Category: Politics

We had another strong jobs report Friday, showing solid job growth, a 22nd straight month of unemployment below four percent, and solid but not-likely-inflationary wage growth. The White House marked the news by pointing out that inflation has fallen by two-thirds, and that household wealth and worker pay are higher now than prior to the pandemic.

Also, CNN released a poll this week showing 71 percent of Americans consider economic conditions “poor” (and 38 percent think it’s “very poor”). It’s an improvement from summer 2022, when 82 percent thought the economy was “poor.”

So why the gap between the economic numbers and the way lots of us perceive the economy? And what are the implications for the 2024 election?

Over at the New York Times Thursday (gift link), even before the good jobs report, economist Paul Krugman tried to puzzle out why so many of us think the economy is in the dumps (as for conservatives, he says, forget it, they won’t believe anything is good while Biden is in office).

Unfortunately, Krugman hasn’t yet endorsed my proposal to fund lots of WPA-style murals depicting the benefits of the clean energy transition. He’ll come around, I bet.

Krugman highlighted two other bits of good economic news this week, mostly because they’d actually happened by the time he wrote his column, which was handy.

This week two excellent economic reports were added to the pile. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the third quarter, labor productivity rose at an annual rate of 5.2 percent, which is really, really fast. It’s too soon to call a trend, but there is increasing reason to hope that our economy is capable of growing considerably faster than we previously thought. […]

Another report showed that unfilled job openings are down. Last year many economists were arguing that the high level of vacancies meant that we needed high unemployment to control inflation. That gap has now largely disappeared, one of many signs that the economy is healing from the disruptions brought on by the Covid pandemic. And this process of healing explains why we’ve been able to get inflation down without a recession or a surge in unemployment.

And yet there’s still the perception that things aren’t just terrible, but that they’ll never get better. Krugman notes that this is in at least part a normal reaction to a time of high inflation: the rate of inflation has come down, but we still remember the old norms for prices.

This effect may wear off over time; as I wrote not long ago, there has to be some statute of limitations on how far back people look for their sense of what things should cost. One interesting recent analysis suggests that it takes around two years for lower inflation to be reflected in consumer sentiment, in which case Americans might be feeling better about the economy in time for next year’s elections.

Well that would be nice!

None of this is to say that everyone is well-off and riding high; a return to something like economic normality still leaves us in a goddamned capitalist economy. If someone’s in a fruitless job search or struggling to pay the bills, it’s hardly helpful to throw economic statistics at them and sing “everything is fine, everything is fine, everything is fine,” unless you’re Cheekface and you’re being ironical.

Nonetheless, Krugman adds, there’s been very real progress on climate and infrastructure, and a little-noticed but significant reduction in wage inequality that has led to big pay gains for the country’s lowest-paid workers — who may not be answering polls. Then there are the things you may only have noticed if you’ve benefited from them, like the increased Obamacare subsidies that have expanded the number of people with health care coverage, or the student loan relief that has left millions of us free of the fear that we’ll be crushed by debt — and the reforms that’ll make student loan payments less burdensome.

Krugman also notes that Republicans are certainly doing their best to make clear that their alternative to Bidenomics would be a disaster, what with Trump’s “plan” to kill Obamacare and renewed GOP talk of cutting Social Security.

If the economic gains posted by the Biden administration haven’t reached far enough, the fact remains that this administration has been from day one committed to shaping an economy that grows “from the bottom up and the middle out,” not showering the benefits on the wealthy. My favorite billionaire, Nick Hanauer, has an excellent column in Time on that — good guy, we’ll eat him last.

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There’s a good argument to make that 2024 may look something like 2022. Even if voters aren’t jazzed about the economy, they may very well consider the weirdos the GOP has running, especially the wannabe dictator for a day who’s likely to be at the top of the ticket, and the Right’s insane efforts to force women to give birth, and decide that no matter what, they’d prefer not to be ruled by a religious fascist minority.

[White House / NYT (gift link) / Time]

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The right-wing press loves to talk up its own importance, but is its influence exaggerated? And can courting the wrong media sources prove politically damaging?

‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’, was the infamous front page in 1992, when the tabloid claimed credit for the Conservative Party’s general election victory. Five years later, and the moment that appeared to indicate  Tony Blair  was heading for Downing Street was when  the Sun’s front page announced: “The Sun Backs Blair.” In 2016, the newspaper splashed: ‘It’s the Sun Wot Swung It,’ claiming it had ‘led the fight against the EU and had the strongest influence on people voting for Leave.’  

The Murdoch-owned tabloid certainly has an inflated ego and love of talking up its own importance, but is its influence exaggerated? Do the likes of the Sun affect what people think about, not what they think?And can a politician’s courting of such media ultimately prove self-defeating?  

There is evidence which suggests that the impact of the populist media is vastly inflated, and, unfortunately, we don’t have to look too far for discussion involving politicians’ courtship of the wrong type of media. 

Starmer’s ‘Thatcher’ article in the Telegraph 

Last weekend’s article in the Sunday Telegraph by Keir Starmer sparked such discussion. In a bid to woo diehard Conservative voters and consumed by not being ‘complacent’ and taking any votes for granted, the Labour leader did not just pen a piece for the Tory newspaper, but invoked and praised the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.  

Many traditional Labour voters disagree of course with Starmer’s assessment that Thatcher effected ‘meaningful change’ in Britain. And rather than extending the hand of friendship to all Britons, irrespective of who they have supported previously in the ballot box, as Starmer said, the article sparked backlash among members of his own party. 

And it wasn’t just those on the Left who objected to the piece. John McTernan, political secretary to former PM Tony Blair and of the ‘New Labour’ cohort, joined the criticism.  

“The Labour party’s relentless pursuit of Tory switchers is in danger of backfiring badly. Keir Starmer’s praise of Margaret Thatcher in the Sunday Telegraph is a double danger – it wins over no wavering voters but risks losing the goodwill of a wide range of his supporters, old and new,” said McTernan, in an op-ed about Stamer’s precarious foray into ‘enemy territory.’  

Polling suggests that millions of uncertain voters could decide the next UK election. But only time will tell if the Labour leader’s Thatcher-praising piece for a Conservative newspaper will pay off in appealing to those who feel disillusioned by the current Tory government, or backfire by alienating Labour voters who despise Thatcher and felt a queasy sense of unease when reading it.  

But what it does show, is the importance politicians attach to the right-wing press. But is such a perception misconstrued, with the said media sources being less influential than generally regarded?  

Daily Mail readers more likely to vote left-wing parties (yes really!)  

A poll conducted by Survation on behalf of Greenpeace UK, uncovered some interesting findings relating to the news sourcing habits of voters. The survey asked 20,205 respondents earlier this year, who they would vote for if there was a general election tomorrow, and what was their primary news source.

Interestingly, the majority of Daily Mail voters would vote for left-wing and progressive parties, with only 40 percent saying they would vote Tory.  

And this is the best part. MORE Telegraph readers would vote Labour over the Conservatives, 41 percent to 32 percent. Even among Times’ readers, 45 percent would vote Labour and 28 percent Conservative.

The Sun was another shocker, with 46 percent of readers saying they would vote for Starmer’s party compared to 34 percent who would opt for the Conservatives.  

As well as essentially confirming just how ‘Sunakered’ the Tories really are, the findings suggest that A) Starmer may have been wasting his time by trying to woo Telegraph-reading Tory voters, as they are not as ‘Tory’ as him and his team might have thought, thereby doubly shooting himself in the foot by running the risk of alienating his core voters. And B), nobody really takes any notice of the weird rants published in the right-wing press, as readers are more likely to vote left-leaning parties.  

Oh, the irony.  

Restore Trust’s efforts are all in vain 

In fact, the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Just look at Restore Trust’s failed attempts to wrest control of the National Trust, not just once, or twice, but three times. For a third consecutive year, the right-wing insurgent group failed to secure a place on the National Trust’s council in this year’s elections. That was despite the Telegraph and its titles, fanatical in their opposition to the organisation, throwing their weight being the ‘anti-woke’ campaign.  

It seems, the efforts of the Telegraph, alongside GB News and the Daily Mail, not to mention a few incensed Tufton Street residents, who worked themselves up into a state of apoplexy churning out anti-NT, pro-RT propaganda, were all in vain. Again, suggesting that their readership is not as right-wing, or docilely ‘compliant’ as they may think.  

The failed ‘Red Ed’ campaign 

This one goes back a bit further, but it’s worth mentioning. In the early 2010s, when Ed Miliband was Labour leader, the country’s two leading right-wing newspapers embarked on an ‘othering’ of ‘Red Ed.’  

