The BBC and corporate media coalesce around an extremely narrow consensus of political thought, and ensure that anybody who steps outside that consensus is ridiculed and marginalised. That consensus has got narrower and narrower. I was delighted during the general election to be able to listen to Nicola Sturgeon during the leaders’ debate argue for anti-austerity policies and for the scrapping of Trident. I had not heard anyone on broadcast media argue for the scrapping of Trident for a decade – it is one of those views which though widely held the establishment gatekeepers do not view as respectable.
The media are working overtime to marginalise Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour leadership candidate on the grounds that he is left wing and therefore weird and unelectable. But they face the undeniable fact that, Scottish independence aside, there are very few political differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon. On issues including austerity, nuclear weapons, welfare and Palestine both Sturgeon and Corbyn are really very similar. They have huge areas of agreement that stand equally outside the establishment consensus. Indeed Nicola is more radical than Jeremy, who wants to keep the United Kingdom.
The establishment’s great difficulty is this. Given that the SNP had just slaughtered the Labour Party – and the Tories and Lib Dems – by being a genuine left wing alternative, how can the media consensus continue to insist that the left are unelectable? The answer is of course that they claim Scotland is different. Yet precisely the same establishment consensus denies that Scotland has a separate political culture when it comes to the independence debate. So which is it? They cannot have it both ways.
If Scotland is an integral part of the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s policies cannot be unelectable.
Nicola Sturgeon won the UK wide leaders debate in the whole of the United Kingdom, despite the disadvantage of representing a party not standing in 90% of it by population. She won not just because she is clever and genuine, but because people all across the UK liked the left wing policies she articulated.
A Daily Mirror opinion poll following a BBC televised Labour leadership candidates’ debate this week had Jeremy Corbyn as the clear winner, with twice the support of anyone else. The media ridicule level has picked up since. This policy of marginalisation works. I was saddened by readers’ comments under a Guardian report of that debate, in which Labour supporter after Labour supporter posted comment to the effect “I would like to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he believes in the same things I do, but we need a more right wing leader to have a chance of winning.”
There are two answers to that. The first is no, you don’t need to be right wing to win. Look at the SNP. The second is what the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents? The problem is, of course, that for so many in the Labour Party, especially but not just the MPs, they want to win for personal career advantage not actually to promote particular policies.
The media message of the need to be right wing to be elected is based on reinforced by a mythologizing of Tony Blair and Michael Foot as the ultimate example of the Good and Bad leader. These figures are constantly used to reinforce the consensus. Let us examine their myths.
Tony Blair is mythologised as an electoral superstar, a celebrity politician who achieved unprecedented personal popularity with the public, and that he achieved this by adopting right wing policies. Let us examine the truth of this myth. First that public popularity. The best measure of public enthusiasm is the percentage of those entitled to vote, who cast their ballot for that party at the general election. This table may surprise you.
Percentage of Eligible Voters
1992 John Major 32.5%
1997 Tony Blair 30.8%
2001 Tony Blair 24.1%
2005 Tony Blair 21.6%
2010 David Cameron 23.5%
2015 David Cameron 24.4%
There was only any public enthusiasm for Blair in 97 – and to put that in perspective, it was less than the public enthusiasm for John Major in 1992.
More importantly, this public enthusiasm was not based on the policies now known as Blairite. The 1997 Labour Manifesto was not full of right wing policies and did not indicate what Blair was going to do.
The Labour Party manifesto of 1997 did not mention Academy schools, Private Finance Initiative, Tuition Fees, NHS privatisation, financial sector deregulation or any of the right wing policies Blair was to usher in. Labour actually presented quite a left wing image, and figures like Robin Cook and Clare Short were prominent in the campaign. There was certainly no mention of military invasions.
