I Wish That Corbyn Were Not Leader, But I Might Still Vote For Him, by Tom Bailey

I recently wrote an extremely vitriolic article for the Huffington Post blog in which I bemoaned the new Labour leader and mocked his chances of victory.

I’ll be honest, the article was not the peak of my journalistic career: I was frustrated, and I unfairly directed my frustration towards Corbyn and his followers. 

I attacked Corbyn for the reshuffle disaster, and I blamed him for all the problems facing his party. 

Though I do think Corbyn was partly to blame for the resignations, and though I am certainly suspicious about what went on in those “hostile briefings”, I realise my article was misled and, to an extent, unfair. 

I allowed my anger to overcome my reason, ignoring the fact that both sides in the reshuffle conflict were to blame – John McDonnell for his spiteful comments about a “right-wing clique”, for example, and Stephen Doughty for using his resignation to launch a public attack on his leader. 

However, that’s not to say my feelings about Corbyn have changed: I still think he is the wrong leader for the party, and I still think he will lead Labour to electoral oblivion. 

And that’s my main problem with Corbyn: his unelectability. 

YouGov polls show that, while many people agree that Corbyn is principled and honest (a defence constantly used by his supporters), they don’t think he is capable of running the country. 

And that is, of course, a problem, because the Labour Party doesn’t want to be in opposition. 

If it wants to change people’s lives for the better, and if it wants to make this country a fairer and more equal place to live, then it needs to be in government. 

So why is Corbyn so unelectable, and why do polls show his popularity falling? 

Well, not only does Corbyn have about as much charm and rhetorical skill as a drowned rat, he also lacks the ability to appeal to the general public.

As I said in my previous article, “Corbyn’s mandate can only go so far.” What I mean by that is this: Corbyn’s mandate came from Labour supporters and people who agree with his socialist agenda. 

But just because 59.5% of Labour members support Corbyn, that doesn’t mean the whole country does. 

I’m sorry to say this, but most people in this country feel alienated by Corbyn’s views: his decision not to kneel at the Privy council, his early refusal to sing the National Anthem and his branding the death of Osama Bin Laden as “a tragedy, upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy”.

Corbyn supporters are constantly telling me that his honest decency will attract young voters and the large swathes of people across the country who are disillusioned with politics. 

But can he? Yet another elderly white male from the South who wants to be prime minister? I doubt it. 

In fact, whilst campaigning for Labour in Oldham, Abby Tomlinson (one of the key founders of the Milifandom movement) says she met nobody who was attracted to vote for Labour by Corbyn, “a LOT of non voters who won’t be persuaded to do so” and a lot of people who used to vote Labour, but won’t now because of Corbyn. 

So here’s my biggest dilemma: I don’t actually disagree with Corbyn on that many issues. 

Take the above three examples: like Corbyn, I see the monarchy as a symbol of systemic inequality; like Corbyn, I loathe our national anthem; and like Corbyn, I think every criminal ought to be given a fair trial (though I certainly wouldn’t, under any circumstances, call the death of a terrorist mastermind a “tragedy”).

However, I do realise that most of the British public don’t think like me, whether for bad or for good. 

Corbyn was elected, in my opinion, because of a lack of concern (on behalf of Labour members) for what the electorate actually think. 

Indeed, I recently spoke with a lady who helped to run Labour elections and who worked alongside Miliband. 

She told me that, in her opinion, Labour party members are the worst possible people to choose a leader simply because they vote for themselves, without considering the views and concerns of the general public. 

I also realise that for a politician to be credible, they need to be careful with their words: the press in this country will jump on anything, however unfairly. 

That’s why Corbyn shouldn’t have called Hamas and Hezbollah his “friends”, even though it was arguably the right thing to do in order to encourage peace in the region. 

But, as I have said before, Corbyn never expected to be in the spotlight, and that’s one of his problems. Oh, how I long for David Miliband to return. 