Ed’s ‘sin’ was it seems his father’s beliefs. The ‘framing’ campaign began with a 2,000-word article by the Daily Mail on September 17, 2013, headlined ‘The man who hated Britain.’ The reason why the newspaper devoted so much ink to a distinguished academic who was largely unknown to the general public and who had been dead for 19 years, was revealed in the article’s sub-heading:

‘‘Red Ed’s pledge to bring back socialism is a homage to his Marxist father. So what did Miliband Senior really believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country.’ Of course, the Mail did not make reference to Ralph Miliband’s distinguished war service in the Royal Navy, including involvement in the D Day landings.

It triggered a bitter right-wing media tirade against ‘Red Ed and his ‘revolutionary father,’ driven mostly by the Mail but with enthusiastic support of the Sun.  

But as Ivor Gaber, professor of journalism at the university of Sussex, noted in the London School of Economics, despite the ‘ferocity and intensity of the ‘Red Ed’ campaign,’ there was a ‘noticeable lack of success.’ Polls at the time found that people didn’t generally regard Ed Miliband as ‘too left-wing,’ and viewed David Cameron as being further to the right than Miliband was to the left.  

For Gaber, the campaign’s failure to capture the public’s imagination was multifaceted. For one, it was more than 20 years on from the collapse of the Soviet Union, meaning ‘red scare’ clearly no longer had the potency it once had. Secondly, the Mail, while an ‘important and influential paper, in terms of both its readership and its perceived importance among policymakers and opinion-formers’, there were, wrote Gaber ‘countervailing forces’ at play. Namely, TV news, where the ‘Red Ed’ campaign failed to take off, having much larger audiences, and in the Professor’s words, ‘greater credibility than the Daily Mail. Thirdly, the rise of social media, where alternative views and, at times, robust challenges to the political narrative of the mainstream media, was another countervailing force.  

Ten years on, with print media continuing to decline and digital news having gained even greater audience traction, the countervailing forces impeding vicious right-wing campaigns that Gaber spoke of, are likely to be even more potent, thereby quashing to influence of newspapers like the Mail and the Sun even further.  

The last couple of decades have seen Britain’s major newspapers, including the Sun, Daily Mail, Times, and the Telegraph, witness sharp circulation declines. Without offering decent returns, investors are shunning the sector, something the government warned in May 2022, threatens the “future of a pillar of democracy.” Amid the decline of mainstream news outlets, social platforms as a means of consuming news are surging. Recent polling shows that the vast majority of the under 40s now get their news from TikTok and other social platforms.  

Rupert Murdoch’s departure  

And what will the stepping down of Rubert Murdoch as chairman of Fox News and News Corp., ending a seven-decade-plus career which saw him carve out a global media empire, likely to mean British politics?  

Murdoch, or at least his newspapers, have long had a strange hold of UK politicians. Since the 1970s, the newspaper and TV baron, whose News Corp. owns the Times, and the Sun, plus TalkTV and Times Radio, has struck both fear and awe into elite political leaders in London. Perhaps through fear of risking savage media attacks which would render them unable to govern effectively, this ‘fixation’ has crossed the political spectrum, with Tony Blair as desperate to court Murdoch as his successor David Cameron. In the first 14 months of Boris Johnson’s government, Murdoch and his top executives in the UK and US met the PM and other high-level government politicians, 40 times. 

During the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices, and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal, Tony Blair, whose relationship with Murdoch was described as ‘unhealthy,’ admitted that he failed to challenge British tabloids over misconduct because he could not afford to lose their support. 

Some argue that Murdoch was a one-off who will not be replaced in a changed media landscape. As Peter Mandelson, former cabinet minister who was instrumental in the courting of the media mogul during New Labour, said: “If Murdoch was starting out again now, I just don’t think he would rise to the influence he was able to build then.”  
 

While others believe there will be more of the same under Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, who has taken over his father’s role.  

“It’s the son wot won it,” said former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, when he congratulated Murdoch for “pulling off a seamless transaction within the family’s global media empire.”

This summer, politicians from across the parties rubbed shoulders with members of the media at Rubert and Lachlan’s annual party, including Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.  

The Labour leader’s attendance suggests that Starmer seeks to convince News Corp. that his party is deserving of endorsement by the group’s newspapers and channels. The newspaper’s infamous ‘The Sun Backs Blair’ frontpage will undoubtedly be in Starmer’s mind.  

For a languishing industry, the press still has an awful of a lot of clout with elite politicians of all stripes, as proven by the cross-party rush to attend Murdoch’s party, and Starmer’s willingness to write for the likes of the Telegraph. The problem is that the newspapers don’t hold equal clout with their readers, as suggested by the Greenpeace poll, and by their nosediving readership. In this sense, Starmer’s Thatcherite-endorsing article in a Tory newspaper could prove not only futile but damaging.  

As McTernan warns, the “most dangerous complacency of all is to take your own voters for granted.”

Right-Wing Media Watch – Boris’s media faithful stand behind their man  

Boris Johnson was in the Covid Inquiry hot seat this week. After a five-hour grilling on Wednesday, during which he admitted he should have ‘twigged much sooner’ about the threat posed in the early days of the pandemic, the former PM faced boos by crowds of bereaved families as he left the Inquiry.  

Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the Tory nationals (bar the Times which alluded to Johnson’s apology for the ‘utter disaster’ of Covid) devoted their lead stories to Johnson in the dock, opting to focus on Jenrick’s resignation, and Sunak’s growing revolt among right-wing Conservatives over his failed Rwanda flights plan.  

The Daily Star got it about right, assigning its front page to the ‘Pinocchio on the stand.’  

Though away from the front pages and there was plenty of comment from right-wing commentators and columns which jumped to Johnson’s defence.    

GB News, Johnson’s soon-to-be employer, focused on the lead Covid Inquiry lawyer, Hugo Keith, being ‘forced to backtrack’ after making ‘false claims’ while ‘grilling Boris Johnson. Johnson issued a ‘fiery rebuttal,’ wrote GB News to Keith’s ‘misleading statement on the UK’s death rate.’ The report goes on to quote barrister and writer Steven Barrett (an author at the Spectator), who told the right-wing channel that he felt himself getting ‘irritated by the KC.’  

Meanwhile, the Johnson-adoring Express framed their piece on the Inquiry as being an impending triumph for the disgraced former PM. 

‘Boris Johnson to come out fighting at Covid Inquiry grilling: ‘I got the big calls right’ was their headline.  

In its ‘The Sun Says…’ column, the tabloid nonsensically asked: ‘What Prime Minister wouldn’t have made mistake in once-in-a-century catastrophe like Covid?’  

‘WHAT is the point of the second show-trial of Boris Johnson?’ it continued, before answering its own question with an equally random answer… ‘Aside, that is, from providing warm employment for smug lawyers and political anoraks.’ 

‘We get that bereaved families of some Covid victims need closure…’ the report casually continued. And they claim it’s the lawyers being smug!  

The Sun’s Ross Clark went for the same lawyer-bashing angle, claiming ‘What’s the point of Boris attending the Covid show trial? Nosy lawyers just want to read his WhatsApps and trip him up.’  

They’re certainly using the Inquiry as a means of continuing their intimidating assault on ‘lefty lawyers,’ which, as we know, is not only unfounded, unjustified, and downright ridiculous, but risks encouraging division which could have serious repercussions. Following Priti Patel’s lashing out at ‘lefty lawyers’ in 2020, the Law Society warned that lawyers are at risk of physical attack if politicians continue to ‘sling insults’ at them. 

But such warnings, of course, fall of deaf ears with the right-wing press. They are too preoccupied with defending the indefensible to think about any potential repercussions their hate-filled tripe might have on hard-working, honest people. 

Woke Bashing of the Week: Right-wingers in fit over Belgian character trying to bring inclusivity to Christmas  

The festive season never fails to send right-wingers into a frenzy, as they object to anything they deem ‘untraditional’ in an attempt to cook-up their half-baked culture wars. 

This week, the Belgium city of Ghent was in the firing line for employing an African female Santa Claus, who was “going to be draped in the colours of a Palestinian flag and hand out gifts to children at the town hall,”as GB News put it.  

Queen Nikkolah is the creation of artist Laura Nsengiyumva, who wanted to offer an alternative version to Sinterklass and his sidekick, Zwarte Piet – or Black Pete, a black-faced boy with curled-hair and large, painted on red lips. Belgium and the Netherlands celebrate St Nicholas Day on Dec 6, with celebrations involving Sinterklaas and his companion Zwarte Piet. Anti-racism campaigners have called for an end to the tradition in both countries. A protest against Zwarte Piet took place in the Belgian city of Kortrijk last month, calling for more inclusive, child-friendly celebrations.  