It was only once Labour were in power that Blair shaped his cabinet and his policies on an ineluctably right wing course and Mandelson started to become dominant. As people discovered that New Labour were “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, to quote Mandelson, their popular support plummeted. “The great communicator” Blair for 90% of his Prime Ministership was no more popular than David Cameron is now. 79% of the electorate did not vote for him by his third election
Michael Foot consistently led Margaret Thatcher in opinion polls – by a wide margin – until the Falklands War. He was defeated in a victory election by the most appalling and intensive wave of popular war jingoism and militarism, the nostalgia of a fast declining power for its imperial past, an emotional outburst of popular relief that Britain could still notch up a military victory over foreigners in its colonies. It was the most unedifying political climate imaginable. The tabloid demonization of Foot as the antithesis of the military and imperial theme was the first real exhibition of the power of Rupert Murdoch. Few serious commentators at the time doubted that Thatcher might have been defeated were it not for the Falklands War – which in part explains her lack of interest in a peaceful solution. Michael Foot’s position in the demonology ignores these facts.
The facts about Blair and about Foot are very different from the media mythology.
The stupid stunt by Tories of signing up to the Labour Party to vote for Corbyn to ridicule him, is exactly the kind of device the establishment consensus uses to marginalise those whose views they fear. Sturgeon is living proof left wing views are electable. The “left unelectable” meme will intensify. I expect Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest problem will be quiet exclusion. I wish him well.
Funny I can’t see anything in the rules about “unproductive comments”, (although I did read that Craig enjoys seeing “a bit of banter”);
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/nicola-corbyn-and-the-myth-of-the-unelectable-left/comment-page-3/#comment-534059
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[ Mod: Macky, and Phil et al, you can either play by the rules or not at all. It’s entirely up to you, but it is not a matter for discussion. ]
The High Level International Military Group—a UN-commissioned group made up of 11 former chiefs of staff, generals, senior officers, and political leaders from the U.S., Germany, Spain, Holland, the U.K., Italy, Australia, and Colombia—dismissed all charges and allegations of Israel’s war crimes after investigating last summer’s attack on Gaza.
The report was issued on Saturday following the group’s five-day trip to the region in March. It ultimately claims that Israel acted responsibly and with much restraint when the IDF bombarded Gaza last summer during what is known as “Operation Protective Edge.” The report even refers to the attack as “legitimate.”
How can the killing of 509 children by a superior military force be seen by the UN of all bodies,as legitimate.
What on earth is going on in Brussels,who’s calling the shots,the US? Israel? It’s certainly not common sense anyway.
http://theantimedia.org/israel-bombing-elementary-schools-not-considered-war-crimes/
[ Mod: Macky, and Phil et al, you can either play by the rules or not at all
Err, I’m trying to find out what the rules are ! Where is the rule about “unproductive comments” ? Craig stated he enjoys banter, which is by definition “unproductive” !
Anybody familiar with The Cream report will be aware that it demolishes the argument that immigrants put a burden on the economy and that migrants come to Britain and “take” all the new jobs. As the report showed, there isn’t a fixed number of jobs to be filled.
Between 1995 and 2001 the number of jobs went up by 12.8 percent while the working age population rose by 10.2 percent. Around 2.3 million of new jobs created since 1995 went to migrants. The report pointed out that this is “not surprising since immigration accounts for nearly the entire growth of the UK population”.
Meanwhile around one million new jobs created over the same period went to British-born workers – despite the fact that its population size is unchanged.
Importantly the report exposed how the definition of “migrant” affects whether they are “contributing” or not. So, children born in Britain to migrant parents are counted as migrants when they are in school. Yet when they go to work and start paying taxes they become “British”.
The Cream report added that calculating the “cost” of migrants to Britain doesn’t consider that the cost of educating them was borne elsewhere:
http://cream-migration.org/files/FiscalEJ.pdf
Technicolour, thanks for reiterating the fact that Migration Watch, as acknowledged by Professor Dustmann, are a bunch of charlatans. I also highlighted above that this was the view of Professor Dorling too.
““To meet the requirements of European Union Community guidelines on state aid to maritime transport, the company’s routes were put out to open tender. To enable competitive bidding on an equal basis.”
When Westminster put the running of the rail service out to tender it was called privatisation.
