Tag Archives: Yvette Cooper

Business & Enterprise, Politics & Economics

If Economics is Heartless, how can Politics realistically deliver the Heart

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A Political Confession

Between you and me, I once voted Tory – 30 years ago, and never yet Labour until Jeremy Corbyn inspired me. The Labour Leadership campaign, until Corbyn’s shoe-in to liven up the deadly proceedings, had initially deadened me to more of the same public school Oxbridge blue Labourites. Corbyn added heart, soul and principles – I don’t have to agree with him entirely, but we need a Tony Benn or Michael Foot for their beliefs and ethics, not just electability or the in-word according to Radio 4, credibility.

In the intervening 30 years I’ve voted LibDem and Green believing in free speech, equality and the environment. I have an Economics degree to my name, and so understand the economy – but it’s not an exact science, it’s more like being a meteorologist or historian with failed predictions and over-analytical hindsight still not faithfully dictating future outcomes.

“true Labour not blue Labour”

Corbyn has injected humane passionate inclusive positive politics back into the mix, he’s avoided criticism of the other candidates and made politics appealing to all ages once again. He’s packed out halls up and down the country. He’s apologised on behalf of Labour and welcome new and old members to Labour’s fold. He is, “true Labour not blue Labour“.

Globalisation

Globalisation is here to stay – and that is a good thing. I believe in a true globalisation, a fair trade where second and third world (what classist terminology) countries can export through economies of scale and relatively cheap labour until they rise up the economic rankings like the BRIC nations have but Africa, bar Nigeria and its oil, haven’t.

Capitalism and the not-so-Free Market

Capitalism exists not because of free market forces, but because those with power and economic privilege are able to fix the market. Under a true free market capitalism the banks, Iceland, Greece etc would have been allowed to go bust and would no doubt have been reformed and rebuilt (probably with outside support and freedom to reset currency) like Germany and Japan were post-War.

The EU or the fixed federal currency market, is not a free market, nor is protectionist America.

I no more believe in socialism as a divorced from reality theory than I do conservatism or capitalism, I do however believe in equality, human rights, opportunity and globalisation – as opportunity and undeniable reality. What this means is that my voting intentions lie across the field from Green to Liberal, Labour to Conservative, though given half the chance north of the border I’d probably vote SNP.

Nationalisation and Investment

I do believe in the re-nationalisation of basic transport, energy, and broadband, or their shared ownership by not-for-profit community interest companies as an alternative to buying them back. The Internet and fast transport are the modern industrial revolution, changes that cannot and should not be rolled back.

I also believe in responsible re-investment whilst interest rates are low and we have AAA rating. In infrastructure, for example, that will enable entrepreneurial expansion – something even Corbyn has voiced, he is not stuck entirely in the 1970s or the 1790s as Boris Johnson has termed it. Housing, transport, green/new-energy and technology need investment. Corbyn has said, as part of his Better Business plan:

“The current government seems to think ‘pro-business’ means giving a green light to corporate tax avoiders and private monopolies. I will stand up for small businesses, independent entrepreneurs, and the growing number of enterprises that want to cooperate and innovate for the public good.”

Socialism and People First

Vulnerable people need protection – Capitalism does not provide that. There has to be compromise with free market economics to achieve community care, compassion, and ethical responsibility. The focus on prosperity and opportunity ignores the needs of fair provision for all people and those disadvantaged by lack of possibility.

Socialism cannot meet that need without compromises either. I’ve always been a free market relative small-‘c’ capitalist with a socialist heart, green environment and liberal free speecher – that doesn’t mean a compromise candidate, but a strong-valued candidate willing to balance means and objectives, and prioritise people not power, not compromise principles. Labour has gone too far down the compromise route.

The language of “we cannot deliver principles or priorities until we have gained power (by any means)” leads to voter distrust. The politics of the majority may well be those of aspiration but the needs of the many are actually those of desperation and disenfranchisement.

“Something deeply attractive to most people in society of the idea of the cohesive, the coherent, the collective. The idea you don’t blame minorities, the idea you don’t make people with disabilities suffer, you don’t walk away from people with mental health conditions, you don’t walk away from people with problems. There’s something strong about a cohesive society…” – Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn & Political Change

Personally, switching from privilege to privation, through life and mental health circumstances, changed my politics. Politics now lacks principles and heart, Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon, Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood bring back something of that. They may yet reinvigorate the electorate.

