labour shows a united front and that they take advantage of Tory divisions over Britain’s EU membership.

So far the Tories have kept their disagreements over the EU private because the Labour poll ratings have been so dire. Parties facing defeat show much less unity, for example the Tories in early 90s. There is currently a strong incentive for Tory MPs to stay in the good books of the leadership, i.e. being rewarded with government jobs in the 2020s.

However the mask of Tory unity is slipping. Boris Johnson is dividing the party by giving some credibility and popularity to the No campaign. This a careerist move from Boris, who views this as his last chance to become Tory leader and thus Prime Minister. Barbed words have already been exchanged between Boris and David Cameron, and the rift will only grow as Boris and George Osborn battle it out to be the heir apparent when Cameron steps down.

Labour's own divisions make it difficult to take advantage of the Tory split. This is why it is important for Labour to show a united front in the EU referendum. However, this is made harder by the fact that Labour's leader is not convinced of the benefit of EU membership. There are a lot of problems with the EU from a left wing perspective (TTIP is the tip of the iceberg) but the only way that the Labour Party can achieve socialist goals is through working with other left wing parties in a united Europe. Labour need to get behind the EU.

The left wing vote is needed for Britain to stay in the EU. This is why Alan Johnson is leading the passionately pro EU Labour In campaign. It is this positive approach to Europe that the country needs, not a scare campaign based on jobs and security that Britain Stronger in Europe will offer. Labour In is needed because if the left stay home on referendum day, the leave vote will win. Labour In is a great chance for the party to be the decisive element in British politics.

Corbyn and the Labour left need to take the upper hand if they want to stay in control of the party. There have been too many headlines about in-fighting and arguments between the Labour leadership and the PLP. The Tories are trying to maximise the divisions in Labour by moving forward the vote on renewing Trident. Labour need to do likewise, by making Tory divisions over Europe as big as possible, while putting on a well organised and united campaign to stay. If Corbyn can organise a united Labour Party, on the side of what most people want, against a divided and unpopular mid-term government, then he can turn the tide of bad headlines around.

This is a huge opportunity for Labour and Corbyn. A passionate, positive defence of the EU against a divided Tory party will show the public that Labour under Corbyn can be an effective opposition. People will believe Corbyn if he campaigns to stay in the EU. It plays to his strengths, namely that people think he is honest and believe what he has to say, which is unlike most politicians or his PLP rivals. He can even present his earlier wavering to his advantage - he considered both options sensibly, like the rest of us, before making an informed, balanced decision. Corbyn needs to take this opportunity to do what only he can do, show the county how Labour are different from the Tories.

Labour must be well disciplined, on the side of the voters and against a divided government. Above all, they must be positive, avoiding a mirror image of Farage’s knee-jerk rhetoric or the scare tactics of Cameron's stay in campaign. This will not only win the EU referendum for remain, but will also win back control of the headlines. Corbyn needs to seize this opportunity to start winning.

The problems with the staying in the EU argument

The referendum date has been set and the campaigning has started in earnest. Even at this early stage, it looks likely that the vote to remain will win. David Cameron and George Osborne will be stressing the threats to the UK if we vote to leave the European Union, and this concern about the loss of jobs will trump any worries over immigration or British sovereignty.

The argument that we should vote to stay in the EU because of the jobs loss that will result if we leave is a powerful one, but is it the best course of action for the pro-EU side? I think they would prefer to run a positive campaign that inspires people about the role the UK can play in Europe, but they will ultimately fall back on the vision of an isolated and impoverished Britain outside the EU.

The industry that stands to lose the most from an EU exit is the finance and banking industry. The City of London is the financial core of the EU and, if we vote to leave, then many global finance companies will relocate to Frankfurt to get better access to the EU’s financial markets. The resulting loss of jobs would be felt up and down the country, when we consider the supply chain that financial companies are plugged into. Many companies outside the City are dependent on the economic activity that goes on there, and if you remove those London companies there will be job losses in Newcastle, Bristol and Blackburn.

I hate having to admit that the UK economy is dependent on the whims of bankers; that they could choose to leave at any movement, and that would cause a lot of economic problems. That line of thought leads to the argument that we need to be as nice to bankers as possible - not tax or regulate them too much - to keep them happy and employing everyone else. There is a serious argument to be made about how unbalanced the British economy is and how dependent upon the finance sector we are, but in the short run we have to work with the economy we have.