Geert Wilders, the far-right ‘Dutch Trump’ politician, promised to bring back the tradition in the manifesto that helped him secure gains in the recent Dutch election. 

Planning on dishing out sweets and treats to children in Ghent and spreading the joy of the festive season in an inclusive celebration, Queen Nikkolah found herself the target of a cultural firestorm.  

Far-right and Conservative politicians objected to the planned event, which 300 people had reportedly signed up to attend. They accused Queen Nikkolah of seeking to use children to push a political agenda while threatening tradition.  

The town’s mayor, Mathias de Clercq, a member of the Flemish conservative liberal party, joined in the noise, telling reporters that “we shouldn’t try to turn him [Sinterklass] into something else.” 

Anneleen Van Bossuyt, a politician with the right-wing populist party N-VA, described the proposed event as “absolutely unacceptable,” referring to it as “woker than woke” on the party’s website. The politician compared it to the proposal to put warnings on Pippi Longstocking books in Ghent’s library amid accusations that the stories contained racial stereotypes.  

Predictably, our right-wing press jumped on the story, leading with Van Bossuyt’s comment.  

‘Woker than woke’ splashed both the Telegraph and GB News, swooning over the character being ‘cancelled’ by Ghent, ‘after de Clerq stepped in.’ 

The reports ignore the explanation that Nsengiyumva provides about the creation of her character, that she saw Queen Nikkolah as an antidote to the Zwarte Piet stereotype, that is a strong, female black character.  

On the uproar she unwittingly created among the far-right, Nsengiyumva said: “It tells you a lot about their agenda, they need some targets and some distractions from real problems.” 

No doubt this is just the start of the right-wingers’ annual moaning that ‘you can’t say Christmas anymore.’  

TalkTV’s Julie Hartley-Brewer, billionaire and former Conservative Party deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, and right-wing pundit Darren Grimes, whose GB News show was cancelled, have led claims about the nation’s alleged use of ‘festive time’ not ‘Christmas time.”  

Strange really, as I don’t know anyone who has a problem with the word ‘Christmas.’ Another half-baked fantasy by right-wingers desperate to tap into the prejudices of their audiences with dog-whistle talking points.  

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

Aspiring Labour MPs can now apply for selection in all remaining seats without prospective parliamentary candidates, with the party publishing a full list of so-called “non-battleground” seats online.

The list includes 211 ‘non-battleground’ seats, which amounts to just under a third of Westminster’s 650 constituencies. This would appear to suggest Labour strategists believe the party has a fighting chance in the remaining 439 seats.

The party’s best ever general election result in terms of the number of seats won was 418 in 1997, followed by 412 in 2001, 393 in 1945 and 393 in 1966. It won just 202 in 2019.

The application page for Westminster selection contests on Labour’s website is here, with candidates expected to meet requirements including belonging to a trade union and 12 months of party membership.

Applications will close at midday on January 10. It comes after the Labour national executive committee (NEC) recently voted to accelerate such parliamentary selections late last month, as LabourList revealed, amid rising expectations the Tories could consider holding an election in early 2024 rather than later in the year.

Documents seen by LabourList last month also said all members who previously expressed interest in standing in such seats would be contacted too.

We have reproduced Labour’s list with the name, region and current party which holds the seat below, in alphabetical order:

Boston and Skegness East Midlands Conservative
Daventry East Midlands Conservative
Derbyshire Dales East Midlands Conservative
Gainsborough East Midlands Conservative
Grantham and Bourne East Midlands Conservative
Harborough, Oadby and Wigston East Midlands Conservative
Hinckley and Bosworth East Midlands Conservative
Louth and Horncastle East Midlands Conservative
Melton and Syston East Midlands Conservative
Mid Derbyshire East Midlands Conservative
Mid Leicestershire East Midlands Conservative
Newark East Midlands Conservative
Rutland and Stamford East Midlands Conservative
Sleaford and North Hykeham East Midlands Conservative
South Holland and The Deepings East Midlands Conservative
South Leicestershire East Midlands Conservative
South Northamptonshire East Midlands Conservative
Basildon and Billericay Eastern Conservative
Braintree Eastern Conservative
Brentwood and Ongar Eastern Conservative
Broadland and Fakenham Eastern Conservative
Broxbourne Eastern Conservative
Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket Eastern Conservative
Castle Point Eastern Conservative
Central Suffolk and North Ipswich Eastern Conservative
Chelmsford Eastern Conservative
Clacton Eastern Conservative
Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard Eastern Conservative
Ely and East Cambridgeshire Eastern Conservative
Epping Forest Eastern Conservative
Harpenden and Berkhamsted Eastern Conservative
Harwich and North Essex Eastern Conservative
Hertford and Stortford Eastern Conservative
Hertsmere Eastern Conservative
Huntingdon Eastern Conservative
Maldon Eastern Conservative
Mid Norfolk Eastern Conservative
North Bedfordshire Eastern Conservative
North East Cambridgeshire Eastern Conservative
North East Hertfordshire Eastern Conservative
North Norfolk Eastern Conservative
North West Cambridgeshire Eastern Conservative
North West Essex Eastern Conservative
North West Norfolk Eastern Conservative
Rayleigh and Wickford Eastern Conservative
South Basildon and East Thurrock Eastern Conservative
South Cambridgeshire Eastern Conservative
South Norfolk Eastern Conservative
South Suffolk Eastern Conservative
South West Hertfordshire Eastern Conservative
South West Norfolk Eastern Conservative
St Albans Eastern Lib Dem
St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire Eastern Conservative
Suffolk Coastal Eastern Conservative
Waveney Valley Eastern Conservative
West Suffolk Eastern Conservative
Witham Eastern Conservative
Bexleyheath and Crayford London Conservative
Bromley and Biggin Hill London Conservative
Carshalton and Wallington London Conservative
Hornchurch and Upminster London Conservative
Kingston and Surbiton London Lib Dem
Old Bexley and Sidcup London Conservative
Orpington London Conservative
Richmond Park London Lib Dem
Romford London Conservative
Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner London Conservative
Sutton and Cheam London Conservative
Twickenham London Lib Dem
North Northumberland North Conservative
Cheadle North West Conservative
Chester South and Eddisbury North West Conservative
Congleton North West Conservative
Fylde North West Conservative
Hazel Grove North West Conservative
Ribble Valley North West Conservative
Tatton North West Conservative
Westmorland and Lonsdale North West Conservative
Arundel and South Downs South East Conservative
Ashford South East Conservative
Aylesbury South East Conservative
Beaconsfield South East Conservative
Bexhill and Battle South East Conservative
Bicester and Woodstock South East Conservative
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton South East Conservative
Bracknell South East Conservative
Chatham and Aylesford South East Conservative
Chesham and Amersham South East Conservative
Chichester South East Conservative
Dartford South East Conservative
Didcot and Wantage South East Conservative
Dorking and Horley South East Conservative
East Grinstead and Uckfield South East Conservative
East Hampshire South East Conservative
East Surrey South East Conservative
Eastbourne South East Conservative
Eastleigh South East Conservative
Epsom and Ewell South East Conservative
Esher and Walton South East Conservative
Fareham and Waterlooville South East Conservative
Farnham and Bordon South East Conservative
Faversham and Mid Kent South East Conservative
Folkestone and Hythe South East Conservative
Godalming and Ash South East Conservative
Gosport South East Conservative
Guildford South East Conservative
Hamble Valley South East Conservative
Havant South East Conservative
Henley and Thame South East Conservative
Herne Bay and Sandwich South East Conservative
Horsham South East Conservative
Isle of Wight East South East Conservative
Isle of Wight West South East Conservative
Lewes South East Conservative
Maidenhead South East Conservative
Maidstone and Malling South East Conservative
Mid Buckinghamshire South East Conservative
Mid Sussex South East Conservative
New Forest East South East Conservative
New Forest West South East Conservative
Newbury South East Conservative
North East Hampshire South East Conservative
North West Hampshire South East Conservative
Oxford West and Abingdon South East Lib Dem
Portsmouth North South East Conservative
Reading West and Mid Berkshire South East Conservative
Reigate South East Conservative
Romsey and Southampton North South East Conservative
Runnymede and Weybridge South East Conservative
Sevenoaks South East Conservative
Sittingbourne and Sheppey South East Conservative
Spelthorne South East Conservative
Surrey Heath South East Conservative
Sussex Weald South East Conservative
Tonbridge South East Conservative
Tunbridge Wells South East Conservative
Weald of Kent South East Conservative
Winchester South East Conservative
Windsor South East Conservative
Witney South East Conservative
Woking South East Conservative
Wokingham South East Conservative
Bath South West Lib Dem
Bridgwater South West Conservative
Central Devon South West Conservative
Cheltenham South West Conservative
Chippenham South West Conservative
Christchurch South West Conservative
East Wiltshire South West Conservative
Exmouth and Exeter East South West Conservative
Forest of Dean South West Conservative
Frome and East Somerset South West Conservative
Glastonbury and Somerton South West Conservative
Honiton and Sidmouth South West Conservative
Melksham and Devizes South West Conservative
Mid Dorset and North Poole South West Conservative
Newton Abbot South West Conservative
North Cornwall South West Conservative
North Cotswolds South West Conservative
North Devon South West Conservative
North Dorset South West Conservative
North East Somerset and Hanham South West Conservative
North Somerset South West Conservative
Poole South West Conservative
Salisbury South West Conservative
South Cotswolds South West Conservative
South Devon South West Conservative
South Dorset South West Conservative
South East Cornwall South West Conservative
South West Devon South West Conservative
South West Wiltshire South West Conservative
St Austell and Newquay South West Conservative
St Ives South West Conservative
Taunton and Wellington South West Conservative
Tewkesbury South West Conservative
Thornbury and Yate South West Conservative
Tiverton and Minehead South West Conservative
Torbay South West Conservative
Torridge and Tavistock South West Conservative
Wells and Mendip Hills South West Conservative
West Dorset South West Conservative
Weston-super-Mare South West Conservative
Yeovil South West Conservative
Aldridge-Brownhills West Midlands Conservative
Bromsgrove West Midlands Conservative
Droitwich and Evesham West Midlands Conservative
Hereford and South Herefordshire West Midlands Conservative
Kenilworth and Southam West Midlands Conservative
Kingswinford and South Staffordshire West Midlands Conservative
Lichfield West Midlands Conservative
Meriden and Solihull East West Midlands Conservative
North Herefordshire West Midlands Conservative
North Shropshire West Midlands Conservative
Solihull West and Shirley West Midlands Conservative
South Shropshire West Midlands Conservative
Staffordshire Moorlands West Midlands Conservative
Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge West Midlands Conservative
Stratford-on-Avon West Midlands Conservative
Sutton Coldfield West Midlands Conservative
The Wrekin West Midlands Conservative
West Worcestershire West Midlands Conservative
Wyre Forest West Midlands Conservative
Beverley and Holderness Yorkshire and Humber Conservative
Bridlington and The Wolds Yorkshire and Humber Conservative
Brigg and Immingham Yorkshire and Humber Conservative
Goole and Pocklington Yorkshire and Humber Conservative
Harrogate and Knaresborough Yorkshire and Humber Conservative
Richmond and Northallerton Yorkshire and Humber Conservative
Skipton and Ripon Yorkshire and Humber Conservative
Thirsk and Malton Yorkshire and Humber Conservative
Wetherby and Easingwold Yorkshire and Humber Conservative

