Cameron's great reforming decade

It’s heartwarming to start 2016 with the stirring words of David Cameron ringing in my ears.

According to his New Year message, Britain is living through “one of the great reforming decades” of our history.

We’ve had great reforming eras before. Attlee’s post-War Labour government launched the National Health Service and put in place a welfare state. In the sixties, we saw Labour back under Harold Wilson and making changes that would revolutionise the way we live: doing away with the death penalty for murder, ending the legal prohibition of homosexuality, massively extending access to education. And then, in 1997, we had a Labour government which, despite the Iraq War tarnish Tony Blair gave it, notched up some remarkable achievements: the human rights act provided Britain with the closest thing to a fundamental law in its history, while the introduction of a minimum wage was matched by outstanding levels of investment in the NHS. The government took millions out of childhood poverty and brought peace to Northern Ireland.

If your preference is for the Tory version of reform, there were the Thatcher years too. We had section 28 to demonise homosexuality again, the deregulation of business that allowed unregulated banks to punish us all for their irresponsibility in the 2008 crash, and the crushing of the unions to give us today’s zero-hour contracts and non-living wages.

So what are the great reforms that Cameron has ushered in? Well, there was gay marriage, and we shouldn’t underestimate that change. On the other hand, the first breakthrough came with the introduction of civil partnerships, under a reforming Labour government, in 2004. In the next year or two, we may have a major decision to take over membership of the European Union, but that will lead either to no change at all, or to a regression to pre-1975 isolationism.

Apart from that, what have we had? Five years, now extending to six, of austerity economics. The effect has been of slowly extending hardship across the least well off in society. Less support for the working poor. Severe cuts to assistance to the ill. An onslaught against the unemployed. And, of course, the slow strangulation of the NHS as hospital after hospital goes into the red.

A monument to Cameron's achievement: homelessness growing again

These policies are intended to serve what Cameron presumably views as his big idea: the elimination of the “structural deficit” in government spending (structural deficit is a slightly easier form of deficit to cut than the actual deficit) and the reduction of public debt. However, what he described as the “legacy of debt” Gordon Brown had left to our children in 2010, had grown by well over half as much again by 2015. That’s because progress has been minimal over the deficit – it’s been pain without gain.

Indeed, in October 2015 the deficit reached its highest level since 2009, at the time of the crash.

Not much sign of a major, dramatic turn for the better there then. Nothing to compare with legalising homosexuality or even privatising the railways. Instead all we see is a general greying of society, a growing meanness as those already least comfortable in their lives are made to suffer more, while those imposing the misery retreat into their increasingly valuable houses and shut the door on what’s happening outside.

Perhaps we shouldn’t pay too much attention to Cameron’s notion of a reforming decade. Instead we should focus on the beginning of his messages and the words, “for me, there are no new year’s resolutions, just the resolve to continue delivering what we promised in our manifesto.” That sounds much more like him, doesn’t it? For “no resolutions” read “no ideas, no commitments.” For “continue delivering what we promised” read “we’ll go on with the policies that have failed for the last half decade, and once again miss our objectives.”

A decade of reform? Sounds more like another five years of increasing squalor and low achievement. Rather like the years under Stanley Baldwin's Tory government. If you've never heard of him, or can't think of any of his achievements – well, that would be precisely my point.

Still. Happy New Year. Let’s make it one in which many more people wake up to the fact that they don’t have to put up with this kind of government for ever.

Thank you, Oliver Letwin, for making Tory views clear

What a fine row has blown up following publication of Cabinet papers from 1985.

The controversy has focused, in particular, on a memo signed by Oliver Letwin and a colleague. It advised the then Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher, not to respond to that year’s riots by increasing investment in black communities, because the money would be frittered away on the “disco and drug trade.”

Those bright young men apparently viewed the proposal for a £10m communities programme aimed at dealing with inner-city problems, as little more than a means to “subsidise Rastafarian arts and crafts workshops”.

Tottenham riots in 1985

To discover that the Tories were racist in 1985 is hardly an earth-shattering revelation. It would be much more interesting to be told that they were still racist today, but we’ll no doubt have to wait a couple of decades or so to have that suspicion confirmed.

What makes this memo interesting is that Oliver Letwin is still firmly in politics, an MP and Minister, and a leading adviser to the present Prime Minister David Cameron, as he was to the Prime Minister back then.

It isn’t even the comments on black communities that I find most interesting. What he has to say about whites is, in many ways, far more illuminating still. He was clear that blacks oughtn’t to benefit from the riots, in particular because “lower-class unemployed white people had lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale.”

