Democracy R.I.P.?

Dominic Cummings broke the rules, broke the law, lied about it and remains the most powerful unelected man in the UK. Public opinion is certainly against Cummings and has turned against Boris Johnson for supporting him. This could have been a pivotal moment politically if only we had an opposition capable of taking advantage. On the other hand, it remains true that opposition parties don't win elections, ruling parties lose them.

As I have previously outlined in some detail Tony Blair's New Labour did not win by attracting Conservative voters but because Conservatives abstained. Widespread disillusionment with the Tories could have the same effect again.

The polls certainly do not make good reading at the moment if you are a Tory strategist. In a JPL poll published in the Daily Mail, 66% (and crucially 52% of Tory voters) thought Cummings had lied. 59% (and 51% of Tories) thought Cummings was "arrogant.

A lying, arrogant Tory. Well, who would have expected such a thing. Except, strictly speaking Dominic Cummings is not a Tory. At least he is not a member of the Conservative Party. Neither is he a Civil Servant, so not bound by their code of conduct. Nor is he a journalist, though he is married to Spectator writer Mary Wakefield. I'm not going to write a biography of Cummings, because I feel that there is a far more serious issue at stake here.

It will come as no revelation that I am not a big fan of the Conservative Party. Like many I do not believe that December's General Election was fought fairly. The fact that Labour insiders were working for a Labour defeat, the suspicion that the postal vote was subject to fraud, and a media campaign against Labour's leader that was personalised to the extent of paranoia all point to a strong possibility that Labour were denied a victory mainly for being too left-wing for the Establishment to stomach.

For all that, the Conservatives were elected. Maybe not fairly nor squarely, but however they managed it, they managed to win enough seats to make it appear that Labour were crushed. They are, therefore, "representatives" of constituencies and answerable to their constituents. Our democracy is far from perfect, but in a strange way it has, until recently, appeared to be, on the whole, legitimate.

Yes, it is far from proportional. Yes, it allows for party favourites to be parachuted into "safe" seats. Yes, it seems increasingly remote from the lives of ordinary people. But, until recently, it was defensible as a system that seemed, on the face of it, to give outcomes that were, broadly, in line with what the country (by which I mean the UK, not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) wanted.
What I have just written will enrage many on the left, and if they read it, many on the right too. But, an imperfect democracy is better than no democracy at all. And, any democratic system is open to manipulation meaning that it cannot be judged solely on its results. That is not to say that I am either happy with the results or that I don't think the system can be improved.

But something else is happening. Democracy itself is being undermined. And, the Dominic Cummings affair has brought to the surface that which had previously remained hidden. A non-elected so-called "Special Advisor" (or SPAD as I believe they are called) breaks the law, is caught out and is so powerful that almost the entire Cabinet rally immediately to defend the indefensible. Let's just recall that Cummings was the "mastermind" behind the Vote Leave campaign which was caught breaking the spending rules and told some of the most outrageous lies of the Referendum campaign. Cummings was the advisor whose advice included proroguing Parliament, ignoring the Supreme Court and lying to The Queen. Cummings, we are led to believe, was a member of SAGE which against all the available evidence refused to put the UK in to lockdown until the Covid virus was rampant throughout the population. Cummings was also the man who enraged an usually compliant press corps by separating those considered loyal to the Government. In short, Cummings has been the most powerful man in the UK since Johnson became leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. He is also prone to creating chaos.  As Jill Rutter of the Institute of Government says Cummings, and through him Johnson has a “complete disregard for what we have come to regard as the norms of constitutional conventions.”

Cummings believes he is above the law. He believes he is incredibly important. And, a man who could not manage to concoct a credible story for public consumption, clearly believes he is incredibly clever. Of course, if you are surrounded by Hancock, Raab and Gove it is probably easy to think of yourself as a genius. I rather worry that the cleverest person in the room at Cabinet meetings is quite likely the pot plant in the corner.

What is most worrying about our current government is not that they are incompetent (though 40,000 deaths and rising is pretty damning), it is not even that they are corrupt (though funneling public funds to private organisations in which they have a stake isn't a good look), but their fondness for avoiding accountability. Their instinct, when questioned, is simply to lie. Indeed, so ubiquitous are Ministers lies that mostly we just shrug and move on.

Public trust in politicians has never been lower and although some on the left will celebrate this as a sign that people are seeing through the system, recent electoral results suggest that they are not turning leftward.. When we lose faith in politicians it induces cynicism rather than radicalism. We are moving back rapidly to the Blair days where people started to believe there was no difference between the parties. At least Jeremy Corbyn gave people a choice at the ballot box, but the lack of a dear opposition means that Labour is not challenging the drift to authoritarianism and rule by backroom SPAD's with no democratic mandate and no stake in democratic institutions.

The British PM, unlike the US President, has never been chosen by public vote. But, they have needed to be elected at the ballot box. The drift toward the primacy of what the economist JK Galbraith described as "technocrats" begun under Blair when Cabinet Ministers no longer needed to be elected MPs but to have a "talent" that was seen as lacking in elected representatives. This might be business-related or scientific, usually it was/is just being loyal to the PM and his “project”. That said, it is interesting that as the New York Times describe it, Johnson “has little fixed ideology and is capable of shifting positions for political expediency.” In this, he is rather like Tony Blair who was famously dismissive of political ideology. But, whilst their public pronouncements give the impression that they are simply making it up as they go along, privately these individuals are subjected to the manipulation of their advisors.