But, alas, instead we have a leader who is struggling to unite his party and struggling to present a credible alternative that can appeal to the electorate. 

And yet, despite my qualms, I might still vote for him in 2020. 

Why? Because he seems to be the lesser of two evils. Yes, it’s true, I don’t think he can win, and that’s why I wish he wasn’t leader: but I’d still prefer him over Cameron, or worse, Osborne. 

Though I can’t hold a seemingly staunch pacifist stance like Corbyn does, and though I am very uncertain about Corbyn and McDonnell’s economic capabilities, I think I can trust the Labour party far more than I can trust the Tories. 

What is more, with the Lib Dems seemingly resigned to becoming a protest party, voting Labour could be the safest way to ensure that the poorest in society are represented; that the NHS is protected; and that equality and fairness are promoted throughout the UK. 

I feel now that I ought to give some words of advice for Corbyn and Labour if they want to win in 2020 (listen up Jezza). 

Firstly, they need to work on appealing to everybody in the country, particularly the middle classes.

Secondly, Corbyn needs to be more careful with what he says and how he says it. Honesty alone won’t win an election, I’m afraid.

And finally, Labour need to hammer home its message over, and over, and over again until its adages are perpetually haunting the thoughts of the general public.

I can’t tell you many times I’ve heard how, “If we want a strong NHS, we need a strong economy” – it’s annoying, but it works.

Perhaps, with a lot of work, there can indeed be a Labour victory in 2020.

@TomBaileyBlog

On Balance, Better Off Out, by Roger Godsiff MP

I do not take a hard line position either in favour of the UK’s leaving the European Union, or in favour of the UK’s remaining in the European Union.

The last time the British people were asked whether Britain should stay or leave was back in 1975 when the European Union was then a ‘Common Market’, which Britain had entered under the Heath Government in the early 1970s. 

The Common Market was essentially a free trade area and in the 1975 referendum I voted for Britain to remain as a member of the Common Market. 

Since 1975 the Common Market has evolved, radically, into a European Union, and this was cemented when Mrs. Thatcher signed the ‘Single European Act’ around 1986. 

According to her memoirs, and according to her political advisor at the time, John Whittingdale, who is now the Secretary of State for Culture, she was told by Foreign Office officials and European Commissioners that this was merely a tidying up exercise to bring to a conclusion the creation of the Single Market and had no other significance. 

Subsequently, once again according  to her memoirs, she realised that what she had done had much more significance and she openly admitted that she bitterly resented having allowed the legislation to go through the UK Parliament. 

At the same time, in the mid-1980s, the Trade Union movement and Labour Party, which had, until then, been sceptical about the whole concept of a European Union also signed up to it after the European Commission President, Jacques Delors, went to the TUC and told the Trade Union movement that the only way they could protect themselves against the ravages of Thatcherism, and her attacks on working people, was to seek the protection of the European Union.

Almost overnight, the majority of Trade Unions switched from being sceptical or anti-EU to being supportive of the institution. 

The coming into being of the European Union was a massive step away from the Common Market.

From being just a free trade area, this was a huge step towards the creation of a United States of Europe, modelled on the way America was governed, which was always the intention of the founding fathers of the European Coal and Steel Community which was a precursor to the Common Market. 

The two most prominent advocates of the setting up of the European Coal and Steel Community were called Monet and Schumann, and they knew, as their biographical histories acknowledge, exactly what they had in mind which was, eventually, a United States of Europe modelled on America.

But they were also aware that this would take time and could only be done step by step. Most importantly they were aware that it had to be achieved by stealth, because if the people of Europe were asked, on a regular basis, whether they wished to be part of a European superstate, then it was highly likely that the proposal would have been rejected.

This principle of never, unless in the most extreme circumstances, consulting the people of Europe, has been something that the Federalists have stood by ever since.

Whenever a new treaty has been signed by Governments and there have been objections amongst the electorates of member-states, the whole paraphernalia of the Brussels bureaucracy has then been mobilised to ‘rubbish’ such criticism, and vehemently to deny that what was being proposed was in any way a movement towards the creation of a European superstate modelled on America. 