Do we want to be a part of a Europe that exists to further the interests of the financial industry? Not really, is my answer, but an existence of principled poverty is equally unappealing. Still this argument is not the stuff of folk songs and banners. "Vote yes so that we're not totally fucked." “Daddy, what did you do during the great EU debate of 2016?" "Well son, I soberly told everyone that the EU is not perfect but we are reliant on it and we need to make a pragmatic decision based on jobs and the economy." This is no one’s ideas of our finest hour.

The argument that we are more secure within the EU goes beyond the jobs that will be lost if we leave. Europe is facing an unprecedented level of challenges, from migration to Russian expansionism, from environmental crisis to financial instability. The UK needs to be involved with Europe to participate in the solution to these problems, rather than just burying our heads in Union Flag bunting and hoping that the problems will go away.

However this is also another scare tactic to convince people to vote to stay in. The message is that Britain will be overloaded with refugees we cannot house, then drowned under melted polar ice, bankrupt from financial chaos and then crushed by Russian tanks. It is not an argument to convince anyone to love the European Union, it just makes voters frightened of the lonely world outside the EU.

The EU needs better PR if the stay campaign want to really convince people that EU membership is something important to be protected. The yes campaign is trying to be positive about the benefits of EU membership, but it will not be as effective as a scare campaign. After all, a positive message about British togetherness and shared successes during the Olympics had little effect during the Scottish Independence Referendum. Messages of doom and gloom if Scotland left the union did work.

The issue is that not many people in Britain love the EU. Although most will probably vote to stay in out of fear of the consequences of leaving. The problems of Britain's antipathy towards the EU will not be resolved by a campaign that bullies voters into staying in. The yes side need a campaign that appeals to people's hopes and aspirations for a better tomorrow, what we can achieve by working with our European neighbours. It needs to be positive and effective to settle this issue once and for all.

My biggest fear is that a yes campaign based on scare tactics will ultimately win but will not satisfy anyone. Britain will remain a part of the EU, but dislike of the EU will be at an all time high. Being reminded that we need the EU because we have to keep the finance industry happy - or else they will take away our jobs - and that the finance industry likes the EU is not a strategy to inspire affection and confidence in the European Project. Britain may vote to stay in, but the desire to leave will be stronger than before.

Ultimately this will not settle the issue and will only sow the seeds of another referendum, especially if a new EU treaty is proposed. We need a debate around this referendum that leads to some concencious over the EU, not one which leads to more hostility in the future. Those who are set in taking the UK out of the EU must get the clear message that Britain wants to stay in, or else they will begin this process all over again.

The problem with the yes campaign is that a strategy based on frightening the electorate will not settle the issue of whether EU membership is in Britain's interests. We need a positive campaign about the EU to convince the electorate once and for all of the benefits of Britain taking an active role in the EU. A scare campaign maybe the easiest route to victory, but in the long run it will fan the flames of the desire to leave the EU.

The left wing case for staying in the EU

Recently I laid out the left wing case of leaving the European Union. This was aimed more as a counterpoint to UKIP and their xenophobia than it was to those who want Britain to remain a part of the EU. Many on the left believe there is a lot to be gained from Britain having an active role in Europe, so here is the left wing case for staying in the EU:

The EU is generally more left wing than the British government has been over the last few decades, especially on economic issues. EU regulations prevent the worst excesses of private business. Health and safety standards and working time directives protect us from unsafe working conditions and long gruelling hours. I cannot imagine the Cameron or Blair governments passing the same laws.

Atlantean free marketeers (like Douglas Carswell) see this EU referendum as an opportunity to reduce regulation and government oversight of the British economy so that it becomes more competitive. George Monbiot aptly describes these as “rules that prevent children from being poisoned by exhaust fumes, rivers from being turned into farm sewers and workers from being exploited by their bosses.” Without the EU we will have less job security and less safety in the workplace.

The issue of large companies avoiding tax is also one that can only be tackled at an international level. The Conservative government has shown that it is intensely relaxed about large companies paying little or no tax, despite the fact these companies benefiting from government spending on education, healthcare, transportation, etc. The European Union has already indicated that it might force Google to pay more tax than the paltry sum which George Osborne negotiated with the search giant. In the age of globalisation and multinational companies, only multinational governments can hold large private firms to account and make them pay their taxes.