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The best way to lower migration is to wreck the economy, the sociologist Hein de Haas has often noted. This captures a fundamental trade-off for government: how to balance managing migration levels with economic growth, well-staffed public services, and secure funding for higher education? 

Despite promise after promise to bring down numbers, they have in fact risen sharply in recent years. Indeed, the only time the government has met prime minister David Cameron’s original target to get net migration to the tens of thousands was at the height of the Covid- 19 pandemic, when travel restrictions were imposed globally and the economy was in freefall. 

The package of announcements this week is the government’s latest attempt to square the circle. With net migration reaching a new peak of 745,000 in 2022, the government has faced pressure from its backbenchers to bring numbers down. 

‘We have failed’: Jacob Rees-Mogg apologises for Conservative record on migration

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Concern over doctors’ health needs as legislation to regulate PAs and AAs introduced

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MDU and Red Whale come together to support healthcare professionals’ educational needs

But much of the recent rise is down to a post-pandemic surge in international students and overseas workers filling vacancies, especially in health and social care. Restricting these numbers could both imperil the funding model for universities and lead to a staffing crisis in the NHS and care sector. 

It would also be highly unpopular: IPPR’s research with Rob Ford found that the public strongly supported migration of health and care workers in particular. 

The solution proposed by the government is to target the dependants – the partners and children – of those who arrive. Following a previous restriction earlier this year on international students bringing dependants (excepting postgraduates on research programmes), there will now be a similar ban on the dependants of care workers. 

This is combined with a set of other measures announced in the home secretary’s five-point plan – including raising the salary threshold for the skilled worker visa to £38,700, increasing the minimum income requirement for partner visas to the same amount, and ending the 20 per cent ‘going rate’ discount for jobs on the shortage occupation list. 

The risk for the government is that these measures lead to the worst of both worlds. For the hardliners, they may well not be enough to bring down net migration. 

The government claims numbers could fall by 300,000, but this figure is misleading: it appears to be an estimate of those who arrived in the UK last year but who would not have been able to had these measures been in place. It therefore does not account for the impact of the measures on emigration – and consequently exaggerates the overall impact on net migration. 

Moreover, a breakdown of the 300,000 figure suggests that just under half is due to the ban on student dependants, which had already been announced by the government earlier this year. 

Most of the other measures are not likely to have a major impact. The vast majority of skilled worker visas – around 87 per cent, according to our estimates, based on the latest quarter of data on skilled worker visa grants and median annual gross pay – will be unaffected by the salary threshold rise, given most are currently being sponsored for health and care work, which is exempt from the increase, and many of the remaining jobs are already highly paid.i 

Scrapping the 20 per cent ‘going rate’ discount is sensible but will have little impact – less than 14 per cent of used visas for jobs on the shortage occupation list reported making use of the discount in 2021 and 2022. 

This leaves the ban on dependants for care workers, which will have a larger impact – the government estimates a reduction of 120,000 arrivals – but could risk worsening the workforce crisis in the social care sector. 

The government is banking on strong demand for the visa globally to overwhelm the limited appeal of a visa which prevent workers from bringing family members with them, but the impact is hard to forecast with any certainty. 

Plus, there are a wider set of risks attached to these new proposals. Restricting dependents could heighten the risk of care worker exploitation, the Migration Observatory has suggested, given people will be separated from support networks. Tighter rules for international students could take their toll on university finances. And the doubling of the minimum income requirement for partner visas will prevent many settled residents – as well as British citizens – from living with their loved ones. 

It could also expand the use of the 10-year family route to settlement – a fallback for people who are do not meet the criteria for family visas but whose right to a family life would otherwise be violated. As our research found earlier this year, the repeat applications, hefty visa fees, and restrictions on access to benefits on the 10-year route can have serious impacts on household finances, physical and mental health, and child wellbeing. 

So by trying to have its cake and eat it, the government may end up doing little to reduce net migration while storing up a new set of problems for social care, universities, and family life. In any case, much of this impact will not be seen by the time of the next election, given the time lag involved in the ONS’s publications of the migration statistics. 

The irony is that most forecasts expect net migration to fall in any case over the coming years as the rise in international student arrivals is followed by an increase in people leaving. 

In the longer term, a more sustainable approach to managing migration should focus on the underlying factors behind the shortages motivating employers to recruit from overseas. This means working with employers to improve conditions and invest in training the domestic workforce. 

For social care in particular, the answer is higher pay and conditions, which requires a new funding settlement for local authorities. This is a trade-off which it seems the government is currently unwilling to make. 

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The conscription of workers is an abuse of state power and the government is openly pursuing anti-worker policies.

In dystopian Britain, millions of workers have lost the right to strike. The right was acquired to counter employers exploiting workers. This helped to improve workers’ pay, working and living conditions and accelerate economic growth. Ever since the late 1970s, workers’ rights have been under attack and former Prime Minister Tony Blair once boasted that the UK has the “most restrictive laws on trade unions in the Western world”.

The draconian Tory law

The draconian Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 marks a new phase. Despite lawful strike ballots millions of workers will be conscripted to work during a strike. This week, despite considerable opposition, the Tory government has enacted legislation specifying minimum service levels (MSLs) that striking workers must provide. The MSL for railways is 40% of the usual train timetable. For ambulance workers, it is around 80% of the staffing level. For border security services at airports, ports and elsewhere 75% of the staff must work during a strike. These requirements do not apply to UK nations with relevant devolved powers. Further MSLs will be issued for other sectors.

The MSLs are accompanied by a Code of Practice, specifying the “reasonable steps” (whatever that means) that trade union must take in ordering their members to cross picket lines and break strikes. The workers refusing to obey will be sacked without any redress and trade unions can be sued for damages by employers.

Millions of workers will not be able to take strike action. For example, in the case of trains, 40% of MSLs can’t be provided without signalling, ticketing, platform, cleaning, security and other staff. They have effectively lost their right to strike.