As Jonathan Cook has noted the problem with the furore over Dominic Cummings (and, as a result Emily Maitlis) is that the issues have become personalised. Instead of concentrating on the damage that is being done to our institutions we fall back on the "one bad apple" approach whereby if one individual is eviscerated or exonerated life can return to normal. But normal, as Cook documents consistently in his blog, is to support the Establishment, not to oppose it. It is hard to argue with his conclusion on Maitlis:
“Like her colleagues, family and friends, Maitlis felt personally angry. She let that anger cloud her judgment. Her emotion trumped her normally astute journalistic instincts to avoid ruffling the feathers
 of those who paved her career path to the top of the BBC. She made the mistake – for once – of doing real journalism when what is expected of her is charade-journalism.”

Right now, public anger (according to polls) is directed mainly at Cummings. Johnson and his incompetent bunch of Cabinet colleagues, are feeling that anger mainly because they are completely misunderstanding its depth. Even if Cummings were to resign (which looks increasingly unlikely) the hypocrisy at the heart of this could stick. But it probably won't.

Cummings has contempt for Tory MPs let alone the British public. In his Rose Garden Address one thing he said which went largely unnoticed revealed how he saw his position.
“It was obvious that the situation was extremely serious” he said referring to the pandemic crisis “I felt like I ought to return to work if possible, given I was now recovering, in order to relieve the intense strain at No. 10.” This, we should remember, was not a Cabinet Minister or even a scientist with specialist knowledge, but a hired political aide. Either he over-rates his own importance or as this statement makes clear he is central to Government decision-making: “I was involved in decisions affecting millions of people, and I thought that I should try to help as much as I could do.”

Dominic Cummings is clearly an abrasive character and has plenty of enemies (though not the scores he alleged were protesting outside his house) and he is on the extreme wing of Conservative ideology. But, if he were simply an advisor he would be sacked and another advisor found. But, he is not just an advisor that has become clear as Minister after Minister has prostrated themselves on national TV to retain his benevolence. If Johnson was Cummings choice as Conservative leader, then their political future is best served by retaining his support. And, “if a few pensioners die” along the way, as Cummings reportedly said, then so be it.

For those of us who believe in democracy, no matter how flawed, the gradual erosion of transparent decision-making and the ceding of power to unelected officials is deeply disturbing. At a time when it is pretty much impossible to take to the streets safely to protest we can only sign petitions and use social media to show our feelings. This may not yet be the death of democracy, but it lies fatally wounded.

Class wars

On Monday May 10th the British Government announced that schools in England could re-open from June 1st. The National Education Union (NEU) immediately said no they can' t. This led to the Daily Mail leading with the headline "LET OUR TEACHERS BE HEROES". The implication was that teachers were chomping at the bit to get back to work and the only thing stopping them was "militant" trade unions.

The narrative of teachers vs unions conveniently forgets that over 95% of teachers belong to a union. 450,000 + to the NEU alone. According to BESA there are 506,400 full-time teachers in the UK. Perhaps, its the non-unionised one's that the Daily Mail was referring to? But, that being the case how could a trade union prevent them going to work?

The Daily Mail, along with the rest of the establishment media, have been at the forefront of the "Clap our key workers" campaign. Mostly aimed at the "heroes" in the NHS, the media in its enthusiasm for getting teachers back to work might have noticed that key workers included teaching and nursery staff.

It is interesting that shortly after the announcement on 10th May, the Government web page was changed. It no longer lists key workers instead it is only concerned with schools and nurseries. Although it states:
“The definition of critical workers remains unchanged.
Our ambition is to bring all primary year groups back to school before the summer holidays, for a month if feasible, though this will be kept under review.”

The Government justify their decision on the basis that the R number is down. Teachers appear unconvinced, as do many parents. But, the message is that schools are safe. The only reason they cannot open is because teachers, specifically teaching unions, refuse to accept the science. The Daily Telegraph reports that:
”..confusion over whether it's safe to return to school has done great damage to trust between schools and parents and teachers“

Nowhere in the Telegraph's coverage is there room for even the slightest hint that teachers may have the best interests of their pupils at heart. Their coverage this week has been solely to continue what it has done throughout this crisis: propagandise on behalf of a Government that has lurched from crisis to crisis.

The simple fact is that there is no confusion. Teachers do not want to return unless its safe to do so. Many local authorities (11 at the last count, but probably many more) will not force English schools to re-open on June 1st. According to a survey carried out by UNISON, 96% of "support staff" are not convinced that it is safe to completely re-open schools.

The parents organisation PARENTKIND surveyed 250,000 of its members in early May. 25% said they were happy with a September return. 18% said they did not want a return until teachers felt it was safe. 10% did not want a return until teachers and pupils had received a, still non-existent, vaccine. To be fair, 23% were happy to return when the Government felt it was safe to do so.
According to The Sun:
“John Jolly, Chief Executive of Parentkind, said: “Overwhelmingly parents tell us that they do not want their children to go back to school until it is safe to do so, with most wanting clarity on when this could be. It is vital that parents’ voices are heard and shape government action.”“

In other words, contrary to what the Mail and Telegraph might have us believe it appears that the only people keen on a return to school on June 1st are the government, journalists and Katie Hopkins. It might be pointed out that the children of the ministers and journalists promoting this return to school are almost exclusively in private education, which remains closed until September.

Alistair Campbell tweeted the question "can anybody name a Government minister whose children are educated in a state school?" Fair question. According to the Daily Express Michael Gove responded with a "quick witted" and "brutal" reply- "Yes". However, he failed to name a single one. 

In February, the Sutton Trust reported that 65% of the current cabinet had attended fee paying schools. Its not unrealistic to propose that their children, plus some of those who came from a state school background, will be in private education. (My apologies for not being as quick witted or brutal as Gove, that is something us state educated lesser mortals can only aspire to.)

