liberation

Voter turnout and disillusionment in the UK election

The most bizarre thing about the recent British general election was how a campaign could be both fascinating and boring at the same time. There was definitely something interesting going on, partly due to the closeness of the race and partly just because it amounted to the end of an era in electoral politics. But it was also dreadfully dull – with the various political parties being more bland than ever, and the austere policies of Labour, Lib Dems and Tories converging into an unattractive centre. It’s not surprising therefore that despite the heightened public interest in the campaign, voter turnout didn’t improve much at all. In fact, the real winner of the campaign was “The Abstention Party” – due to the fact that more of the electorate choose not to vote than the numbers that voted Conservative. [Read more below]

The politics of football

A recent Guardian article entitled Anyone want to play on the left?, asked whether footballing socialists are becoming an almost extinct breed in the UK and beyond? Sport and politics don't always have to go together of course, as the article admits: 'This is only football, after all. It doesn't have to mean anything. But it's usually much more fun when it tries.' In particular, it argues that 'Historically, football's politics, such as they are, have tended to loiter on the left wing', but the modern marketised model has meant that 'the working man's ballet' may be turning into 'the middle-class man's ballet'. [See more below]

What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

Political journalism is just about dead. In New Zealand we have very little informative and critical journalism to help us see what lies below the world of surface appearances (especially with the ongoing cuts in journalism). That's why it worth trying to see the fascinating documentary series entitled The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom by Adam Curtis, which has just screened on the BBC in the UK. This three-party series explores the dominant anti-collective ideology that views human beings as selfish, mistrustful, isolated individuals and which has been incredibly influential on politics and general life in the west since the end of the cold war. [Read more below].

[political finance] Party finance reform in the UK - more of the same

Party politics in the UK is about to undergo a 'radical overhaul' of its system of party finance, but the mechanisms used will be just 'more of the same'. These reforms could have significant influence on the NZ system, which in parallel shares many of the problems and weaknesses of the UK system and is also facing imminent reform. Some analysis of the proposed UK reforms is therefore of some importance to NZ - and shows that, as usual, reform is being directed in a way that will once again simply favour party hierarchies and make party politics even more divorced from civil society. [READ MORE BELOW]

2008 NZ election to be fought on the environment

With the significantly narrowing differences between the political parties in Parliament, next year's election will be based around few political issues. Issues of race and the economy will be of decreasing importance in debate, as the parties agree on the issues more than ever. And although there is significant agreement on combating climate change, it is likely to be the key issue being fought over. Certainly in the UK, this is the central issue in politics at the moment. The Independent - as well as all the other UK papers - reports that global warming is clearly becoming the main battleground for the three main parties, with the leaders 'all placing unprecedented emphasis on the environment'. Gordon Brown has called for a 'new world order' to combat climate change, while the Tories have announced plans for 'pay as you burn' taxes on aviation to curb air travel. Labour's Peter Hain has even called for a ban on stand-by buttons on appliances. "Green speak" is raging across the political spectrum, but mostly amounts to the same banal 'clip-on environmentalism' seen in NZ.

[political finance] British loans to parties - and the payoff

In the wake of the 'cash-for-honours' scandal in the UK, the Electoral Commission has revealed that the Labour Party has loans of £23.4m and the Tories of £35.3m. These revelations come after the scandal forced the Government to amend the electoral laws so that all loans above £5000 to party head offices and loans of £1000 to local offices, have to be declared. The police are also about to end their investigation into the scandal. Apparently, in 1993 - when the Tories were in power - research showed that 'although only 6.2% of British companies gave money to the Tories between 1979 and 1992, 50% of peerages and knighthoods for "services to industry" went to the executives of Conservative donors". Now with Labour in power, '58.54% of all donors giving more than £50,000 to the Labour party receive an honour.' Yet again it seems that parties in power are able to use the levers of honours and peerages to gain financial favour for themselves.

[political finance] Electoral law is 'victor's justice', not fairness

Rather than being about fairness, electoral law is often nothing more than "Victor's Laws" - written and implemented in the interests of the ruling political parties. A good example of this can be seen in today's news that the British Labour Government is intending to 'push through legislation which will put strict caps on the amount parties can spend on national and local election campaigns' because the Labour Party 'is ridden with debt' and fears 'that the Tories are preparing to outspend Labour', according to the Guardian report, Labour plan to ambush Tories on funding.  According to one Labour source, 'We have to act. The Tories already have their candidates in place in the marginals.... So far as the Tories are concerned, the election campaign is already under way. We cannot afford to leave things as they are.' Such examples make it obvious that parties in government use their access to the levers of electoral law to benefit themselves and disadvantage their opponents.