The mechanics of the law are that a Minister decides the MSLs needed during a strike and ask employers to comply. Employer must select the workers needed to comply with the order and send their names to the trade unions that organised the strike. The union must implement the work order.

To call a strike, a union must give a 14 day notice to the employer. However, the employer is only required to give trade unions 7 day notice to ensure that selected employees work, and has another four days to vary that list. This effectively leaves trade unions with just three calendar days to comply with the non-negotiable order.

From the mass of employee names supplied, a union must determine whether they are its members. It must then send emails (if it knows addresses) and/or first-class letters (will Royal Mail deliver in time?) to inform the members so listed. This could run into thousands. For example, recently 20,000 members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) took strike action. The striking members selected by the employer must receive communication from the union before the strike action i.e. within three days (see above). The union must “encourage them to comply with the work notice”. Such letters no doubt would be carefully crafted by lawyers, at considerable expense to trade unions.

The selected union member “must carry out the work during the strike or could be subject to disciplinary proceedings which could include dismissal”. There is no automatic right of appeal for unfair dismissal or compensation.

Without any consultation the Act has changed the law on picketing. Trade unions may have to appoint “picketing supervisors”. As hundreds of railway stations could be picketed, this would mean appointing hundreds of picketing supervisors or other officials. Paragraph 33 of the Code of Practice says ”the picket supervisor (if present) or another union official or member to use reasonable endeavours to ensure that picketers avoid, so far as reasonably practicable, trying to persuade members who are identified on the work notice not to cross the picket line at times when they are required by the work notice to work.”

This is followed by paragraph 34 stating that: “Unions are not required to notify the picket supervisor of the names of union members identified in the work notice”.

The person selected by the work notice may wave the letter from the union to cross the picket line. The onus is on the union to find a solution.

Unions must not offer any inducements to members selected to work during a strike. If employers decide that trade unions have not taken “reasonable steps”, which is not fully defined, they can sue the union for damages. Inevitably, prolonged litigation will follow.

Anti-worker policies

The conscription of workers is an abuse of state power and the government is openly pursuing anti-worker policies. It should be noted that there are no minimum service levels that water, gas, electricity, rail, banks, insurance and other companies, or government departments must provide to the people. The legislation empowers ministers to impose MSLs on trade unions and striking workers only.

International law, signed by the UK in 1948, requires dialogue between trade unions and employers to set the level of the minimum service. The UK Act, however, excludes dialogue between those parties in setting the level. The Minister alone sets MSLs. Historically, UK trade unions have voluntarily agreed minimum service levels (MSLs) with employers in key sectors, e.g. essential maintenance, but the government has chosen not to build upon that.

Unlike France, Italy, Spain and other European democracies the right of British workers to take strike action is not protected by constitutional or other means. In those countries, workers can’t be sacked for taking strike action. British workers denied the right to take industrial action will struggle to bring intransigent employers to the negotiating table, and their living standards will plummet which will then have knock-on effect on economic activity.

The legislation is underpinned by a threat of dismissal of workers and lawsuits against trade unions. But how will the government or employers find a readymade supply of train drivers, ambulance drivers, nurses and doctors?

Employers can even flout the law. Last year, P&O Ferries illegally sacked 800 workers. The then Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “P&O plainly aren’t going to get away with it”. The government did not enforce the law.

The legislation does not specify any “reasonable steps” that employers must take to resolve industrial disputes. A macho employer could select more workers than is “reasonably necessary” for the purpose of providing minimum service levels, and humiliate unions to create conditions for lawsuits. The work notice may contain inaccurate information but unions cannot challenge employer’s specification of “reasonably necessary” number of workers needed. Trade unions with limited resources will not be in a position to challenge the might of global corporations, and those doing so face the likelihood of high legal costs and eventual bankruptcy which is perhaps the main aim of the Tory law.

No doubt, aggrieved workers will suspend co-operation with employers and refuse to work overtime or on rest days or out-of-hours, or take sick leave. This will sour industrial relations.

There is also a dilemma for employers. Suppose following Ministerial edicts they choose not to issue work notices. If so, they could leave themselves open to lawsuits by service users for failure to provide minimum service levels.

The leadership of the Labour Party has pledged to repeal the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 as it is unworkable and infringes basic human rights.

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

Image credit: Garry Knight – Creative Commons

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

New Mexico will invest $500 million into purchasing water from controversial sources, including treated oilfield wastewater, as a means to bolster the state’s water portfolio. The purchases are the latest in a long-running series of deals dipping into untapped waters to shore up dwindling supplies as climate change and decades of overconsumption drive aridification of the Southwest. 

The water would come from two sources: brackish saltwater, from aquifers deep underground, and produced water—wastewater from oil and gas wells. Neither source, but particularly the latter, is immediately fit for most consumptive purposes. But as traditional water supplies like rivers and groundwater aquifers are depleted in the Southwest, local and state governments are increasingly investing in new water sources to keep up economic and population growth, despite skepticism from environmentalists and water experts. 

“In arid states like ours, every drop counts. A warming climate throws that fact into sharper relief every day,” said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in a press release Tuesday. “This is innovation in action: We’re leveraging the private sector to strengthen our climate resiliency and protect our precious freshwater resources.”

Critics are calling the plan a handout for the fossil fuel industry that will only incentivize further drilling for oil and gas in New Mexico, where the produced water comes from, driving increased emissions of greenhouse gases to further warm the climate and dry out the region. 

“As her administration is rubber stamping new permits for oil and gas emissions that increase climate stress and water scarcity, she is then going to spend $500 million on the industry’s wastewater to treat the water scarcity issue that is caused by their climate emissions,” said Melissa Troutman, a climate and energy advocate with WildEarth Guardians, an environmental nonprofit advocating for reforms of New Mexico’s oil and gas regulations. 

Fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce in New Mexico. In August 2022, the Rio Grande went dry in Albuquerque for the first time in four decades and tensions are rising between the U.S. and Mexico over water availability. New Mexico also gets water from the dwindling Colorado River, and is one of the states engaged in tense, ongoing negotiations over how to preserve the system that provides fresh water to 40 million people in the region and supports the region’s vital agricultural production. On top of it all, the water from nearly every aquifer in the state is already completely allocated.

That’s left Southwestern states searching for new water supplies, with cities and states turning to desalination, complex water transfer agreements, recycling wastewater for consumption and more to try and diversify water portfolios. But strong skepticism remains over the use of brackish and produced water. Produced water from oil and gas drilling, not only comes from the industry primarily responsible for greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, but can be filled with a variety of toxic chemicals. 

Treating produced water to standards suitable even for industrial use could be pricey, critics say, and those funds could be better spent on other solutions to the state’s water scarcity. It’s a sentiment shared by environmentalists in Texas, New Mexico’s neighbor, which proposed similar legislation earlier this year. “I’m very skeptical,” said Bruce Thomson, professor emeritus in civil engineering at the University of New Mexico who previously ran the Water Resources Program there. 

Little is known about the hydrology of the deep underground aquifers the water is held in, he said, and most of the basins are not rechargeable, meaning once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. He also noted the chemistry of the water makes it difficult to desalinate and can even feature hazardous waste left over after desalination.

And unlike desalinating ocean water, which can put the brine left behind by the process back in the sea, there is no easy place to put the leftover brine from desalination projects in landlocked, arid lands like New Mexico. 

For produced water, all of the problems of brackish water are significantly worse and more complicated due to its toxicity and extreme salinity—typically three to four times that of ocean water, Thomson said. Neither is a real solution to the region’s increasing aridity, he said, and ultimately, New Mexico and the Southwest as a whole, will have to make the most of its dwindling water supply. “There is no new water,” he said. 

But that doesn’t mean states like New Mexico won’t try to find new supplies.

Beginning next year, the New Mexico Environment Department will begin seeking proposals from companies interested in providing brackish or produced water. The contracts will come in the form of advanced market commitments, which allows companies to seek investments from the private sector, such as to build treatment facilities, with a guarantee the state will buy the water. 

That water will largely be used for industrial purposes, like the development of hydrogen, solar and wind farms, and the manufacturing of goods like microchips, though it has the potential to be used for other purposes “as treatment and demand allow,” the state said.

Lujan Grisham, who made the announcement at COP28 in Dubai, told Reuters the brackish water could be used eventually for public consumption, while the produced water, which is far more toxic, would be reserved for clean energy development. 

Those industries, however, can be water-intensive. The development of hydrogen fuel, for instance, requires water to be treated to higher standards than for drinking. 

