Red Pepper » Davy Jones

Election diary: Lines of divide in Brighton

admin — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 15:00:46 +0000

I know it’s 21 months away from the general election, but here in Brighton & Hove, the lines of divide between the parties are falling into a regular pattern. On four hotly contested political issues in the last few months, the same divides have emerged:
Bedroom tax: Brighton & Hove’s Green-led council was the first to say it would not evict people for non-payment of arrears arising from the bedroom tax. The Green Party nationally was unequivocal in opposing the bedroom tax and arguing the need to scrap it. Locally, of course the incumbent Tory MP supports the bedroom tax. The local Labour Party candidate, Nancy Platts, opposes it. But her national party refuses to promise to repeal it if Labour forms the next government.
‘Zero-hours’ contracts: Last week, the coalition government announced a ‘review’ of the use of ‘zero-hours’ contracts after reports that one million people were forced into them. Predictably, my opponent local Tory MP, Simon Kirby, supports the review, no doubt because its terms of reference have explicitly excluded banning them.
Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, the Green parliamentary candidate for Hove Chris Hawtree and I issued a joint press release calling for an outright ban, as did the national Green Party. Predictably, also, Nancy Platts publicly supported a ban, but the national Labour Party announced a ‘summit’ on the issue and argued ‘zero-hours’ should be ‘the exception not the norm’, ie. it sat on the fence and has not explained where its ‘red lines’ are between what is morally acceptable and what isn’t.
Fracking: As huge local protests mount in Balcombe, just up the road from Brighton, over Cuadrilla’s exploratory drilling prior to fracking, the same divide has appeared. The government wholeheartedly supports fracking and is issuing massive tax breaks to encourage it. The local Tory MP refuses as yet to be drawn (mindful of local rural opposition). My local Labour candidate opposes fracking. But the national Labour Party supports it! Needless to say, the Green Party nationally and all the local Green parliamentary candidates are completely opposed to it and have given huge support to the local protests. Good luck to the campaigners who are camping at the drilling site.
Rail re-nationalisation: Caroline Lucas MP has announced a parliamentary bill to re-nationalise Britain’s railways. I fully endorse this, as does the national Green Party. The Tories of course oppose it. Once more, my local Labour opponent supports re-nationalisation but of course the national Labour Party refuses to commit itself to such a ‘radical’ course of action.
Other parties
For completeness, I should probably refer to other political parties (though the Lib Dems’ involvement in the coalition makes them in practice indistinguishable from the Tories).
UKIP likes to present itself as anti-establishment and an alternative to those tired of the major political parties. But in practice, of course, its policies are pretty similar to the Tories, albeit with a dash of extra racism thrown in. It supports fracking, opposes rail re-nationalisation and seems to have no policy on zero-hours contracts (though its general pro-employer stance suggests it probably supports them). The one exception to this dismal approach is that it has, in a rare moment of enlightened policy-making, called for the abolition of the bedroom tax!
Where next?
All these issues are key dividing lines – real struggles, involving real people, on issues that have huge consequences for many people’s everyday lives. The coalition government and the local Tories are on one side. The Green Party and its parliamentary candidates are on the other side.
Labour is on the fence – on the wrong side of it. It remains silent or speaks with different voices locally and nationally. The local Labour candidate has taken the same position as the Greens. But everyone knows that when it comes to it, the national Labour Party will triumph over the lone voices in the party against its stance.
As for me, I hope people can see I’ve been putting my words into action – including being heavily involved in building up the Brighton People’s Assembly Against Austerity. The Brighton PA has significant support – the initial launch meeting had 400 people, and the subsequent ‘organising’ meetings regularly attract between 30 and 50 people. On 24 August, it is supporting a Mass Sleep-In in central Brighton to highlight the effects of the bedroom tax in creating further homelessness. It is producing simple anti-austerity leaflets (using the Red Pepper Mythbusters material!) and supporting local Defend the NHS campaigns. I have also been leafleting Brighton station around the re-nationalisation campaign, and supporting the anti-fracking protests at nearby Balcombe. Labour is nowhere to be seen in these campaigns, though I would welcome its involvement.
As I campaign to be elected to parliament, I want to build the broadest opposition to the terrible policies and actions of this government. But words are not enough: local Labour supporters, including its left-wingers, have to be involved in these campaigns, or they will be tarred with the same brush as their leadership.