Because any criticism of the direction that Europe has been going has always been belittled by the Federalists, a massive amount of resentment has been built up and what we are seeing now in various parts of Europe.

What I think will happen in the UK, is that a lot of people will vote against the European Union because they have never been told the truth about what the real intentions were and, to put it bluntly, they feel that they have been conned. 

If this did happen in the referendum in the UK, then the only people to blame would be the Federalists fanatics who had deliberately not made the arguments for why they believed that a European superstate, modelled on America, should be created, with most political power residing at the centre in Brussels and with the individual member-states relegated to being component parts of the superstate like American states.

Turning back now to the specific arguments which will arise in the referendum, I think that the first thing that needs to be said is that what the Prime Minister ‘achieves’ in his negotiations will have very little relevance to the debate that takes place.

From day one, he set out with minimalist agenda because he had very little flexibility, and what he will finally ‘achieve’ will hardly figure in the referendum debate at all.

The argument as to whether we should stay or leave is going to centre around whether we were economically better off in or out.

And around whether having control over who we allowed into this country – and how many people we allowed into this country – was preferable to the current situation whereby any of the 503 million people living in the 28 countries of the European Union have an absolute right to move to any country within the Union, and to settle and work there without the national government’s being able to place any restriction on them. 

The question of the mass migration of populations from Syria should not be part of the debate, because these are genuine political refugees fleeing for their lives. But I suspect that it will figure in the thoughts of many people who do not favour unrestricted movement of people within the 28 countries of the EU.

As I said right at the beginning, I do not have a hard and fast position and I have a great deal of respect for people such as Ted Heath and Denis Healey who, as serving soldiers in the Second World War, saw the destruction of Europe and dedicated their political careers to ensuring that such a thing did not happen again.

They considered that if that involved binding the countries of Europe so closely together, then that was as a price worth paying.

This idealistic argument has never been properly articulated by the Federalists who, as I have said, have tried to achieve the establishment of an United States of Europe by stealth and, in doing so, have denied what the so-called ‘project’ was all about.

People are not stupid, and many people have become increasingly angry – aided and abetted, it needs to be said, by elements in the press This anger has simmered below the surface for a long time.

The European Union has all the basic ingredients of a superstate – a flag, an anthem, European citizenship, and its own currency, the Euro, as well as its own Parliament to which people in this country, and in many other parts of Europe, do not relate at all.

Nevertheless, to have the basic building blocks of a state, but to deny the real intention of the European Union, is just disingenuous, and causes cynicism and frustration in many people. I suspect that this is going to show itself in the referendum.

On balance, therefore, I believe that the United Kingdom would be better off out of the European Union.

The UK is the second largest contributor to the EU budget, giving £50 million every day, which amounts to £19 billion every year. 

Less than half this money comes back to us, and when it does, it is Brussels that determines what it can be spent on, and not the Westminster Parliament. 

The Common Agricultural Policy swallows £43 billion a year, 40% of the entire EU budget. Yet agriculture is just 1.6% of the EU economy, and the £3 billion a year in subsidy that goes to British farmers is heavily targeted towards the richest land owners, including multinational agrobusinesses. 

Our fishing industry, which used to be a major source of employment and sustained communities along the shores of the United Kingdom, has been destroyed by the EU’s Fishing Policy.

Furthermore, I am totally opposed to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which is a secret agreement being drawn up between the US Government and the European Commission, driven by the American Chamber of Commerce.

TTIP will not only open up our public services, such as the NHS, to encroachment by US corporations, but will also allow those corporations to sue governments. Such as ours, if a future Labour Government were to reacquire public assets such as the railways into a form of public ownership which resulted in a loss of ongoing profits by the corporations owning them. 

There is one other factor which needs to be considered.

