Public meeting: Where now for Egypt and the Middle East?

Another poll gives Livingstone the lead in London

This from LBC, a London talk radio station, giving credence to last week’s YouGov poll:

An LBC 97.3 poll of Londoners voting intentions suggests Ken Livingstone is now favourite to win the mayoral election

The Labour candidate has 51% of the vote to Boris Johnson’ 49% after second preference votes are allocated.

Mr Livingstone continues to get more support in inner London while Boris Johnson is more popular in the suburbs. But despite the results, when asked, most Londoners still expect Mr Johnson to win.

Boris struggles to win support among Londoners aged 18-44 while Ken struggles to gain the support of older people.

David Cameron’s spending cuts seem to have a greater impact on putting people off voting for Boris than opinions of Ed Miliband do on Ken’s chances.

Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick is the most popular second preference choice for Londoners with 38 percent of the vote.

A few initial thoughts:

1. Momentum is with Ken Livingstone. If sustained, the poll lead is a complete reversal from only months ago, when Boris Johnson, the Tory incumbent, led by eight points. This is most likely attributable to the energetic campaign around the rising cost of transport in London and the growing public sentiment that Johnson is neglecting the interests of ordinary Londoners.

2. The self-deafeating economic line being articulated by Labour nationally might damage the good work being done by Ken and his team in London, by minimising the identifiable policy differences between Labour and the Government. The polls suggest that the general direction in London is superior to that of Labour nationally. Whilst Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have nothing to show from the latest polls by their lurch rightwards, in London the relentless campaign message that Labour is ‘on your side’ against cuts to living standards seems to be bearing fruit. This should be taken on board by Ed Miliband and his supporters.

3.  Labour’s campaign team are right to urge against complacency – these are only two polls and we are months from the election in May. Johnson’s campaign and its numerous media backers have already responded with a campaign of negativity towards Labour, but a renewed charm offensive, playing to Johnson’s strengths, would probably bring benefits. Right-wing pundits have also urged Johnson to neutralise the ‘out of touch’ line of attack with a programme of superficial policy announcements, but if Johnson’s article in the Sun attacking unemployed young people is anything to go by, he isn’t taking that on board just yet.

Another private sector collapse

Total employment rose in the 2000’s by 1.5 million, 1.1 million in the private sector, and 400,000 in the public. The collapse of the private sector from July 2008 destroyed half of all the jobs created from 2000 to 2007.

At Left Foot Forward, Cormac Hollingsworth gets to grips with the fallacy of a private sector led recovery.

“Now is the time to oppose Israel’s racism”

Palestine Solidarity Campaign leader Hugh Lanning exposes Israel’s increasingly racist legislation in today’s Morning Star.

Last Wednesday Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a racist law which has been in operation since 2003. It denies spouses of Israeli citizens any right themselves to citizenship or residency if they happen to be a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip, or from purported “enemy states.”

This particular law – originally described as temporary but renewed ever since – is just one of a growing number of racist laws and attacks on human rights passed by Israel’s parliament the Knesset.

Ever since 1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes during the Nakba, or catastrophe, Palestinians who managed to remain on their lands inside the Green Line have suffered from discrimination.

Palestinian citizens of Israel, who form 20 per cent of its population, have citizenship but not Israeli nationality.

Israel’s 1950 Law of Return welcomes any Jew immigrating to Israel.

But Palestinian refugees have never been allowed to return, in violation of UN Resolution 194, which has repeatedly asserted the refugees’ right to do so.

The attempt to remove Palestinians from their land did not end in 1948.

The most recent land grab, approved last year, was the Prawer Plan, which when implemented will forcibly remove 30,000 Bedouin from their land in the Negev.

Read the rest of the article here.

Securing the Arab revolutions

An interesting discussion between Mehdi Hasan and Wadah Khanfar on the Arab revolution and its prospects.

Happy Birthday Muhammad Ali

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

Len McCluskey speaks out on the ‘Blairite policy coup’

Excellent assessment of the Labour party lurch toward full blown endorsement of austerity by Len McCluskey:

Ed Balls’s sudden embrace of austerity and the public-sector pay squeeze represents a victory for discredited Blairism at the expense of the party’s core supporters. It also challenges the whole course Ed Miliband has set for the party, and perhaps his leadership itself. Unions in the public sector are bound to unite to oppose the real pay cuts for public-sector workers over the next year. When we do so, it seems we will now be fighting the Labour frontbench as well as the government.

The political elite that was united in promoting the City-first deregulation policies that led to the crash is now united in asserting that ordinary people must pick up the tab for it. It leaves the country with something like a “national government” consensus where, as in 1931, the leaders of the three main parties agree on a common agenda of austerity to get capitalism – be it “good” or “bad” – back on its feet.

The only justification offered for supporting the pay freeze is that “jobs must be the priority”, thereby buying into the hoary old fallacy that increasing the wages of the low-paid risks unemployment. The view that deficit reduction through spending cuts must be a priority in order to keep the financial speculators onside has been the road to ruin for Labour chancellors from Philip Snowden to Denis Healey.