What’s so striking about these words is that Letwin clearly meant them as a compliment. It’s a good thing, in his world view, for people to accept life in “appalling slums.” They know their place, no doubt, and don’t disturb their betters by complaining to angrily which, in contrast to those nasty black rioters, makes them fine people. Not actually fine enough for a Tory government to want to help them at all, but fine enough to win applause, in a slightly condescending way, from the betters who keep them in their slums and are pleased not to be bothered by them too much.

It’s become something of a commonplace of English politics in recent years to assert that not enough is done for the white working class. There’s a lot of truth in that statement, if it’s taken at surface value – taken to mean exactly what it says. Unfortunately, it’s often code for “we really ought to accommodate the xenophobic and often racist views that certain elements within the white working class express.” Organisations like the far-right UKIP like to draw on that kind of bitterness. Sadly, however, many on the right of the Labour Party would like to counter UKIP by pandering to its anti-immigrant policies.

The approach that would allow Labour to remain true to its roots is quite different. And Letwin’s remarks show us the way. He talks about “lower-class unemployed white people” living in “appalling slums.” What does that suggest for Labour? It points us towards both a positive and a negative message.

The positive message is that we should push forward our commitment to build an economy that doesn’t leave you unemployed, or even unable to live adequately in a job, as happens today. And a commitment to building more, decent, affordable housing so that no one is forced to settle for a dire slum existence.

The negative message? That Letwin has let the cat out of the bag. Labour needs to hammer the point that the Tory Party’s perfectly happy to leave people unemployed, living in squalid slum environments. So if you want Labour to help you out of those conditions – stop voting Tory or UKIP and elect a Labour government to help us all.

Good of Letwin to have made that clear.

Global warming: the deniers may be shrinking in numbers, but they're keeping the volume up...

It was no doubt naive on my part to imagine that fewer and fewer people could seriously still be denying the reality of climate change. You know, I thought it might be the Trumps of this world who know no better, but few others. The overwhelming consensus building up among scientists, and the constantly growing frequency of damaging weather events that all seem to point in the same direction, seemed to make denial untenable.

Well, I was wrong. Or, if I was right, I had underestimated the sheer vociferousness of the dwindling band left. They seem more than capable of making up in sheer volume for their shrinking numbers.

I’d made a couple of references on Twitter to the way the floods in England seemed to provide additional evidence for global warming’s grip. And I found the deniers coming down on my head like a torrent of brimstone.

One of the best responses pointed me at a post by NASA concerning the ice cap at the Antarctic. This, it seems, has been growing, not shrinking.

Let me repeat that. There’s more ice and snow at the Antarctic than there has been for ages. So I could stuff that in my pipe and smoke it, because it certainly refutes the notion of global warming, doesn’t it?

Antarctic sea ice at its greatest extent recorded, in 2014
The previous maximum is shown in red

Well, no, actually. My correspondent didn’t just put up the picture, he pointed me at the whole article. And I read it. Here’s how it starts:

Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The new Antarctic sea ice record reflects the diversity and complexity of Earth’s environments, said NASA researchers. Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has referred to changes in sea ice coverage as a microcosm of global climate change. Just as the temperatures in some regions of the planet are colder than average, even in our warming world, Antarctic sea ice has been increasing and bucking the overall trend of ice loss.

“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” Parkinson said.

So the phenomenon of Antarctic ice growth is (a) too little to compensate for ice loss in the Arctic, and (b) a local event compatible with global warming overall.

Local cooling within global warming? Most of us have got used to this paradox. It seems the deniers struggle with it.

What’s more, the article is from 2014. A year on, NASA reported, “2015 Antarctic maximum sea ice extent breaks streak of record highs.” My denier was quoting last year’s news; this year’s lends itself even less well to his argument.

In fact, he decided to hammer his point with another NASA study on the sheer extent of the growth of the Antarctic ice cap. Again, the headline seems to strengthen his case: “Mass gains of Antarctic ice sheet greater than losses.” The devil, for him, was in the body of the article, when it quoted glaciologist Jay Zwally:

But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally. “If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years — I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”

What this suggests, according to Zwally, is that the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was mistaken to think that Antarctic ice melt was adding to rising sea levels.

“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”

My correspondent must have focused on the fact that the IPCC had got it wrong. He didn’t take into account that the error was on a matter of details. Overall, the picture is if anything more worrying: if the Antarctic isn’t contributing, then the effect of other causes of sea level rise must be even greater than we feared.

