Pick a side - will you continue to press the button?

There is a big red button on your phone. If you don’t press it, nothing happens. That is how buttons work generally. But if you do press it, it might tell somebody else to kill someone. How often would you press the button?

So yet another attack has taken place by a hate-filled extremist on people going about their daily business. This time around it took place in New Zealand. A right-wing Australian with guns and hate massacred unarmed unsuspecting people going about their regular business. A few days later an attack on a tram in Utrecht appears to be people being shot by a suspected Muslim terrorist with guns and hate. Just this week we hear that devices have been placed on railway lines by Brexiters.

We can add these to the list of atrocities committed by many different individuals. Manchester concert bombings, the Pittsburgh synagogue attack, London Bridge, Finsbury Park. When you start to research these atrocities often a motive is given for the attack – Anti-Semitism or Racism or Right-wing Terror. I think it is a lot simpler than that.

Often when I write I compare events or opinions or arguments and look at them side by side and explore the differences. Lots has been written about the New Zealand attack – how it was out of the ordinary, how it has driven an immediate response in New Zealand, profiles of the attacker asking what went wrong to bring him here, how the attack was carried out.

What saddens me is how obviously similar it is to all of the other attacks mentioned above. And that we will face many more of these. The script, the background story always seems to be the same. Lone individual, possibly some contact with hate groups, obtained weaponry and attacked at a time / in a way designed to create maximum outrage and fear.

What brings these individuals or small groups to this point? A point where they decide that the only way to make an impact to further their views, to achieve success is to go out and kill people they have never met and have no connection to, on the basis of whatever motivation they wish to give? Some of these attackers have left their thoughts – either in the form of videos or manifestos or even Facebook posts. So we can state their ideologies and way of thinking with a bit of certainty.

Firstly, they all seem to believe in absolute groups. Us and them. Whoever the “them” are doesn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things. They could be Muslims, Immigrants, Jews, Non-Muslims. It is still very fresh in the memory that Jo Cox was murdered by one of these attackers. Her “them”? She was a remainer. Just imagine that. The line that separated people who should live and have rights and people it was acceptable to kill was which way they voted in a referendum.

These lines don’t exist. These separating lines that split us into definite groups are not real. But we do it all the time. We align ourselves to others of the same religion, the same political party, family, country, football team and use that alignment to see Them as somehow different. We have far more in common with other people, no matter how little we think we do, than we have that is different.

Secondly, They have either done some unfairness or injustice to us, or are going to and we should do something about it – because nobody else is. This is the deep-rooted belief that the threat / unfairness is obvious, that everybody sees it, but that the authorities are ignoring it OR are powerless OR weak. This is either that immigrants are taking over our country, that Jews are pulling the strings to control government, trying to steal Brexit from us, invading our countries to steal our oil / power / influence. Whatever It is that They have done or will do, It is obvious from the messages / communications / inputs the attacker sees. They are all equally guilty of It too, because they are one group solely defined by one characteristic.

Again, we have to call bullshit on this thinking. And we see it all the time. Not all Muslims are terrorists or paedophiles who trade young girls. Not all Westerners supported various invasions. Not all immigrants are trying to steal your culture and your land. What I find really scary is that often when talking to otherwise sensible people they have been conned into looking at one example and extrapolating that risk across the whole They, and unless you can refute that single example that is proof They are all like that. We have to be better than that.

Thirdly, that they are acting on behalf of the rest of the Us. They are doing it in Our name or Their name. Depending on which side of their invented line you sit. This might be the act that wakes Us up, shows Us what to do, and scares Them into stopping / giving up. It will ignite / unite Us in taking action – because we are all just waiting.

How do they get to this point? Where do these ideas come from? That they have support for their actions, some sort of reward awaits them? They’ll be seen as some sort of hero? Whilst their worldviews may be coloured by the mainstream media, or religion, or groups, and this is where their “motivation” comes from, this belief that they are supported and believed seems in almost all cases to come from social media interactions. This seems to be the only place they could possibly take the belief that there is a legion of support for what they are about to do.