Andy Burnham appears to be an opportunist, accused of flip-flopping policies for best outcome – remember he’s stood for leader before. Yvette Cooper has political history and association with the Blair-Brown years, and Liz Kendall is way too Blairite – and now cursed by the other Miliband. A cabinet composed of all of them stands a chance but bar Burnham (who seems to be manoeuvring himself to hedge his bets whilst everyone bets on Corbyn 1/4 whilst Burnham is 4/1) the others have stubbornly refused to share a table with Corbyn and Labour luminaries have done everything possible to derail and invalidate the democratic revival the leadership race has brought.

Democracy and Mass Appeal

By mass appeal I’m not talking majority aspiration, but appealing to the masses, the people who exist near the bottom bent under the weight of everyone else getting ahead by aspiration and avarice, and leaving them behind. Those forgotten, that even David Cameron cynically swore in 2010 before the election that he would not forget, during austerity. The poor, those on benefits, immigrants, the disabled, those with mental health issues, the forgotten and might as well be ‘disappeared’.

Facebook Labour Leadership Likes
Facebook pages – Labour Leadership Likes

If print media column inches are counted then Jeremy Corbyn is streets ahead,  and if social media is anything to go by then his Facebook campaign has 62,000 supporters (& 78k on his personal page) to Andy Burnham’s under 5,000 (18k on his personal page) Yvette Cooper’s 400 (20k on her personal page) and Liz Kendall’s 115 (7k on her personal page). Among my friends alone, 70 have liked Corbyn’s campaign page, 1 Burnham’s, and another has a declared interest for Kendall. It may be the Facebook generation that he is reaching, but by a long chalk he is the one Labour leadership contender reaching it. A spoof page for Liz Kendall for Tory leader has 3 times as many likes as the one for Labour leader.

Labour Leadership stats on Facebook
Labour Leadership stats on Facebook

Aside from social media, Corbyn is taking towns and cities by storm to packed-out venue crowds and queues down the street if feedback from  Norwich is anything to go by. More than 1500 registered to attend an 800-seat event, so Jeremy stepped outside to address, without notes, those who couldn’t get in. Many chose not to attend once they knew it was over-capacity. this was Norwich’s biggest political rally in decades.  This over-capacity story was repeated in Ealing, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Newcastle and other locations.

“This is a phenomenon, the like of which I haven’t seen in 40 years of watching Labour from close-quarters. Because it’s feeding off an aching for change that’s coming from ordinary Labour supporters below, not being imposed by rulers from above” – Brian Reade in the Mirror

Opposition – A Party of Protest

We could not have a better Leader of the Opposition for the next 5 years, certainly post-Miliband’s silent slide from the scene post his #EdStone and election loss moment, than Corbyn. During the interregnum Labour has been impotent and were the SNP to be a UK-based party one might have seen Nicola Sturgeon as the true heir to opposition leader in Parliament.

The fear that Labour would be consigned to “oppositional politics” or be a “party of protest” were Corbyn to be at the helm, is not a bad thing. The third of the electorate that don’t vote include people disillusioned with politics and politicians who all seem the same, 50 shades of austerity rather than any alternative vision. We have had more Blue Labour post New Labour and at the last election could barely tell the parties apart.

Janet Daley, among others, writes that the Tories are now waking up to the fear that Corbyn may win, after their initial glee at his rise, thinking that Labour had shot itself in the ‘Michael Foot’. Electing someone the Tories fear will create true opposition and debate, not an establishment bi-party centre-right duopoly. We’ve had the political equivalent of price-fixing for too long. The female-led Greens, Plaid Cymru and SNP gave us a taste of political change but could not break the mould other than in Scotland.

When the Right calls a political spade a spade:

“The only way that Labour can win that contest is to become (as they see it) a Tory-lite party: Conservatism with a human face. And that is not, absolutely not, what they are interested in. If, in order to be electable, you must relinquish all your socialist precepts and learn to love the free-market economy, then there is nothing perverse in turning your back on electoral victory.”