The European Union is huge organisation, with six thousand people employed in Brussels alone. Its budget is over £100 billion a year, but its accounts have not been signed off by the Commission's own auditors for over 15 years. 

No other organisation with such a huge budget – whether governmental or private – could operate in this way and not have its accounts audited yearly and signed off by their auditors.

I hope that the referendum will allow plenty of time for these important issues to be discussed and for people to make up their own minds.

I think that the Government will be making a great mistake if it thinks that by rushing through a referendum in a couple of month’s time, it will necessarily get the result it wants.

If the decision of the British people is to remain as part of the European Union, then such a decision will of course be respected by me.

But if the decision of the people is to leave the European Union, then I don’t think it will be the end of the civilisation, as some people are predicting.

Roger Godsiff is the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Hall Green.

@RogerGodsiff

Listen Very Carefully, I Will Say This Only Once, by James Doran

The workers’ movement in the UK has faced years of defeats. Legislative and industrial change has reduced the collective bargaining power of workers through their unions, to the advantage of capital.

The composition of the working class has changed – there are more workers who are sole traders, and the nature of the workplace has been transformed as information-communication technology has proliferated. 

The workers’ party, the main political organisation of the labour movement, has also faced defeats – but after an unprecedented period of success.

The nature of that success is hotly contested, both its causes and what led it to end in defeats (narrowly in the 2007 Scottish parliamentary elections, then in the UK general election of 2010).

Undoubtedly, something went badly wrong. Recent events have brought to the forefront a number of concerns.

For example, how are differences of opinion to be expressed? What are the forums for debating areas of disagreement?

These are democratic questions for the whole of the workers’ movement as it undergoes a legislative and industrial assault by the British ruling class.

Civil war or broad church?

Understanding people’s fears means imagining their best self. If you were in their position, what would be your hopes and how might these be threatened?

From the perspective of those that won the Labour leadership contest, the fear has been that those who lost were not and are not going to accept defeat.

The concern is that their view of what constitutes electoral success will not be heard because a losing faction was seeking a re-run of the leadership contest.

From the perspective of those who lost the Labour leadership contest, the fear is that being dropped from the shadow cabinet is the beginning and not the end.

The concern is that their view of what constitutes electoral success will not be heard and that Labour is on course for another general election defeat as a consequence of elements of the leadership platform.

As an observer watching from a distance, it seemed unlikely that a broad-based cabinet could last given these fears.

There was not acceptance from some that there could be an organisation to advance the platform of the leader, just as there were organisations to advance the platform of previous leaders.

If Labour is described broad church, then it makes sense to think of there being a division by an aisle.

Seated on one side, members whose perspective is closer to Momentum and Open Labour, and on the other, members whose perspective is closer to Progress and Labour First.

Faith is something that we trust that others possess – we cannot see the ideas people have in their heads, their hopes and fears. So, this takes time to be established.

Losing streak or learning curve?

It is fair to say that the congregation has swelled in the past year. This poses challenges for those who lost the leadership – how to organise at the grassroots where previously this was perhaps not thought as necessary outside of party conferences? 

Labour First have taken the lead, to some degree, and this perhaps reflects the organisation’s origins in the broader labour movement. And Progress is now organising meetings across the country.

Regardless of their origin, activity, or funding, it is the case that both Progress and Labour First represent traditions within the workers’ movement which – like Momentum and Open Labour – can only find effective representation through the Labour Party.

For those of us who were active in supporting the election of the party leader, the main challenge is not just sustaining and developing participation of new and returning members, supporting and developing activism which will deliver election victories.

We are also having to sustain and develop the approach taken in the leadership contest, where the candidates focused on policy and campaign ideas in a series of comradely hustings.

In the coming period, we will have to listen carefully to the voices of those who lost – not just those who lost the leadership contest, but the people whose support for Labour was lost and those whose trust has never been gained.

We must listen to the concerns of people losing out under the Tories, and work hard to learn and win trust.

Things can change. Let’s start with a renewed focus.