There is a big red button on your phone. If you don’t press it, nothing happens. But if you do press it, it might tell somebody else to kill someone. How often would you press the button?

We know from the writings of Anders Brevik he took most of his motivation and ideas from other people writing on forums and social media. ISIS regularly use facebook, twitter and youtube to get their message across because they know these lone wolf individuals take succour from it. During the recent attack in New Zealand the perpetrator live streamed it on Facebook. Over and over these vile individuals take their comfort, their support, their motivation from posts of other people on social media.

It’s also important to remember – the people who do this – they think differently from us. For the vast majority of us the idea of getting so angry that we decide to attack, injure and kill people is abhorrent. More so in cold blood. But none of them are picked up in advance. They suddenly follow up on their decision making. Often family and friends are aware of their views – but not that they are dangerous or genuinely considering this action. Until somebody is dead. I am not a psychologist – I have no training to say who will behave like this. Maybe we are all capable. But I don’t know which of my friends, family, readers of this blog, and colleagues are capable of turning. Neither do you.

There is a big red button on your phone. If you don’t press it, nothing happens. But if you do press it, it might tell somebody else to kill someone. How often would you press the button?

We have to choose a side. Are we the person who presses this button or not? This week as an example videos emerged of British Army soldiers shooting as an image of Jeremy Corbyn. If you support this – can you be certain that won’t be seen as a message to someone to take out his old service revolver and do it? After all Darren Osborne (who attacked Finsbury Park) was looking for a way to kill Jeremy Corbyn. That post decrying Tony Blair as a war criminal who got away with it? Posting videos calling remain supporting MPs traitors? Linking Leave supporting MPs to violent racism? Do you really know the impact of the language of hate on people around you? Perhaps you do. Strangely I reckon the families and friends of the people mentioned as carrying out these attacks felt comfortable sharing hate, and bile, and anger. I wonder if they do now.

There is a big red button on your phone. If you don’t press it, nothing happens. But if you do press it, it might tell somebody else to kill someone. How often would you press the button?

You can't trust Labour on the economy (Part 2)

One of the most often repeated claims you will hear from Conservative party supporters is that you can't trust Labour on the economy. It is a message that has been repeatedly pushed by large parts of the media for many years. In fact, it has been heard so often it sometimes seems like it as is obvious as gravity, Liverpool football club struggling against smaller teams or that you can't get a decent cup of tea in a coffee bar. If you missed the first half of this blog, it might be worth visiting ( http://unexpectedsocialist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/you-cant-trust-labour-on-economy.html ) - although I am not guaranteeing it is worth visiting. In that I set out 3 major tests of whether an economy is working - a good economy would be one where: 

1. any growth in the economy benefits those who work for it;
2. it provides opportunities for everyone to participate and add to the economy whilst;
3. providing a reasonable level of protection from external shocks to the national economy and individual shocks through changes in circumstance

I also asked how we could know if we could trust a party to deliver either of those. To be as fair as possible, I have split this down into 3 governments we can compare - that of the previous New Labour administration, that of the current coalition & Tory government, and a future potential Corbyn government.

So going back to our central question - are the Conservatives any better than New Labour at getting people to participate in the economy? And would Corbyn be any better than that? 

Looking at the immediate headline statistics this seems obvious and clear cut. We are told every month now that employment figures are at a record high, unemployment at a record low. Obviously, the Tories win this hands down. But it doesn't take much scratching of the surface to get below that and see that it is not quite as it seems. 

The headline rate is shockingly good - 74.4% employment rate. This means that 74.4% of the people who could work are either employed or self employed. This is the highest since records of this sort began. Under the last Labour government, just before the global economic crash in 2008, the best they achieved was 73.0%. 