The greatest argument in favour of Britain taking an active role in the EU is that our future is intertwined with the EU countries, whether we are inside the EU or not. Our cultures and people are intertwined. There are 2.3 million people from other EU countries living inside Britain, bringing with them a huge diversity in language, food, religion and culture. There are also 1.26 million British people living abroad in other EU countries. If we left the EU these connections will still be present, the people of Europe will still be mixed together, but Britain would have no political voice in this shared European society.

I love the diversity and that immigration that EU membership brings to this county. I believe it makes us a more tolerant and flexible society, easily able adapt to the challenges of the future. With conflict spreading in the Middle East, China's economy slowing down and environmental crises looming Britain needs all the strengths and diversity of opinion it can get. The right thinks the free market can solve these problems, the left knows that only with European governments working together through the EU can these issues be tackled.

In the refugee crisis, Europe is being tested by an external shock. All the countries in Europe have been affected by the huge influx of people. With climate change meaning more environmental disasters and sea levels rising, we will see a lot of immigration into Europe over the next few decades. This will affect all of Europe and Britain needs to part of the solution. Pulling up the drawbridge will not work.

I believe in the wider EU project, the idea that it is in the interest of all the European countries to work together to solve the problems we are all facing. Europe is stronger when its countries are united in government as well as in purpose. The EU is the larger structure that allows European governments to respond collectively to the challenges of a globalised world. A country like Britain does not have the clout or the economy to influence global events alone, but by working with our neighbours we can be a powerful force for good in the world.

The nations of Europe have not fought a war between each other since the inception of the European Union, because we recognise that it is in all of our best interests to work together, share resources (such as labour and capital) where needed and to tackle problems with a united front. The EU is certainly not perfect and reform is needed to improve its ability to achieve this mission, but if we are to meet the challenges of the future then we need a multinational government with British representation. Leaving the EU is to sacrifice co-operation with our neighbours in favours of a mythical belief in the superiority of Britain.

The left wing case for leaving the EU

"Who will speak for England?" the Daily Mail asked, last Thursday, as they tore into Cameron's negotiated deal with the European Union. The announcement of this framework acts as a firing pistol for the race to secure Britain's place either in or out of the EU and has triggered a national debate about the merits of Brexit.

Certainly the EU is not perfect; the way Greece has been treated over the last few years has led me to firmly consider a vote to leave. However one issue is not enough for me to make up my mind. The arguments for both staying and leaving are complex, and reflect the politics of the person arguing. We have heard a lot from Nigel Farage, Douglas Carswell and Chris Grayling about the horrors of the EU, but in the midst of all this anti-immigration table thumping it has been largely overlooked that there is a solidly left wing case for leaving the EU.

On some level I feel obliged to support the EU just to spite the people I really hate - namely UKIP. Personally, I do quite well out of the EU. I live in London, which is awash with European cash, and no one loves the European city break more than me. However, I recognise that other people might not benefit quite so much from EU membership and I want to vote in the interests of people who are not as well off as I am, rather than my own.

On that note, what follows is the left wing case for Brexit. At some point in the near future the left wing case for staying in the EU will follow.

The first major point is that most people do not know what the EU is for or what it does. Aside from a few nebulous points about bringing Europe together, what does the EU actually do? The EU does has a profound affect on all our lives, mainly it provides the regulatory framework that Europe wide businesses operate under. These large companies employ a significant proportion of the British workforce and heavily contribute to our GDP. However the British voter is so disconnected from the decision making process behind this regulatory framework that we cannot have much of a say in how the EU is run.

Due to this, the EU is less accountable than our own national governments. Most people do not have a good understand of the issues and factions within the EU, which makes it very hard to have an informed opinion during European elections. I am very interested in politics, and even I cannot name the main centre left and centre right blocs within the MEPs.

I find it deeply worrying how disconnected we are from the debates in Brussels, which fundamentally limits the British voter's ability to have a say in how the EU is run. For this reason I would prefer decisions to be made closer to home, so that more people can participate in and feel affected by politics. This opinion extends to a belief that more power should be moved from Westminster to town halls around the country.

The regulatory framework that the EU provides exists to make it easier for multinational companies, mainly banks, to operate in the single European market. It grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community and has always sought to make Europe richer by providing a more stimulating environment for business. Whether intentionally or not, it mainly serves the interests of large financial companies and companies wanting cheap labour to drive down the cost of production.

TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) deal is good example of this. It is a proposed agreement between the EU and the USA, which will erode national government’s powers to regulate businesses. This is a clear example of the EU putting the needs of multinational corporations above its citizens. If we don’t want to be a part of TTIP then we need to leave.

Another example is the austerity imposed by the European Central bank on poorer EU nations. This has damaged the provision of social security, led to redundancies and wage cuts, depressed their struggling economies and resulted in huge privatisations in many countries. I do not want to be part of an EU that strips welfare and removes the provisions of public services from its poorer citizens.

Should a genuinely left wing government be elected in the UK, then the EU’s regulatory framework will make it harder for said government to implement its policies. Policies such as financial sector reform or higher progressive taxes on the wealthy will be difficult to implement in the single market of Europe, where it is easy for companies or individuals to move overseas where circumstances are more favourable. If the left wants to achieve socialism in Britain then we need to leave the EU and be fully in control of our own destiny.

Iceland is a shining example of how we should have dealt with the 2008 financial crisis. They allowed a few large banks to go bust, implemented legal reforms on the surviving banks and jailed bankers who were found to have broken the law. Iceland is also outside the EU and probably could not have done any of this if they weren’t. There are advantages to not having a seat at the table when the table is on fire.

As much as I love being able to interrail from country to country on my British passport, the reality of membership is not so rosey for low paid workers. Open borders and free movement of labour has driven down wages of low skilled workers, while allowing British firms to move jobs overseas where labour costs are less. Jobs in trades or construction that used to be well paid are now minimum wage jobs because of the income eroding power of the unregulated EU labour market.

This could be prevented if the government provided more protection to workers and invested in training for the low skilled. However this Tory government has clearly put the needs of large companies, which save money from the supply of cheap low skilled labour, above the well-being of these workers themselves. The only option to protect low skilled workers is to vote to leave the EU.

The case for voting to leave the EU goes beyond the anti-immigration arguments of UKIP and eurosceptic Tories. There are strong left wing arguments for leaving the EU, as the EU is more interested in helping businesses than helping ordinary people. If we want to use government to challenge the power of the financial sector and to help the poorest members of society, then it will be necessary to leave.

If you are interested in reading the left wing case for staying in the EU then it can be found here.

What makes a leader?

Sometimes it feels like our leaders are cut from a different cloth than the rest of us. They are frequently tall and good-looking, always smartly dressed and knowledgeable. They project these characteristics with confidence; this is how you know who is in charge when you walk into a room.

A myth has grown up around our political and business leaders that they have the most experience, they are the most knowledgeable and have the most creative ways of tackling problems. Why else would they be in charge? The rest of us have to have faith that the people in charge know what they are doing. We believe that our leaders are creative, innovative and original thinkers and that the incentive system rewards creative, innovative and original thinking. In reality our leaders are none of these things.

Professor Aeron Davis has specialized in studying our leaders, the elite or the 1%. He has talked to powerful people in the worlds of business, finance and government, including CEOs, venture capitalists, senior civil servants, politicians and policy advisers. Last Tuesday, in a lecture at Goldsmiths University, he shared some insights into what he has discovered about the people who control our lives.

The first thing that Professor Davis discovered is that leadership is like speed dating. This may seem like a strange comparison, but when you consider speed dating is a lot of people hopping from table to table quickly, then this is quite an accurate analogy for leadership. In his research, Davis discovered that a third of CEOs had been in their current positions for less than 2 years, and two thirds had been in their job for less than 5 years. One-year contracts for top executives are becoming more common. Top executives move in, work briefly in a senior position and then move on to another one at a speed that is completely alien to most people’s career progression.

The same is true of top positions in the government. Davis discovered that most cabinet ministers hold their job for less than two years. Senior civil servants and advisers are also moved from role to role every few years. In the world of finance, the average time a share is owned before being traded has dropped to 22 seconds. All of this makes me wonder how CEOs, investors or ministers can have any knowledge of what they own or run? The simple answer is that they do not. Often our leaders have no experience or understanding of what they lead. How can they when their tenures are so short?

