john eden

male pale and stale
Well you can't be saying that the non-author of the ghost written "art of the deal" is not into the win-win thing, surely? :p

I mean, it's a mess - we can agree on that.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Isn't it just. Weird thing is, I keep liking the things John McDonnell is saying - apart from this bullshit. I can't see how Labour hopes to implement such a radical programme against a backwdrop of economic chaos. Unless of course there's some some punish the rich/Disaster Socialism thinking at work.
 

droid

Well-known member
The same dynamic is still at play. Frustrating as it is, committing to a second referendum and a possible Brexit reversal could well destroy their chances of election.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
But the alternative is even worse. If they do win an election as Brexit goes through/shortly afterwards, they'll inherit a country in ruins, and everyone will blame them for it rather than the architects. Surely better to take a punt that enough people now realise Brexit is suicide, and back a vote for a second referendum? And if Brexit *is* reversed in some way, who's to say the Tories won't implode at that point? The people who're going to capsize the ship are on the right, not the centre of that party.

Not to mention the renewed possibility of a Labour coup/breakaway party if Corbyn and McDonnell continue to offer no escape from Brexit.

As to the employee ownership policy introduced today - much as I like it in principle, why risk the backlash this is going to provoke (and renewed calls of 'unelectability') on a policy that will benefit workers at best £500 a year, and nothing at all if they work for mid-sized companies?
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Robert Peston has just written an interesting column on this. I don't know if I trust Labour to have the skills and ability to deliver this but it's interesting reading. There's a lot of other stuff I detest about Corbyn's Labour but this seems much more in tune with the moment than anything the Tories have to offer - though conference season is upon us, so I guess we'll have a clearer picture soon. I have no idea to reconcile all this with the smoking ruins of Brexit either. The idea that Labour are gonna somehow magically negotiate a better deal seems entirely fatuous.

Jeremy Corbyn's speeches are usually a compilation of his greatest hits, what you might call "NOW that's what I call socialism!" - and they typically contain a call for more children to have access to musical instruments in schools, a tirade about supplying arms to Saudi and a pledge to destroy neo-liberal economics.His shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, is altogether less flowery and more grounded. He gets his teeth into what he perceives to be a problem and then does not let go. The problem he has identified is the transfer of power, money and security over the past 40 years from workers to capital, from young to old, from north to south, from poor to rich. And this is not some lefty fiction: ask the Bank of England, which is not a den of reds under beds, or consult the prime minister's famous speech on the steps of Downing Street on 13 July 2016.

We are living through the longest period of stagnation in living standards since the early nineteenth century. Employment has risen while security of unemployment has collapsed. Too many people in work are forced to use food banks - as the Old Etonian Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby pointed out on Peston on Sunday some time back. The answer, according to John McDonnell, is a word that was almost an obscenity in Britain for more than 20 years, "socialism". McDonnell has a raft of interventionist policies that in theory would shift power and money from owners and managers on the one hand to workers more dramatically and decisively than those of any government since 1945. And the big question is whether what he is proposing are old-fashioned and obsolete solutions to thoroughly modern problems, or a modern take on socialism that stands a chance of healing the UK's widening social, demographic and geographical divisions.

This is not easy to answer. The heart of the uncertainty is a related question: is he really trying to find new ways for people to organise and act collectively, or is his approach designed principally to reverse the long decades of remorseless weakening of traditional trade unions and their mostly male, white, middle-aged general secretaries? If his policies turn out largely to be about giving the traditional trade unions, Labour's paymasters, an opportunity to take revenge on the hated boss class, they'll end up leading to strife and the flight of capital and internationally mobile businesses from these shores. But if they are actually about new forms of democracy within the workplace, they could be empowering for workers and executives alike.

The problem is that McDonnell and his team have produced plenty of headlines but precious little practical detail. So we know that Labour wants to allocate a third of seats on boards of companies employing more than 250 people to workers. Now if those boardroom seats are in practice controlled by existing trade unions, one form of lumbering centralised corporatism could be replaced by another. That's certainly possible, given the associated reforms Labour wants - to set pay for whole industries collectively, and make it easier for unions to recruit in the workplace, for example.
There's almost identical uncertainty around the governance of new Inclusive Ownership Funds, which would control up to 10% of all bigger companies - again those employing 250 or more - for the benefit of workers. It is not at all clear who will be the trustees of those funds. But if they were union reps, they might be less creative and consensual than would be ideal.

So the proof of the pudding will be the institutional structures put in place. There is one version of what McDonnell proposes that could be a new form of wealth-creating co-operative capitalism; there's another that could be bureaucratic, statist, and impoverishing to rich and poor alike. What presumably McDonnell knows is that the more he presents these policies as an assault on business, the less effective they will be. He has already created huge opportunities to game the proposed new system. If it is implemented, we’ll suddenly see a bulge in businesses employing 249 people and rewarding directors and owners through interest on debt capital they invest rather than dividend-paying equity. Or to put it another way, if he is serious about healing the ripped fabric of the UK, he will resist the temptation to cast all bosses and owners as universally rapacious and ripe for fleecing. In my experience, most bosses - not all - would agree that there has been too great a shift of money and power away from most working people.
But McDonnell has been around this track long enough to know that if they think he’s coming for them, they’ll have no compunction to shift their money, skills and employment opportunities away from him - and away from the UK - faster than you can say “for the many, not the few”.
 
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droid

Well-known member
If they get in via a November or spring election I imagine their first move would be to negotiate an extension of article 50. If that happens I think there would either be a second referendum or, more likely a deal that includes the custom union and a soft Brexit.

The calculation at the moment is whether they can afford to alienate the UKIP & Leave contingent they picked up last time. Presumably the vast majority of hardcore remainers will stick with them despite the ambiguity, because there's no real alternative. Ideal scenario is for EU pressure to force a Tory split with the DUP and bring down the govt in October.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The same dynamic is still at play. Frustrating as it is, committing to a second referendum and a possible Brexit reversal could well destroy their chances of election.

Opinion polls suggest the public would vote Remain in a second referendum, perhaps by a margin as big as 60:40.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I know I keep saying this, but I reckon those opinion polls are dead wrong.

Well yeah, I wasn't saying it would definitely happen, or anything. But does suggest a lot of people have gone off the idea of Brexit - or at any rate, a hard (let alone no-deal) Brexit.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
If they get in via a November or spring election I imagine their first move would be to negotiate an extension of article 50. If that happens I think there would either be a second referendum or, more likely a deal that includes the custom union and a soft Brexit.

The calculation at the moment is whether they can afford to alienate the UKIP & Leave contingent they picked up last time. Presumably the vast majority of hardcore remainers will stick with them despite the ambiguity, because there's no real alternative. Ideal scenario is for EU pressure to force a Tory split with the DUP and bring down the govt in October.

I've always read the Lab leadership's opposition to Brexit as part of their hostility to neo-liberalism i.e. political rather than the about electoral triangulation. Maybe I'm wrong about this, I don't know - the Ian Dunt article I've linked above suggests as much, saying that the "cap on spending limits" argument is bollocks. Anyway, I thought electoral triangulation was mere Blairite Devilry, and it was about sticking to your principles?
 

droid

Well-known member
Principles are important but not of much help if you cant get elected.

Its a difficult line to walk and Labour arent doing with much grace, but the logic is sound, I think.

The most apposite poll Ive seen recently was the one that said about 60% of the UK is sick of Brexit anymore and just wants it all over with.
 
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