I am a Socialist

Ed Miliband admitted live on BBC Radio 5 this morning that he is a socialist. Ever since, the news agenda has been exploring what he meant. Most people who follow British politics will know that Ralph Miliband, Ed’s father, was certainly a socialist. A true advocate of Marxism.

Even in the few seconds allotted to him on the radio, Ed Miliband managed to state that he doesn’t agree with his father’s vision of socialism. Ed’s father would be talking about the implementation of socialism requiring a working-class revolution, the government being controlled by the working-class and seizing all assets of production… and private property. Essentially creating an even distribution of wealth and work throughout the entire society.

It’s obvious that Ed Miliband is not advocating this form of socialism when he claims to believe in socialism. He is obviously believing in a sense of fairness in the interaction between the government and the citizen, the helping hand, the fair deal. If this is so obvious – that the modern-day left-wing interpretation of socialism by the Labour party is not quite the firebrand socialism of the past – then how come it’s taken over the media agenda today?

Open all hours Member of Parliament

With the expenses scandal last year and the hung parliament this year, not to mention the national disillusionment with the leadership of New Labour, it’s no surprise that many people doubt that their own MP ever gives value for money, or is even possible to reach. But I noticed a facebook status update today by my former MP Virendra Sharma, that made me smile.

Virendra is MP for Ealing Southall, which was my constituency until the boundaries were redrawn at the 2010 election – so I now live in the Ealing central constituency.

Virendra has just arrived in India on a business trip where he is meeting local government officials. He has posted on his facebook the address where he is staying and his mobile phone number just in case anyone wants to get in touch while he is away.

MPs still attract a lot of criticism about being removed from reality, so it’s refreshing to see that one local MP is happy to remain open all hours.

1984 all over again

It’s time for an emergency budget! Stop spending on everything!

Since the election in May and the formation of the coalition government there has already been two rounds of spending cuts – a quick announcement of £6bn of savings and a more recent tranche of £2bn.

But as we borrowed something like £180bn last year, this emergency budget is going to go deeper then anything anyone in the UK can remember – probably this is going to be harsher than the early 80s with Thatcher.

Yet I get a sneaking suspicion that the present government wants to whip up this feeling that times are hard so they can facilitate cuts right across the public sector, in the same way the public can support a war when they think there is an imminent threat of attack.

It’s a disaster. The previous lot were all wrong and don’t blame us for the cuts. It’s all their fault!

Apple sweatshops

Apple manufactures many of their products in China.

Labour costs in China are far lower than in Cupertino, California.

None of this is news. In fact, every time you open a shiny new Apple box the first statement that greets you is ‘Designed by Apple in California’ with the ‘Assembled in China’ statement hidden away at the bottom of the box – but it is still there and visible.

What is news is that Apple boss Steve Jobs is fighting off claims that workers in factories assembling the iPhone are living in such poor conditions that there is a far higher than normal suicide rate amongst workers – Apple contractor FoxConn has had 13 suicides or attempted suicides this year alone.

Entry-level Foxconn workers earn about £90 a month. The company has responded to recent criticism by offering workers a 30 per cent hike in their salary so they can apparently enjoy more of their leisure time.

I find it hard to believe that a company that it so obsessed with image as Apple would be using contractors that employ people in ‘sweat-shop’ conditions. The Foxconn employees have access to company-sponsored medical facilities, restaurants, and leisure facilities such as a cinema and swimming pools.

But this episode raises the ‘No Logo’ debate on working conditions in China once again – and that fight was from a decade ago. When Naomi Klein documented the slave labour being used to stitch together expensive brand-name training shoes it shone a light on the squalid secret that manufacturers had hidden for years, that they could pass off their responsibilities for employees to contractors. It was because of that furore that most commentators on international business believed it could not happen again – no company would be so stupid as to use contractors that don’t treat their staff in a fair and humane way?

So has Apple been caught out?

I don’t think so. It’s true, the suicides are worrying. Why should so many people at a single firm be killing themselves, and how can that firm be so quick to offer a 30 per cent salary increase when criticised?

But nobody should forget that us in Europe and the USA are often guilty of judging other countries by our own standards. It’s true that I would not find the working conditions in a Shenzhen factory attractive. It might be clean and safe, with a cinema and pool, but the company expects me to work 12-hours a day, 6 days a week, and they want me to live at the factory.

I find it hard enough to consider commuting to an employer, let alone living at their factory.

But ask someone suffering the grinding poverty of rural China. The real China. The ninety per cent of China’s land mass to the west of the rich Eastern strip. Ask those people if they are prepared to work hard to earn some money at a rate that is probably ten times what they are surviving on, and with accommodation provided. What do you think many of them will do?