And, when Right wing Boris Johnson and Janet Daley are in agreement with Labour’s Dan Hodges, one has to wonder that a politician this scary may actually be quite good.

Principles over Power

Standing up for principles over power, may inadvertently deliver power. Focusing on power at any cost, as Blair did – delivered electoral victory and increasing disillusionment among the faithful as they witnessed the rise of Tory Blair.

In fact, the interventions of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Miliband, Alastair Campbell, Peter ‘Machiavelli’ Mandelson, and even Neil Kinnock are all proving counter-productive and appear as attempted establishment saving, rather than actually listening to the disenfranchised, for whom Labour was founded. The new class war is for the voiceless and voteless against the vices of the entrenched political victors (New Labour and New-but-increasingly-old Conservatives).

We could perhaps have a golden age of re-expansion with current cheap, albeit borrowed, money and investment, but it needs to be carefully managed not overspent – I’ve no idea who could deliver that, but I’d rather a realistic way to deliver Jeremy Corbyn’s heart were found than a heartless way to deliver Kendall’s power-hungry realism were.

Diversity & Equality, Politics & Economics

Immigration controls, an arms race of rhetoric over rational realities and positive benefits

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The Labour Party Shadow Cabinet Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has promised today to clamp down on immigration, yet a year ago, said Labour will not enter an “arms race of rhetoric on immigration” … yet does. What is more, she clearly believes in recycling as half of today’s speech on immigration is 13 months old.

In the polls Labour is barely a few points ahead of the Conservatives, despite their expenses debacle over Maria Miller, and is little more trusted than the Tories. Nobody trusts the Lib-Dems for having gone to bed with the Tory government in coalition leaving Nigel Farage and the further right UKIP free to wipe the floor with Nick Clegg in the TV political debates, that Labour and Conservative leaders refused to partake in. Politics and politicians are back to an all time low. So to resurrect trust, they pick an ‘easy’ subject, soft target – immigration, one on which UKIP do well at the polls, in order to gain political traction and voter empathy. If only it were not the wrong policy, feeding on fears and not hopes, as with  Clegg and Farage’s clash in the televised EU debate. Polls show UKIP on 25-29% for the European elections.

Russian immigrants disembarking from a ship at Brisbane in 1931It’s also bad timing as Britain’s first Asian male, of Pakistani immigrant parents, whose father worked hard as a bus driver, so that he could become Chase Manhattan Bank’s youngest VP at 25, becomes Equalities Minister in the Government. So as someone of ‘immigrant stock’ gets to the top, Labour complain about non-graduate immigration, the very parentage from which Sajid Javid emerged.

It is another form of class discrimination to have Australian-styled points systems for immigration, to only allow in highly skilled and qualified foreigners, and to turn away low-skilled desperate working class migrants – not very socialist.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “exploitation attracted low-skilled migrants, when the UK should actually be trying to attract university graduates.”

Labour allegedly got it badly wrong on immigration in their last decade in power, as Cooper admits today, again, “the last Labour government got things wrong on immigration”, and that they were committed to reintroducing full exit checks at UK borders, previously scrapped by the Labour when they were last in government. Not an apology as such, and not really necessary, if, like me, you believe in immigration, multiculturalism and healthy workplace competition.

Protectionist policies are actually very nationalistic and counter globalisation and international aid. People willing to enter this country at their own expense to take on low paid jobs, to literally “get on a bike” – to coin a phrase that when last said by a Tory minister, didn’t go down well – to find a job, even if in another country, should be praised not pariahed.

Socialism only for one’s own country is a nationalistic self-interest. Worldwide betterment and welfare of all would embrace anyone working to feed their family. So long as decent minimum wage controls are in place to prevent employer exploitation then a fair wage is on offer to anyone willing and able to take the job. British people should already have a natural advantage due to their location, education, and own-language fluency – should, I say, but may not due to poor education, training, mobility, motivation etc. There is no need or ethical basis to protect ‘our own’ over ‘immigrant’ competition. To do so, rubbishes the ethics of socialism and international welfare in the name of national interest – for which, read, political self-interest, a phrase that David Cameron has also repeated today, “Britain’s National Interest”, which apparently “sum up everything we are about in Europe.”