The use of water not typically utilized for irrigation or drinking to support these industries could help save more higher-quality freshwater from being tapped for uses that don’t need it. But as resources dwindle, water experts have said even water better suited for industrial need may be required for residential use as long as it meets drinking standards. 

“This is just another example of throwing money at a technological, so-called fix to a problem that requires comprehensive planning and addressing systemic issues,” Troutman said.

Reading through the tributes to Alistair Darling last week, it occurred to me that the only time you ever hear anything complimentary about politicians is when they die.

And while this might seem fair enough – after all, they already enjoy lots of power and influence, and so surely it’s more important to hold them accountable for their failings than to praise them, I think it warps the public’s perceptions of politics, and of politicians, in a way that does everyone involved an injustice.

Good politicians get little credit while in office, bad politicians get away with abysmal performance because we don’t expect anything better, and the public are deprived of a more human, more interesting and ultimately more accurate understanding of the people who govern, or seek to govern, our country.

Stereotypes about politicians are rarely true

To start with an obvious caveat – some politicians are terrible (and even though this is LabourList, I’m afraid this does include some Labour MPs too). Many more are simply inadequate to the jobs they hold.

But the most common stereotypes (some variation of ‘they’re in it for themselves/ the money’) are rarely true either. I’ve met many politicians, and I’ve sensed many different motives in them, but I’ve never met one I thought was in it for financial reasons. Few want to hear it, but most people with the ability to get elected to parliament could make more money doing something else.

It made me wonder what will be said about our current generation of politicians when their time comes, and whether it will be different to what is generally said about them now.

Of course, in death, no one dwells on the human failings and professional misjudgements that characterise even the most successful life, but the tenor of remembrance can vary – the phrase ‘a divisive figure’ tends to cover a multitude of sins in political obituaries.

It’s the least of their failings, but the Tory government of the past thirteen years has made the defence of my least fashionable opinion – actually, a lot of politicians are more decent and impressive than you’d expect – almost impossible. But here goes.

Being an MP is extremely difficult

Being an MP is an extremely difficult job, and many of them at least try to do it well. It requires understanding and being able to speak on a huge range of issues, managing a wide network of relationships, taking decisions on difficult political and moral questions, spending long working weeks away from home, and weekends canvassing and at constituency engagements, against a backdrop of intense scrutiny and sometimes abuse and threats to your personal safety.

None of them are saints, or pure altruists, and like most of us, their flaws are often inseparable from their best traits too. Strong moral convictions can also mean blindness to other perspectives.

The strategic calculation needed to get to the top can be indistinguishable from ruthlessness. High levels of charm, so useful in paving the way to high office, often don’t go hand-in-hand with rigid personal propriety. Good public speakers can fall somewhat in love with the sounds of their own voices. And so on. Some of them have few if any of these qualities, and shouldn’t be in politics at all.

But many of them do have real convictions, including, annoyingly, the ones you don’t agree with. Many champion different causes, or work through Parliamentary mechanisms to get laws changed in ways that don’t make the headlines, but which do change people’s lives.

Many use their platforms to make a difference in their constituencies on local issues. They often think deeply about how to vote on difficult issues, and take seriously what it means to vote on issues like military action.

Few people know much even about Starmer

The majority do not fiddle their expenses, harrass juniors or take money from lobbying firms. That some do should appall us because it’s not the norm, not because it’s all we can expect from politicians anyway.

The media is to blame for much of this, but I’m often surprised by public incuriosity too; even amongst politically-interested and left-leaning people, I’m struck by how little of them know anything about Keir Starmer.

I don’t claim to be able to see into his soul, but I don’t find him hard to understand.

The working-class background. The teenage socialism. The upward mobility through intellectual ability and an extreme work ethic. A person who defines himself by achievements and who is haunted by the prospect of failure.

A professional focus on international human rights law. A growing interest in public service reform. A desire to fix things within larger and larger systems. A reserved and analytical personality that is not an ideal match for politics but which he has worked on.

Anotable absence of anyone coming out of the woodwork with stories about his personal conduct – and can you imagine how much the right-wing press would pay for them?

All this paints a picture of a comprehensible character, and give a pretty clear indication of the kind of prime minister he’d be.

This stuff is not hidden – a scroll through Wikipedia and a couple of podcast interviews would tell you all of it. But you wouldn’t learn much of it from television or newspapers.

Journalists of course have a bias towards the gossipy and the characterful, and a professional interest in ‘catching politicians out’, as though they don’t trust the public to come to their own conclusions if they give politicians more than a minute to speak uninterrupted. Brief combative interviews just work to make our politicians seem like shallow caricatures; some are, but many are not.

We should hear more from real friends of politicians

When a party chooses a new leader, why doesn’t the BBC screen a documentary about them, covering their biography, their professional life to date, and some interviews with people who actually know them – both critics and friends (real friends that is, not fellow MPs hoping for jobs)?

Why doesn’t it show more coverage of the Parliamentary speeches and debates that take place every day on different issues? Why are there not more documentaries on how politics actually works in this country; intelligent primers for the politically interested?

The point of this kind of coverage would absolutely not be to present politicians in glowing terms – it would be to let their records and lives to date speak for themselves, so the public could come to more informed judgements about them.

And in demonstrating that most politicians aren’t actually completely venal, it would highlight the rare examples of those who truly are.

With Boris Johnson, it’s hard to imagine a single person not reliant on his patronage speaking highly of his character  – a younger person he had mentored, friends he had supported through hard times, constituents he had helped through unsung constituency work. That says more about him than his worst critics could.

But many politicians will have reams of such character references, and I think it would improve public discourse, and help us actually distinguish between the very different kinds of people who have sought to run our country, if we occasionally got to hear from them before politicians died.

Some MPs really can speak thoughtfully and at length about difficult policy questions, and it feels almost taboo to write it, but the public might learn something from listening to them too – many of them have thought deeply about issues from geopolitics to the economy, and are often party to insights that most of us don’t have.

And as for the rest? As Barack Obama’s grandmother apparently used to say, ‘Let a fool speak. For every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance’. There are still too many fools in politics, but it’s lazy to pretend all politicians are.

 

Wow, Albanese’s Labor really seems to be screwing this up. Politically, at any rate. Governmentally, it appears to be rational, efficient, honest and hard-working, dedicated to dozens of small and mid-size reforms to make the country a little less unfair, and addressing the backlog of willed decline, incompetence and duplicity displayed by 10 years of the Coalition. 

Its reward for that is that its primary vote has collapsed, to 31, and its 2PP to an even 50-50. It’s being shellacked from the right by the Daily Tele and others in the Nude Corpse stable, and it faces a right-shifted Nine Network. One would guess it lost about 2% of primary to the right on the Voice to Parliament — both its content and the obsessive focus on it for months on end, as people watched the cost of living get worse. On the left, it has lost to Greens, socialists and minors on, well, everything: the duplicitous Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) and the lack of real action, not cancelling the stage three tax cuts, the unlimited commitment to AUKUS, the bizarre “green Wall Street” proposal for the environment, and, thunderingly, the unlimited support for the Netanyahu government’s destruction of Gaza. 

The right shift has gone fairly directly to the Coalition, and most of it is unlikely to come back. The left shift may not come back to the degree it once did. Some socially conservative Muslims may vote Green or community independent and then Coalition, just to hurt Labor for its betrayal of non-European Australians. So it is quite possible that, over six months or so, Labor has really wrecked itself for 2025.

The third element in that process has been Anthony Albanese and his distinctly mediocre leadership. Labor seems to have made every political mistake in the playbook. It has been bizarrely bad at this. One assumed, on its election, that it would have some program to put in place. Not a grand Rudd-style thing, offering multiple separate targets, but a simple theme about making life better and attaching various piecemeal reforms to it. Such a program would have included plain talk about how difficult it is to make real change on this, citing global conditions, as well as the failure of the previous governments to address it, etc, etc. 

There has been nothing of that sort. The core economic/class initiatives have been the comprehensive labour law reform, the HAFF, and supporting a minimum wage rise in the Fair Work Commission. That’s really about it, apart from tinkering. Getting a good chunk of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Act through the Senate is a substantial achievement, will improve many lives and is something for the party to be proud of. But the melancholy fact is that it remains sectional. Many people, including many working people — many of them swinging seat voters — won’t receive any advantage, compared to a more comprehensive attack on more widespread challenges of everyday life. The HAFF, even at its most optimistic assessment of 30,000 homes, would have a marginal impact on the housing crisis. And the minimum wage boost was a straightforward support of cases in the commission. 

