Author: David Landon Cole

Centre Ground, Common Ground

Posted on by David Landon Cole

At the risk of being shot down by an uberblogger, I have to take issue with Iain Dale’s argument that the centre ground is the common ground, mostly because I don’t think either exist.

The centre ground is, presumably, the bit in the middle. The middle of what, I hear you cry. It could be between Labour and the Conservatives. Immediately we run into the problem of both parties having wings and factions.

A redraw might have extra axes closer to or further from the line between the two major parties for the LibDems, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Greens and the rest. Straightaway, we’re seeing that there have to be multiple axes where you can talk about centre ground between two or three parties across the broad sweep of policies, but as you add others in

Moreover, the common ground and the centre ground is not the same thing. The centre position between a unitary state and Scotland and Wales becoming independent might be a federation composed of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, London, Yorkshire, the North West, Midlands, East, South and South West. That would probably not be acceptable to many people – the centre ground is not the common ground.

Talking of devolution, I believe I’m right in saying that Nye Bevan (and do please correct me) was in favour of states’ rights in the USA because it was the only way to achieve socialism and a unitary state in the UK because it was the only way to achieve socialism. The more left-wing position is here the same as (if for different reasons) the right-wing party. Equally, Tam Dalyell, poser of the West Lothian Question, opposed devolution.

The common ground is what parties accept as the playing field. We should have, in some form, an NHS etc. The centre ground is an abstract that may not have any philosophical coherence and may be so unpalatable that it is emphatically not the common ground.

xD.

LSE SU Comms Officer Blog

Posted on by David Landon Cole

My friend Ali Dewji, Communication Sabbatical Officer at the LSE Students’ Union, has launched a blog at sucomms.blogspot.com. This is an excellent idea. It allows more contact with him, lets him show his reasoning for things and, if and when the Beaver Online starts up properly and assuming they link to the blog, may increase student information and involvement.

xD.

The BNP

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Matt Sinclair echoes Norman Tebbit in saying that the BNP don’t fit on the right and by extension must be of the left.

Giving definitions such as ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ are not in and of themselves good, but only by the extent of the usefullness.

Is it useful to describe the BNP as right-wing?

I would say that people of the right are generally more attached to nationalist ideas. The left would emphasise class distinctions in its place. The main right-wing party in the UK is officially the Conservative and Unionist Party. While that is entirely probably a historical nomenclature, it is not unreasonable to say that the Conservatives are the more patriotic and more nationalist party. From Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ to Smethwick, the Conservatives have had the problem of nationalism extending to racism. If that is too far back in time, it might be worth pointing out that Lord Taylor suffered from racist campaigning against him when seeking a parliamentary nomination. One one issue-axis that is the most important to the BNP, it is fair to say that the right, as it manifests itself today, is closer to the BNP than the left. That doesn’t mean they are close to them; it means they are less far away than others. I think that’s why people say that the BNP are far-right.

That having been said, the right is generally in favour of lower taxes, less state intervention and so on. That can certainly not be said of the BNP. In short, describing them as right-wing isn’t useful; extending the positions that the right take to an extreme doesn’t effectively describe the BNP.

Is it useful to describe the BNP as left-wing?

They are more statist than the espoused ideals of the right. I do, however, question that anti-statism of the right. Certainly, there is an ideology (which I am not immune to), but the tendency to want to grow the armed forces and the police – the most coercive elements of the state – suggests that there are statist tendencies, at least among certain parts of the right. Equally, there are traditionalist points of view on the right (and I would add that the BNP are very keen on certain traditions).

Economically, they do have more in common with the left; a greater role for the state and so on. I think the question is why they favour it. I would venture that the BNP are in favour of nationalisation as a secondary means because they see potential support amongst former Labour supporters who want nationalisation. For instance, the BNP favour abolishing all taxes for farmers – a right wing position? – but I would suggest that this is either because they see farmers, in a Francoist manner, as essential to the nation, both economically and because they prefer the rural life or because they see support starting to grow in rural areas and are playing a populist card.

I’m in favour of nationalisation of certain industries because I believe that they are necessary to provide a certain minimum standard of living so that people can exercise their liberty as they see fit. I would venture that the BNP aim to create (what they consider) a perfect society and see nationalisation as a means of doing that. The Soviets sought to eliminate the private sphere; I think this is more manipulating the private sphere so people agree with you anyway. That having been said, the BNP are more in favour of people having more, smaller (farming) properties and explicitly say they are against expropriation. Taking left-wing policies to extremes does not effectively describe the BNP.