That 74.4% equates to (between 16 and 64) 30.67 million people either working or self employed. For the New Labour government, at it's highest point, this was 29.06 million. So there are 1.6 million more people employed compared to eight and a half years ago. But just being employed is not the entire picture. What is also important is how much you are earning for that employment. Because it is this - your income - that determines how much you can participate in the economy. In that case, we are doing slightly worse. In fact, average earnings (which excludes self employed people) are down by 3%. So more people are working, but earning less than before. 

What is causing this? Well, whilst it is hard to reach a really strong conclusion, there are some really good candidates for part of the explanation.

Firstly, the national minimum wage has not increased quickly enough. This had slowed down until then Chancellor George Osborne made some moves to re-dress the imbalance he had caused. Secondly, almost the entire public sector has had pay freezes or raises limited to 1% for 7 years. The public sector workers are carrying the rest of us through austerity. Third, there are more immigrants now in the country - willing to work for much lower wages - potentially around 800,000 in that period. Finally however, and this seems to have had the biggest effect, is the rise of the zero hours contract. 

Since the last Labour government 700,000 new jobs have been created where those people have no guarantee week to week, day to day, hour to hour. The number has gone from 200,000 to 900,000. What was once a flexible way for employers and employees to work where this arrangement suited both parties has become the standard operating model for hundreds of employers. The coalition and tory government have done nothing to stop this. If you aren't on one of those contracts - just imagine what that is like. You never know if you are going to eat or pay bills - and you can't work anywhere else. It is as close to modern day slavery as most of us will ever get. 

So whilst employment has gone up far fewer people are actually able to participate in the economy in a meaningful way. We all on average have less to contribute with. And the increase in employment figures can almost entirely be matched to inwards net immigration and zero hours contracts. So whilst we had increasing spending power and jobs under the Blair / Brown governments, we have not seen this under a tory government. But what would we see under a Corbyn government?

Well, that is hard to say. If we believe the promises made as part of his election campaign, there would be increases in the minimum wage, an end to zero hours contracts, pay rises for the public sector and real genuine investment by the government in major infrastructure projects - and the aim would be to increase employment rates through this. Of course the challenge for any future Corbyn government will be how to pay for these. This ties in to managing to deliver without destroying the economy and leaving it protected from shocks - but that will be part 3 of this blog.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled

               I am of a certain age where there are some films that absolutely define me. Most people could guess my age pretty accurately, given that my favourite films include Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Jerry Maguire, Top Gun, Die Hard and The Usual Suspects. In the last of those there is a brilliant line delivered by Kevin Spacey as Verbal Kint – “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist” (If you are a young person, I would suggest watching that movie straight away, along with Fight Club).

                As a member of the Labour Party, at the moment I feel a great deal of sadness and anger in terms of where my party is. I am at heart an unreconstructed socialist, who has wound his way back here via a variety of other views being tried on for size. The ongoing / stalling / necessary / evil / failed / righteous* (delete as appropriate) coup has really shown the worst of our politics on all sides. What is equally saddening has been that within the Labour Party and the wider bit of society that sees itself as left-leaning we have seen the worst of absolutist thinking and “othering” behaviour. You are either a Corbynista or a Blairite. You are Progress or Momentum. It is black and white, chalk and cheese. For god’s sake whatever you do, pick a side. Certainly you must not see anything in between (don’t worry, I am not going to use the phrase “a third way”). You are either for or against – and that view will completely and entirely colour whether something is acceptable or not – not the act itself.

                It is because of this thinking that I have separately heard a wide variety of possibilities in terms of the underlying cause of the coup in the Labour Party. It is either a right wing coup orchestrated by Portland (http://www.prweek.com/article/1401004/portland-forced-deny-involvement-plot-oust-jeremy-corbyn) on behalf of the permanent political class who rely on voter apathy (http://www.thecanary.co/2016/07/02/the-real-reason-the-permanent-political-class-is-trying-to-topple-jeremy-corbyn/ ). Or alternatively, it is evidence of the party fighting back against an existential threat of Momentum Entryists trying to steal the party (http://uk.businessinsider.com/corbyn-could-split-labour-and-create-a-new-socialist-party-2016-6?r=US&IR=T). When you look at either of these theories they BOTH have an awful lot of “if and then” logic in them.

