Tagged with Class

Labour needs a shadow Minister specifically to tackle inequality

class inequalityThe gravy train rolls on reaching ever more sickening heights of greed, selfish gratification and disregard for the ever deeper miasma of poverty that disfigures our country. The latest figures show that the richest 10% of the UK population, who already owned 52% of UK wealth just before the 2008 crash, have become significantly richer since the crash because of the rise in value of financial assets, during a time when averages income have fallen 8% in real terms. Britain now has 2 million dollar millionaires, if the value of equity in houses is included, up by almost a third since last year. There are also now 44 billionaires in Britain, up from 8 in 2000.

The individual excesses continue apace, only getting ever more outrageous. British Gas has just appointed a new chief executive, Helge Lund, previous boss of Norway’s Statoil company, with a £15m ‘golden hello’ and potential earnings of an additional £14m a year. At the other end of the scale are 70 former NHS care workers for the disabled in Doncaster who have taken so far 85 days’ strike action resisting the further crushing of wages and terms and conditions for the lowest paid. Their jobs were outsourced, holidays cut, and take-home pay cut by a third. Care UK which won the contract and ousted them is owned by private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital and its chairman John Nash was recently made a peer after donating a quarter of a million pounds to the Tory party. Continue reading →

Is UKIP taking some progressive stances that Labour is afraid of taking?

carswellUKIP is stealing important weapons in the progressive armoury, and Labour seems powerless to respond, almost losing a safe seat in a by-election, says Damien Hockney, former UKIP member of the London Assembly and Deputy Leader of Roberty Kilroy-Silk’s breakaway party, Veritas. Since then, UKIP has apparently been in discussion with a sitting Labour MP who is considering defecting.

We do not endorse the views expressed here but believe it is a piece well worthy of attention and we invite comments on the extent to which plausible, relatively “progressive” elements within UKIP (though Hockney himself is not currently a member) may attract support not only from disillusioned former Labour voters but from some party and union activists and even MPs.

The astonishing progress of UKIP in two recent Westminster by-elections is the most serious warning so far that the political elite has lost its touch and appears to simply not care about the voters. The landslide victory in the Tory seat of Clacton was expected from the day the by-election was called (we should all be asking why, not just accepting its inevitability). But more important was the party’s near victory in a supposedly safe Labour seat on the same day against opinion polls which predicted a big majority for Labour, and the discussions between UKIP and a sitting Labour MP about possible defection: this is the eleventh hour reminder to the left and progressive politics – that UKIP is being allowed to steal some of the most important weapons in the progressive armoury, and Labour seem powerless, unwilling and inactive in response. Continue reading →

The Establishment and How They Get Away With It – live webcast at 6:30pm

A live webcast from the LSE featuring Owen Jones talking about The Establishment and How They Get Away With It will take place here at 6:30pm today.  Visit this page shortly before the advertised start time and click on the play button to begin watching the webcast. If the webcast does not begin at the allotted time, or you experience technical difficulties, please see the LSE Public Events Twitter feed for updates.

To view the webcast on YouTube click on the YouTube logo in the lower right corner of the video player.

Scheduled for 13 Oct 2014

Speaker: Owen Jones
Date: Monday 13 October 2014
Time: 6.30-8pm

The political elite in action: who represents Yorkshire in Labour’s shadow cabinet?

shadcabIf you want more reason for dealing with the political elite’s career structure in the Labour party, just look at who represents Yorkshire in Labour’s shadow cabinet. Labour has 32 MPs from Yorkshire (the Tories having gained 10 seats in 2010), just 12% of the 258 won by Labour in 2010, but it has 37% of the MPs in the Shadow Cabinet (10 out of 27). This makes Yorkshire the best represented region of Britain at Labour’s top table.

Yorkshire’s finest includes the only member of the shadow cabinet that earned a living as a manual worker, former plumber Jon Trickett. But of the 10, half went to Oxford and all but 2 to a Russell group university (the 24 which see themselves as the UK’s best). Only two were born (though three grew up) in Yorkshire and no more than two live in Yorkshire now. Seven out of ten were SpAds (or the equivalent in the European parliament), and 2 others had worked full time in politics.

It’s good to have high fliers representing Yorkshire, but how many of them, apart from Jon Trickett, could be said to have had “ordinary jobs”? The answer to that is a bit subjective. My sample of respondents suggests some would say none. Others no more than two or three. Judge for yourselves. Continue reading →

Either Labour starts to do politics. Or politics will do in Labour

working classOblivion is a shuffle, lurch, and crawl away for the Conservative Party. Even if by some dark miracle they are returned to power next year, the terminal crisis enveloping them cannot be sidestepped. Either the hard right lunatics decamp to an ever-so-pure and ever-so-irrelevant electoral lash up with the purple people bleaters, or they don’t. And for as long as they lay claim to Toryism, so the Conservative Party will be permanently hobbled. Yet things aren’t too great for Labour either. Demographics, economics, and culture are chewing up the Tories. But they’re doing the same for Labour too.

Consider the big shocker during the referendum campaign. Honourable members, party workers, activists and trade unionists who trekked north were deeply shocked by the awful state Scottish Labour was found to be in. As the SNP boast of passing the 100,000 member mark Scotland’s former ruling party is languishing on something like 12,000 members. That’s just utterly, utterly pitiful. Local conditions have a role to play, but when stagnation and decline is too often the lot of Labour parties outside of London something else is going on. Just as the Tory collapse cannot be stymied by a few more canvassing sessions and new returns entered into Merlin, so it is true with Labour. Keeping calm and knocking on doors is not sufficient to see off the shadow on Labour’s lung. Continue reading →