Leaders many not understand the government department or company which they are running, but they understand the problems they are trying to solve, right? Surely in our modern competitive world, you can only get ahead by providing a solution to a need or want experienced by a large number of people? Not according to Professor Davis, who said that the lives of CEOs are a never-ending conveyor belt of fast-paced meetings. Their understanding of the needs or wants of our lives are limited.

Most senior business leaders or politicians only associate with each other in environments from which ordinary people are excluded. A good example is the arcane customs of parliament, which make outsiders feel unwelcome but send subtle signs to elites that they are in their own space. During the documentary Inside the Commons, David Cameron remarked that parliament looked like a cross between a church and a school. My school, a state run prefabricated modernist structure, did not look remotely like the neo-gothic pomposity of the Palace of Westminster, but parliament is not a place for people like me, it is a place for people like David Cameron.

We have an image of leaders - especially in business - as brilliant iconoclasts, people who think differently and create new products or ideas. Steve Jobs, for example, was someone who created a dazzling array of new consumer goods and conquered the technology market. Never mind that Jobs did not invent the computer, MP3 player, smart phone or tablet, most leaders are not even original enough to refine a product that someone else has invented. Due to their short contracts, leaders are quite risk-averse and creating something new is risky.

If doing something new it goes wrong, then a CEO can wave goodbye to the extremely high-paid speed-leadership scene and go back to living like the rest of us. CEOs would rather not risk it. Following what other companies are doing is much easier. Apple can popularise the tablet and then every other company can follow them into that market. It is safer that way. Maybe this is why we have a huge number of smart phones on the market but no flying cars.

Jokes aside, the image of the freethinking innovative business leader is a myth. Professor Davis claimed that leaders are more like lemmings, blindly following each other in the same direction. This is as true for politicians as it is for CEOs. Thatcher brought in neo-liberalism, and Labour followed suit. Blair had his army of spin-doctors and media-trained professional politicians, and now the Tories have the same. Original ideas are too risky. This is why every economy in the world liberalised their financial sector and transferred enormous power to their banks. Finding a different economic model was too risky, even when the risk of financial meltdown was high. This is why we have not had banking reform even after the 2008 financial crash.

The final one of Professor Davis’s insights into our leaders is the culture of targets. He said many of the CEOs and financiers that he met told them that neo-liberalism is a superior economic model to socialism or a mixed economy, but in application they did not see how free markets worked any better than state intervention. What works is targets. Targets set by leaders and then implemented by everyone else.

CEOs or government ministers are very good at gaming this system of targets to their own advantage, mainly because they set the targets. This has led to everyone else’s work becoming part of a giant computerised accounting system, where we are all compared to how efficiently we achieve our targets. The long-term effects of this have been wage stagnation and insecure employment, but also rapid economic growth and spiraling rewards for those at the top. Most people think the financial incentive system is set up to encourage effective leaderships, whereas in reality it is exploited by our leaders for their own financial advantage.

The leaders of business, finance, the civil service and politics live in a world isolated from everyone else, where they set their own short-term targets, follow what everyone else is doing, see a short-term uptick, and then rapidly move on to a better-paid position somewhere else. We have to complete their targets and have faith that our leaders know what is best for us. Over time, inequality has worsened, living standards have fallen and our leaders have become more remote from us. The net result of all this is that the world belongs to the 1%, and the rest of us just live in it.

Can the left blame its failures on the right wing media?

Last week saw the publication of Margaret Beckett’s report into why Labour lost last year’s the general election. The report can be read in a number of ways to confirm your own views about what Labour did wrong. During this period of Labour Party soul searching it is worth remembering what the weeks leading up to last May’s election were actually like. Immediately before the election the right wing press were full of images of Ed Miliband looking weird eating a bacon sandwich, front page articles about how his economic policies would bankrupt the country and how Labour had let an army of migrants into the country to simultaneously steal your job and claim benefits.

The Beckett report confirmed the perception that Labour was out of step with what most voters wanted, especially in terms of the economy, benefits and immigration. I find myself asking: were Labour out of step with public opinion, or were the public told Labour was out of step by the right wing media? Miliband committed to austerity, and controls on immigration, but it did not make a difference at the ballot box. Was this because the right wing papers rubbished Miliband from the start and never allowed his policies to have a fair hearing?