                The quote from The Usual Suspects comes from an original from Charles Baudelaire. But given the above theories, if either of them prove true, it will certainly need to be changed. So, depending on where you are on that perfect duality where any behaviour is allowed as long as it justifies the ends, you can either have: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was after failing to convince 3 MPs involved in the plot to stand aside so there was one candidate standing against Corbyn to not fully engage in the EU referendum; stop the newspapers reporting what Jeremy Corbyn was doing during the referendum campaign; stoke hatred of Jeremy Corbyn by people he works with in the House of Commons; convince almost all of his shadow cabinet to resign in a timed way one after the other (and the press to report it in that order); convince other MPs in the party that it was all his fault; pass a vote of no confidence; but be so incompetent as to botch a leadership challenge by being unclear on what the rules are; to avoid Tony Blair being impeached for war crimes”.

                I am going to go out on a limb here – if you could manage to make 90% of that happen without problem then you would have been able to control the Blairite candidates, and you would have known that you could push through the coup by way of Leadership challenge. Was there anything as disappointing as seeing Neil Kinnock brandishing a print out of the Labour Party rules on the Andrew Marr show saying that Jeremy Corbyn definitely wouldn’t be on the ballot for leader because the rules could stop it? A couple of things show how silly that is – if you know you can get rid of someone through a leadership challenge you go down that route rather than publicly humiliating someone on front of their colleagues. Secondly, sane people do not walk around with a certificate to show they are sane. If you are going on air with a copy of the rules in your pocket, you are not sure the rules really support you. You are using them the same way a drunk uses a lamp post – more for your own support than illumination.

                Oh yes, two possible changes to the quotation. For those of you who are Blairites (and remember – you must be one or the other) “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing MPs who didn’t support his views to nominate him to get on to the paper; then to have hundreds of thousands of entryists prepared to spring into action and join the Labour Party (myself included); then get them all to vote for him; convince the other contenders to not drop out so their vote was split; hang on to power through both local elections and an EU referendum whilst seizing control of the Labour Party machinery; manufacture outrage within the party to create a split in the party (by way of smearing a PR company with links to Tony Blair) ; in order to get all of those people you have convinced to join the party 12 months earlier to now leave the party and join a newly set up Momentum party; convince the Union Leaders to come with you and bring their members; and on the way get an establishment judge to find that Tony Blair does have a case to answer over the Iraq War; call for and get an impeachment against him; thus destroying the Blairite Labour Party and start afresh with a clean left wing Momentum party”.

                Again, stretching this a bit but maybe there are easier ways to do that. Quite frankly, the thought that a government inquiry into a decision to go to war would ever (or would ever be allowed, take your pick) to find that a Prime Minister of this country had performed in a way that could lead to criminal charges against that PM seems a long way from the truth. If it was going to do that it wouldn’t have been delayed so much. There are not enough people in Politics, irrespective of parties who want to see that happen. I realise that I am making myself a hostage to fortune by calling that before Wednesday. The whole project would be based on the outcome of other things – not a successful strategy usually.

                There is a well-worn approach when considering different theories called Ockham’s razor (or maybe Occam’s Razor depending on your spelling) which isn’t proof of logic of an argument, but is a good starting point – the theory is “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected”. In other words – the idea with the fewest parts should be your starting point. Looking at those competing viewpoints above anybody outside of the debate would be forgiven for saying they both smell a bit fishy.

What is interesting is that both sides of the argument are giving the appearance that any means is justified because their ends are just. So Jeremy Corbyn allegedly refusing to take Tom Watson’s calls (although clearly these calls must have come after the Glastonbury weekend), the public defrocking of Jeremy Corbyn in parliament which was only second to Cersei’s walk of shame in its gratuitousness, threats for mandatory reselection and taking legal advice on whether MPs can keep the Labour party name whilst splitting from the leadership are all acceptable weapons. As well as that we have entered a lockdown phase where everything Corbyn has done is right OR everything Corbyn has done is wrong. Whether this is what you think or not, it is how it is playing out in the media. And both sides are looking at their own constituencies as an example of them being right, as if this is a binary decision “we have the members on our side so we must be right – is democracy” versus “we have the voters as well as the party members to think about so we must be right – is democracy”. Yeah, because voting on things democratically has been working out so well for us in the last few weeks.