Diary of a ‘wannabe MP’: local elections, UKIP and the left

admin — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:07:59 +0000

It’s almost exactly two years to the probable date of the next General Election – May 2015. The results have come in from the May 2013 local elections around the country. As a parliamentary candidate, I now have an even keener interest in the facts and figures!
Obviously, everyone is talking about UKIP in the local elections. They did well too in my local constituency. Although there were no elections in Brighton & Hove this spring, Peacehaven & Telscombe Towns ward – part of East Sussex County Council and my Kemptown constituency – did have elections. UKIP did extremely well, taking both seats from the Conservatives.
This doesn’t bode well for the Tory MP for Kemptown, Simon Kirby. On this showing he would lose thousands of votes to UKIP – and lose his seat. Nor was it a good result for Labour, beaten into third place. The Green Party stood two candidates in the ward and polled a respectable 200 votes – not bad for a campaign starting from scratch.
UKIP’s appeal
So why did UKIP do so well in a part of Brighton Kemptown and across the country? I think there are lots of reasons but the main one is clear: huge swathes of people are simply fed up with what they see as the main three ‘all the same’ parties. They have a point.
This follows the pattern seen elsewhere in Europe. The mainstream parties all support different degrees of austerity. Many of them are mired in corruption scandals and seen as entirely self-serving. They represent the ‘political elite’ and are out of touch with the concerns of ‘ordinary people’. IPSOS MORI research shows that nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of UKIP voters are male, three fifths are over 55, and half identify as working class.
It just takes UKIP (or Beppe Grillo in Italy) with a populist, humorous, outsider stance to make the most of the desire for ‘something different’ and to give mainstream politicians a kicking. Of course, it is easier if the policies of the protest party pick easy scapegoats – foreigners, Europe, scroungers and the like – which sections of the media already regularly target.
Can the radical left ‘do a UKIP’?
So, can the Green Party (or the radical left more generally) simply replicate the success of UKIP or other protest parties?
It’s not that simple. We genuinely do have a completely different and more complex message to UKIP. For us, the worsening climate disaster is closely linked to the austerity drive. It is the same powerful elite who are driving attacks on the living standards of the vast majority of people, and threatening the very survival of the planet. And the solution to both is linked too: breaking the power of that elite, reorienting the economy towards sustainable goals, and fairer distribution of the wealth that already exists.
For many people that seems too big and daunting a message to grasp – much easier to blame foreigners and scroungers. And of course we in the Green Party remember only too well that we scored a stunning 15 per cent in the 1989 Euro elections, but only scored 0.5 per cent in the following general election – a sobering thought for me. It tends to be only in moments of major crisis that people can grasp the bigger picture: after the Chernobyl disaster, when the danger of nuclear power became a reality; or immediately after the economic crash, when people saw the real immorality and incompetence of the bankers and the inequality of the contemporary capitalist system.
For most of the time, we have to connect these big themes with more day-to-day problems that people face. State benefits are just such a crucial issue.
Benefits
While most media attention has been on the local elections and the success of UKIP, the benefits revolution introduced by the Tories has taken root. This Tory-led government has slashed benefits in a way that its mentor (Margaret Thatcher RIP) would never have dared.
The government and the right-wing media have softened up the public with scare stories about scroungers and the size of the benefit bill. Most people think benefit fraud is around one third, while in reality it is much less than one per cent – and tax evasion and fraud dwarfs benefit fraud by a ratio of 40:1.
But the ‘welfare reforms’ (ie. cuts) are now taking effect. A briefing prepared by the local Community & Voluntary Sector Forum in Brighton & Hove paints a bleak picture. Over 35,000 households in the city will be worse off as a result. And the three worst affected wards are all in my own constituency – East Brighton, Moulsecoomb & Bevendean and Queens Park – where 10,000 households will face cuts.
These staggering figures are a devastating indictment of the coalition government and the local Tory MP Simon Kirby who voted for all these benefit changes.
It’s clear to me that a major emphasis of my campaigning in the next two years will be supporting those affected by these benefit cuts, holding the Tories nationally and locally to account for introducing them, and forcing Labour to come clean on whether they would reverse them.
You can also read my article on the pay dispute at Brighton council here.

The pay dispute at Brighton council: a Green view

admin — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:10:53 +0000

Caroline Lucas speaks to occupying Brighton bins workers

Everywhere you look on the web today, there are appeals for solidarity with GMB union council staff in Brighton & Hove, some of whom face the prospect of huge pay cuts. It seems to be a bizarre situation. How is this possible with a Green-led council that has campaigned harder than any other council in the country against public sector austerity in general and for fairer pay for the low paid in particular? The council was after all one of the first to be accredited as a living wage employer, and just this week became the first council to pledge officially there will be no evictions resulting from the bedroom tax.