Around 7% of the population attend fee-paying schools. These schools are often called "independent", although they are entirely dependent on an elite of rich people to maintain their dominant position. Amongst newspaper columnists, some of whom vociferously support the establishment government, 44% ( according to the Sutton Trust) were educated privately.

What becomes obvious is that those most keen on state schools re-opening have no real knowledge or commitment to those schools. Their children, as far as we can tell, will be safely ensconced at home with private tutors and nannies to do the hard-lifting for their parents busy allowing the UK to become a Covid-19 wasteland.

What of the science? We hear much of the R number. Is it above or below 1? Is it going up or down? But, does anybody outside a tiny minority of theoretical epidemiologists actually understand how the R number is calculated? Yours (and my) future well-being is being decided on the basis of R, so it is important that we understand the science behind it. According to the BBC "R" is a simple number. Well, all numbers are simple particularly if they are expressed as whole numbers (1, 2,3 etc.) The Government claimed that R was 2. 6 in March, shortly before the lockdown was announced. It then fell to 0.7, when it was deemed politically acceptable (or perhaps expedient) to 'ease" the Lockdown (a decision incidentally though not coincidentally that was announced as the Treasury released figures suggesting the Lockdown night "cost" upwards of £123 billion), and has since risen to 0. 9.

All of this makes some sort of sense. When the R number was 2.6 every infected person, on average, infected a further 2.6 people. When it was 0.7 every infected person was infecting less than one other person. So, as the R comes down the number of people infected falls. The goal is to have an R of considerably less than 1, particularly where infection carries with it the risk of a very uncomfortable hospital visit or even death. But, even if R makes sense at this level, it still raises questions about exactly how it is produced.

According to the Government's website calculating R involves a complicated modelling procedure (which they conveniently do not explain). What they do tell us is that they are using multiple models providing a range of figures from 0.7 to 0.9. But, still no explanation of what variables are being input to arrive at this figure.

The BBC website includes the following information:
“Using data - such as the number of people dying, admitted to hospital or testing positive for the virus - allows you to estimate how easily the virus is spreading.”

This provides a little more detail but fails to explain what weighting is given to each, and, critically, how this data is crunched to arrive at 0.7, 0. 9, I or 2.6.

In a slight, but not unimportant twist we are now told that the R figure is not uniform across the UK but differs in different regions. Which would if true, be a good reason to ease the Lockdown in different regions at different times. This is certainly what happened in China and Italy. Apparently, the lowest R is in London, which a fortnight ago had a quarter of all Covid-related deaths in the UK. Forgive me for sounding cynical, but a figure that is too complicated to explain is being used to justify easing the lockdown and according to one model suggests that the largest city in the UK is virtually Covid-free, has just a hint of being politically useful to a Government desperate to prove how successful it has been. 

Forget the R number, the arguments for opening up schools have been based on a simpler statistic. Children have very little chance of catching Covid-19 and virtually no chance of dying from it.
This is the headline in Friday's Mail:
“Boost for schools reopening as biggest study of its kind finds children are 56% less likely to catch coronavirus than adults.”
The study conducted by University College London was according to the Mail:
“..the latest experts to throw their support behind Boris Johnson amid a furious row about English schools restarting in June.“

What is noticeable about this study is that it was not actually a study at all, but a review of existing studies mostly from countries which locked down far earlier than the UK, and all of which had contact tracing programmes which the UK does not. Furthermore, contrary to what the Mail claims the study authors never suggested that their study supported government policy. 

Although it was a large study the authors are rather more circumspect than the Mail claims. For the review, researchers screened 6,332 studies and identified 18 with useful data. Nine were contact tracing studies from China, Taiwan, Japan and Australia, eight were population-screening studies and one was a systematic review of small household cluster contact-screening.

Interestingly enough I am not aware that anybody, including teaching unions, has claimed that children were at high risk of dying from the disease. The debate has been about whether children can transmit the virus. Although, children may be less susceptible to the virus themselves nobody knows for sure if they can transmit it to others. The thing to remember here is that even if children have a low risk of transmission they are not the only one's in school. The teachers, teachers assistants, kitchen staff, administrators, caretakers and others are adults. And, the argument for children is that they are "low "risk not "no" risk.

There are, of course, already children in state schools. Teachers have been working with the children of key workers. The absence of a coherent test and trace regime means that we have no idea whether those children have passed the virus between themselves, or infected their teachers (or vice versa) or taken it home to their parents.

What we do know is that the more people in schools, the more likely it is that the virus will be transmitted. Whilst most people will survive the more the virus is free to circulate, the more likely it is to find those vulnerable to dying from it. That may not be children, or teachers or even the parents of those children but the grandparents or neighbours. For as night follows day we can be certain that opening schools will be followed by opening up more and more of the economy, including the hospitality and tourism sector which you probably know better as pubs and clubs . 

Ultimately, the opening up of schools is not a scientific issue, but a psychological one (my psychology friends will be devastated to find out they are not a science but there you have it). The so-called science, which policy is supposedly guided by is, to put it mildly, of dubious value. As members of the so-called science community have prostrated themselves before their Government paymasters, so science itself has become a political domain. But, in truth, it doesn't matter if every scientist in the UK sells their soul to Johnson and his team of incompetents, because the more "experts" the Government rallies to its cause, the more ordinary people will have to decide for themselves whether they "feel" at risk.

Feelings are often treated as soft, and if they emerge in political debate are swatted away in favour of hard, emotionless data. But people's feelings matter. If workers feel unsafe it is up to their employers to allay their fears, not employ the gutter press to berate them as cowardly. There is nothing more cowardly than Government ministers and so-called "journalists" whose own children are privately educated, demanding that those in the state sector take risks they are not prepared to take themselves.