@doran_j

Jeremy Corbyn, Northern Ireland, and the Falkland Islands, by David Lindsay

Northern Ireland was Britain’s Vietnam. It dragged on for years. And it ended in that most abject of defeats, when all political and popular support at home has dried up, and when the penny has dropped that the local guerrillas are never going to go anywhere because they have nowhere else to go.

The Vietnam veterans were shunned for a long time. None of them has ever become President, and now none of them ever will. By contrast, the people who opposed the war, even those who did everything short (if that) of backing the other side, came to be treated as having been right all along, and continue to be so treated.

The factual accuracy or even the morality of all of this is not the point. It is the political reality, both in relation to Vietnam in the United States, and in relation to Northern Ireland in Britain.

The bafflement and even hurt of the military lobby that no one cares about its gripes against Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell bespeaks an unawareness that the English and the Welsh, at least, have profoundly distrusted their own Army since 250 years before even the Old IRA was created, and have historically tolerated it only because most of it was abroad most of the time.

The only exception to this was during and immediately after the Second World War, but resentment of National Service rapidly revived the old attitudes. Can there be another country on earth where the mere existence of the Army has to be approved by Parliament every five years?

Then there are the causes in which that lobby takes issue with Corbyn and McDonnell, both of whom were elected as London MPs during the Troubles, in Corbyn’s case four times.

Ken Livingstone also managed that three times, and he went on to win two London-wide elections, in no small measure on the back of his prescience with regard to Northern Ireland; the serious prospect of his becoming Leader, as indeed he did, did not stop a Labour victory in the elections to the GLC even in 1981.

There are other examples that could be cited. Thus has spoken, over and over again, the city that bore the brunt of the IRA’s campaign, whatever leafy Home Counties hacks may think. It is singularly disagreeable to expect the price of one’s principles to be paid by other people.

In truth, mainstream Mainland opinion always included a very pronounced steak of resentment at having to pay, whether in blood or in treasure, for a Unionist tribe across the water that was incomprehensible when viewed from over here. By the end, popular feeling in Britain simply refused any longer to tolerate the intransigent entitlement that it saw as the root of the problem. Never in Britain has Northern Ireland been a popular cause. 

But even in Northern Ireland, Unionists of the old school, whose position seems to be presupposed as common sense and common decency by the more securocratic sections of the media, are now lucky to take two per cent of the vote, and never manage three per cent.

One Irish Republican bomb in London would now lead to an immediate and unilateral British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, whether or not the Republic would take it, and no matter who wanted us to stay. They would hardly be the first people whom Britain had simply upped and left behind. We have done that on every continent.

But no such bomb is going to be set off, because the Republican leaders have never had it so good. The political system is designed entirely for their convenience. Former British soldiers of the same generation are preparing to be brought back to stand trial. If the IRA was riddled with British agents, then was it to those agents that Britain surrendered?

There was more public support for the Falkland Islands when they had been invaded. But they are not going to be invaded again. The world has moved on.

Latin American interests would instead threaten to move to somewhere else more jobs in the United Kingdom than there were people on the Falkland Islands. There are fewer than three thousand people on the Falkland Islands. Thatcher’s original scheme for a transfer of sovereignty, followed by a leaseback, would then be a done deal.

As it probably would be if there were any serious threat of a second invasion. People on the Falkland Islands do not pay tax in this country. Nevertheless, a Labour Government would not dare be seen to sign over the Falklands. So Argentina and its allies would only play either of these cards while there was a Conservative Government in Britain.

The very last threat to the present situation, therefore, would be the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.

@davidaslindsay

To Tidy Up the Shambolic Laws on Sexual Offences, by David Lindsay

It is time for Parliament to tidy up the shambolic laws on sexual offences.

First, the age of consent should effectively be raised to 18, by making it a criminal offence for anyone to commit any sexual act with or upon any person under that age who was more than two years younger than herself, or to incite any such person to commit any such act with or upon her or any third party anywhere in the world.