Extreme left wing and extreme right wing are, I think, terms that are more useful because of the word ‘extreme’ rather than the words ‘left’ and ‘right’. To say they are extreme-right brings allegations that all right-wingers are racists and that they are extreme-left that all left-wingers want to control society.

In Denmark, there is a party simply called Venstre, meaning Left. They would be called rightwingers, espousing free market liberalism. They are known as the left because the Danish parliament was originally split between small landowners and large landownders; the former sat on the left, and Venstre are their successors. So far as I know, the issues of small- versus large- landowners are not currently major ones in Denmark. The point is that labels often grow from history, and are not invented to suit the needs of the day. Indeed, the modern terms of left and right come from where people sat in a chamber at the time of the French Revolution. Even if we decide that we must (perhaps for reasons of simplicity) use a single axis, Left-Right as it exists at the moment is not a useful one. Two axes would be more useful (see www.politicalcompass.org) and there’s a case for using more than two.

Usefullness here is in terms of describing them in political science terms and for the use of practical politics.

‘Violent, racist, homophobic, populist Holocaust-deniers’ seems to work.

Question is: what are we doing about it?

xD.

Not in my name

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I have just had the misfortune of watching Labour’s Party Election Broadcast for the local elections.

It mentioned not one policy. When I say not one policy, I don’t mean that it refrained from mentioning Labour policies and attacked the policies of other parties. It didn’t even mention the BNP, which even Margaret Hodge seems to think important. No, it had a cartoon chameleon to illustrate that David Cameron changes policy. It wasn’t even funny – it treated watchers as children. I still don’t know if it was some attempt at a joke. I have no objection to negative campaigning – attacking opposition positions is necessary – but this is pathetic. Pathetic, as in deserving of pity because someone thought this would be a good idea.

The basic message of the broadcast was that Labour doesn’t like David Cameron. Firstly, what a surprise; secondly, attacking policies by attacking the person ends up decreasing turnout. Oh, and he calls himself Dave, and should therefore be shot. It does not surprise me that people don’t vote, let alone for Labour, when the best we can do is a cartoon chameleon that doesn’t say anything.

There is a website – davethechameleon.com – but it’s probably worth noting that visiting this site will add to the hit counter of a bloody awful campaign.

Not in my name.

xD.

Constitutions of Continents

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Sadly, both Dead Men Left and Hold that Thought are barking up wrong trees when they come to Europe. DML argues for a left no and HtT for a left yes. I’m going to argue, in my usual flaccid and unconvincing style, that left-right issues are not really relevant for the constitution(al treaty) that goes to a referendum this Sunday in the Fifth Republic.

 

Dead Men Left makes a couple of mistakes, IMHO, in his piece. The first is to say

 

“Good Europeans vs. bad Americans is a model all internationalists should noisily reject. To dismiss – at a minimum – the 48% who voted against Bush in November 2004; to dismiss the many historic achievements of the US left; to write off any possibility of change in America that does not depend on external confrontation is to evince a profound, pessimistic conservatism.”

 

DML’s main point is right, but to say that the 48% who didn’t vote for Bush are somehow part of the radical left or even committed to another world is bollocks. They did, after all, vote for John Kerry. You remember. The one who based the personal part of his campaign on being in the military. You might remember which war he was in…

 

Secondly, Mandelson is very well described as oleaginous, but just because he likes something doesn’t make it bad. I am given to understand that he is partial to guacamole, which I consider an entirely reasonable position. The cynical point of view is that he would sell his own grandmother for power. The European Constitution means he doesn’t even have to do that, as it presents him with a lot more power. Now, while Mandelson having more power is probably as close to demonstrably bad as we could come, more power to someone is not necessarily bad. What if Make Poverty History were taken on board by the new common foreign minister as a leitmotif? While it may have become watered down, even Britain will support it and it would improve matters.

 

The point of the constitution is that it raises the stakes. There’s the usual bullshit of pandering to petty nationalism with pointless rhetoric about the EU being not a nation but a family of nations, but beyond that there are two big changes: the common foreign minister and the 1/3 veto.