Covid 19 remains a highly contagious, potentially lethal virus, for which there is no vaccine. The risks to some people may be relatively low, but they still exist. It is neither cowardly nor unpatriotic, nor militant for workers to say that their workplaces - be they schools, factories or offices - should be safe. It is absolutely correct for trade unions, who have a health and safety responsibility, to demand safe working conditions for their members.

Perhaps, the real issue here is not about schools at all, but how we as a society adapt to a World in which a lethal virus remains a constant threat. Throughout this crisis we have all said "when this is over" but what if it is never over? What if, like HIV, no vaccine is found? Then we need to think about how we educate children in a way that guarantees the safety of the children, their teachers and other workers. One possible solution is to accept that we can no longer have class sizes of 30+ children in state schools. In the long term that will mean more classrooms and more teachers. In the short term, it might mean children attending physically on a rota and investment in online learning for the remainder of the time. It will almost certainly mean testing children and staff on a regular (perhaps daily) basis, and isolating anybody and their families who shows signs of infection.

For now, it means backing workers and unions when they argue that they want their workplaces to be safe. In order to reduce the risk there has to be a rigorous test and trace regime. It really is time for politicians, journalists and scientists to stop quoting "risk" as if they were selling a lottery ticket. We are, literally, being asked to gamble our own and our children's lives on the basis of "scientific" models which are so obtuse nobody can adequately explain them. The real heroes here remain all the workers who have continued to work. These include teachers who are, despite what the Daily Mail thinks, already heroes. As ever we see a callous disregard for workers by a ruling elite who want the many to take the risk, so that the few can continue to make a profit.

Invisible Opposition

For those of us who are Labour members or supporters still coming to terms with the December election result, the leaked dossier and the election of, oh what was his name, watching an incompetent Government would be bad enough but watching innocuous opposition at a time when it is working class people taking the brunt of the crisis is infuriating as well as frustrating. 

We are told that Kire Stormer is “forensic”. In fact, he is so forensic that every mention of him by his adoring acolytes in his Shadowy Cabinet and the press has to include the word. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary the word forensic is an adjective meaning “related to scientific methods of solving crimes, involving examining the objects or substances that are involved in the crime” or “using the methods of science to provide information about a crime”. So, according to his disciples, we don’t just have a politician as Leader of the Opposition but a detective. What a pity Watson wasn’t still Deputy, what a team they would have made.

Where will the ball end up?

During his leadership bid Strimmer made much of his ability to hold Boris Johnson to account. There would be no missed open goals from him. Not only a detective but a pretty good footballer too, apparently. To be fair, he never used the open goal analogy but it was often thrown at Jeremy Corbyn by journalists who are now slavering over Detective Stormer. And, with the government in absolute disarray since the pandemic took them by surprise, there have been plenty of open goals beckoning, and if they’ve been missed by our forensic knight at least Piers Morgan has been getting the rebounds.

Whilst 55% of Labour supporters in the most recent LabourList survey were at least fairly happy with his leadership so far, 62% thought Labour had not been critical enough of the Government’s Covid-19 policy. There can be little doubt that the Government’s handling of the crisis has been shambolic, has ignored the science, and been far too slow. As figures emerge it would appear that the victims of the virus are overwhelmingly old, but there is a strong correlation with ethnicity and income in the younger victims. Many workers have died because their employers have not provided adequate protection. This includes at least 24 bus drivers in addition to over 100 NHS and care staff. These are goals that are wide open for the Labour leader to hold the government to account.

In the latest example of Government chaos on Sunday Boris Johnson made a televised address to the UK which was widely shared beforehand to the media. This led to headlines proclaiming Monday as the day we got our freedom back. It was as if staying at home to avoid catching and reproducing a fatal disease was some kind of plot to restrict our freedom to go to the pub or to visit our elderly (and, by definition, most at risk) parents. It is not just right wing, Brexit supporting nutcases who supported this notion but also left-wing Facebook pages were not without their fair share of, I hesitate to call them this but if the cap fits, conspiracy theorists. Look at Sweden they would say, they are not having a lockdown and their death rate is far below ours. Ipso facto, we were wrong to impose a lockdown and should follow the Swedes. Not the Germans or Kiwis though who had even lower death rates but had imposed strict lockdowns early on.

To stay home or stay alert?

The measures to ease the lockdown were farcical as the devolved nations decided to go their own way, and it was far from clear whether people were supposed to return to work on Monday or, as was stated by Dominic Raab the next day, on Wednesday. It was also unclear what was to happen to people’s kids given schools were to remain only partially open. Moreover, despite assurances that all workplaces would be “Covid secure” there is no legal obligation to actually do so in England, although the law is stronger in both Scotland and Wales. 

A YouGov survey taken after the announcement found that whilst 44% broadly supported the moves taken by the Government, there were marked differences between Labour and Conservative voters. In short, and hardly surprising, Tory voters are far more likely to support whatever the Government does no matter how incoherent. Whilst a third of Labour voters supported the easing over half were opposed. Interestingly enough, but perhaps just a reflection of voting demographics, support for a relaxation of the rules is greatest among the over 65’s, the group that is clearly at most risk from the virus.

The suspicion has to be that the Westminster Government is concerned that despite being one of the last countries to impose a lockdown it does not want to lose any economic advantages that might accrue from easing the lockdown. A number of countries are now removing their lockdowns, apart from Sweden which never had one, so it will be interesting to see whether they suffer a second wave as some scientists (who tend to know what they are talking about) have predicted. Nobody can know for certain whether there will be a second wave but scientists who work with infectious diseases have cautioned against removing the current restrictions too fast or too early. Though quite what too fast or too early might be is open to some interpretation.