The maximum sentence would be twice the difference in age, to the month where that was less than three years, or a life sentence where that difference was at least five years. No different rules for “positions of trust”, which are being used against male, but not female, 18-year-olds looking after female, but not male, Sixth Formers visiting universities.

And no provision, as at present, for boys to be prosecuted at any age, even if they are younger than the girls involved, whereas girls have to be 16. The law on indecent images is also enforced in totally different ways in relation to boys and girls of the same age, and even to boys who are younger than the girls. That must end.

Children under the age of consent can have abortion or contraception without parental permission. That is an argument for banning children under the age of consent from having abortion or contraception without parental permission.

Unless they decided as adults to seek to make contact with their children, then the financial liability of male victims for pregnancies resulting from their sexual abuse ought also to be ruled out. Talk about victim-blaming.

Secondly, it ought to be made a criminal offence for anyone aged 21 or over to buy or sell sex, with equal sentencing on both sides. No persecution of girls and very young women whose lives had already been so bad that they had become prostitutes. No witch-hunting of boys and very young men who were desperate to lose their virginities. But the treatment of women and men as moral, intellectual and legal equals.

Thirdly, the replacement of the offences of rape, serious sexual assault, and sexual assault, with aggravating circumstances to the general categories of offences against the person, enabling the sentences to be doubled. The sex of either party would be immaterial.

There must be no anonymity either for adult accusers or for adult complainants. Either we have an open system of justice, or we do not. In this or any other area, there must be no suggestion of any reversal of the burden of proof. That reversal has largely been brought to you already, by the people who in the same year brought you the Iraq War. The Parliament that was supine before Tony Blair was also supine before Harriet Harman. Adults who made false allegations ought to be prosecuted automatically.

Moreover, how can anyone be convicted of non-consensual sex, who could not lawfully have engaged in consensual sex? If there is an age of consent, then anyone below it can be an assailant. But a sexual assailant? How? Similarly, if driving while intoxicated is a criminal offence, then how can intoxication, in itself, be a bar to sexual consent? The law needs to specify that it was, only to such an extent as would constitute a bar to driving.

And fourthly, obscenity ought to be defined as material depicting acts that were themselves illegal, or which was reasonably likely to incite or encourage such acts. Sentencing would be the same as for the illegal act in question in each case.

American-style legislation for internally administered “balance of probabilities” or “preponderance of evidence” tests to sexual assault allegations at universities or elsewhere must be banned by Statute. It is incompatible with the Rule of Law to punish someone for a criminal offence of which she has not been convicted.

As for teaching things in schools, how is that curriculum time currently being filled? Apply the Eton Test. Would this be taught in a school that assumed its pupils to be future Prime Ministers or Nobel Laureates? If not, then instead fill the hours with something that was. Teach Latin. Someone will.

Convictions under laws predating these changes ought to be annulled along with those of men whose homosexual acts would not be criminal offences today. Labour should vote against that unless it also annulled, not only all convictions in the above categories, but also all convictions and other adverse court decisions arising out of Clay Cross, Shrewsbury, Wapping, and the three Miners’ Strikes since 1970.

This would set the pattern for all future feminist and LGBT legislation. Without a working-class quid pro quo, then Labour would vote against any such legislation. Alongside the DUP, the Conservative Right, or whoever. It is not Blair’s Labour Party now.

@davidaslindsay

In Anticipation of Cameron’s Single European Act on Speed, by David Lindsay

It is hardly as if Jeremy Corbyn has ever hidden his views on the EU. It is not his fault that no one has ever reported them.

He has suggested a renegotiation that of course he knows would be the exact opposite of that which would ever be brought back by David Cameron. Cameron was elected to conduct that exactly opposite renegotiation, and then to put its conclusion to a referendum. He is going to do both of those things, and that is fine.

Whatever arrangement with the EU has been renegotiated to Cameron’s satisfaction will be horrendous from the point of view of British workers and of the users of British public services. Submitted to a Special Congress of the TUC and to a Special Conference of the Labour Party, it will be rejected overwhelming, even unanimously, thus initiating the entirely correct campaign for a No vote in the referendum.