It’s a long story and one that is difficult to write for lots of reasons. Let me start by saying unambiguously that I oppose and have consistently argued and campaigned against the stance taken by some senior officers who advise the Green-led council on this pay issue. So has Caroline Lucas, our local and the UK’s only Green MP. So has the local Green Party itself. And so have almost half the local Green councillors, including the deputy leader Phelim McCafferty. But at the same time, it is not as ‘black and white’ as it has been painted in the progressive/left media.

The background

Brighton & Hove City Council was formed in 1997 from the merger of Brighton borough, Hove borough and parts of East Sussex county council. Pay and conditions had to be harmonised. Pay was eventually sorted out, but the allowances have not been. In addition, like dozens of councils up and down the country, Brighton & Hove has had to assess past pay and condition settlements in the light of more recent equal pay legislation. Many councils have found themselves facing bills running into tens of millions of pounds – Birmingham famously faced an £800m+ bill. Almost every council has now sorted out the mess of past settlements but previous Tory and Labour administrations of Brighton & Hove had failed to do so – fearing the financial consequences, and threats of industrial action.

Into this situation came the new Green Party-led council, elected in 2011 – the first ever council with Greens at the helm. It was keen to clear up the mess left behind by previous administrations and to look at past deals the previous councils had struck with the local trade unions.

Note the Greens are a minority administration, as they were elected with 23 councillors out of 54. They can’t simply decide on measures without consulting with other parties. I understand that there are some legal deadlines for sorting out these issues that means the core agreement needs to be signed by autumn 2013. So far, so good. But then, senior council officers intervened, and since then it seems to have gone off the rails, as the council leader Jason Kitcat has accepted at face value – naively in my view – the advice that officers have provided. So what happened?

I do not know exactly the content of council officers’ advice to councillors about what they found about the existing pay and conditions packages at the council – because that advice has remained a closely guarded secret. And the council’s legal advice was that councillors should say absolutely nothing in public about it. Personally, I think this advice was fundamentally wrong. And it has led to councillors being unable to explain what the dispute is about – with disastrous consequences, especially for staff morale, and allowing the media to manipulate the dispute.

My interpretation is that Brighton & Hove council probably found, like most other councils in the country, that some past allowances were at least questionable under the new equal pay laws. Its officers probably found that the sums involved to put things right were huge, and could bring the council to the verge of bankruptcy, adding to the existing budget pressures that the council was already facing due to the government’s cuts in council grants. With looming legal deadlines, and understandably hoping for cross-party support for a solution on such a crucial matter of staff pay, the council leaders passed over responsibility for negotiating a deal with the unions to senior officers. Apparently, this was done with no brief from the Green group of councillors, and no commitment to bring back any offer to councillors for approval before being submitted to staff. I think this was a big mistake.

Green Party members in Brighton & Hove are rightly proud of the council’s achievements on the living wage and its commitment to reducing the gap between the highest and lowest paid. They understandably assumed that any change to allowances would mean levelling pay up with no losses for other groups of workers. It soon became clear that officers were pursuing a different tack – trying to pay for upgrading those whose allowances historically had been too low by reducing those whose allowances had been ‘too high’. This had the effect of pitching one worker against another in a one-off change rather than introducing them over a longer period of time.

There can be little doubt that the sums of money are very high and the temptation for officers to strike such a deal was strong. Rumours suggest that upgrading the allowances would add £30m to the annual council wage bill. Some councillors have voiced fears of ‘financial meltdown’. But I think it was a mistake to let senior council officers take this approach. And it was a huge mistake not to let council staff and others in the city know what the real motivation was for the changes being proposed.

The role of the unions

Frankly, the local trade unions have not exactly covered themselves in glory either in this dispute. Of course, unions rightly fight for their members’ best interests. But much of the publicity and campaigning from the unions has been deliberately misleading and in my view has taken on a politically partisan pro-Labour and anti-Green bias.

The unions have portrayed the dispute as the Greens wanting to reduce the pay bill by cynically attacking the lowest paid. Indeed that is what many of the rank and file staff now sincerely believe – partly because the council has been so useless to communicating with them. But it isn’t true. Equal pay is entirely absent from the union’s narrative. So is the fact that it is low paid women workers who will gain the most from any settlement. So is the fact that the council’s wage bill will go up, not down, as a result of the proposed settlement. The GMB is playing a crafty game with Labour locally, who have pulled out of the initial cross-party consensus trying to resolve the issues.