 

If people are going to scream about the constitution, they might take the time to read it. If 1/3 of national parliaments vote against a European law, it goes back to the Commission. I do not deny that the EU has the potential to ride rough-shod over the European social model. The 1/3 provision means that, particularly given that people would appear to be more willing to participate in non party-politics based campaigns (viz. Make Poverty History, Stop the War, Social Forums &c.), a particularly odious piece of Eurolegislation could be effectively stopped by a concerted, transEuropean campaign.

 

The question should be not ‘does this accord with our political dogma’ but ‘is this good for us as lefties/righties/soggy centrists’. There is no bias inherent in the Constitution that cannot be undone by legislation coming from Brussels; the question is as to what nature this legislation will take if the Constitution is approved.

The SU Again

Posted on by David Landon Cole

One of the issues that came up quite a lot in the SU elections last term was the need for an admin assistant up in the advice and counselling centre. The problem, as ever, is a lack of money.

A possible solution might be a hundred club. If we could set up a club with 100 people paying £10 a week for the twenty weeks of the winter and lent terms, we would make £1,000 a week or £20,000 over the term. 25% of this could go into prizes (say one prize of £50, two of £25 and ten of £15 , with the winners being drawn at the end of each UGM. That would leave £10K, which would at least start to cover the cost of an admin assistant.

As it seems I’m going to be around, I might offer to run it.

xD.

Human Probabilities

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Thomas Fairfax, a Parliamentary general in the English Civil War, said, of the proposal to launch a pre-emptive attack on Scotland:

Human probabilities are not sufficient grounds to make war on a neighbour nation

How little things change. True, Iraq is not a neighbour to Britain, but then the world is a very much smaller place than in 1650. The basis for going to war was that Saddam posessed weapons of mass destruction, an opinion – very much an opinion – based on intelligence gathered from various sources. Such information is very much, and of necessity, a human probability.

Now we see, played out in Uzbekistan, the consequences of a war justified on human probabilities. I cannot help but think that the actions of the Uzbek government are due, at least in part, to their closeness to the US. Not only was a war made on human probabilities, but the probability (in the opinion of some) Islamic fundamentalism is now used as justification for the unjustifiable.

I suspect that in the coming days we will hear that the decisions to use such heavy-handed tactics were made down the command chain (conveniently away from Karimov, but no surprise there). Terror is such a nebulous concept that it can be used, as we now see, in a manner very much like Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984.

What concerns me is the lack of protest from Washington.

A memory of polling day

Posted on by David Landon Cole

On the way from the Committee Rooms (a Committee Room is just someone’s front room taken over on election day to organise canvassing) at Tachbrook Street to my place off Horseferry Road, I walked around Vincent Square. The cricket pitch in the centre is owned by one of the private schools in the area – I forget which one – and, as I did when I was at a similar school in Somerset, everyone, I presume, was playing cricket. The senior boys were playing ‘proper’ cricket and were allowed to use the pitch itself while the others used nets and catching cradles around the side. The most junior boys, by age or physical inability, basically hung around and talked to each other.

As I walked around, I saw behind one of the trees, unnoticed out of sight of everyone else, a boy, maybe ten, eleven years old, with curly, brown hair and glasses picking flowers that managed to grow from the little light that filtered through the tree’s leaves. I felt sorry for him, such a pathetic figure. He looked not dissimilar – not necessarily the same, but not dissimilar – to me at that age, not because of the hair or the glasses, but his aspect and isolation from the others. I assumed he was in a similar position to me at that age; no good at sport, and so trying to avoid the humiliation of having this proved to all and sundry by always looking for notes to be excused physical exertion and having to use communal showers and changing-areas.

There he was, in school uniform rather than cricketing gear, away from the others and perfectly happy with his own company. I suspect that had any of the others seen him, there would have been a positive hue and cry about this patently abnormal behaviour. I am often told that the British public school system is the best in the world. Maybe it is if you’re one of the strong ones, who doesn’t flinch from imposing the discipline and orthodoxy of the strong on the weak or one of the moderates who’s behaviour doesn’t attract the ire of the strong and can live with bullying going on. If you’re on of the weak, if you want to be left alone to pick the flowers that grow in the shade of the trees, you tend to find that out of the shadow over your head, a great and terrible hand will pull you up and crush you.

xD.