The power and influence of the nebulous right wing media are often cited by lefties on both sides of the Atlantic as the reason for electoral failure. Surely the masses would embrace nationalisation and higher taxes on the wealthy if only someone would explain to them how this is in their interest, preferably in words of three syllables or less. Maybe the left should stop using the right wing media as an excuse and confront its lack of popularity? After all, circulation of newspapers is declining. In Britain we have (largely) unbiased TV news coverage, and social media offers a far greater ability to reach people directly and convince them to support left wing policies.

When looking at this argument, it must first be said that there is clearly an overwhelming right wing bias in the print media. This is not imaginary. Apart from the Guardian and the Mirror, every mainstream daily paper supported a ring wing party in the last election - they all supported the Tories apart from the Express, which supported UKIP.

The coverage of Cameron and co. is generally favourable. The most glaring example of this is the press’s reaction to the comprehensive spending review in November. In the run up to the election, Labour campaigned on less austerity, higher corporation tax and a mansion tax on expensive homes. The papers’ reaction was that this would be the end of Britain, capitalism would crumble as incentives to be successful were removed, the rich would all move overseas and take their money with them, the deficit would swell and we would face an economic crisis of the same magnitude as Greece’s. Labour’s policies were a socialist dagger aimed at heart of Britain.

Then along comes the comprehensive spending review and George Osborne puts back his own deficit reduction target as well as raising corporation tax and stamp duty. The papers praise him as a level-headed chancellor, a moderate liberal claiming the centre ground of politics. Labour’s grab at the homes of rich would have put grannies onto the street. Osborn’s is a sensible policy for a more prosperous Britain.

John McDonnell did not help matters by waving around Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, but even so, the magnitude of Osborne's U-turn on working tax credits, on tax cuts and clearing the deficit went entirely unacknowledged. The Independent tried to draw everyone's attention to the gaping silence over Osborne’s back and forth on the economy: “George Osborne executes a tyre-melting U-turn over tax credits, and the nation’s ears are drawn away by the gentle thud of a little red book landing on a table.” However there was little open criticism of the government. Another painful example is when during the election campaign Cameron forgot his supposed football allegiance, saying he supported West Ham when in 2010 he claimed his team was Aston Villa. Could you imagine what would happen if the Labour leader had made this mistake in the weeks before an election? The front pages would be filled with photoshopped images of Miliband in different team’s stripes or probably as a giant ham.

The circulation of newspapers is declining steeply. In 1997 The Sun sold an average of 3.8 Million papers a day. Today it is less than 2 million. Over the same time period the Guardian’s circulation fell from 430,000 papers a day to 185,000. However these papers still have a lot of influence. Millions of non-purchasers still absorb their headlines in the newsagent’s queue. The power of their brands has made them very competitive in the growing space on online news and social media. People trust established papers and its shows in the fact that the Mail online is the most read news source in the UK. The Sun as a million Twitter followers, whereas the Carny (a new online only, left wing news source) has less than 4 thousand Twitter followers. The power of established newspapers brands to decide what is news and what is talked about is still very high.

The question is, does any of this influence the way people vote? Most news and commentary is read by people who follow politics regularly and most of these people have a set party affiliation. Social media - for all its ability to take left wing message directly to those who can benefits from them - is in reality a vast echo chamber, bouncing people’s own opinions back at them. Guardian editorials attacking the savagery of benefit cuts are shared and read by people who were going to vote Labour anyway. Telegraph editorials about the need to reduce the deficit are ready by Tory voters. Biased words falling on biased ears.

The newspapers do shape public opinion but they are also shaped by public opinion. Case in point is the Daily Mail putting a drowned Syrian refugee on their front page. The huge swell of support for the refugees in public opinion forced a newspaper that is typically strongly against immigration to take, for a time, a more compassionate line.

The right wing media also back the party that is going to win, whatever that party is. Despite headlines about Ed Miliband being in Nicola Sturgeon's pocket, The Scottish Sun endorsed the SNP in the general election, because they were going to win whatever happened.

My view is that the right wing media is not an impassable bar to left wing progress. The media follows public opinion as much as public opinion follows the media. I believe that the right wing press makes it harder to put left wing arguments across, but not impossible. When used properly, social media and online news can reach people directly and circumvent the right wing dominance of the printed media. When the left is doing badly then the press will be an obstacle to electoral success. When the left is doing a good job of getting our arguments across, then the press will fall in line behind popular and successful arguments.

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.