However, none of that changes the view held by myself, Caroline Lucas and the local Green Party that the stance of the administration is wrong and very damaging.

What has been proposed

A ‘final offer’ – which has never been approved by councillors! – has been put to staff. Nine out of ten staff are unaffected. Some low paid, mainly women workers in Unison, stand to gain significantly. And a few hundred manual staff, mainly male GMB workers in the refuse and street cleaning department, stand to lose. The amount varies – for most it is less than £25 a week. But for a few it is much more.

A compensation package has been proposed which offers for example someone who loses £1,000 per year around £3,500 in a lump sum. The text of the offer is not entirely clear but it seems to imply that if it is not accepted, that the council will impose it – presumably by sacking staff and re-employing them on the new conditions.

The local Green Party has held two packed general meetings of its members to discuss this issue. This is a sovereign decision-making forum for the local party. The arguments of the council leader and his supporters were roundly defeated at both.

The first meeting opposed any attempt to sack and re-employ staff on worse conditions. The second meeting condemned the offer to staff for including significant pay cuts to low paid workers. Myself, Caroline Lucas and around half the Green councillors supported the stance taken by the local party. We have argued that any settlement cannot include threats to sack staff and cannot include pay cuts to low paid workers.

The issue now has become critical for us. Our candidates in last week’s elections were asked why some of our councillors were attacking the low paid. Allies and supporters locally and nationally are deeply troubled by what the council may be doing. And local Green Party members are wondering what they have to do to get councillors to follow national and local Green Party policy, and to withdraw the ‘final offer’ and the sacking threat.

By all means send your support to the GMB workers threatened with pay cuts. I have. But please note that the story is more complicated than it first appears. And it looks increasingly like the story that has been played out in many radical parties here and abroad; it is a conflict between those who want to manage the system better, and those who want to change the system altogether. The story is not yet over.

Davy Jones: diary of a ‘wannabe MP’

admin — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:39:28 +0000

I have been selected by the Green Party to be their parliamentary candidate at the next general election for Brighton Kemptown. I’m thrilled by it, and a bit stunned. But at a time when, according to Ipsos MORI, trust in politicians is lower (at 18 per cent) than trust in journalists, estate agents or even bankers, why on earth would a radical like me want to stand for parliament?
One thing is very clear: the mainstream political parties are seriously discredited here and abroad. More and more people feel thoroughly dissatisfied with the political system.
Just look at George Galloway’s unexpected victory in Bradford West. Or look at the recent Italian elections, where a ‘stuff the establishment’ comic picked up nearly a quarter of the vote. Even the rise of UKIP in the Eastleigh by-election shows the desperation for any alternative. And in Greece, the radical left wing Syriza polled over 27 per cent of the vote last June.
There is a real opportunity for parties who stand for something completely different – and I think especially for those who understand that the environmental crisis, the austerity programmes and the attacks on social justice are all interlinked.
My political background
I’ve been politically involved since my university days, many decades ago. First, I was in left wing groups, then the Labour Party left and the Socialist Movement, then a founder of Socialist newspaper and its successor Red Pepper magazine.
And for the last four years, I have been in the Green Party down in Brighton – my home city, where I grew up as a teenager. I joined because I felt the Green Party just might be able to provide a real radical political alternative to the dreary mainstream. Since then, Caroline Lucas has been elected as the UK’s first Green MP here in Brighton, and the Green Party won the most votes and took minority control of Brighton & Hove Council nearly two years ago.
Brighton & Hove
There are three parliamentary constituencies in Brighton & Hove:
• Pavilion is the radical hub of Brighton, including the universities and the alternative areas like the Laines, and Caroline Lucas, the first Green MP in the country, is standing again here in 2015;
• Hove is to the West and includes parts similar to Brighton, but also some more affluent traditional Tory areas together with some working class estates beyond Hove – it currently has a Tory MP and Christopher Hawtree is standing for the Green Party in 2015;
• Kemptown, where I am standing, is similar to Hove – a mix of liberal urban areas, affluent Tory parts and working class estates. Traditionally it has swung with the national election victors and currently has a Tory MP – Simon Kirby.
All three constituencies are in Labour’s top priority 30 seats – though it seems a terrible indictment of Labour that it should make toppling the sole Green MP in the country its 19th top priority seat. Electing Caroline Lucas in 2010 was a herculean effort by the whole Green Party – the first Green MP in the world elected under a pure ‘first past the post’ system. And what a breath of fresh air she has provided in parliament and round the country ever since.
Some will argue that Greens and Labour may split the left vote and let the Tories back in locally. But Labour argued that when Caroline stood in Pavilion in 2010 – and she won. They argued the same at the council elections the following year – and the Greens came out with the biggest vote and the most councillors. With that track record of success, I hope Labour say it again about Kemptown! Labour have made clear they are not interested in any sort of anti-Tory electoral pact in Brighton & Hove.
The journey begins
I was proposed just before Christmas to stand as prospective parliamentary candidate and adopted almost unanimously at the end of last month. I never expected that.
The general election will most probably be in May 2015 so I have two years to prepare. Two years to immerse myself in the communities of the Kemptown constituency, to talk to people and hear their views and concerns, to find out what’s going on and to confront the ‘myths’ and fears that people have. I want to be different to the mainstream candidates: I want to give expression to people’s political dissatisfaction and to give them hope and confidence in a real political alternative.
For example, in the last few weeks I have been spending time giving support to the inspiring struggle of the students occupying Sussex University against privatisation. I have not only campaigned for support for the occupation and visited with Caroline Lucas and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, I have also, as a yoga teacher, organised a rota of free yoga classes for those in the occupation from Brighton yoga teachers! I have learnt how strongly the students and staff there feel about solidarity on the campus and how horrified they are by the university becoming what they describe as a ‘privatised machine’.
At each step on my journey I intend to report back on the insights I have gained and the campaigning I have done. If you could help in any way, please contact me on davyjones1952@gmail.com