Now, I don’t want global warming to happen. I take no joy from the fact that reading the evidence thoroughly only confirms the bad news – after all, it is bad news. I wish we could deny what’s happening. I’m simply amazed by the extent to which deniers are prepared to go to support their rejection of evidence.

It’s faith, and faith at its worst. It sees what it wants to see, and reads what it wants to read. And if it gets its way, it’ll lead the planet, blindfolded, into desperate straits.

Looking forward in the spirit of Pratchett

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.

The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!

And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye.

Ah, the voice of Terry Pratchett. Communicating truth through humour. Presenting through his imaginary Discworld a picture of our own planet, distorted only so far as its most essential characteristics have been blown up to make them unmissable. Appealing characteristics as well as blemishes, even if there are more of the latter,

Since the superb yearly gift of a new Pratchett novel has now come to its fatal end, re-reading is now my only option. I’m laughing my way through The Truth at the moment, with its insightful treatment of the role and development of the press. But nothing in it outshines the glass-half-full quotation. And it just seems to become more and more apposite.

Another Pratchett novel, living up to its title

I was particularly struck by it when I read a post from a friend calling for sympathy for those, like doctors or petrol station attendants, who have to keep working through Christmas days while so many of us are enjoying time with our families. That reminded me of a young woman I met, thirty years ago, at a supermarket checkout on New Year’s day. Her looks betrayed her state, and when I put it to her she readily admitted that she was badly hungover from the night before. Even so, she was determined to do ten hours of work on that public holiday, because she was being paid triple time. Recently married, she and her husband were busily saving for a house purchase.

UK overtime payments have declined steadily since those days. Partly, this reflects a decrease in the number of overtime hours worked, which may well be a good thing but, anecdotally at least, I’m coming across increasing numbers of people being asked to work overtime for no raised level of payment, or indeed only for time off in lieu. The woman with the hangover might not, today, find that working on New Year’s day was quite as remunerative as it was thirty years ago.

This may be one of the reasons why the British Social Attitudes survey has found that, where 74% of people in 1986 would have recommended to a newly-married couple that they buy a house as soon as possible, the percentage had fallen to 53% in 2012. Britain is regressing towards an older dispensation in which home ownership was a privilege of the few, not a right of the many.

It’s no surprise to discover that the High Pay Commission finds that the remuneration of Chief Executives of our biggest companies is set to grow from 145 times the average salary in 2010 to 214 by 2020. It seems that the owners of the large glasses that are never full enough, are seeing their share growing even more starkly than before; meanwhile, at the other end of the bar, there are more and more people finding it difficult to catch the barman’s eye.

It all sounds pretty hopeless. Fortunately, there is a glimmer at least of optimism still. Labour has a new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who is infuriating a lot of large-glass holders by refusing to stop speaking out, with energy and determination, for those with small glasses or no glass at all. Among those he infuriates are the supporters of the now old-fashioned “New Labour” school. When they ran the party, they were, as Peter Mandelson so aptly put it, “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” They were, unfortunately, just as relaxed about many others remaining filthy poor.

Their replacement offers a chance that we might be able to deal with the empty glasses. Perhaps that’s no bad note on which to end the year in which Pratchett left us, and prepare to push forward in his spirit in 2016.

A Christmas message to a "Christian" Britain. Seriously, Cameron?

David Cameron has shared his wisdom with us in his Christmas message to the UK. It seems that, here in Britain, we’re about to “celebrate the birth of God’s only son, Jesus Christ – the Prince of Peace. As a Christian country, we must remember what his birth represents: peace, mercy, goodwill and, above all, hope.”

Aaah. It’s touching isn’t it?

According to children’s charity Barnardo’s, 3.7 million British children now live in poverty. Infant mortality is 10% higher in poor families than among the rest of the population, and children under three in those families are two and a half times as likely to have a chronic disease. These children also tend to underperform at school, so the chances are that their children too will be brought up in poverty.

Not a lot of hope there. Not much goodwill towards them, either. And, with growth forecasts for the UK revised downwards, hope is shrinking fast too.

The spirit of Christmas Present.
As long as you don't actually need a present.

Just a month before Christmas, Cameron appeared in the House of Commons pleading for authority to take military action against the ISIS death cult in Syria. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, where NATO is trying to withdraw to leave Afghans running their own affairs, six US soldiers died recently in an insurgent bombing, while British forces are being sent back into action in Helmand Province. They will be helping an apparently desperate struggle to save Sangin city, with no guarantee of a successful outcome.

