We have all learnt that Cameron routinely makes up policy on the hoof, but he has really outdone himself by his explanation of his case for bombing Syria. First of all as he states it, his military case is the defeat of ISIS. This is risible since the contribution that he is planning for Britain to make to that end would be marginal to the point of invisibility. It would not only be wholly ineffective, it would also have the perverse effect of making the streets of Britain less safe as ISIS or its affiliates sought to take revenge. But most important of all, it is easy to enter a war by some vainglorious posturing as Cameron is intending, but very difficult to exit a war as Iraq and Afghanistan make all too clear. There is the other inconvenient problem for Cameron that if Jeremy Corbyn wins on Saturday, his chances of winning a Commons vote are far from certain. Continue reading
Posted by Michael Meacher
Now they’re aiming to go back to non-prime mortgage securities which caused crash
If you want evidence of how reckless and desperate bankers and investors have now become in search of higher yields, look no further than the widespread decision to return to a variant of the mortgage-backed securities which precipitated the 2008-9 crash.
Then it was sub-prime securities which were knowingly sold to households handicapped by low pay and insecure employment who predictably could not maintain their mortgage payments in a volatile labour market. Now it’s simularly financially disadvantaged individuals who are lured to take on non-prime mortgage-backed securities, those that do not meet even the minimum legislative standard. But of course they do offer high yields, and if the bankers can dispose of enough of these financial vehicles laced together with other dodgy securities, the risk has been passed on to some other half-witted investor. Continue reading
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Just what is Cameron for?
Watching Osborne yesterday on the Andrew Marr show answering questions on whether Britain should bomb Syria and other foreign policy matters, one did wonder where exactly Cameron fitted. Increasingly Osborne, arguably the most formidable politician in the House at the moment, has already assumed the premiership he has coveted for so long.
All the detailed policy-making is now already in his hands, and that may suit Cameron quite well since he, like Blair, has never been one for detail (as PMQs exposes relentlessly week after week). He prefers to be the front man, running with whatever is the latest story, even if it turns out to be the opposite tomorrow. There is no-one so slippery as Cameron so as to be able to somersault every day as though that was the most perfectly normal political routine. But he is no longer the hard man behind it all. And he’s not even able to perform his diminished role very well. Continue reading
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It’s about the fundamentals, silly
The basic reason that the leadership election has been so disappointing, until Jeremy Corbyn came on the scene, was that it was stuck on issues (insofar as it was stuck on any issues at all) that, while certainly important, did not have the makings of a vision. Even when Corbyn prompted the others to produce some actual policies, they were not the real thing. Andy Burnham was right to praise land value tax and above all the need to integrate social care within the NHS, and Yvette Cooper was absolutely right to demand that Britain takes its proper share of Syrian refugees where the government response has been callously dehumanised. Bully for her. But these are not the fundamentals, and only Jeremy Corbyn seems to have grasped what this election is really all about. Continue reading
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Chuka Umunna’s partial olive branch
In his speech yesterday Chuka Umunna appeared to be offering from the Blairite faction of the PLP an olive branch of reconciliation. If this is the correct interpretation, it is a useful and welcome one, although he made it conditional on Jeremy Corbyn showing flexibility on EU, NATO, Trident renewal, and tax (unspecified). I don’t remember Blair, when he won the leadership in 1994, offering flexibility on policy in order to gain support from potential front-bench members of the PLP, having won. My memory is that, come 1997 in particular, we were all told to knuckle down and loyalty was the order of the day. But let that pass. The key point is that he emphasises solidarity and agrees, what is obviously true, that the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands who have joined Labour in recent weeks are not entryists, but have done so because they are animated by Labour values. Continue reading