Labour Vote takes a Walk.

Perhaps the most disheartening, yet unsurprising result of the recent Euro elections in the UK is the election of two BNP Euro MP's. Disheartening as their share of the vote increased marginally relative to the collapse in support for the Labour party.

This, not the BNP is the real story of the Euro elections with the New Labour calculus that the great unwashed have nowhere else to go, returning to bite them where it hurts. Labour's party machine has atrophied and their campaign apparently disorganised and ineffective. The traditional Labour vote has unsuprisingly sat on it's hands and stayed at home.

As a libertarian lefty outsider it does seem amazing that Labour high command failed to spot this draining of support and do something about it. Even if you take a base machine politics view of the debacle, the lack of GOTV is puzzling and does not bode well for a general election.

Labour Vote takes a Walk.

Perhaps the most disheartening, yet unsurprising result of the recent Euro elections in the UK is the election of two BNP Euro MP's. Disheartening as their share of the vote increased marginally relative to the collapse in support for the Labour party.

This, not the BNP is the real story of the Euro elections with the New Labour calculus that the great unwashed have nowhere else to go, returning to bite them where it hurts. Labour's party machine has atrophied and their campaign apparently disorganised and ineffective. The traditional Labour vote has unsuprisingly sat on it's hands and stayed at home.

As a libertarian lefty outsider it does seem amazing that Labour high command failed to spot this draining of support and do something about it. Even if you take a base machine politics view of the debacle, the lack of GOTV is puzzling and does not bode well for a general election.

The Politics of Mediocrity: Cameron's Vapid Play for The Centre Ground.

To any kind of leftist, be it tankie, old skool sectarian trot, trad social democrat or libertarian/anarcho-socialist type Conservative party conferences are very much an exercise in political anthropology. After all althought the labour party has divested itself of most of its social democratic principles, it's form and method of organisation are pretty familiar, even New Labour's vanguardist lenninist take-over was a textbook operation familiar to most leftwing activists. The Labour party still has the sinew and reflexes of a left-of-centre party so  it's internal politics can be easily followed.

The Conservatives however have not and will not ever be a socialist party, it is the party of captial, of the petit borgeious businessman, Burkean stick-in-the-muds, the small landowner, the surrogate England party nostalgic for empire absorber of the old classical liberals and patrician neo-aristocratic one nationistas. As the cliche goes the Conservatives are designed to be good at one thing: winning elections which leads quite neatly onto another cliche being that it's no accident they are called 'the stupid party'. The Conservative party is not really interested in ideas, Ideology like their party's leadership is a means to an end. Conservatives being the ultimate pragmatists.

Thatcherism was then an aberration for the Conservative party. The entryism of various libertarian, 'free market' idealists and other radicals into the Conservatives is still causing them severe indigestion even now. Only Thatcher could keep this coalition of eurosceptics, gonzo corporate 'libertarians' and the party's traditional class interests together. The party's ideological schisms and factions were hard to manage lacking. This brings us neatly to Cameron...

Cameron is in many ways a sign of the party returning to its aristocratic blue-blooded roots and to the Conservatives pragmatic power seeking ways. To paraphrase Private Eye the general consensus was that the 'oiks' had had a good enough go at running the party and now it was the toffs turn again. Cameron's orientation is power and he will mouth whatever pieties are needed, politically cross-dress, softsoap and do  whatever is needed to get elected. The traditional Conservative position only made strange due to the 17 year old Thatcherite abberation. Cameron is returning the Conservatives to their political roots, be afraid!

The Drums of War Beat Faster

Iran is being prepared for war, many voices accross the web are warning of the impending catastrophe, From Arthur Silber to Empire Burlesque all are echoing the same theme: War is coming, be ready.

For a UK citizen this then asks the question, how if/when such a terrible event occurs will it affect me, living in a small uninteresting island of the unfashionable end of Europe. Although it is terrible to pose the question in such a self centred way, international geopoltics can seem rather abstract to the ordinary man in the street and for the working class day-to-day survival is paramount.

The bombing of Iran would raise oil prices, increase islamist terrorism and make the world an even unsafer place there is no upside even on the crudest and most amoral of utilitarian calculus. Another question for your average British person is would Brown go along with the attack? This is a hard one to call, every British semi-progressive type hopes that Brown will emulate Harold Wilson and refuse to provide logistical support or troops/planes. On the other hand it is perfectly convincing to see Brown's inherent atlanticism getting the better of him and the mysterious alchemy of the 'special relationship' taking it's toll on his political judgement and therefore troops being committed.

Make no mistake the British antiwar movement must lobby hard, counter neo-imperialist propaganda and mobilise the British public against any involvement in a strike on Iran, otherwise the consequences will be lasting, bloody and protracted

Back once again

So I return having finally found a decentish bloggin' tool in Ubuntu Linux called Flock, a fancy 'web 0' browser, fully buzzword compliant and up-to-date and more importantly Free as in libre software.nati

Politics has changed as has the international scene, Blair has gone, Brown a shoe-in interesting times ahead...

No better time to blog, more soon.

technorati tags:return, blogging, back

Manufacturing Consent...One School Pupil at a Time.....

To paraphrase what the Jesuits used to say if you gave them a child when they were 5 yearsold the church would have that child for life, much the same is true of our ever creeping surveillance state with schools being in the front-line of this particular battle between a citizen's privacy andthe states desire to keep tabs on one. The pupils at a north London sixth form are an example of how this friction between individual liberty and the rationalizing technocratic and totalising aspects of the modern state will play itself out over the coming decades. The key bureaucratic innovation for this particular school is to let the 6th form pupils sign themselves in and out of school via their fingerprints, this of course entails that their fingerprints be held on a centralised school database to enable such a system to work properly. From the schools point of view, and the wider idea of bureaucratic rationality the idea of logging pupils makes perfectsense as it is more 'efficient', gives the pupils more 'control' over when they sign in and out and streamlines the administration of the school. As with most of these seemingly administrative measures, what appears innocuous and merely bureaucratic tidying up makes people more tolerant and willing to accept he monitoring tracking of their every day activities. So this biometric fingerprinting scheme by the schools is a straw in the wind, and another means of socialising people towards a total surveillance society.

Unlike some Anarchist/Libertarian types I am not a conspiracy theorist on the whole, the surveillance society is not part of some evil master plan by the ruling classes to control society, in fact it would be an easier menace to combat if it were the case..but I digress, the surveillance state is the logical culmination of many different trends, both technologically and socially. The police, security services and related spooks are hard-wired to want more control and to extend their capabilities from their perspective the desire to use these technologies is unfortunate but understandable. Technologically Moore's law and the explosion of modern telecommunications technology have made the nightmare of total surveillance and monitoring a real possibility. Politically with the so-called War-on-Terror being in full swing it has provided perfect cover embracing and enhancing these technologies without fear of a public backlash. The British are of course one of the most heavily monitored societies in the western world, CCTV cameras, numberplate tracking and other intrusive technologies are quietly accepting with nary a murmer by the public. The old saw of: if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to worry about is all too readily accepted.

These social and technological trends were of course present pre 9-11 madness and 7/7 bombings, but these events have been used by opportunistic politicians and their cunning enablers within the police and security services to further restricit liberty and to pilfer a phrase manufacture consent. Biometrics in schools are the merely the start and if the current insanity in the middle east continues, be more afraid....

testing testing

Beowulf's not dead, only sleeping...

A long hiatus..but I'm back as I have finally installed and set-up Ubuntu on my system and intend to blog more frequently... so apologies for my absence and back to bloggin'