Big business and almost the entire Conservative Party will line up behind Cameron, since their only objection to the EU is the imaginary “Brussels red tape” that he will have pretended to have cut.

Very occasionally, there is constitutional theory stuff on the outermost fringes of Toryland. But right-wing intellectualism is the most Continental of concepts. It is not about such Bennite concerns to almost anyone on that side. They are just not like that. 

The Government’s latest assault on trade union funding is really designed to attack the only possible source of funding for the No campaign.

The economic, social, cultural and political power of the British working class, whether broadly or narrowly defined, cannot exactly be said to have increased since 1973. Any more than Britain has fought no further wars since joining a body as successful as NATO or nuclear weapons when it comes to keeping the peace.

We had full employment before we joined the EU. We have never had it since. No job in the real economy is dependent on our membership. Or were trade with, and travel to, the Continent unheard of, because impossible, before our accession to the EU?

Not for nothing did Margaret Thatcher support that accession, oppose withdrawal in the 1975 referendum, and go on, as Prime Minister, to sign an act of integration so large that it could never be equalled, a position from which she never wavered until the tragically public playing out of the early stages of her dementia. “No! No! No!” was not part of any planned speech.

In anticipation of Cameron’s Single European Act on speed, Labour needs to get its retaliation in first. Jeremy Corbyn needs to demand immediate legislation.

First, restoring the supremacy of United Kingdom over European Union law, using that provision to repatriate industrial and regional policy as Labour has advocated for some time, using it to repatriate agricultural policy (farm subsidies go back to the War, 30 years before we joined the EU, and they are a good idea in themselves, whereas the Common Agricultural Policy most certainly is not), and using it to restore the United Kingdom’s historic fishing rights of 200 miles or to the median line.

Secondly, requiring that all EU legislation, in order to have any effect in this country, be enacted by both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or the other of them. Thirdly, requiring that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard.

Fourthly, disapplying in the United Kingdom any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of Parliament. That would also deal with whatever the problem was supposed to be with the Human Rights Act.

Fifthly, disapplying in the United Kingdom anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs who had been certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons. Thus, we should no longer be subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, of neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, of members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, of people who believed the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, and of Dutch ultra-Calvinists who would not have women candidates.

Sixthly, reducing in real terms the British contribution to the EU Budget; that is another longstanding Labour policy. And seventhly, pre-emptively disapplying in the United Kingdom any Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, thus making any such Agreement impossible in practice. Outside the EU, would Cameron just negotiate something even worse with the United States? Not before 2020, when he would need to be replaced with Corbyn.

All before Cameron even set off for his renegotiation.

After all, which privatisation did the EU prevent? Which dock, factory, shipyard, steelworks or mine did it save? If we needed the EU for the employment law that, since we do not have it, the EU is obviously powerless to deliver, then there would be no point or purpose to the British Labour Movement. Or have the trade unions disbanded, their job done?

Far from preventing wars, the EU has done nothing to prevent numerous on the part of, at some point, most of its member-states, and not least this member-state. It was a key player in, and it has been a major beneficiary of, the destruction of Yugoslavia.

It is now a key player in, and it seeks to be a major beneficiary of, the war in Ukraine, which is the worst on the European Continent since 1945, and which is a direct consequence of the EU’s expansionist desire to prise a vital buffer state out of neutrality and into the NATO from which the EU is practically indistinguishable.

The Leader of the Labour Party has been saying all of this all along, right back to when he voted against the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty.

@davidaslindsay

On Possibly Coming Round to Votes at 16, by David Lindsay

I am still not convinced about lowering the voting age. We are being bounced into it because 16 and 17-year-olds voted in the Scottish referendum. But my mind is no longer entirely closed to it.