Belgian virologist Guido Vanham, for example, whilst supporting the lifting of restrictions warns: “That is, of course, the risk if you lift the measures too early you can get a second wave.” Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,  says that even if it seems that the death rate is falling, that there could still be a lot of asymptomatic (meaning that they have the virus but show no signs) people out there who could spread the contagion even more rapidly in a second wave. As he puts it: “If we don’t put out all the flames, then we’ll have this smouldering number of people that will all be able to ignite outbreaks at once.” 

Meanwhile virologist and blogger, Rich Condit, cites modelling done by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington which suggests that if stringent social distancing measures are kept in place, the “first wave” of covid-19 disease in the US may subside by mid-June, with a total accumulation of ~93,000 deaths.  The IHME states that: “By end of the first wave of the epidemic, an estimated 97% of the population of the United States will still be susceptible to the disease, so avoiding reintroduction of COVID-19 through mass screening, contact tracing, and quarantine will be essential to avoid a second wave.” And, there is in this respect little difference between the US of A and Great old Britain, both with leaders who seem to think you can beat a virus by exhorting hyperbole. Admittedly, Boris Johnson has not yet suggested zapping the virus with bright lights or drinking detergent.

Speaking in the Commons on Monday Boris Johnson was very clear that the worst of the crisis was over, “our shared effort has averted a still worse catastrophe, one that could have overwhelmed the NHS and claimed half a million lives” he claimed. The context of this is that the UK has an official death count of over 33,000, the worst in Europe and the second worst in the World. Yet, in Toryworld this is a success because it could have been worse. In that sense the Charge of the Light Brigade can be counted as a success as only 110 soldiers were killed. 

The Labour leader might have taken the view that it was too early to ease the lockdown and stated that clearly. He might have pointed out that the UK was failing its own 5 tests, and he might have said that the party would support any worker or trade union which refused to work in unsafe workplaces. He might also have pointed out that it was, at least, debatable whether we had passed the worst of the crisis. These were open goals so tempting he should have taken the net off.

Johnson continued his “we’re winning” theme with his exhortation: “Our challenge now is to find a way forward that preserves our hard-won gains while easing the burden of the lockdown.” The problem is that the hard-won gains (only 33,000 dead and not the hypothetical 500,000) were, according to the experts, a function of the lockdown restrictions. What seems to be passing people by who are keen to regain their “freedom” is that Covid-19 remains a highly infectious disease with no vaccine. Nonetheless, Johnson and the majority of the media are relying on a plan that  “is conditional and dependent, as always, on the common sense and observance of the British people.” 

Lets get together and spread the virus party!

This is the same common sense that saw people mass buying toilet paper just a few weeks ago and now planning “freedom parties”. This was clearly an attempt to get the retaliation in early if things go pear-shaped. It will not be down to the Government but the lack of common sense shown by the public.

The end of the lockdown, and to be fair to Johnson he has stressed that everything is provisional, is really a return to economic life. It is as if the economic is not social and that making money is the only real reason any of us exist. For many white collar workers the lockdown has been an opportunity to work from home, but if you are a cleaner, or work in a shop, or in a factory, home working is difficult to say the least. So this advice would have sent shockwaves through a few households: “People who are able to work from home should do so, as we have continually said, and people who cannot work from home should talk to their employers about returning this week and about the difficulties that they may or may not have.”

The idea that people should just have a little chat with their employers assumes that relations between workers and bosses are somehow equal. But, at the heart of the employment process is an inequality based on the simple fact that one side has most of the power. This is only challenged when workers join together and organise themselves into trade unions, the very idea of which makes most Tories apoplectic.

As the Morning Star reported: “Workers in service jobs — carers, bus drivers, security guards, chefs and retail assistants, for example — have suffered higher rates of death linked to Covid-19 during the pandemic than other workers, and two-thirds of deaths were among men.” They quote RMT general secretary Mick Cash who said: “These figures are a sobering reminder that front-line bus and taxi workers across the country are being put at risk by the government’s failure to ensure that workers in these sectors are adequately protected from Covid-19.”

You might have thought, if not actually expected, the Leader of the Opposition to demand that workers are not sent back to workplaces unless it was safe to do so. Moreover, you would expect the leader of the party of organised labour to question whether workers rather than talk to their employers had their unions to speak on their behalf. But, if you had expected that you would be sadly disappointed.

In his response to the Prime Minister, there was no outrage and certainly no anger at the current situation. Rather, “One of the key issues is whether there will be guidelines in place to ensure the safety of the workforce.” That is what workers being asked to return to work needed “guidelines”, not even laws, but just guidelines. Forget that open goal were we even on the same pitch? But Sir Forensic had not finished: “Those guidelines were being consulted on last Sunday, but they were vague ​and had big gaps. Under protective equipment, it just said, “To be inserted” or, “To be added”. The document that I have now seen says that

“workplaces should follow the new ‘COVID-19 Secure’ guidelines”,

which I assume are the same guidelines, as “soon as practicable”, but on page 22 the document states that they will be released later this week.” 

Is that clear? This is what his supporters call being “forensic”. It means he has read the briefing with highlighter in hand. As Sienna Rodgers notes in her LabourList daily briefing: “Labour is a main opposition party, not a legal team advising the government.” Even Stephen Bush, a Starmer apologist and political editor of the New Statesman makes the point “It means that the class dimensions of the lockdown will become more stark: people who are able to work from home will continue to do so, while people who can't are being asked to take on a higher level of personal risk.”

The Socialist Campaign Group of Labour left MPs issued a statement which described Johnson’s plan as “a thinly veiled declaration of class war from a government that has chosen to put the economic demands of some sections of big business above the welfare of the country.”