So not much peace or mercy there. In fact, I’d rather hoped at the end of 2014, that this year might be Britain’s first without war since 1914; well, that didn’t happen. So this “peaceful” country has racked up something of a record: not a single year’s peace in 102.

Cameron has no difficulty mouthing sentimental platitudes about the country he leads, though they have nothing to do with the reality of the nation on his watch.

But then that’s obvious from his other words. He’s once again described Britain as a Christian nation. Clearly, this supposed Christianity has nothing to do with Christian values – as we’ve seen, there’s not much compassion for the poor, nor much desire for peace. But then there isn’t much evidence of Christianity in religious practice either: we heard only days ago that Anglicans are planning to close down certain churches since congregations have fallen to single figures in many cases. Overall, it seems that only about one in ten of the population attends a Christian church service on a regular basis.

That doesn’t stop many Brits describing themselves as Christian. In the latest census, 59% of people in Britain and Wales described themselves as Christian, and 54% in Scotland. The British Social Attitudes survey came up with a lower, and probably more reliable figure, of 46% Christians, against 48% describing themselves as irreligious.

Still, even that figure seems to overstate significantly the level of Christian commitment, compared to actual religious practice. Which maybe explains Cameron’s message: he joins the tradition of many of his compatriots, to be long on words and short on practice.

Cameron’s talk of peace, mercy, goodwill and hope is welcome. But given what he’s actually doing, it strikes me that getting much of any of them has to start with getting rid of him.

Now, that would be real note of hope to celebrate in this holiday season.

Ships that pass in the night aren't always sad

The expression “ships that pass in the night” has a pathetic ring to it. But sometimes it’s better to pass a ship, even without stopping, than be isolated on a barren ocean.

While I was a student, I enjoyed what I suppose one could only call an episodic friendship. It was strictly limited in time, and even more restricted in space: we met each year, for three years, at the annual get together of our college department, at a former royal hunting lodge in Windsor Great Park. That’s the park in which the Queen’s home at Windsor Castle is set.

Windsor Great Park: good place for a weekend

I don’t even remember the friend’s name, so I’ll call him Steve here. Our college – Birkbeck, University of London – taught degrees by part-time study, with lectures between 6:00 and 9:00 in the evening. It therefore catered for students I found particularly interesting: adults, many in the forties, people who were already in mid-career, who’d lived a bit and learned a bit. Or not, in some cases. The oldest student was a wonderful woman who, though English, revelled in a Polish countess’s title (through her late husband) and was the sprightliest woman in her seventies I’ve ever met.

Steve had left school at sixteen, sick of the whole education game. His father had found him an opening as a trainee borough surveyor (you may know the old joke, she was only the mayor’s daughter but she let the borough survey ‘er, but he wasn’t like that). By the time I met him, he’d been in his profession for a quarter of a century and become the youngest borough surveyor in London.

He’d then decided that learning was actually fun. He spent some years getting some “A”-level, school leaver certificates, and then decided that it would be fun to do a French degree. Birkbeck College was the obvious place. He was a year ahead of me, so our paths barely crossed in college, but we both attended the weekends away at Windsor Great Park. And each year we did the same thing: we met up in the evening and drank a bottle one or other of us had brought (or possibly the bottles we’d both brought) and talked the night away until the small hours. Alone: everyone else sensibly went to bed.

Steve was married but the relationship had grown sterile. He’d met a woman at Birkbeck and they had launched on a great love. A hopeless love, as it happened. She too was married, and each of them reached a point where they were ready to leave their partner for the other, but sadly not at the same time. I don’t know whether they ever ended up together, but certainly at the time I knew him, the prospects weren’t rosy.

His wife had given him a hard time over his behaviour, and he’d had to admit that he hadn’t exactly shone in the morals stake. On the other hand, he didn’t accept her accusation that he’d had casual sex – he’d fallen in love and focused all his attention on just that one woman.

One day he was looking for some college notes of his and, as he hunted through drawer after drawer, he came across a diary.

“You didn’t read it?” I asked, appalled.

“Of course I did,” he told me, “I wasn’t going to let curiosity gnaw away at me. At first I thought it was about me, but then I realised it wasn’t. She’d been having a pretty torrid affair for as long as I had. Worse still, she’d even had a one-night stand with another guy. Despite all that stuff about me and casual sex…”

“What did you do?” I asked increasingly horrified.

“Well, I went downstairs and found her. And told her ‘I’ve been reading this.’”

“Oh no! How did she react?”

“Oh, she wasn’t pleased.” He chuckled. “People never are pleased when you catch them out in their hypocrisies.”