                What is needed now is calm heads and moving away from that sort of thinking – and pretty quickly. We need to save the Labour party and the ideals it stands for. Unfortunately, that would mean both sides would have to learn and grow up a bit. Let’s get rid of the conspiracy theories, and stick to things that we do know or at least can agree on. There must be some of those mustn’t there? Or are we so far down the rabbit hole we can’t find any common ground.  I have tried to list these in order of increasing contentiousness.

1.       Leaving the EU referendum provides immediate short term risks that the Labour Party needs to be ready for

2.       As a party we are better off together, looking outward rather than fighting ourselves

3.       Our enemies are those who oppose social justice, fairness, workers rights, an end to poverty (look, I am trying to be cool but quite obviously that is code for the Tories and UKIP)

4.       The PLP never wanted Jeremy Corbyn as their leader, and some have openly attacked him, some have been half-hearted and some have supported him

5.       The membership did want him – even without us nasty Entryists, the full members of Labour voted overwhelmingly for Jeremy Corbyn

6.       Having a vote of no confidence in him which carries no constitutional weight whatsoever is a clear indication that you are too nervous to run the gauntlet of a leadership election when that would have been quicker and easier. Stop pretending we are dicks who don’t get that

7.       Jeremy has achieved some things – particularly government u-turns around education cuts; benefit cuts; police funding etc.

8.       Jeremy Corbyn (or possibly the team around him) has made mistakes and what is clear is that something does need to change. Anyone willing to cling to their rationality could see that mentioning ISIS and the state of Israel in the same sentence was going to be a bloody stupid idea

  What isn’t clear is whether the aim of the PLP is to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn (the person / the team) or whether it is to get rid a left wing agenda of policies. This is going to be really crucial in winning many of the party over to looking at a way ahead, potentially without Jeremy Cobryn as leader if that is what it takes. For many people (ie me, and trying to claim the moral high ground) we joined because we were attracted to the agenda rather than necessarily for the person. For those on the Corbyn side it may be time to accept that a new leader is needed – but one who can carry on his views and direction of travel for the party (although let’s be honest, no-one thinks that is Angela Eagle). How we handle this WILL define how we handle the upcoming months and years of turmoil in the country and the next general election. This will therefore help to decide how successful we can be in standing up for the values of the Labour Party. Perhaps, in that we can take something positive from this. It reminds me of my most favourite film quote from Fight Club, delivered by Brad Pitt “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight”.

I shouldn’t be writing this blog

           I really shouldn’t. On Thursday the UK voted that we should leave the EU. 1 million people more voted to leave than remain. Whether you agree with that decision or not it is a fact. The people who voted most strongly for Leave were, based on the official polling data, from working class towns who have been let down and left behind over the past 30 plus years. This was a chance for them to scream out their anger and rage at the state of their lives and the fact that they don’t feel listened to. Since the results the far right, the racists and the xenophobes have used that as an excuse to peddle their hatred, believing (I think wrongly) that the vote has shown more people agree with them than they previously knew. The Prime Minister has resigned. The EU want us to start negotiations. The Vote Leave campaign have come out already and said their big claims (more NHS money and lower immigration) were never actually true. People who voted leave are about to find out that when the campaign said “Take Back Control” they added a silent “and give it to Etonians in London”. We are about to go into one of the angriest phases in this country’s history.

We should all be sitting down, and working out what we do to get from this point to one where we can act as a country again. Hell, we need to decide what sort of country we really want first. Not what sort of country are we being offered by career politicians in London. I should be setting out, as a socialist, my view for what that could look like and how we could achieve it. We need cool heads, reconciliation and calm debate to answer all of those people who voted in anger. We must not fail to hear that voice – they are the majority in this country. That is what I should be doing.