UK Conservatives tilt left; voters get cynical

The Conservative Party in the UK continue their attempts to outflank New Labour in the political centre by updating their social policy. Greg Clark, a shadow minister and confidant of David Cameron, is calling on the Tories to make poverty and inequality central issues and ditch the party's 'out of date' ideas about welfare. He wants the party to be less influenced by the old ideas of Winston Churchill and listen more to the liberal Guardian newspaper's leader social commentator. Meanwhile, former Tory Chairman and marketing guru, Lord Saatchi, has published a pamphlet entitled In Praise of Ideology, in which he says people are losing faith in politics because there is so little difference between the parties: 'The pragmatism of the centre ground turns politics into a commodity market - because pragmatism leads to opportunism, which leads to cynicism.' He says that the failure of young people to vote is a rational reaction, and we now have a 'super-cynical electorate' precisely because of the search for the centre ground.

Vast majority of Brits fear Bush and oppose Iraq war

75% of British voters think George Bush is a great or moderate danger to world peace, according to a new Guardian poll. It's interesting that Bush is more feared than either Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And 69% believe US policy has made the world less safe since 2001. In terms of Iraq, 71% now say the invasion was unjustified. Similar opinions were also found amongst Canadians and Mexicans.

Labour parties in decline

With the Labour Party in New Zealand slipping to 13 points behind National in the latest TV One News poll, it's interesting to note that here in Britain the latest Guardian poll puts the British Labour Party at their lowest point in 20 years, with only 29% support. Although voters are very positive about their National Health Service, it's interesting that only 25% think the NHS has improved under Labour, while 30% think it's got worse and others think they've made little difference. While Labour has doubled the NHS budget, only 14% believe this money has been well spent - much has gone into private firms. Note also, that Labour has moved further to the right in adopting a xenophobic and unworkable ban on Bulgarians and Romanians (both now in the EU) working in Britain.

John Pilger: The return of people power

John Pilger's latest column on The Return of People Power outlines some of the popular resistance movements in action around the world. In particular he points to the fast growing mass resistance movements throughout Latin America that are now overshadowing the traditional parties. Also in Lebanon he points to the fact that a strong part in seeing off the invasion by Israel was the fact that civilians acted in defiance of the land invasion and returned from refugee camps to their southern Lebanon towns as the Israeli army advanced. Pilger says that 'Here in the west, as people abandon the political parties they once thought were theirs, there is much to learn from resistance movements'. He also refers to recent polls that show the sea-change in public opinion is happening in places like Britain, especially in regard to Blair and the Labour Party: 'No less than 80 per cent regard him as a liar; 82 per cent believe his warmongering was a principal cause of the London bombings; 72 per cent believe he has made this country a target.' And 'More than three-quarters of the population believe Brown and Blair have merely made the rich richer'.

Pilger also corrects some un-truths in the reporting of the resistance in Iraq:

In Iraq, in contrast to the embedded lie that the killings are now almost entirely sectarian, 70 per cent of the 1,666 bombs exploded by the resistance in July were directed against the American occupiers and 20 per cent against the puppet police force. Civilian casualties amounted to 10 per cent. In other words, unlike the collective punishment meted out by the US, such as the killing of several thousand people in Fallujah, the resistance is fighting basically a military war and it is winning.

[political finance] British Labour Party funding

In the UK - as in NZ - the Labour Party has been the wealthiest political party in recent years. Recent party funding figures suggest that this might be changing. The latest donation disclosure figures are out (for April-June), which show the Liberal Democrats got £783,000, Labour received £3.4m, and the Tories got £5.9m. According to the Guardian's David Hencke this represents a sea change taking place in British politics, although he says that all the main parties still play the role of representing billionaires rather than ordinary people.

Also of interest in the latest figures is the amount of debt that the parties have. Labour now owes £28m. No wonder it is selling honours. One of the strangest donations the 'chardonay socialist' party received was £5,927 for bottle-openers.

Peter Wilby has written a good opinion piece entitled Business wields more power over Labour than the unions ever did in which he argues that business now controls the party system destroying the setup whereby unions financed one party and business the other. He says that business actually prefers Labour to be in power:

A business-friendly Labour government is preferable to a business-friendly Tory government - even if a Labour one isn't quite as friendly - because it removes any threat of power falling to a hostile party.

I'm sure the same could be said in New Zealand.

All is not well with our world

In the UK there's recently been a lot of talk about "happiness", the fact that there is significant levels of personal and social malaise around, and the need for greater provision of therapists. As a counter to this, Paul Moloney, a psychologist, argues in the Guardian that what makes us most miserable is poverty and work. His opinion piece is one of the few decent attempts I've seen to put the unhappiness debate in a more political context. He challenges the mainstream view that 'the causes of psychological distress lie in the way that we see the world, not in the way that it is'.

The real threat we face is Blair

Tony Blair is a war criminal - says the latest John Pilger column about the alleged plot to blow up airliners leaving London - and he's the real threat to the British people.

Tory terrorists?

On the Guardian website, Brenden O'Neill argues that radical political Islamists sound a lot like Daily Mail-reading Little Englanders. O'Neill correctly points out that 'both are suspicious of modernity, both view the masses as lazy and vulgar, and both wish to turn the clock back to simpler, more humble times.' A very interesting opinion piece, with a lot of good debate to follow it.