Ethnic minorities more likely to die

The point surely is that the incoherence of the plan, and the reasoning behind it are not guided by the science but by the usual Tory dogma which ignores any evidence that contradicts its own narrow world view. On a day when it became public knowledge that people from BAME backgrounds were most likely to die along with those with the lowest incomes was it enough for the Labour leader to pick through a document as if he was a solicitor advising the board of a company on its new sexual harassment procedures? It’s not as if public opinion was widely enthusiastic for an end to the lockdown.

A survey carried out by the University of Cambridge’s  Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, found that 87% of their “representative” sample supported the lockdown continuing. As Gabriel Recchia says in a recent piece in The Conversation “If ministers’ proposals to end the lockdown sooner rather than later are arising partly from a perception that people are itching for an immediate end to the current policy, these concerns are misplaced.”

Of course, it is not public opinion that drives the Government, but the opinions of those closest to them. The truth is that public opinion is risk averse. A noisy minority supported by Tory cheerleaders in the press may give the impression that they want the lockdown over as soon as possible, but most people remain, understandably, more concerned about catching the virus than some false notion of “personal freedom”. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, the difference here is freedom from the virus versus freedom to become infected.

Perhaps what we would have liked the Leader of the Opposition to say to the Prime Minister in the Commons on Monday was something like:

“Does the Prime Minister recognise that the covid crisis has exposed grotesque levels of inequality in our society? His statement yesterday has given carte blanche to many employers to ​try to force people to come back to work, without proper consideration of their health and safety and the dangers they will suffer in travelling to work. Does he recognise that, while the death rate is so high and the reinfection rate continues, his statement will probably make the situation worse, not better? Will he reconsider carefully and not lift the restrictions and the lockdown until it is absolutely clear that we have the corona crisis under control? It is affecting the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society the worst, and I believe his statement will make the inequalities in this country even worse at the centre of this crisis.”

Labour is not the Tories legal team

But, under no real pressure from Labour dissidents Kire, Krie, or whatever his name is, does not just seem to see his role as a legal adviser, but is perfectly happy to let the Tories set the agenda. It is time to stop scrutinising every government document forensically (the Party should certainly do so, but it is a waste of PMQs) and start leading. Although many of his supporters will say, “but wasn’t he good on care homes?”, with The Guardian (rapidly turning into a Stammer (is that his name?) Fanzine, declaring “Keir Starmer presses Boris Johnson over care home deaths.” 

What Stormier actually did was ask a series of technical questions that one might expect at a Select Committee. He did not use his time at the dispatch box to raise the real issues facing people: PPE for health and care workers, ensuring that workplaces (in England) are safe, ensuring that employers cannot force people back to work, arguing for a financial settlement that allows people to live whilst they are furloughed etc. What we get is “I want to probe a little further the figures that the Prime Minister has given us.” Can somebody please remind Sir Eric Of Thingy that he is now leader of the Labour Party not a barrister building a case for how incompetent the Government are, a fact that is already well established.

As David Wearing points out on Novaramedia: “..instead of seriously holding Boris Johnson to account, Labour has served to relieve the pressure on him by colluding in the fiction that the Tories are doing their best, getting some things right and other things wrong, and in need of nothing more than a little constructive criticism.”

Please don't go

Should I stay or should I go, must be the most over-used reference to a Clash song since London Calling (a song about a nuclear catastrophe incidentally) was the backing music for almost every reference to the London Olympics. This time around it is the theme to debates amongst the left in the Labour Party with a number of people, including former MP Chris Williamson, arguing that the left project (if there ever was such a thing) within Labour is dead and that the only viable option is a new party of the left. I will state from the outset that it is my view that such a party is doomed to failure and for the time being the best place for anybody who wants to continue what Jeremy Corbyn started is in the same party of which he remains a member.

I should start by saying that I have no great emotional attachment to membership of the party. I have been politically active since 1983 and have spent far more time outside the Labour Party than in it. I joined for the second Jeremy Corbyn leadership campaign because I liked what he stood for and was disgusted with the behaviour of a PLP determined to put the left back in its box. But, for those staying because they are worried that there is a political wilderness outside the party I can assure you that does not need to be the case.

In fact, I can assure you that the nexus of left-wing activity will shift away from the Labour Party toward extra-parliamentary activity. That being the case retaining membership of the party does not have to preclude getting involved in local and national campaigns. If the coronavirus crisis ever ends, and that is by no means a certainty, then politics as normal will return. As I’ve said before the climate emergency is going nowhere, poverty has not been solved and will probably be exacerbated by a fresh round of austerity, and the anti-trade union laws still need repealing. At the same time social issues such as housing, domestic violence and the, sadly, ever-present racism are not going away.

For many people the Labour Party is seen as a socialist party that has been hijacked by liberals and careerists. This is not strictly true. In his ‘Arguments For Socialism’ Tony Benn makes the case that the Labour Party has always been a broad church. What this has meant in practice is that the party has allowed a left-wing element to thrive so long as it was a minority. 

What has rocked the Labour establishment to its core over the past three years has been the fear that Labour might transform into a socialist party in which the left was a majority not just of the members but of the PLP also. The leaked report shows clearly the abhorrence of those at the centre of the party to the very idea that the left might control the party’s future direction. Whilst what was so shocking to many about that report was the level of vitriol aimed at members, the leader and those closest to the leader, the real revelation was that the inner core of Labour was so virulently anti-socialist. This was not just a doctrinal difference but a deep-seated, irrational, hatred of the left. 