Why should putting the ferry service out to tender be called anything else?”
It was first put out to tender in 2007. By the Labour government.
“When they privatised the Orkney Shetland ferry prices were raised and services cut. When MV Hamnavoe broke down and was out of action for a month there was no replacement brought in. Serco was banned from bidding on government contracts for over charging for electronic tagging but the Scottish government seem happy to get into bed with them, as they are with the likes of Brian Seuter and Rupert Murdoch.”
______________________________
Tell me Fred how are the Scottish government in bed with Murdoch? Murdoch employs many folk in Scotland,so tell me Fred what sinister undertakings have you uncovered.
Souter donated £1 million to the SNP during the indy ref so what? JK Rowling,did the same for Better Together,is she in bed with Westminster? a mute point Fred.
The Scottish government bought two specially designed planes to run services to some (granted not all islands) which went into service yesterday,so it’s not all doom and gloom.
I do agree with your point on SERCO,they wouldn’t be my choice of contractor SERCO ran Dungavel detention centre from 2001 to 2003, and we all know what harsh treatments are dished out in their,but Dungavel is a overall Westminster matter,that we must abide for now.
I sincerely hope the people who work for CalMac retain their positions with the company as in tne case with Abellio.
Daniel, Technicolour
OK, have it as you wish: large-scale immigration raises wages rather than depressing them and there are no effects on infrastructure.
It is probably that sort of blind faith which led to UKIP garnering 4 million+ votes at the last election.
Enjoy your next latte when served by a Polish university graduate, Daniel!
Fred: “The people who live on the islands will suffer, the CalMac workers will suffer.”
Not for as long as they might, if they follow the example of the rather wonderful Skye Bridge protesters (adapted, of course, but people are imaginative):
“Opened in 1995 the bridge replaced a ferry service that linked Skye to the mainland for centuries. Private contractors undertook the construction of the bridge and they recouped their costs by charging a toll to cross the bridge.
The tolls that were charged to use the bridge were much more expensive than the ferry service that it replaced and much more expensive than any other bridge in Scotland. A campaign of civil disobedience took place with over 500 people charged for non-payment of the bridge tolls. Other protests took place including local people “grazing” sheep around the toll areas to cause maximum disruption to traffic.
In December 2004 the Scottish Government bought out the bridge and tolls were immediately abolished making the bridge free for everyone to use.”
The history of the Skye Bridge protest is quite amazing, the locals who took on the Bank of America (whose toll soared from an estimated 40p per ticket to £11.40) and won. Better link here (I couldn’t copy from the piece)
http://www.lochalsh.co.uk/skye_bridge.shtml
And a film about the peaceful, inspired, inspiring ways in which the people protested:
http://thirdforcenews.org.uk/tfn-news/skye-bridge-protest-celebrated-in-music-and-film
“It was first put out to tender in 2007. By the Labour government.”
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That’s correct Juteman, I don’t know if you have read this article on it.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-truth-about-calmac-short-version/#more-72212
More info on the Calmac story here, Fred.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-truth-about-calmac-short-version/
Snap!
“Seven in ten (71 percent) employers feel the good availability of migrant workers has no impact on wages at their organisation.”
______________________
Wouldn’t you rather expect them to say that?
In the same way as employers will usually say that corporation tax should be lowered?
Few employers are going to say “oh yes, I like large-scale immigration because it keeps wages down (and saves us the expense and trouble of training up local young people), are they – it wouldn’t be good PR.
Be careful – your own middleclass jobs might be feeling the heat before too long. And then you’ll be singing a different tune.
Having just had my JFK conspiracy interest rekindled by a poster, after 50 years only this may be said -The persons behind the crime of the century had to have the media behind them to “grassy knoll” and obfuscate the truth. We can see how they done it by observing the same devils at work in the microcosm of this blog. Jack Ruby(enstein) was a kind of suicide bomber way ahead of his time, he gave up his life and “bombed” the truth from surfacing. JFK RIP.
