A New Kind Of Politics

Jeremy Corbyn is now leader of the Labour Party. The thought of a left-wing socialist securing the Labour leadership has been, for decades, unthinkable. I'll be honest. I didn't vote for Jeremy Corbyn, for reasons I will try to explain later. There is no doubt that a huge shift has taken place within the Labour Party. Although a sea change, took place 40 years ago, in 1975, where the Tories elected what they considered to be a rank outsider for their leader. This rank outsider became the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.

British people are amenable to change in either political direction, where they believe that beneficial social and economic change is possible. Margaret Thatcher's government was clearly not Ted Heath's or Harold Macmillan's 'one nation' Conservatism where the nation's prosperity would surely 'trickle down' to the working classes. 

Sadly Margaret Thatcher's government brought about no meaningful social change. The only radical changes she brought about was generate the huge gap between the rich and the poor and the isolation of the poor and the sick. The only prosperity she did bring about was the promotion of the already fairly comfortable working class to more comfortable middle class people. Margaret Thatcher said she believed that there is no society. She believed that the needs of the individual were sovereign, outweighing the needs of the many. A posh way of saying it's OK to be selfish and hang everyone else.

After Jeremy won on Saturday, September 12, 2015, a number of Labour MPs, who find themselves insufficiently 'Corbynite', are now 'considering their futures'.
While many Labour MPs may well agree with Jeremy's aims and objectives. (It is, after all, like stating that you're in favour of holidays, ice cream and sunshine), they may disagree about the method.

Jeremy Corbyn supports: 

• no tax cuts to the rich, (in addition, asking them to pay more tax).
• closing of the non-dom tax exile loophole
• quantitative easing to facilitate growth, which can be consolidated later when the economy improves
• opposing air strikes over Syria 
• yes to remaining within EU (although looking to renegotiate terms)
• re-nationalising the railways and also the big 6 energy companies

All of the above enjoys huge public support right now. 

All of these actions, if successfully executed, would bring about much needed additional tax revenues, without hurting jobs. Indeed more likely to create jobs. So any studies into this, which the Corbyn leadership has done, will be shown to be practical and not merely ideologically driven. This may explain why the Tories are curiously quiet on these issues at the moment.

A few hours after being elected, a recovered Jeremy Corbyn, began to spell out the success story that he believes is unfolding, which will enrich the Labour Party. For years, people have been complaining that New Labour was so close to the Tories in terms of manifesto content and pledges that it was seen to be over-cautious and more importantly, too Tory. This has translated into people voting for UKIP, BNP, Green and Respect as well as socialist-alternative parties.  

I think it is fair to assume that these voters, voted the way they did because they felt that Labour no longer spoke for them. Many believed that Labour seemed to speak more for public sector workers who were probably middle class as well. It seems to reasonable to assume that many of these wayward voters seem to be returning to Labour as Labour is now their preferred party, which they feel, now speaks for them.

More importantly than that, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour leadership has already been talking of truth and reconciliation. Familiar themes, in Nelson Mandela's post Apartheid South Africa. These ideas are very necessary ones for a party who has lost touch with its grass-roots. Further, it is vital to establish a meaningful dialogue to enable the people we have lost, to return to Labour and make them feel welcome again.  

Labour Party membership has reached the highest in its entire history. A few hours later he supported the protest through London which supported the welcoming of the refugees. Even the Conservatives admit that he is a conviction politician. He seems to be a politician who is in politics give him an opportunity to bring about real change for the better in British life, both social and economic, for all.

I was left wondering why I didn't support Jeremy Corbyn as he supports so many of the core socialist values that I do. I made the mistake that because I don't share the same space on the Labour Party political spectrum as Jeremy, well.....perhaps I will never know! Perhaps I was wrong. What is certain is that I can use my my time and energy and my financial resources, with renewed enthusiasm to back a Corbyn victory in 2020.

I believe that Labour's future will be best served by supporting Jeremy Corbyn, however we voted. I believe his contesting David Cameron for the number 10 job is perfectly achievable. Why shouldn't it be? It's true that people may feel that a more left wing brand of Labour wouldn't fit comfortably in the increasingly middle class Britain now. 

But given the higher levels of austerity to come, and this governments' inability to create a solution that works, then I truly believe that given high public support already in 2015 for Jeremy Corbyn's aims and objectives then by 2020 he could not only achieve a Labour victory, but a substantial Labour one. 
My conclusion? My Labour Party has just got more exciting!

The Autumn Statement?