None of this adds up to a program, even a minimal one, and there appears to be nothing in the pipeline. The two major initiatives got snarled on difficult politics, with the crossbenchers chopping up the jobs bill that Labor wanted unified to keep gig employers and the like on the hook. The HAFF was 50% a con job, was pinged by the Greens (which pushed for actual housing funding), and won wide public support. Labor and its tame intellectuals really lost the plot in responding, out of personal animus towards the Greens. 

That’s been about it, as far as a social democratic government goes. Net-zero initiatives have been pursued, but undermined by fossil fuel grants; there is a commitment of hundreds of billions to a sycophantic US alliance; pointless mass death in Gaza has been endorsed. Leaving aside fantasies of a left social democratic government, one could expect more from a centre-left Labor government. Labor pleads powerlessness to implement popular/populist ideas like price controls, because they’re unconstitutional and also distorting. But they have no appetite for the things that could be done to lower costs and prices, such as challenging the power of the various oligopolies that run our lives. Given the establishment of the national cabinet during COVID-19, they could have created a more substantial and integrated federal/state housing plan to mount a scaled-up attack on affordability. 

The failure to propose anything big, simple and sustaining is all the more bewildering given that there is already an example of how Labor can do this and win. Dan Andrews has shown that a series of big projects, and a theme linking them — “Victoria’s Big Build” — allows a government to resituate attacks and scandals arising from smaller issues that have to be dealt with. That worked and it kept working. It would obviously have to be modified for a federal government, but it would be a hell of a lot more effective than what the party is doing now. Why didn’t it do something like that?

The strong suspicion is that it was not merely the desire to maintain the “small target” strategy in a hostile mediascape that dictated this approach. Labor no longer has any strong institutional desire to tackle inequality of opportunity and condition at its root. The right has abandoned even the bread-and-butter form with which it once did this, to run the narrowest of compensatory regimes for those stuck within the limits of class-based lack of opportunity or — in the case of the benefits-dependent — stuck in unending, grinding, hopeless poverty. The “National Left” leadership offers no alternative and seems very pliable, largely grateful simply to have not ended their careers in permanent opposition. 

That it has abandoned such programmatic acts can be seen in the success of the Greens’ class and economic attacks, which the party has successfully recentred itself around. If Labor were doing even the most basic muscular things to address the housing crisis, then the Greens would have no line of attack that was simultaneously radical but also basic. If they had been forced leftward by a real Labor program, then they would have had only the most deliberately expansive demands, such as the national rent freeze. Instead, all they had to argue was that a housing program should involve actual money to build actual houses, and politics caught fire for a while. Part of Labor’s primary vote collapse surely occurred in that messy encounter. 

When a government derived from a historically social democratic party abandons all but a vestige of such a program, and simultaneously creates an alliance with a belligerent megapower to which hundreds of billions of dollars — essentially most of the country’s ongoing social fund — must be devoted, then it crosses very rapidly from one side to the other. The Albanese government is not here to materially liberate people from class oppression, but to enforce discipline on a population. One usually calls this nationalist. But in this case, it involves a surrender of much of our sovereign power to wage or not wage war to another larger power, to whom we are connected through our white racial heritage.   

With no real program, and no wellspring of desire to have one, Labor projects a vacuum. In that vacuum anything at all can appear and become a key issue, and that is what is happening to Labor now. Had it an Andrews-style approach — and it is entirely possible that it doesn’t for no other reason than the National Left’s personal hatred for the leaders of the Victorian Socialist Left — the detainee release issue would not have been as poorly handled as it was, and would not have become a central issue, symbolising the capacity of the government to keep us safe. Instead it, and anything else, can become the main issue for a while, since nothing else of any size occupies the public square. 

Would it be possible for the Albanese government to reboot itself in the new year and create some form of synthesised attack on the forces that are making life less and less livable for millions, and close to unlivable for a section of those people? Unless there has always been some cunning plan waiting in the wings, any such program would look ersatz and improvised. But there is no sign that there is sufficient leadership within the government to regroup and offer even that meagre consolation prize. The stronger likelihood is that the vacuum at the heart of the governmental purpose will be expressed as an absence of assertive governmental action. Labor will fight on the defensive all the way to the 2025 election. 

There it will face swing voters in 25 or so key outer-suburban electorates that feel that the Albanese government put a lot of inner-city energy into causes of possibility like the Voice on one side, grim military command on the other, and very little in the middle, except for enforcing the discipline of the market. In 2022, I thought that this marked a sort of “left Howardism”, with its commitment to military strength and toughness on refugees and the poor, while offering very little by way of economic transformation. But with its full commitment to the Voice campaign, and not much more than the Voice campaign for several months, it could not even maintain that discipline. It has combined the worst of both worlds, aligning itself with the (deserving) few, and against the many, who feel ever more disregarded by that. If Labor can’t give the appearance of turning the screw, as it were, in this term, it can kiss an era goodbye. And if it can’t perform the reality of that operation, and turn towards some muscular social democratic traditions, should that happen, it won’t matter anyway.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: A teenage boy who identifies as a girl is heading to the Irish Dancing World Championships after placing first in the U14 2023 Southern Region Oireachtas competitions. Parents of girls competing in Irish dance are frustrated and outraged, saying that they cannot understand why a boy with physical advantages is allowed to dance against their daughters.

“Oh, my gosh. It’s going to make me cry,” said one mother, whose daughter danced in the same competition as the trans-identifying boy in the Dallas, Texas, event. “I never thought I was going to have to deal with this. And my heart breaks for my daughter and the other girls that are having to deal with this. They are too young to have to deal with topics that are going on in society, that are adult topics, that they don’t quite comprehend yet.”

“They just look at it as unfair,” she added emotionally. “And it’s really hard to explain to them what’s going on and why they have to accept it. That’s what society’s making them do. As a mom, I want to be an advocate for my daughter. But at the same time, I have to protect my family.”

The Daily Signal has chosen not to name or picture the boy who won the U14 dance competition since he is a minor. Dance results show that the child formerly competed as a boy and placed 11th in the world in the Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG) World Championships in April 2023.

The boy’s social media includes the preferred pronouns “she/her” and pictures of the child at Irish dancing competitions depict him wearing the typical dance attire for girls, including dresses, makeup, and wigs. Results show that the boy finished first out of 100 dancers in the early December girls’ U14 competition, making him both a world qualifier and a national qualifier.

He dances with the Inis Cairde School of Irish Dance, which did not respond to requests for comment, nor did his teacher. The boy’s mother did not respond to requests for comment via her purported social media accounts.

In a video reviewed by The Daily Signal of the boy winning the U14 girls competition on Sunday, girls in the background can be seen with jaws dropped, looking at one another when they realize that he has been declared the winner.

“My daughter was in absolute tears,” shared the mother whose daughter competed against the boy last weekend. Her daughter was unaware he was a boy until he received first place and word spread like wildfire throughout the competition, she said. “She was like, ‘This is so unfair.’ I totally agree.”

Message boards reviewed by The Daily Signal show that many within the Irish Dance community are up-in-arms about the event. Users purporting to be parents expressed outrage about a boy dancing in and winning a girls’ competition—then expressed more outrage when their posts were deleted by the Voy message board moderator (who also deleted a post by this journalist requesting parents reach out for this story).

A number of parents reached out to The Daily Signal to share their frustrations, requesting anonymity to protect their daughters’ privacy and dancing futures.

“Parents think it’s outrageous,” shared one dancer’s parent, who spoke anonymously to preserve family privacy. “They are absolutely outraged. It’s absolutely ridiculous, just like in any other sport, and we’re seeing it play out on the national stage in the congressional hearings this week.”

“The feeling is one of fundamental unfairness,” this parent added. “And then obviously the frustration and resentment that goes along with that.”

“It’s just not OK,” protested a mother whose daughter also danced at the Southern Region Oireachtas and is now heading to the World Championships. “It’s totally wrong. It’s unfair, especially in Irish dance. A lot of it is just about power and strength. Yes, there is the technique … but a lot of it also has to do with strength and power and the boys are stronger.”

Parents told The Daily Signal they do not understand when or how the leaders of the Irish dancing community made the decision to allow boys to compete as girls. But emails from the Southern Regional director shine some light on this process.

In an Oct. 30 email obtained by The Daily Signal, Southern Regional Director PJ McCafferty told Irish dance teachers that at the June 30, 2022, Annual Convention of the Irish Dance Teachers’ Association of North America (IDTANA), the members in attendance adopted an inclusivity statement.

That statement said that the IDTANA is committed to “a culture where every dancer, family, teacher, and volunteer feel safe, respected and valued through creating an environment that provides dancers, regardless of age, ability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, income, race or sexual orientation, opportunities to learn and grow as dancers and people.”