Ah Juteman, what is it they say about great minds……….lol.
“OK, have it as you wish: large-scale immigration raises wages rather than depressing theme”
Well, of course, since you haven’t been able to show otherwise. It must be hard to have to argue without facts.
“and there are no effects on infrastructure.”
Have we discussed ‘infrastructure’? I don’t think so. One might speculate how much of the £20 billion immigrants contributed was spent on building – do some research, by all means.
“It is probably that sort of blind faith which led to UKIP garnering 4 million+ votes at the last election.”
Do you think so? Because we look at the facts, people vote for UKIP’s lies? That is strange.
“Enjoy your next latte when served by a Polish university graduate, Daniel!”
I wonder how many of the 1.4 million British people working abroad are being sneered at by European Habbakuks. My sympathies to them.
I understand that it can be uncomfortable when long-standing myths of the kind peddled by charlatans like Migration Watch – and subsequently uncritically reproduced in the media in order to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment – are totally debunked by academics in the field. But it is what it is.
Oh look what the GCHQ spooks are upto, but I’m guessing that maybe some commentators here are already very familiar with all this :
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/06/so-the-spy-services-are-the-real-internet-trolls.html#comments
“If you’re not careful, the (newspapers) will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”….
Mark Regev has a South African accent just now on C4, excusing his countries horrific record in Ghaza. I had to switch it off as his belligerent lies made me thick.
Booooohooo they are all biased against us, look at us the poor, eternally misunderstood Apartheid Israel. He accused Hamas of escalation because they did not accept their cease fire conditions.
I think Israel should be expelled from the UN! It should now loose its special trade agreements and anyone who has any record of suspected war crimes going ‘shopping ‘in London, should be arrested.
“Souter donated £1 million to the SNP during the indy ref so what? JK Rowling,did the same for Better Together,is she in bed with Westminster? a mute point Fred.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Brian_Souter#Donations_to_the_SNP
“Tell me Fred how are the Scottish government in bed with Murdoch? Murdoch employs many folk in Scotland,so tell me Fred what sinister undertakings have you uncovered.”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/sturgeon-no-link-between-snp-backing-of-bskyb-bid-and-sun-support.1335525091
Nevermind had a thought, a critical factor in changing things no doubt, Or just Nevermind, unproductive comments….?
I pick the latter.
“Not for as long as they might, if they follow the example of the rather wonderful Skye Bridge protesters (adapted, of course, but people are imaginative)”
I crossed on the ferry to Skye many times before the bridge was built and never paid once. If you were a local the boys who collected the fares walked right past you. They made enough from commercial vehicles and tourists not to have to penalise somebody just going to the shop in Kyleakin.
The bridge put a stop to that.
“It was first put out to tender in 2007. By the Labour government.”
And your point is?
How does that have a bearing on what it is called? It’s still privatisation as who does it.
Mark Regev has a South African accent just now on C4…
Think he always did, Nevermind (although he was born in Melbourne). There’s still an affinity – I see de Klerk’s back onside:
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/FW-de-Klerk-opposes-sanctions-on-Israel-20150621
Memory hole (no way of verifying this, really, but suggestive –
http://mg.co.za/article/1994-02-11-fw-de-klerks-three-lies
Fair play to the man, though. He did enable a peaceful transition in SA.
“She told the BBC he had believed that News Corporation’s consolidation of its ownership of BSkyB would have created the potential for increasing jobs in Scotland.”
Re above the snippet from your link Fred,so in essence,Alex Salmond’s intervention (which the original source in your link claims is only a suggestion) would’ve been a bad thing because it would’ve effectively brought more jobs to Scotland.
Or did Alex Salmond have a ulterior motive Fred,if so what, let us know Fred.
As for Souter,what exactly is his crime Fred? is it one of donating to the SNP?
Er Fred, the point was that thanks to the protesters, the bridge is now free. I agree, massive infrastructure projects devastate local community enterprises regardless.