Remember Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years? Like the enormous supercomputer's answer '42' the government is not going to like the answer because it has been asking the wrong question.

How can we create an environment where we can deliver income tax Black Friday give-aways just before the election so we can get in again?

The question the government should be asking is, how can we regenerate demand? They don't ask this question for two reasons. 

1. They won't like the answer
2. They see low paid working families benefiting as being anti-recovery.

The answer to our problems, in part, is to increase demand. After this has been achieved, the government can quite rightly focus on reducing the deficit and debt. 

For demand to increase, a very sizeable number of extra people have to be earning a lot more than the National Minimum Wage. The 2014 (current rate) is £6.50, with 18-20 year olds receiving £5.13, under 18 year olds receiving £3.79 and apprentices receiving £2.73 per hour.

Add to that, the number of people on either temporary, short-term and of course zero hour contracts, then it is small wonder that such a large number of people are effectively frozen out of the plan to move Britain forward. A Britain fuelled only by Black Fridays. And it is small wonder that the economy is so slow to move out of recession into a recovery, of sorts.

There is a compelling business argument to move people up, in these income brackets, to receive what is called the Living Wage. The UK Living Wage for outside of London is currently £7.85 per hour. The London Living Wage is currently £9.15 per hour.

Paying the London Living Wage is not only morally right, but makes good business sense too. There are now over 2,200 employees working for companies with contracts from the GLA who are benefiting from the London Living Wage.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London

Even Boris doesn't view this as unpalatable, it's just that all these years employers have been claiming it would bankrupt the country and also cost jobs. That seems to have changed. For productivity to change, workers need to see that there is a future for them. Otherwise, why bother? They can surely get more on benefits? The government's argument seems to be that benefits are far too attractive!

An inconvenient truth for the government is that sadly, working for a living, in many cases, isn't not only not attractive, but also not viable. When you are lucky enough to leave benefits behind and get a job, you are pushed towards a financial cliff of around a £300 to £600 shortfall while you have your benefit stopped and you wait for your first salary. Looking at it from a coalition government perspective, the best plan is to cut social benefits on the pretext that these are too high. It doesn't occur that salaries and wages might be too low.

Just as we think we're hearing a new spring of worker appreciation from Boris, winter draws on from the CBI.

Labour’s rather modest commitment to raising the national minimum wage (NMW) to £8 per hour by 2020 should it win the next general election, has been condemned by business groups like the CBI.

This is at the same time where bankers are given millions of pounds in bonuses to deliver a bank from 2011 to 2012 with no significant improvement whatever. The Libor scandal has further undermined trust in banks. Barclays has been singled out for fiddling the Libor rate to increase its profits. 

The deputy governor of the Bank of England went so far to call the Libor market a "cesspit" which seems to imply that Barclays is not the only bank "at it!" These same people who line their own pockets also seem bent on denying hard working people of the chance of earning decent money for extra effort, These bonus laden bankers, who often also get their income tax paid for them as well, seem oblivious to the thought of even 'setting a moral example'. 

Contrast this to families who have had their salaries frozen for 5 years, it is clear that 'setting a moral example' is something that the low paid, hard working people alone must comply with.

A little bit less 'we're all in this together' then?

Google, Starbucks and Amazon avoid paying any UK tax at all, due to fancy fiscal footwork. Starbucks alone paid £20 million back to the UK government in 2012. So out of their $13 billion revenue they will get to keep $12.9 billion. We Brits really drive a hard bargain!

Suppose the Chancellor succeeds in taxing all these companies' profits at just 10% each? (Just under half of the income tax % of someone earning £25,000 per year).

That's still a lot of new hospitals and schools.Also libraries we could re-open (that the Coalition government closed from 2010 onwards).

Wouldn't the government be doing us all a favour as tax payers if they helped the poor keep more of their income? Not enough income for poor people means that we force them to choose the rip-off pay day loan companies that are unbelievably allowed to advertise on ITV with interest rates of 1700% APR. These legal loan sharks, suck any benefit that the government may have given them. 

The government could also do the community a power of good by: 

• injecting cash into development grants for licenced Credit Unions.
• taking away the licences of all payday loan companies who charge above 40% APR.

If it sticks in the craw of this coalition government that they're actually giving a helping hand to low paid, hard working people, then they could at least console themselves that it would actually do the demand-starved businesses in this country a big favour. 

Consider:

Britain should move toward being a fair and equal opportunity society  

'A fair days' pay for a fair days' work'.

Surely, if we did that, won't we all be better off in the end?