So, as Yvette Cooper claims, if Labour win, they would make the exploitation of migrant workers a crime, I wonder if she is protecting their political interest rather than the welfare of migrant workers, who in the same breath she would restrict the numbers of, which is not protecting them. The real aim is to reassure British voters that they will not have undue competition for their jobs and hence Labour votes. But even Patrick Wintour in the Guardian sees the proposal as “legally fraught … giving the state greater control over the setting of wages in the private sector above and beyond the minimum wage.”

It is already illegal to exploit migrant workers, it is just hard to enforce, and workers are unlikely to complain for fear of losing their jobs, or not knowing their rights. So Labour is not bringing in anything new, just tinkering for political gain and to reverse their reputation on immigration.

Her measures are nothing new, and the current Government are already “doubling the maximum fine for employers found using illegal workers … a four-fold increase in fines for firms not paying the minimum wage and increased penalties for landlords housing migrants in illegal premises.” Blatant employment of substantial illegal immigrant workers already merits potential jail terms of up to two years and unlimited fines.

Yvette Cooper also said, “When people go to work in other countries in Europe they don’t expect to be able to claim benefits as soon as they arrive and likewise, I don’t think people should expect to when they come here,” – that could have been said just as easily by a Tory or UKIP spokesperson. The current rhetoric on immigration is knee-jerk political fear that it will cost them votes unless they at least ‘sound’ tough on immigration, and the causes of immigration.

Yet Cooper kept harping on about not having:

“an arms race in rhetoric, but practical policies instead”

She used the same phrase 13 months ago:

“But we won’t enter an arms race of rhetoric on immigration – and we hope the Prime Minister won’t either. That’s not honest, or good for Britain.”

It seems to be her favourite soundbite of the moment, if a moment can last over a year. Today, according to the  Guardian she was planning to attack the approach of UKIP, saying that having simplistic solutions:

“ramps up the rhetoric, raises false promises and expectations, undermines trust and confidence, and creates division and hostility …”

“We won’t engage in an arms race of rhetoric, and we reject the divisive politics of the right that promotes hostility instead of building consensus .”

“We will never compete in an arms race of rhetoric. We will never conduct the debate in way that whips up tensions and hostility.”

Last year, in the same speech, she accused the current Government of being:

“engaged in a frenzy of briefing and rhetoric“

and ended by saying:

“It means no rhetorical arms race, just sensible and practical proposals…”

So, all that has changed is proposals have become policies, yet the rhetoric remains the same.

Take, for instance, last December, when Yvette was still on the same song in an article she wrote in the Daily Mirror that the Government’s ministers’ had:

“ramped up rhetoric looks more like panic than plan. Instead of chasing headlines that increase concern and hostility, David Cameron should concentrate on sensible policies to help. Labour won’t join in a Dutch auction of tough language that helps no one.”

Yet that is all Cooper’s words are, “tough language”, allegedly in response to having “listened and learned”. Rather, it is all politicians fearing the rise of UKIP and losing the moral and media battle on immigration. They are listening to the polls and not their political principles, afraid of losing the next election not of making a better world for us all to live in, one with a great multicultural Britain, without racism, prejudice and phobias of several kinds.

Cooper also chooses some strange examples and stereotypes in her speech, suggesting that immigration has given us “Trinidadians on our hospital wards” and that the Norman Conquest was immigration not invasion!

Brits living abroad in EUDespite some of the highest levels of immigration in Europe we also have one of the lowest unemployment figures and now the highest growth figures of all Western developed economies. So, clearly, immigration is good for us. We should not forget that over 2.2 million Brits have emigrated to Europe alone from our shores. It is time to end the “arms race of rhetoric” over immigration, by Labour, Tory, and UKIP, combatants and to start seeing immigration and multiculturalism as a blessing to British society, adding to its richness and diversity. Nobody is selling the positives of healthy immigration.

Motive for UK immigrationThis is an edited, updated version of an article I first published here. I’ve previously written about the scaremongering over Romanian and Bulgarian immigration and the positive benefits of immigration and multiculturalism since migrants are less likely to claim benefits, more likely to contribute fiscally and 99% come here for work, education and family, not for the alleged welfare benefits.