Habbabkuk,
I would suggest that the 71 per cent figure is indicative of an awareness and recognition among employers that immigration has no impact on wages and the research bares them out. I agree with you in as much as this kind of reasoning sounds – at least on the surface – counter-intuitive. As the liberal columnist Polly Toynbee put it in the Guardian, “Near-full employment should mean pay rises – but cheap imported labour keeps it low.”
There’s something about this way of thinking that makes people take it more seriously than other arguments about immigration. People are inclined to listen when you explain that housing shortages are a result of failure to invest in public housing, not immigration.
But somehow the economy is different. It seems to have a life of its own, beyond the control of human beings. This makes it harder to tackle the idea that immigrants hold down wages.
In fact it’s all too easy to slip into a left wing version of opposing immigration, which goes something like this: socialists defend workers’ wages and conditions, which are under attack because there are too many workers competing for too few jobs. So we should support restrictions on immigrant labour.
On the surface it seems an obvious truth that the arrival of large numbers of foreign workers into the labour market must drive down the wages of those already here. This appears to be consistent with the views of Karl Marx who wrote about the “reserve army of labour” – the pool of unemployed and underemployed workers whose existence poses a threat to employed workers and helps the bosses impose wage discipline. It seems that, today, immigration provides global capitalism with its reserve army.
But those who adopt Marx in order to reinforce the apparent consensus arguments of both left and right, are really misrepresenting him. It isn’t the case that Marx argued for controls on immigration as a means of defending wages or that immigrants really prevent British workers from getting more pay.
The notion of a “reserve army of labour” is a powerful one, conjuring up an image of workers as cannon fodder, ordered into battle by the capitalist machine. Perhaps for this very reason, mainstream economists sometimes fall back on Marx’s terminology when they glimpse just how bad things are for workers.
For example, the bosses’ paper the Financial Times (FT) wrote recently that globalisation means Western capital now has access to low cost labour in countries that were previously closed off to it: “That vast reserve army of low wage labour is always there in the background, the curse of over supply condemning employees to accept what they are offered.”
AA top economist at the Asian Development Bank also talks about “the pressures of a huge ‘reserve army’ of unemployed and underemployed workers who are constantly driven to seek out employment at substandard wages in order to survive”.
More often than not, however, economists who defend the capitalist system acknowledge the existence of a “reserve army of labour”, but find that Marx’s wonderful phrase sticks in their throat.
So Milton Friedman, the now dead Nobel prize-winning economist was famous for insisting that economies have a “natural” rate of unemployment. Any attempt to create full employment, he argued, was doomed to cause inflation and instability.
But this was nothing if not a bare-faced admission that capitalism cannot exist without a pool of unemployed, whose function is to discourage wage rises among those in work. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the “natural” rate can be uncomfortably large. The unemployment rate needed for a stable economy in Europe is 8 percent. The ECB lament this figure as being too high.
That’s why Friedman’s theory was swiftly toned down by its apologists. The name was unfortunate and was soon replaced by the more anodyne “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment” (ie Nairu). This in turn was replaced by the closely related but still more anodyne concept of the “output gap”.
So the implication is that when mainstream economic theorists don’t like how capitalism works, they change the name of their theories. You could scarcely have a more direct testimony that mainstream economics covers up reality, rather than exposing it.
What happened to Anon1? I was looking forward to his defence of the austerity policies he finds so pleasing.
Incidentally, what are the measures of success of austerity – child poverty? Re-emergence of TB, food banks, people dying of malnutrition, what?
The thing that really rankles is “austerity” to a toff means making do with a slightly less agreeable bottle, or maybe 4 glasses instead of 5, over a swanky lunch. For the poor, it means walking 5 miles instead of catching a bus, or skipping meals.
“But they have a TV! How dare they!”
Indeed. Some even have the cheek not to freeze to death in Winter – life is so unjust.
First major PFI project ever, the Skye Bridge. I remember the lengths to which the Tories went to make it look as if public consultation had occurred, but guess the only opinions that registered were those of hoteliers. Charles Kennedy supported it, too.