As Henry Pelling describes in his excellent, though quite dry, book ‘The Origins of the Labour Party’ the Party has had arguments about its purpose since day one. An alliance of trade unions, social reformers and Marxists was inevitably going to be a party built on convenient compromise. Even the original clause IV which is often held up as the commitment to socialism was, as Tom Blackburn has noted, a compromise which was drawn up by Sidney Webb as a fillip to the revolutionaries in Labour but to ensure that the party was never a party of Bolshevism. It’s commitment “to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the fruits of their labour” shows the paternalism of trade union leaders fearful of workers securing these things for themselves. Right from the beginning there has been a strong tendency within the Labour Party which saw their role as tempering the revolutionary instincts of the working class.

What’s more the majority of those at the top of the party never had any intention of implementing that clause in anything but the broadest terms. They remain however fully committed to the, often forgotten, Clause 1 which makes the Labour Party’s primary aim to maintain a parliamentary party. No reference to making it the government so the treacherous vipers at Millbank were not in breach of that rule, at least, when they were busy sabotaging our chances of electoral victory in 2017 and 2019. Not that it would have bothered them if they were.

The removal of Clause IV by the Blairites was largely symbolic for no Labour Government had ever tried to implement it anyway. For Blair it was a means to signal to the left that there was no room in the party for sentimental attachments to outmoded ideas. That if Labour was to put him in office and cement his place in history it had to be “electable” and that meant jettisoning ideas which the Labour establishment considered to be unpopular, and so the red flag was replaced by a red rose and the word socialism expunged in favour of social democracy. That so many fell for this trick once was, even with hindsight, a catastrophe for the left who became victims of the very party they had championed. That so many are falling for it a second time is an absolute tragedy.

The establishment within Labour always saw the party as a means to become part of the wider establishment not a means to challenge that establishment. It was the ideas of Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb rather than The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels that drove the party. As Ralph Miliband makes clear in ‘Parliamentary Socialism’ once the party had a presence in parliament it was soon absorbed into the mainstream of British politics, as a reformist party.

The adherence to the idea that the party is at its heart socialist is more a result of romanticism than an analysis of its actions over more than one hundred years. In essence, the Labour Party has always been the radical wing of liberalism. A current in British politics that champions the lower classes, that believes in state intervention, that is less complacent and judgemental than the Conservative Party certainly, but not a party of socialist revolution. To label the likes of Starmer, Reeves, Philips et al as Tory is a mistake. They are conservative certainly, but they also have a softly radical edge. The problem is that the closer they get to power their radicalism is shown to be without substance whilst their conservatism comes to the fore.

But, of course, you do not have to believe in revolution to be a socialist. There has always been a strong current on “the left” that advocates a gradualist approach to socialism. This is an approach that sees gaining “power” through elections as the road to socialism. Once in Government, so it is believed, the socialist party will be able to gradually reform away the worst excesses of the capitalist system. This socialism has nothing in common with Marx, and is based in a paternalistic socialism of people such as Robert Owen, and is often described as social democratic to distance it from revolutionary Marxism. The point being that what some describe as social democracy is a long way from the socialism imagined by generations of socialists and far closer to liberalism than many of its supporters would admit.

When Jess Philips declares herself to be a socialist this is what she means. Not a radical change, though I’m sure she would support it if she thought it was viable and would get her on the cover of Time, but a paternalistic social liberalism that wants to help the poor and the abused rather than have them help themselves. You might wonder, and if you are fully committed to the Labour Party have to wonder, what is wrong with that?

The problem is fairly obvious. Over one hundred years of social democracy has brought advances for working people, but what it has not done is alleviate poverty or challenged a social system that has inequality wired into its DNA. Indeed, the number of people in poverty has increased at the same rate as the gap between the richest 5% and the rest has widened. Over time the establishment has become more desperate and more vicious as the inevitable economic cycle of boom and bust has shorter booms and ever more catastrophic busts.

At no point in its history did the Labour Party have debates which mirrored those of Bernstein and Luxemburg in the German SDP, which spurred Luxemburg to write her booklet ‘Reform Or Revolution’, in which she favoured the latter. There was never any serious attempt for the Labour Party to be anything other than a capitalist supporting party. Of course, in supporting capitalism it was to be a nicer and more worker-friendly capitalism, but it was still to be capitalist. The issue for Labour has never been reform or revolution, but rather how much reform was acceptable to a wider electorate that were not socialist by inclination. Indeed, since the 1990’s the issue has not really been one of what was acceptable to electors, but rather what was acceptable to the media and the establishment. That tendency was disrupted only fleetingly by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. And, now it is very much business as usual.

You might think, therefore, that my conclusion must be to leave the party. But, at the moment that is not, in my opinion, the best option, although to be fair it would not be my first such leaving. I gave up on Labour following the miners strike and Neil Kinnock’s attacks on Militant. What is the difference from the aftermath of the miners strike, you might ask? Well, what is the same is that being defeated by a combination of the establishment and traitors within tastes no less bitter. But, there are important differences.

In 1985 the party had around 200,000 members (though accurate figures are hard to come by) and the networks of miners support groups up and down the country had absorbed the majority of the left who, as now, were totally demoralised. The Labour Party now has over 500,000 members and viable networks of activists connected via social media. Many of that 500,000 are engaged in politics for the first time in their lives. Many of them are young activists who having tasted defeat within the party are desperate for success. They are not leaving any time yet. Yes, those members have just handed the party back to the right without putting up much of a fight, but even now some of those who supported Starmer are beginning to realise that what attracted them to the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn was the leader has already gone. Jeremy’s support for internationalism, his compassion, his genuine concern for the disadvantaged, his democratic impulse, all of which endeared him to thousands of new members doesn’t simply hang by a thread. The thread is being cut with a kitchen knife, whilst its wielder, the man who conspired to develop a policy that led to the party’s defeat, declares it was all his predecessor’s fault. 