McCafferty also revealed in this Oct. 30 email that he convened a meeting of the Southern Region Executive Board and proposed a motion allowing trans-identifying dancers to compete as the gender they aligned with: “At the Southern Region Qualifying Oireachtas, dancers may compete in the competition appropriate for the gender they identify as in their everyday life, without regard for their gender at birth.”

“The motion passed in a secret ballot,” he shared.

Then, in a Nov. 21 post, McCafferty publicly addressed concerns about the boy dancing in the girls’ competitions, acknowledging that there is “a great deal of upset” about the matter but emphasizing that “entering and competing in the CLRG [Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha] World Championship competition that corresponds to the gender identity of the dancer is an established CLRG precedent.”

“It has been done before,” said the regional director, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In a statement to the Daily Signal, the Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha, the governing body for global competitive Irish step dancing (recently under fire for “feis-fixing” allegations that teachers were bestowing sexual favors on judges in exchange for their pupils’ advancements), said merely: “CLRG is committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment for every child in our Irish dance community.”

“I am writing this post to remind everyone that we teach all the dancers,” McCafferty continued. “We advocate for every one of our dancers. We do our very best to be fair to everyone. This situation is not easy for anyone. Not everyone’s point of view or personal interests align. I am asking for your tolerance. You are expected to respect all the dancers.”

He urged the dancing instructors to “be proactive and speak to dancers and parents in your class who are aggrieved by these policies,” telling the teachers to “explain that we are required to adhere to CLRG and IDTANA policies,” according to a Nov. 20 email obtained by The Daily Signal.

Many of the female dancers’ parents expressed fears that the Irish dance community would label them as transphobic or hateful if they spoke up for their daughters—and they fear that their daughters will suffer if they speak out. But the parents also stressed that they merely want fairness for their young dancers, who they do not think should compete against a boy.

“My husband could lose his job,” said the mother of the girl who danced in the same competition as the boy. “I could lose my job. I’m afraid my child might be chastised or, you know, not allowed to compete in other Irish dancing. This is what she loves. This is her passion.”

Rowena Ryan is a former Irish dance instructor and adjudicator who taught for over 20 years and whose daughter formerly competed as a dancer. Ryan noted in a phone interview with The Daily Signal that there are many members of the LGBTQ community within the Irish dance world and that she “100%” supports them, “as do the majority of the teachers and adjudicators within Irish dance.”

But that doesn’t change the fact that boys have physical advantages over girls in Irish dance, she said: “There’s just no getting around the physical differences between men and women.”

“When you’re judging competitions between girls and boys, things that you look for are different in a male dancer compared to a female dancer,” she said. “So I just don’t think it’s fair to have the two competing against another because they are judged on different criteria.”

“You can identify as a giraffe if that’s what you want to do,” the former judge added. “I believe firmly in live and let live. It’s when someone else’s decisions are then affecting a lot of other people that you then have to sit back and decide what needs to happen. And I’m sorry, but girls need to compete against girls and boys need to compete against boys.”

Maggie McKneely, a young woman who competed in the adult competition at the Southern Region Oireachtas last weekend, also reflected on the situation in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.

“Most sports, men and women tend to do the same basic activity, just at very different skill levels, but Irish dance is highly gendered,” explained McKneely, who works as a legislative strategist for the conservative organization, Concerned Women for America. “The two sexes wear different shoes, they wear different clothes, they actually have completely different dance styles. They’re really not interchangeable in any way.”

“If a boy decides to compete as a girl, he has to learn how to dance like a girl and wear girls’ dance shoes,” she continued. “So I think it’s really ridiculous. It’s not fair to the kids. It’s certainly not fair to the girls who have to compete against the boy. And it totally undermines what makes Irish dance what it is, the highly gendered aspect of it is a defining feature.”

What is next for those who dissent from the Irish dancing world’s apparent embrasure of gender ideology? Parents who spoke with The Daily Signal hope that their voices will help bodies like the CLRG to recognize that only girls should compete against girls. Some of these parents are preparing to take a public stand if their daughters are forced to compete against a boy.

They feel, as McKneely wrote in a Thursday blog post, that “the powers that be within Irish dance are more interested in being politically correct than preserving both the dignity of Irish dance and its dancers.”

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected], and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. 

The House will move next week to authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden with regard to his family’s alleged influence peddling.

In September, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., endorsed an impeachment inquiry into Biden—but with no House vote to proceed on the investigation. 

On Dec. 12, the House Rules Committee will consider a markup of the impeachment inquiry from a bill proposed by Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D.

NOTICE OF MARKUP ??

On Tuesday, December 12th, @RulesReps will markup H. Res. 918, a resolution directing a framework for continued impeachment inquiry investigations & upholding the House’s constitutional authorities.

Tune in at 10 AM EST. pic.twitter.com/vtehxhtD6K

— House Rules Committee (@RulesReps) December 7, 2023

“It’s time for the House to take the next step in the Biden impeachment investigation and adopt an impeachment inquiry resolution,” Armstrong said in a statement Thursday. “The White House and multiple witnesses have repeatedly refused to cooperate with the investigation and have rejected subpoenas.”

Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement to The Hill, “This baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality but in extreme House Republicans’ shameless desire to abuse their power to smear President Biden.”

He also criticized Republicans for focusing on “stupid stunts to get attention for themselves.”

The announcement comes the same week that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee released bank records showing what appeared to be at least the third direct payment to Joe Biden before he was president that was linked to family companies.

Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, said in a statement to The Hill that the payments for were for a truck, “The truth is Hunter’s father helped him when he was struggling financially due to his addiction and could not secure credit to finance a truck. When Hunter was able to, he paid his father back and took over the payments himself.”

Biden family members owned multiple shell companies that raked in more than $20 million in foreign money. In July, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released an FBI form that showed a confidential informant reported that executives with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, paid a $5 million bribe to then-Vice President Biden in 2016 to help scuttle a Ukrainian government investigation of the company. 

Under the proposal to be considered by the House Rules Committee, the same three panels—the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee—will continue to conduct the probe. 

“Despite this refusal, the investigation has uncovered alarming details that demand further scrutiny,” Armstrong added in his statement. “The Biden family and associates received more than $24 million from foreign nationals. Joe Biden received $200,000 from his brother, James Biden, the same day James received a $200,000 loan from a failing rural hospital operator.”

Armstrong continued:

Joe Biden also received $40,000 in laundered Chinese money from his brother and sister-in-law. It’s become clear that the Biden family sold influence around the world using Joe Biden’s name as the product. An investigation in any jurisdiction around the country would move forward if it had these facts. A vote on an impeachment inquiry puts the House in the best position to prevail in court and uncover the truth.

Testimony from first son Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer, as well as by Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers, outlined numerous times Biden either met with or had phone calls with his son’s business partners. 

When asked about his contacts on Wednesday, Biden shot back, “I’m not going to comment. I did not. That’s just a bunch of lies. I did not. They are lies.”

? Joe Biden:

Dined at Cafe Milano with oligarchs from around the world that sent his son money.

Joined by speakerphone with Biden family associates over 20 times.

Used aliases as Vice President to email with his son’s business associate.@POTUS just continues to lie.? pic.twitter.com/dXy5u76b2x

— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) December 6, 2023

The vote is likely to break down along party lines in both the committee and on the House floor. 

Democrats are already rejecting the proposal for a formalized inquiry. 

“Voting to launch an impeachment inquiry will not change the fact that following many months of endless investigation by this Congress and by Senate Republicans in 2020, the evidence plainly shows no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, much less an impeachable offense,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, in a public statement. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said earlier this week he expected the slim Republican majority in the House to have the votes to authorize an inquiry, which is not the same as a vote to impeach the president. Rather, it opens a formal investigation. 

Republican lawmakers have argued that a formal impeachment inquiry—a process authorized under the Constitution—is necessary to compel the White House and the Biden family to provide documents and testimony that not otherwise would be required by regular congressional oversight. 

Also, formal approval by a full House is not a constitutional requirement. But it does give the inquiry more credibility. In 2019, Republicans were heavily critical of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for unilaterally declaring an impeachment inquiry into then-President Donald Trump for a Ukraine phone call. Eventually, the full Democrat-controlled House approved the impeachment inquiry. However, the House did not formalize an inquiry or hold hearings ahead of Trump’s second impeachment regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capital riot. 

The full House voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry into both President Bill Clinton in 1998 regarding the Monica Lewinsky matter and in 1974 into President Richard Nixon. In 1868, the House authorized the Judiciary Committee and the House Select Committee on Reconstruction to investigate the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, the first of only three presidents to be impeached by the House. 

Johnson, Clinton, and Trump were all acquitted in Senate trials. Nixon resigned after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment, but before a full House vote.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected] and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.