I wonder how things worked out for Steve. But I don’t really need to know. What I remember is three rather good, if slightly drunken, nights with a lot of laughter, spread over three years, nearly forty years.

Our ships passed in the night, but not without a little bit of a party as we drifted together and apart. And again. And again.

Labour in Luton listens to CND: it may be time for a new direction

It was good to see Kate Hudson, general secretary of CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), talking to Luton Labour Party this week.

It would have been better if we’d pulled 200 people together to listen to her, instead of a fifth or sixth that number, but at least the gathering made up in lively discussion and good temper for the relative shortage of numbers. And, in any case, it’s all about sowing seeds that can grow later: the conversation may well have stimulated others, as it stimulated me, to do more towards dumping nuclear weapons. 

Especially with a speaker so full of insight, so eloquent but unaggressive in making a crucial case.

Kate Hudson of CND: insightful and convincing

This is a topical question in Britain right now since the government want a vote in 2016 on a new generation of submarines to carry the British Trident missiles. Hudson was with us to make the case for voting against renewal of the system. I knew the cost had gone up to astronomic levels, but it came as a shock when she started talking actual numbers. She reckons that with the running costs, the submarines would set us back something like £183 billion over thirty years, at present estimates – and, as she pointed out, estimates in these matters always seems to rise.

This is for a system which, as many pointed out, is fundamentally unusable. The only circumstances in which the missiles might be fired would those of all-out war between the major nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, which would imply suicide by the human race. If the radiation didn’t kill survivors of the initial conflict, the subsequent nuclear winter certainly would. We have to maintain the stance that we would use the weapons, or deny them of the little deterrent value they have; arguably, it would be honest, above all to ourselves, to admit that there would be no point in ever using them, and disarm, as we committed to do – this was something of a refrain to which Hudson regularly returned – back in 1968 when we signed up for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

By that treaty, ratified in 1970, the non-nuclear nations agreed not to take up the weapons, in return for the recognised nuclear nations doing away with them. Not one yet has. It is perhaps time that one, at least, did.

Besides, £6 billion a year’s a tidy sum. You could build ten hospitals each year, to the most luxurious standards, and still have some change left over. Alternatively, you could increase defence spending by 13%, which would pay for an awful lot of additional soldiers and their equipment. Those alternatives defined the main positions at the meeting.

Judging by the contributions made to the discussion, the meeting was overwhelmingly against renewal. There were, however, some voices raised in dissent, who favoured hanging on to the Trident system. Even within what seemed to be a large majority, there were two schools of thought. One was firmly pacifist, and included Hudson herself, who would have gone for the hospitals or, as she argued, for greater expenditure on education: building a highly educated workforce would, she felt, put Britain in a far stronger position internationally than nuclear weapons provide.

The other school, to which I slightly shamefacedly belong, believes that we still need defence. Even that there are occasions when, as and only as a last resort, war is justified. While I feel that firing in missiles is a self-deluding as keeping the Trident system – it makes us feel we’re doing something, when in reality we’re achieving nothing – I do understand that we have to be ready to use military means against ISIS. Effective means, however, in preference to empty gestures.

Well, as Hudson also argued, one of the effects of including the cost of Trident within the Defence Budget was to impose cuts elsewhere – amounting to some 20,000 soldiers. She told us that, if we believe in the need for military resources, we could hardly feel comforted by that kind of reduction.

The picture that emerged, for me at least, underlined clearly the uselessness of renewing the Trident submarine system. Indeed, the only argument that seemed to remain standing in its favour, was that it gave Britain as a nation far greater status in the world.

Ten hospitals a year? 20,000 soldiers? These seem high prices to pay for national status, aren’t they?

Still, we in the Labour Party have our work cut out to persuade not just the voters, but even our own organisation, that this is the case. Let’s not forget that the most powerful appeal in favour for the status argument was made, at a Labour Party conference on 4 October 1957, by a man many of us admire profoundly: the father of the NHS, Aneurin (Nye) Bevan. Speaking against a motion on unilateral disarmament, he declared:

It is … not a question of who is in favour of the hydrogen bomb, but a question of what is the most effective way of getting the damn thing destroyed... But if you carry this resolution and follow out all its implications — and do not run away from it — you will send a British Foreign Secretary, whoever he may be, naked into the conference chamber. ... And you call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.

Commitment to nuclear weapons is deeply entrenched, even on our side of the fence. But listen to Kate Hudson and you may well come round to the belief that it’s time to break at last from Nye’s position.