But no. Instead I am writing a blog about another attempted coup in the fucking Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). A party which now appears to be so full of career politicians from the Blair years that it is incapable of seeing outside the Westminster bubble they live in. Who think it is more important to get the “right” result from the leadership election they were on the wrong side of than look to their constituents and address their concerns.

Now, in an attempt to upset every Labour party member in one go, I am going to admit to something which people will see as an act of treason itself. I no longer believe that Labour would get the best possible results in a general election with Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. I voted for JC, and I strongly believe that we need a left leaning leader in order to win back not only votes, but those people who have roared at the government in this referendum. We must not allow them to fall down the route of listening to the racist demagogues of UKIP. So I think we need a left-wing leader who can get those people back. I believe there may be better candidates than JC. I do not believe his performance in the referendum was strong enough. There were enough instances of poor performance and behaviour that we should all be able to see it. I do believe that a move towards a left wing leader who is a more natural vote winner is the direction we should go in.

But this is not the way to do that. At a point when we need a strong, united and responsive Labour Party we are turning our backs on the country to fight internally. What a hideous joke. I am still waiting for the punchline. Let’s be clear on this – dear politicians of pretty much every party YOU ARE NOT DELIVERING WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY WANT. Many feel they no longer have a voice and government is a long way away and not listening. Well done to the PLP for showing those people that is exactly what politicians do. Particularly when you consider the reason for this timing – so that this coup can happen before changes to the NEC lead to rule changes that might make it more difficult to get rid of the party leader.

The problem is one entirely of your own making PLP. The party in parliament is so far further right than the party members that when the leadership election comes up there is only ever going to be one left wing candidate – the fact that they take turns putting themselves forward proves that. But what happened last year (after the tories won an outright victory) is that people said “enough is enough, we want left wing policies and a left wing leader”. We gave you those instructions. By an absolute landslide. There is no questioning the view of the party members in this. The fact that people signed up to join the party in their thousands to make sure that happened should have given you some idea. This, I believe, is the route to taking our country back from those who no longer care about the working class.

Instead of working with those instructions and that leadership you have used every opportunity to undermine and challenge it. You have shown no loyalty to your party members. I do now hope you understand that those party members should feel no loyalty back to you. Neither should the electorate of the country as a whole. You have put your own self-interest ahead of the national one. For that you should be appalled at your behaviour. If you do not like the views of the membership of the Labour party feel free to leave and join another party. Get elected on the back of their membership fees, their hard work and activism, their policies. You truly should be ashamed of your behaviour. We certainly are. 

You can't trust Labour on the economy (updated since originally posted 15 months ago) Part 1

As the general election campaign for 2017 has now started in earnest, I have been locked away trying to understand the outcome from the Margaret Beckett report on why Labour lost the last election (http://press.labour.org.uk/post/137620361394/learningthelessons ). Now, whether you believe the report or not http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35392319 is entirely up to you. However, even without the additional analysis being included, one thing can be said with certainty – voters did not trust Labour with the economy. This has been borne out by my own un-scientific research – i.e. speaking to people on internet forums and social media. It is one of the most repeated phrases I hear and read from a whole spectrum of people. It is one of those "truths" that has become so because it has been so oft-repeated.

There will always be a subset of people who, no matter what can be proven, will decide that they will blindly vote Conservative. We have the same people in the Labour party and that is absolutely fine. People vote for their own reasons. If you are one of those people who hate the Labour party and will never look at evidence with a view to changing that position don’t read this. Use the time to do something useful – read something else, make a cup of tea, look after your children, speak to your life partner. That is fine. But I did want to consider that individual central tenet – that people did not trust Labour on the economy, and therefore wouldn’t vote Labour. I am going to try to extrapolate that too – should they trust Labour on the economy now or in the future.