I am staying in the party, for now, because it is the right thing to do. Those of us who believe in socialism as a viable project must be there to keep raising the awkward questions, to question the leadership, to put pressure on our elected representatives. As a friend of mine was keen on saying: “MPs are like prams, they only going as far as you push them.” You can’t push from outside the party. But, more importantly, all those people newer to politics and who have inspired so many of us with their enthusiasm deserve us to stay and fight alongside them for the policies they joined to support. We may lose. That is a definite possibility, but if we don’t fight we lose anyway.

Of course, some of the people remaining in Labour are doing so because they believe that Starmer will deliver electoral victory. But it is not just his betrayal of Jeremy Corbyn that will see Starmer disappointing anybody who joined the party because they believed it was socialist. There is no doubt at all that in order to be electorally popular Starmer will accommodate policies that are, essentially, Tory-lite. He is already back-tracking on conference decisions that he thinks will put off the electorate. Because, it is well known that when people go into the ballot box in the UK, Kashmir and Palestine are uppermost in their minds. The fact is that jettisoning policies that Starmer knows are popular with the left, is akin to the decision by the Blairites to get rid of clause IV. It is a signal to the left that their days are gone. The party is under new management, so withholding your subs is not likely to bring the party to its knees, as they don’t want you as a member anyway. 

The strategy is to emulate the Blair years. This will include making Labour bland, uncontroversial and not pursuing “opposition for opposition’s sake”. We have been here before. And, for a while the strategy worked. Unlike in 1997, however, the Tories are not in any likelihood of losing popular support. Their handling of the current crisis may be abysmal and has undoubtedly cost lives but the most partisan media ever, particularly the BBC, will ensure that most people will believe that the loss of 30-40,000 lives is a success. At the same time they will get Brexit done.

Again, all of this points in the direction of leaving the party. So, why stay? The answer depends on whether, like the Labour Party itself, you are committed to parliamentarism. There is little or no chance that a small left-wing party outside of the Labour Party can break through the current electoral system to win any seats. At best it might have some success and get the odd councillor, but even that is a long shot. When people say ‘what about the Brexit Party or Macron in France?’, they conveniently forget that both these parties were establishment to the core.

The Communist Party, the oldest established left party in the UK, has not returned a single MP since 1945. The various Trotskyist parties have not managed any MPs apart from times when they could stand as Labour candidates. The vote share of all the parties to the left of Labour has not exceeded 1% nationally in any post-war election. In 2015, the most successful left party was George Galloway’s Respect which gained 9,989 votes, no seats and partly because George got bored with it, split shortly after. Socialist Labour, led by Arthur Scargill got 3,481 votes and no seats, but by 2017 could only manage 1,154 votes. There were various other left-wing parties none of which gained more than 1,000 votes (apart from the Communist Party with 1,229). The point is that each of these small parties had a small membership who had to work so much harder than the mainstream parties for every vote. Whilst some of them were just trying to raise the issues and did not expect to win, those advocating a new party formed by the disenchanted left from Labour, have every intention of not only replacing Labour but of winning. That is the folly.

It’s not that a party of the left could never break through the electoral system, but the conditions in which that could realistically happen would have to be so extreme that parliamentary elections would probably be the last thing on our mind. For the foreseeable future any party to the left of Labour is doomed to electoral failure. The problem is not failing to get elected so much as the amount of effort that gets put into that failure.

That brings us back to the Labour Party. Surely, it could be argued, if it is a waste of time putting effort into left-wing candidates outside of Labour then the same holds true for right wing candidates within Labour? This point I wholeheartedly concede. I refused to canvass for what turned out to be a winning Labour candidate in December, and if that person is still the candidate come the next election I certainly will not be giving up my time to foster their career. Indeed, unless I have a change of heart I will not vote for them either. I won’t vote for anybody else but I won’t vote for a candidate who clearly despises me and everything I stand for.

But, we should not forget that the Labour Party still holds an attraction for millions of people who have no interest in left or right, or whether this faction is more pure than that faction or, if we are honest, much interest in politics at all. Some 10 million of them voted Labour last December despite the onslaught of negativity created by the media and right wing. This support for an avowedly left wing manifesto is conveniently forgotten by a Labour establishment rewriting history to present December as the worst result of all time. As the Electoral Reform Society point out the Conservatives only gained 1.3% on their vote but gained an additional 48 seats.

Inside Labour the left have an opportunity to engage voters who retain their allegiance to Labour in much the same way they stay loyal to a football team despite a change of managers. And, in the same way sports fans don’t change their teams because they go through a bad patch, voters tend to remain loyal to the political party they have always supported. And, to stretch the analogy to breaking point, when a team performs poorly fans stay away but most of them do not switch allegiance to another team. 

Being political does not depend on membership of any particular political party. It is my decision currently to spend some of the time I devote to politics on the Labour Party. It costs me less than £1 a week to maintain my membership. Frankly, that is loose change. And, I do realise that not everybody can say that. Being a member does not mean I endorse everything the leadership says. It never has. But, retaining membership gives me an opportunity to vote for and support left-wing candidates. It allows me to talk to other members, some of whom share my views. It allows me to, at least, try to influence the policies. It commits me to nothing beyond that.

The point about staying is not that the left can only operate within the Labour Party. That has never been true. Most people on the left will also be trade unionists and members of other organisations or campaigns. But that outside the party we are, by definition, engaging a far more narrow range of people. That said, I understand those who want to leave and personally will continue to work alongside them where it is possible to do so. Allegiance to the Labour Party is a strategic position not a principle. So, if you choose to leave or stay I will still speak to you and this blog will still welcome your readership.