I remember what it was like to be a politically active Sixth Former. It is not an experience that I shall ever forget. No one who was one could ever imagine that it was, is, or will ever be normal. Even a superbly well-educated 16-year-old is still a 16-year-old.

Lowering the voting age even further might pose a very serious threat to democracy, since no one seriously imagines that the opinion of a 16-year-old matters as much as that of his Head Teacher, or his doctor, or his mother. Why, then, should each of them have only as many votes as he had? Thus might the process start.

Harold Wilson probably thought that he might gain some advantage from lowering the voting age. But the Sixties Swingers hated him (that is largely forgotten now, but it is true), and they handed the 1970 Election to Ted Heath instead.

If there had been a General Election, as was once widely expected, in the spring of 1996, then, having been born in September 1977, I would have been able to vote in that Election, even though I would still have had a couple of months of school left to go. But by then, I had been free for more than two years to walk out any time I liked. I would have had that freedom even if the school-leaving age had been raised to 18, as is now going to happen.

Lowering the voting age to two years below the school-leaving age would literally be giving the vote to children; to people whom we, as a society, had decided were not yet capable of deciding for themselves whether or not they wished to leave full-time education.

It is still well within living memory that most people left school, and went straight into taxpaying work, a full seven years before they were entitled to vote. Now, we propose that people should have the vote two years before they were able to leave school.

If anyone doubts quite how monolithically middle-class our political culture has become, then consider that it has almost certainly never occurred to the proponents of lowering the voting age that even 21 was ever attained before leaving full-time education, never mind a third of one’s life to that date after having done so.

If 16 and 17-year-olds could vote, then why could they not be called up or cajoled into fighting what have become this country’s never-ending wars? When it is said that this change would leave them open to exploitation, then that is what that ought to mean.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

With the introduction of individual registration, I suspect that the proportion of the extremely elderly that remained on the electoral register would be hardly, if at all, higher than the proportion of those all the way up to the age of about 25. 

Of those registered, if 16 and 17-year-olds were able to be so, then I strongly suspect that the franchise would be exercised by a higher proportion of them than of the over-90s, who are also a very small cohort. 

I have seen the way in which candidates press the flesh in nursing homes when there is an election coming up. Some of the residents know exactly what is going on. Others are decidedly confused. Others again hardly know Christmas from Tuesday. 16 and 17-year-olds would be very much the same.

Like a lot of my vintage, I see one third of bus passes used to commute, for much of the year from and to homes heated by the Winter Fuel Allowance. But then I consider that there will be none of those things for us, even though the people now coming into them no more fought in the War than we did. They were no more on this earth than we were while the War was being fought by anyone.

In my more mean-spirited moments, I ponder that people who “worked all their lives” were paid to do so, and ought not to have spent it all, as of course many of them did not, with the result that they are now loaded. Or I ponder that they have not in fact “worked all their lives” if they have retired a mere two thirds of the way through the probable length of their lives.

I make no apology for seeing no War-like debt to be repaid to those whose formative experiences were sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, full employment, cheap housing, student grants, public ownership, municipal services, the explosion of mass consumer affluence, and the felt need to demonstrate against another country’s war because this country was not waging one.

However, I believe in full employment, cheap housing, student grants, public ownership, municipal services, and opposition to American wars of liberal intervention. I am by no means averse to the finer things in life. I fully recognise that few are those who could really manage without their bus passes or their Winter Fuel Allowances. I support the principle of universality to the very marrow of my bones.

No, the question is one of balance, plus the perfectly simple writing into the legislation of a ban on jurors and parliamentary candidates who were aged under 18 or even 21, as there is already a ban on jurors aged over 75. Balancing generational interests is as important as balancing class interests, or regional interests, or urban and rural interests, and so on. Only social democracy can do those.

The sheer size of the ageing Baby Boom is such that the democracy in social democracy may require a modest reduction in the voting age. While that case has not yet been made sufficiently convincingly to justify the change, I am less and less decided that it simply never will or could be.

@davidaslindsay