Friday 5 June 2015

The Labour leadership election - and I get to vote!

Hell yeah!
To be honest, I'm not really in the mood for an election right now, in the same way that when I last contracted the noro virus I didn't fancy visiting a carvery.  I feel uncomfortable, know there is nothing I can do about it and it means I will have to face a lot of shit.

Comparing the Tories to diarrhea?  Always a good start to a blog.

But now I have the opportunity to vote for the future leader of the Labour party.  Didn't see that one coming.  Mainly because I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Labour party.

As well as sounding like a statement from McCarthy era America, it also doesn't make much sense.  How can I vote for the Labour party leader if I'm not a member of the Labour party?  Well, that's because I'm a member of a Trade Union that is affiliated to the Labour party, and as such have the option to vote.

As a Socialist to the left of Labour, I argue that Unions should not be affiliated to the Labour party.  Instead, they should democratise their political funds, and then back indivdual MPs who back the work the Union do.  Most will be from the Labour party, but not all.

However, whilst I argue this is the right position it is not one that has been won within my Union at this time.  As such, if money is going from the Union to the Labour party, I am happy to exercise my right to have a say in this election.  After all, in a tiny way, I'm helping to pay for it!

The leadership debate, coming as it does immediately after the crushing general election defeat of Labour, is centred around the question "what went wrong?"  Unsurprisingly the core of leadership candidates all seem to think that Labour did not appear right wing enough to connect with a core of the electorate who can decide an election.

Needless to say, I don't agree.  The main problem they had is that what they presented just was not inspiring - they didn't seem to offer an alternative at all.  Really, they campaigned to say they would do the same as the Tories, just slightly nicer and slightly better.

Austerity lite, it has been referred to.

But that's just not good enough.  As is often the case, they lost right wing votes to Tories and UKIP, and left wing votes to Greens, SNP and the other big party in this election - Non of the above!

In some areas, such as the North East, I think there are still working class ties to the Labour Party.  Young people voting for the first time still have an understanding from their families as to why you vote against the Tories.  But elsewhere, it is evaporating.

The right wing in the Labour Party are worried by the emergence of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).  Ostensibly a party that campaigns for Britain to withdraw it's membership of the European Union, it is broadly speaking a nasty, populist, hard right, racist organisation.

They have taken votes away from the Tories, that's for certain, but it appears they have also taken votes from Labour.  Most concerning about this is that they appear to have taken young peoples votes from Labour.

Is this because they are racist?  I don't think so, although a majority of the population are taken in by the mainstream lie that immigration is a major problem.  What you can say though, is that this is a section who will consider voting away from the big two mainstream parties.

UKIP may seem unpleasant, and they are, but they at least represented an alternative.  It was the youth vote that meant the Lib Dems won two previous terms in an area of Manchester with a large student population.  Needless to say, as happened nationally, that vote evaporated.

What also happened though, is that it became clear that left wing, anti-austerity politics did have an audience.  In Scotland the Scottish National Party (SNP) wiped the floor with their opponents winning 56 from a possible 59 seats.

If anything, you have to feel sorry for the 3 SNP candidates who didn't win.  I mean, seriously, they must have been rubbish!

The SNP stood on a clear platform against austerity, and they clearly found their audience.  Mind you, there is more to this than meets the eye.

I would love to say this means that if a party stood with the same message across the UK they would also win a landslide, but that's not the case.  In England the biggest player in disseminating political ideas is the media.  The bulk of the media barons who own the newspapers support the Tories.  They control the editorial line of their newspapers, so the only stories that are printed are those that harmonise with that individuals viewpoint.

Of course, that is true throughout the UK, and indeed the world.  However, in Scotland, they recently had a process which meant that anti-austerity politics had a very real platform to break beyond that stranggle hold - The Independance referendum.

It was such a massively significant question being asked of the Scottish people that the vast majority had no choice but to engage.  The 'Yes' campaign lost in the end, only gaining 45%.  However, translate that percentage into mostly just one party standing in a 'first past the post' system election, and you get a landslide.

Great if you're Scottish, although it means that now you are still ruled by Tories from England.  Also, the SNP is not really that radical a party, with no traditional roots in the organised labour movement, so ultimately are unlikely to deliver real change.  But still, way to get your voices heard!

As part of the election campaign I saw a lot of videos online from celebrities such as Steve Coogan and Martin Freeman discussing why they were going to vote Labour.  They went to great pains to show they were being genuine, even in the filming of the ads themselves (showing make up being applied, etc, so you didn't get the idea that you were being fooled by a flashy campaign.  "Of course this is being filmed by a professional crew, and we know you know that").

One thing they, and many others said, was "I trust Labour with the NHS".  All politicians know that the NHS is sacrosanct to the British public, and is a very real concern to them that it is protected.

Many don't necesarily know recent immigrants to this country, so they can more readily believe lies about them.  However, everyone gets sick, so the NHS is not something you play with quite as easily.

One of the leasdership candidates, Andy Burnham, spent the last government as shadow health Secretary.  He has spoken very well on the issue, including against aspects of privitisation brought through by the Tories.  However, when Labour were in power he was involved in the awarding of the very first PFI contract.  He was there when Labour started the rot.

So do I trust Labour with the NHS?  No.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly trust them a hell of a lot more than the Tories.  But then that's a bit like needing a child minder last minute and having to chose between a drunk you found in the gutter outside LIDL, or Freddy Kreuger.

And that also highlights another problem - if I do vote in the leadership contest, who would I vote for?

All the candidates seem so similar, determind to drag Labour further to the right.  That is, until Jeremy Corbyn announced his intention to stand.


Jeremy Corbyn
There are a number of good MPs in the Labour party, but it's fair to say that no one is better than Jeremy Corbyn.  He's been an MP since 1983 and has consistently been right on everything.

No, really.  He was campaigning against Saddam Hussein before anyone in the West cared about him, but then was a passionate advocate against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  He knew that Saddam was bad, and that the UK should not back him, but he wasn't suckered in to thinking that the invasion would bring anything than what it has - death, turmoil and terror.

So I'm not intending on joining the Labour party anytime soon, but as a member of a Trade Union that does give funding to the Labour I know who I will be voting for!