Labour's Conference Now Little More Than a Trade Fair.

This article by me appears in today's Guardian Comment is Free and sums up my experience of the Labour Party Conference this year.

Business, as usual
Labour 07: This year's event proves it: the moneylenders really have taken over the temple.

Under the strapline "Our conference can provide an exciting place to do business", there was a revealing pie chart in the Labour party's conference guide that gave a breakdown of who now attends the annual gathering.

It is: 10% elected representatives, 20% media, 30% Labour party delegates and visitors, and - top of the list - 40% from the commercial and corporate sector.

So when Gordon Brown and his ministers received their standing ovations, the largest group clapping was the companies looking forward to doing business with this government.

Now that biblical references are de rigueur in the party, it seemed to many that the moneylenders really had taken over the temple.

The rule changes bounced through the conference this week removing the right of Labour members to determine the party's policies at the conference mean the event is now little more than a trade fair and media platform for speeches from the leader and ministers.

And it takes a remarkable feat of ingratiating contortion to consider Gordon Brown's first leader's speech as setting "a new tone" and offering "the possibility of a different kind of Labour government", as Jon Cruddas and others have claimed.

While warm words of praise were bestowed on the NHS and public servants, outside in the real world we learned that in order to save the budgets of some primary care trusts, Bupa was to vet whether patients should or should not receive the treatment recommended by their consultants. Bupa will be paid from the savings made by preventing operations.

Similarly, at an almost surreal fringe meeting at the conference, we heard from the government's adviser on welfare reform, the obviously suitably qualified venture capitalist David Freud, that a similar principle was to be applied to getting people off benefit and into work. While 40,000 jobs are to be cut at the Department for Work and Pensions, private sector companies are to be given the role of forcing the long-term unemployed into work. The firms will make their profits from the benefits saved.

Meanwhile, despite the declaration of a new social housing programme, behind the scenes immense pressure was being applied to delegates to ensure that what was possibly the last resolution ever to be debated at a Labour party conference actually reversed existing conference policy, which calls for councils to be treated fairly in the distribution of resources for building houses.

On the morning we hear of the children of eastern European migrants being racially abused on our streets, how does Gordon Brown's slogan of "British jobs for British workers" sit with those urging "a more positive message on migration"?

Playing tactical games over the timing of the election also reflects an approach to politics where policies are too often determined for party advantage, and even the stability of the government is risked for the same reason.

Caution suggests current poll leads result more from a combined sense of relief at Blair going and the rejection of an incompetent, passé alternative than they do from a belief in the government being committed to real change. John Major and 1992 come to mind.

The scenes of Buddhist monks in Burma losing their lives in a struggle for democracy are a stark reminder that democratic politics should be about more than developing subtler forms of spin and party game-playing.

Windfall Tax the Speculators Profiteering from Northern Rock

Today I called upon the Prime Minister to impose an immediate windfall tax on speculators profiteering from the Northern Rock crisis and to launch a public inquiry as it is revealed that speculators made huge gains in profiteering from the crisis and that Northern Rock had set up “Granite Companies” to put the protection of City financiers before the protection of its customers.

The whole Northern Rock saga stinks to high heaven. It is estimated city traders have made £1billion in profits from “bear raids” on Northern Rock. Added to this the renowned tax expert, Richard Murphy from Tax Research, has revealed that Northern Rock had established what it sarcastically called “Granite” Companies in which funds were placed to ensure that in the event of any financial turbulence the City would be protected ahead of Northern Rock’s own customers. Plus we have today’s exposure that the Rock’s board has paid itself £30 million over the last five years. This all adds up to the need for an immediate windfall tax on the speculators profiteering from this crisis and for a full and independent inquiry into the role of the Government, Bank of England and FSA in turning a blind eye to city excesses for so long.

Remember the members

From Comment is Free:

I read Peter Hain's article yesterday on Cif and thought "God has it really come to this!" I admit to feeling anger but more so an immense personal sadness that someone who was such a fine radical as Peter had come to resort to such self-serving sophistry. Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon came to mind. The next steps on from this craven performance of justifying the leader's every contortion are confessions of guilt for crimes against the party and show trials.

Why such anger? Well, because so much is at stake - the last vestiges of democracy in a once great party that was founded to give democratic voice to those that were powerless and had no voice.

It may sound corny in a cynical age but literally generations of our people have given much of their lives to establishing and cherishing the Labour party because they believed what the party told them when they joined. When they received their party card every member, no matter how humble a position they held in the party, gained the right to attend their local party or trade union branch and seek to convince their fellow members to adopt a particular policy. If successful this policy could be pursued all the way to the party's annual conference with the aim of influencing the agenda of Labour in government.

Of course this process can look messy and at times is rumbustious, which appears to offend Peter Hain's sensibilities, but that is what healthy democracy looks like whether it's in the House of Commons or the conference hall.

Gordon Brown's proposals, set out in his Orwellian-titled document Extending and Renewing Democracy, remove this basic right of party members and trade unionists at party conference to determine the party's policy position on key issues of the day. Instead the delegates attending the conference will only be allowed to raise issues to be referred for subsequent consideration by the arcane centrally controlled structures of party policy forums, commissions and working parties.