This is the last gasp of the neoliberalism which led to 2008, and the final point on the arc of “new Labour” politics – from “things can only get better” to “heaven knows we’re miserable now” and will be for the foreseeable future.

A teaching assistant will be £2,600 worse off as a result of the coalition’s pay squeeze by next year – that does not create a single extra job. Rather, it represents a further squeezing of demand out of the economy during a recession, and will lengthen dole queues. Even the ratings agencies acknowledge that austerity is damaging the economy in Europe.

Of course, for Labour to say it cannot make spending commitments now, and will only make a judgment as to what cuts are reversed in which order nearer the general election, is absolutely reasonable. But this is going much further. As Ed Balls told this newspaper, the “starting point” is “we’re going to have to keep all these cuts”. And this year we have seen one shadow minister after another falling over themselves to endorse savage spending cuts which are hurting real people. Liam Byrne, Jim Murphy, Stephen Twigg and now Ed Balls: four horsemen of the austerity apocalypse.

Where does this leave the half a million people who joined the TUC’s march for an alternative last year, and the half of the country at least who are against the cuts? Disenfranchised.

The real points of differentiation between Labour and the government on the economy are now very hard to identify, the more so since Cameron and Clegg are cutely, if insincerely, positioning themselves as proactive on tax avoidance and executive pay.

No effort was made by Labour to consult with trade unions before making the shift, notwithstanding that it impacts on millions of our members. It is hard to imagine the City being treated in such a cavalier way in relation to a change in banking policy.

This confronts those of us who have supported Ed Miliband’s bold attempt to move on from Blairism with a challenge. His leadership has been undermined as he is being dragged back into the swamp of bond market orthodoxy. And this policy coup may not be the end of the matter. Having won on the measures, new Labour will likely come for the man sooner or later. And that way lies the destruction of the Labour party as constituted, as well as certain general election defeat in my view. It is time for those who want a real alternative centred on investment, job creation and public intervention to end the slump – and a Labour party that will articulate that to get organised in parliament and outside.

Caroline Lucas: we need to challenge the austerity agenda

Caroline Lucas MP makes the point well in today’s Guardian letters page that the opposition needs to overcome it’s fear of a fight with proponents of austerity and make the case for public investment as a means of economic recovery.

In his interview with your paper on Saturday, Ed Balls effectively holds up a white flag and admits that Labour has given up any attempt to set out an alternative economic agenda (Beyond the hair shirt: Labour party can give Britain the tough love it needs, insists Balls, 14 January).

His capitulation before the Tory-led coalition’s definition of economic credibility as meaning ever more fiscal austerity, and his jaw-dropping statement that “we are going to have to keep all these cuts” calls into question the very purpose of the Labour party.

Moreover, the choice he poses between higher public sector pay or growing unemployment conveniently ignores the fact that many public sector workers are on very low incomes, and falsely suggests that we can’t afford to fund both. It is investment in decently paid jobs that generates income, and thus the tax revenues to pay for credit or borrowed money, not the other way round. Instead of trying to outcompete the government in some kind of masochistic virility test to see who can threaten the greatest austerity, an opposition party worthy of the name would be making a far stronger case that austerity isn’t working, and offering a genuine alternative.

A combination of more progressive taxation, a crack down on tax evasion and avoidance and, crucially, Green quantitative easing to deliver investment directly in the new jobs and infrastructure the UK urgently needs to make the transition to a more sustainable economy, would do far more to challenge the government than the Tory-lite policies set out by the shadow chancellor.
Caroline Lucas MP
Leader, Green party

Picket at US Embassy: No western intervention in Iran or Syria

From the Stop the War Coalition. As imperialists go all out to drum up support in the West for military intervention in Syria and Iran it is vital that the anti-war position is loudly articulated. Many on the left have sadly found themselves in a position of de facto support for the imperialist plan to wrestle back the initiative after the Arab Spring. This is a good opportunity to show the correct stance.

Saturday 28 January 2pm-4pm - Picket at US Embassy: No western intervention in Iran or Syria

US Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London W1

The growing threats against Iran in recent weeks have been backed up with increased sanctions. As we know from Iraq, these are a prelude to war, not an alternative to it. There are signs of covert intervention already in Iran, as there are in Syria. Stop the War opposes all military intervention from the west in the region, for which there is absolutely no justification.

We will be gathering outside the US embassy, Grosvenor Square, London W1 on Saturday 28 January from 2-4pm. Please support it if you can.

Mission: Invade Iran

Excellent analysis by George Galloway in Saturday’s Morning Star.

Support the Morning Star: donate to its Fighting Fund here.

It is 12 months since the heroic shabab of Tunisia overthrew EU favourite Ben Ali and set in motion the Arab masses across the region.

Now we see clearly the response of the ailing Western powers which were thrown off kilter as their system of client states creaked, cracked and began to fall apart.

It is war – actual and threatened.

The drumbeats for war with Iran are getting louder, and the escalating provocations by Western capitals are developing a logic of their own.

It admits of no alternative and points in only one direction – towards military conflict.

Or, to put it more accurately, towards open military conflict. The head of Britain’s MI6 has already called for covert military operations in Iran which are, of course, an act of war – and they have been taking place. So are the drone overflights, which are also legally an act of aggression.