In order to split this down we probably need to think about two things – firstly what is a “good” economy and what does that look like? Secondly, why should we trust a party? If we can answer those two, we should be able to put together a fairly strong case one way or the other. Just writing those two questions down outlines a whole host of problems, but let’s try and answer them.

What is a “good” economy?

So, the real difficulty with this is that there is not, and can not be a single definite answer to this. There are some broad areas of understanding, but nothing that we can concretely say “that right there is your answer”. Each individual will necessarily have their own view on this – and it will be coloured by their upbringing, their view on how the world works and what is important to them. We are after all a country of approx. 60 million single issue voters – that single issue being “what is important to me”.

From my perspective then (as a socialist) there are a number of measures of what makes a good economy. The key one is that the national economy should be measured on how that is used to provide a wellbeing for those people involved in and covered by the economy. A good economy would be one where: 

1. any growth in the economy benefits those who work for it;
2. it provides opportunities for everyone to participate and add to the economy whilst;
3. providing a reasonable level of protection from external shocks to the national economy and individual shocks through changes in circumstance

I don’t pretend this is the only answer. There are other things that we could look at - a key one being how the economy is used to look after members of society in need. There are I am sure many issues that this doesn’t address. As we will discuss, some of these items might even rub against each other in different directions. Lots of people would argue that some of those goals are impossible whilst we live in a capitalist system. It is the system we have at the moment and nobody has yet convinced the British public to rally together to change this system for an alternative one. Additionally there are some huge topics that I have left out – the Private Finance Initiative (PFI and PF2 which are the same thing) are a massive burden on this country. However, political parties of all hues are currently wedded to continue delivering them, so they don’t provide a difference between how they are treated. This is a massive topic and the subject of so much unknown and unknowable that it has its own Nobel Prize. To expect me to do justice to it in a blog is probably asking too much. Even with the simplified items above I am going to split this down into a couple of (hopefully easily digestible, probably completely incomprehensible) blogs to not completely frazzle people.

Should we trust a party to deliver?

The next question should then be: How do the last Labour administration and the current (including the coalition years) Conservative government stand on each of those measures? And how do we believe a Corbyn government would stand against those measures? Whilst this may be a little unfair (every government in waiting is brilliant until it gets in), we need to recognise that a Corbyn government would be very different to a Blair / Brown government. 

Well the first measure mentioned above on economic growth and fairness really requires two parts to it – one is a growing economy, and two that the benefits of that growth are shared amongst the actors within it. Whilst there are a range of indicators for a growing economy a useful one is GDP per capita. This shows the value of the outputs of an economy shared equally by the population of that economy. For the UK, this shows the following output (taken from https://knoema.com/atlas/United-Kingdom/GDP-per-capita ).

What you can see from this is that under the last Labour government the GDP per person was higher than it currently is at its high point. It also had a steeper growth – i.e. people were (on average) getting wealthier, faster. This changed in 2008 because of the sudden correction in the markets – caused by the banking crash. The key term there I feel is “correction”. Put simply the market growth was to some extent a myth, caused by a bubble of over-inflated house prices across the globe and reckless behaviour of banks and consumers around the world.

Can we blame Labour for this? I think there must be an element of realisation that for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the key indicator for economic success was GDP growth. Therefore the worst excesses of the banks were missed at best or ignored and encouraged at worst. This lends to the suggestion that Labour can’t be trusted. In order for us to stick with that as a reason, we should also look at the behaviour of the Conservative party in office. If the property bubble and banker behaviour were key components of the sudden correction, then to trust the tories they would have to clearly demonstrate a different approach.  

I would say that quite clearly isn’t the case. In fact the light regulation that allowed this to happen is slowly returning. Despite the rhetoric about this at the time, the Conservative Party (funded by hedge fund managers and property tycoons http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/labour-funding-party-donors-tories-factcheck/13899 ) is indeed pushing back on the regulation of the banks. Ring-fencing of banks (to protect consumers and the economy) has been watered down. There have been a plethora of new scandals SINCE the financial crash ( http://www.channel4.com/news/five-other-banking-scandals-since-2008 ) they have slowly stopped investigations and reviews into the current banking market. 