The Chinese manufacturing miracle is largely driven by these villagers who are improving their lives by working and earning rather than living in poverty. It might not seem much to you and me, but those employees are going to ensure that the money they earn allows their kids do better.

And that’s why China is going to be one place the Americans need to really understand this century. Who can remember when Americans worked hard and ensured their kids had a better future? Perhaps the boom years of Clinton and Bush has made us in the West lose all sense of perspective.

Birds of prey hovering over Downing Street?

I loved the ornithology section on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House yesterday. Take a listen on the iPlayer, it’s in the final 5 or 10 minutes of the programme.

Do you remember the Cameron / Clegg love-in on the lawn last week? While they were speaking to the press in the garden of 10 Downing Street, there was a lot of bird noise in the background. BH got an ornithologist to identify them.

The noisiest bird was a Robin – the red of Labour trying to ruin the press conference – but what was really interesting was that he identified a Kestrel. Kestrels hover around over their prey before swooping in for the kill. Did the Miliband brothers send it swooping over the garden that sunny day?

What is Clegg doing? The answer is Mandelson!

This is the Mick Jagger election. None of the parties are getting any satisfaction.

Yet, even though he failed to win as many seats as expected, Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems are now the kingmakers.

He promised to talk first to whoever had the most seats – the Tories – but why would he really take that idea seriously now? The Tory MPs will not want to work closely with the Lib Dems and the Lib Dems I have been reading online are all horrified that there may now be a partnership with Cameron.

It’s a recipe for disaster and Clegg must surely realise this.

Perhaps it is why he is now playing hardball with his demands. As he entered talks with party officials today, Nick Clegg made a statement saying he has four big priorities: 1. Fair tax reform 2. Education 3. Approach to the economy 4. Political reform to the electoral system

I think he might be able to reach agreement with the Tories on points 1 and 2 as their manifesto pledges are not miles apart there, but Clegg has very open views on how to run the economy and it is through transparency and devolving power from the treasury. Plus he wants a root and branch reform of the electoral system, to introduce a system of proportional representation – consigning the first-past-the-post system to history.

The Prime Minister is extremely weak right now. Clegg could do a deal with Labour that gives him control over all four issues and become a reform parliament. Labour and the Liberal Democrats could join together to lead as a minority government, or they could bring the nationalists into the fold – who would almost certainly join a coalition if money was thrown to their regions.

If Clegg could boot out Brown and announce a reform government with an interim Prime Minister (Mandelson or Johnson?) and Vince Cable running the economy then I think a lot of Labour and Lib Dems would be happier than getting into bed with the Tories. And if the focus is on electoral and economic reform then they could pledge to call a new general election as soon as the electoral system is ready for change – let’s say after one year.

One year down the line, with a PR voting system, the Liberal Democrats would stand a very high chance of getting real power – with a lot more seats.

Clegg could get a lot more of his own MPs into parliament, totally reform the electoral system, get his man running the economy, and keep British politics generally focused on liberal values by kicking the Conservatives out for a generation.

So why is he still talking to Cameron?

Brown is now a spectator

Gordon Brown has said that he will wait to see if the Tories and Lib Dems can reach a deal. He offered to be there to talk to either leader if they wanted to come to him.

Nick Clegg is now the kingmaker – even though his party only won around half the seats they had hoped for. The electoral landscape in the UK is shifting like quicksand today.

Can Clegg do a deal with the Tories? His party really won’t like it, but he promised to talk first to the party with the most seats… that does not mean the deal is done. The Tories and Lib Dems won’t be able to reach a formal coalition as their manifestos are so far apart, but they could reach an agreement on where to cooperate, agreeing to disagree on the rest or to plan some managed reform on issues they disagree on.

Clegg said he doesn’t want to do a deal with a damaged Labour party, but Brown has offered genuine electoral reform.

If Clegg can’t agree a deal with Cameron then perhaps the most likely outcome now is that Clegg will side with the Labour party, forcing a new Prime Minister with a Lid Dem Chancellor – with a focus on a complete reform of the electoral process and a plan to run a new general election within two years… Allowing the Liberal Democrats to win a lot more seats using a more proportional voting system.

But the bottom line is, it’s all out of the Prime Minister’s hands now. He is just a spectator.

Is immigration ‘a good thing’?

Gordon Brown is in trouble today. A woman complained to him about the number of immigrants coming into the UK… a familiar complaint he has heard many times before, but this time he made a private comment about her in his car just after the event – calling her a ‘bigoted woman’ – and Sky News had left their radio microphone on his suit… so the private comments were recorded and replayed to the world.