Why is this being proposed? Partly it stems from a statement Gordon Brown made to trade union leaders last year when discussions were taking place over the need for legislation on trade union rights. At that stage it was made clear that if there was no movement by the government, the campaign for the restoration of basic trade union rights would inevitably spill onto to the floor of Labour party conference. Worryingly to some of us at the time, Gordon Brown responded by saying that under his leadership we can't have Labour party conference defeating a Labour leader in office on policy issues.

So this is not about in Peter Hain's consultancy-speak "engaging with the challenges that a responsible party of government must resolve" or "New Politics". It is straightforwardly the old question whether a Labour leader is accountable to the Labour party.

In recent years, one of the reasons for the exodus of members from the Labour party has been the implementation of policies to which many party members have not only been opposed but also have had no valid opportunity to have a say over and have been unable to hold the Labour leadership to account.

The ability of Labour party conference to decide by resolution the policy of the party on a number of key questions meant that at least there still remained some opportunity for members to participate in a process of direct democracy.

If allowed, democracy does actually work. The message to Gordon Brown is give democracy a chance and trust our members. Instead of trying to bounce the party into adopting these proposals next week when there has been virtually no time for a realistic consultation, I urge him to compromise and allow a proper consultation, a thorough debate and democratic decision making process, bringing a real democratic reform programme to next year's conference which will hold the party together. Please don't use this issue as some publicity stunt "Clause 4" moment.

If Gordon Brown obstinately refuses this compromise and forces his proposals through, could the last Labour party delegate leaving the Bournemouth conference hall turn off the lights please, they will be the lights of democracy.

Warnings on Debt by the Left were Ignored.

Three years ago I set up the Left Economic Advisory Panel,(LEAP), bringing together a group of socialist economists, accountants and practitioners to provide analysis for the Left on the state of the economy and advice on both immediate and long term economic policy. It serves as a left alternative to the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee but examines a much wider range of objectives and consequences of economic policy and looks to the longer term.

LEAP publishes a set of analytical papers twice a year, under the title Red Papers; first prior to the Autumn budget statement and then immediately prior to the budget in the Spring.

Now that the Northern Rock meltdown has prompted a review of Gordon Brown's management of the economy and in particular his approach to allowing the unfettered operation of the finance sector I would urge a look at the paper published by LEAP as part of the Red Papers in March last year written by Tanya Adams, a City economist. You can find them on the Labour Representation Committee's website.

Adams' paper is entitled "Binge Borrowing - an unhealthy economic diet." To quote the paper, it said " The Chancellor might do well to reflect on the inherently unstable dynamics of the UK economy. Since New Labour came to power the so-called growth miracle has been fuelled by a relentless rise in personal debt levels.......relying on excessive personal sector borrowing as a major driver of economic growth creates the potential for all sorts of stresses and strains further down the line .....No one can guarantee that such a wanton and reckless increase in the country's debt burden may not trigger a relapse at some point in the next two to three years. The UK may yet pay a heavy price for an economic policy that has increased the risks posed by the accumulation of excessive debt."

LEAP meets again this month and will be publishing its alternative Autumn analysis. Watch this space. I will make sure we send a copy of LEAP's Red Papers this year to Alistair Darling. He will need them.

To Understand Northern Rock Go and See Odet's play "Awake and Sing"

Last night I went to see Clifford Odet's play "Awake and Sing". Odet was a twentieth century American playwright, born in the early 1900s and died of cancer in 1963. He was a socialist and at one time a card carrying communist, which resulted in him being hauled before McCarthy's UnAmerican Activities Commiittee. As a member of the pioneering theatre collective known as "The Group" he developed his writing talent and scripted other memorable plays such as "Waiting for Lefty."

Set in the 1930s Depression the play is both humourous yet deeply moving, telling the story of a working class Jewish family struggling to survive the grinding poverty and insecurity inflicted on them. We witness the strain placed upon their relationships by their plight but also their enduring humanity, self sacrifice and determination to win through.

The irony of watching a play set in the Depression was not lost on many in the audience on the day queues were forming outside Northern Rock offices as investors feared for their savings. The play is at the Almeida theatre in Islington, not far from Karl Marx's old drinking haunts. Alive today, Engels woould have been buying his mate Karl a few pints of porter to celebrate his theory of the inherent instability of capitalism being proved accurate once again.

The significance of staging Odet's play now is not just the timeliness of its subject. Odet was writing at a time of immense upheaval and change in the world, when new social forces were coming onto the scene. He was one of a wave of artists, writers, economists, social theorists and political activists who played a critical role in not only describing the new world they were experiencing but also explaining it and above all else motivating people, giving them confidence, to change it.

Odet and many of his progressive contemporaries gave people the belief that by reaching into their shared humanity they could not only cope with what the world threw at them but could change the world itself. They could do so by solidarity. A simple message that we can deal with this together.

The advent of globalisation over the last 30 years means that we are in a similar period of immense and dramatic change. Just as the artists, writers, theorists and activists emerged in the 1930s to describe and explain this change so today we are witnessing the beginnings of this reinterpretation of the world and the blossoming of campaigns, social movements and artistic initiatives to give people hope.