So, if you don’t trust Labour on the economy for this reason, you quite clearly can’t trust the Conservatives either. As an argument, it is nonsense. Oh, and if you think that they have at least made sure another housing bubble wont appear and burst, then forget about it (http://uk.businessinsider.com/roubini-the-mother-of-all-asset-bubbles-will-burst-in-2016-2014-12?r=US&IR=T and http://moneyweek.com/uk-property-market-could-be-in-trouble-after-the-2015-election/ ) – those risks are still there. Worryingly from the above graph we can see that rather than the Tories increasing GDP per capita it has fluctuated and is falling again - and this is before the impact of Brexit takes its toll. 

The next thing to consider from any growth in the economy benefits those who work for it is that it benefits those who work for it. To me, this means that the benefits are shared in line with hard work, effort and risk. That is impossible to measure on an individual basis. It is also massively unfair when we have different starting points. Instead a good measure of how the people in an economy are benefiting, and whether it is fairly or not, is something called a "gini-coefficient". If you wish to understand the maths behind it, then it can be readily understood from wikipedia. It basically measures how fairly income is shared amongst a population. This ties in with GDP above – as it measures the income in a period, in much the same way, and then looks at how income is spread between people. There are 2 extremes – but the lower the gini-coefficient the more equally money is shared between the people in the economy. Gini is calculated as between 0 (everyone gets the same) and 1 (1 person gets all of the income). As a co-efficient it is not useful on it's own - but is useful for comparing 2 things - such as different points in time, different countries or different governments.

In order to get a fair reading on this, then we must look at not only what the gini-coefficient was but how it has changed over time under each of these governments. So under the previous Blairite Labour administration, the gini co-efficient (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/household-income/the-effects-of-taxes-and-benefits-on-household-income/2013-2014/data--the-effects-of-taxes-and-benefits-on-household-income--financial-year-ending-2014.xls ) after tax showed a gini-coefficient of 0.38 between 1997 and 2008 – this didn’t really move. Since the coalition government came to power there has actually been an improvement in income equality - the figure got lower to 0.36 up to the end of 2013/2014. This will be in large part due to the changes in taxation that was pushed through by the Liberal Democrats. 

What remains to be seen is how the changes enacted since then will impact through 2014/2015 and 2015/2016. Although if you believe that trying to cut working families tax credits and battering disabled people’s payments will make income more equal then you have really missed the point. I would expect that the gini-coefficient starts to move back out sharply. After all, the current government have tried to remove income from their definition of poverty ( http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-plot-scrap-child-poverty-7244505 ). That can never be a good sign. Whilst we don't yet have the official figures for 2015-2016 (the first year of a solely Tory government), for 2014-2015 the gini coefficient has started to move out again - that is we are becoming less equal once again.

What we can't know is how this will change under a Corbyn led Labour government. However, we can look to the policies that have been unveiled already - investment in public works to kick-start the economey, higher taxes on large corporations and wealthy individuals, higher national minimum wage, a clampdown on tax avoidance and evasion and an end to using the benefits regime to punish the disabled and these would all point to an improvement in this measure (and all measures) of inequality. In fact, his first major speech of this election campaign has been entirely rooted in sharing wealth more equally. So, if we believe that he will be true to his word, this would suggest that on my first measure there would be an improvement in both GDP per capita and how that is shared. But, what we can already say based on the available, independent evidence shown above is this - the Conservative party are NO MORE trustworthy than the last Labour Government. That isn't opinion, that is clear fact when you consider the above. So don't let anyone suggest otherwise - without proving them wrong. 

Of course, this is only one measure, and I will look at the others in my next blog. An absolute key one is what state the economy and public finances are left in. This is another area where many believe what they are told in the media - that every Labour government bankrupts the national coffers if it is allowed to do so. But is this really true? Well, hopefully I can answer that point in my next blog.