It was a private comment, and many would credit Brown with telling the frank truth, but Sky can’t be blamed for using the material – any broadcaster would love to have an indiscretion like this on record.

But is the woman just reflecting what the majority think, and is the Prime Minister reacting in a liberal left way – horrified that someone might criticise those from another country, or race, or faith?

The immigration question is one of the hardest for our politicians to deal with because they never seem to quite get it right. The Labour party at present has made it almost impossible for unskilled workers to enter the UK, encouraged people with specific skills to come using the Highly Skilled Migrant Worker programme, simplified visa approvals using a points-based system, and made it far harder for foreign students to work and overstay their visa.

When you list the measures Gordon Brown has presided over, it looks quite tough on immigrants, but the public perception is that Johnny Foreigner continues to flood into the country. The reality is that immigration is reducing – mainly because of the economic downturn and fragile recovery – but again, why ruin perception with reality?

So, is the problem just that nobody trusts politicians anyway?

This is really the power of the BNP and UKIP. They don’t behave like ‘normal’ politicians and they focus on the immigration and ‘foreigner’ issues. UKIP has pledged to ban immigration for five years if they had any power over legislation, the BNP has been watering down the racist content of their manifesto, but they still appear to actively favour repatriation of migrant workers.

These parties are getting considerable support with their extreme views, and that’s really because of a failing by the major three parties to be seen to be doing something. Brown has argued this point on all the genuine changes he has made to the system. Clegg has argued that we need a better understanding of who is here illegally – potentially leading to an amnesty because that would not change the number of people working, but it would mean they pay tax. Cameron has argued for an absolute cap on immigration numbers by skills.

All three of the major parties have ideas on immigration, but they are all essentially failing to communicate the positive values of welcoming people – with skills – to Britain. The skills that help the British economy to succeed – and therefore allows us to live in a prosperous nation far richer than a population of 60m would suggest.

They are also failing to explain the different types of immigration; what is a refugee, what is an asylum seeker, what is a highly-skilled migrant… and the freedom of labour movement within the 27-nation European Union. All these issues are entirely confused in the arguments of the ‘bigot’… that’s not implying that those who oppose immigration are stupid, but any debate on immigration has to focus on the real issue that concerns them: Are people coming in and taking work from locals?

If that is what people perceive then the mainstream parties need to show that it is not the case, or what they intend to do about it, and they need to do this in a way that people believe. The Prime Minister has a good grasp of facts, but when he reels off stats about this and that, the public switch off and ask why the corner shop sells Polish food. Without once realising that the Polish shop down the road was a Punjabi shop twenty years ago.

The major politicians need to explore why normal people are so attracted by the BNP on this issue, why normal people don’t see any value from the European Union – they just see it as Eastern European workers coming to take jobs, and why a caring and tolerant society like the UK should close the shutters to those not born here.

Leader Debates, round two

So it’s time for the second leader debate tomorrow. This one should focus on international affairs, so it’s likely Gordon Brown will be on the defensive when talking about Afghanistan, Iraq, and the “special” relationship with the USA.

But Brown should have been on the back-foot in the first debate on domestic policy, yet Clegg’s style and Brown’s substance somehow combined to force Cameron into a box. The Conservative leader was most popular when talking on the ‘British jobs for British workers’ immigration debate and that causes an issue for the Tories. They have consistently tried playing to the middle-ground in an effort to win back the Conservative voters who deserted the party for the New Labour project, but if he feels support is coming from sounding tougher, harder right, and less empathetic, then what can he do?

Those views will resonate with old-school Tories, and probably the party membership. But he won’t win the election by sounding like Michael Howard used to. Especially when Cleggmania means the Lib Dems are now on a charm offensive with Vince Cable already the most trusted politician in the UK.

Clearly, with the present first-past-the-post voting system, there is no chance of a Lib Dem majority, but a surge in support for Clegg means we are aiming for another Labour government (if Lib Dem support is mainly poached from Tory areas) or a hung parliament in which a Lab-Lib coalition will carve up power between them.

Whatever your politics, this has to be the most closely-fought and exciting British political battle in a generation. And it’s all over the TV and Internet in a way that was not imaginable at even the most recent general election. I’ll be blogging the debate live for Reuters, so lookout on their politics page for my comments as the leaders speak…

…and they’re off!

As expected, the government are calling the election today.

It was something of an open secret anyway, but now that it’s really happening it feels exciting that the race is going to start in earnest. There is just a short month now until the election on May 6. I’m going to start planning for a relaxing day on May 7, after what promises to be a nail-biting finish. The end of New Labour, a surprise retention of power, or a hung parliament. I can’t remember it ever being this uncertain…