Davy Jones is a member of Red Pepper’s board, but Red Pepper does not endorse his election bid

So farewell then electors – we knew you once…

louise — Tue, 08 May 2012 08:38:12 +0000

This figure is absolutely appalling. It is even worse than the Hansard Society survey published a week ago showing just 48 per cent of people certain to vote in an election, down 10 per cent over the previous year, and interest in politics collapsing from 58 per cent to 42 per cent over the last year.

Why is this the case? Well, many people now see little point in voting as the parties ‘are all the same’ and ‘don’t listen to ordinary people’ anyway. They have a point. While most of us would prefer a Labour council to a Tory one, many people have long memories and see little to choose between Labour and the Tories, especially at the national level.

Elected mayors will be the solution…
Well, they won’t actually. Almost all the referenda in our major cities about whether to introduce an elected mayor failed – most by a significant margin. Only Bristol bucked the trend, with Doncaster voting to retain its mayoral system – glad to know the good people of Doncaster have a sense of humour….

Of course, it’s a pity Boris got back in and Ken failed in London. And it’s great that Jenny Jones performed well and came third. But again, unlike the local government pundits and the mainstream politicians, most people obviously do not think an all-powerful local mayor is the solution to their dissatisfaction with democracy. And they are right to think that. The same will be true of the new elected Police Commissioner elections this November.

What is really needed is for central government to devolve power massively down to local government and on to local citizens. Labour promised it but didn’t deliver. The Coalition promised it but the Big Society has failed – with the Hansard Society recording a collapse in volunteering over the last year from 29 per cent to 21 per cent.

There is no alternative…

Yes there is. And where it was offered, people often took it. Respect won five councillors in Bradford, following up the recent spectacular success of George Galloway in the by-election, the Greens won 8 more seats in England (but lost a few too) and 6 more in Scotland. And TUSC won two council seats (in Preston and Walsall) but lost Dave Nellist in Coventry. But these gains were very modest for the Left alternative candidates. In most places, there is still a mountain to climb before such candidates are seen as credible and electable.

The Nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland fared worse then expected. Jim Bollan was re-elected for the Scottish Socialist party in West Dunbartonshire.

At least the Far Right candidates did badly – the BNP lost in all the 136 seats they contested, and their vote in the London mayoral elections fell by around two thirds.

Davy Jones (davy@davyjonesconsultancy.co.uk)

http://davyjonesconsultancy.co.uk/blog/2012/04/government-toffs-toffs

Brighton goes Green again

James O'Nions — Sat, 07 May 2011 16:04:07 +0000

The Green Party emerged as the largest group on Brighton and Hove council on Friday, winning ten more seats to make a total of 23, against 18 Tories and 13 Labour. With Labour support, it expects to be able to run the council. The result exceeded the wildest expectations of the local party, with the Greens winning 33 per cent of the popular vote across the city (Labour got 32 per cent and the Tories 29 per cent).
Traditionally Brighton was primarily Labour, while Hove was primarily Tory, making for an interesting split when the two merged to form a unitary council in 1997, and the new city of Brighton and Hove in 2000. The Green Party won its first seat in 1996 and its support has steadily grown outwards from the city centre, while the working class estates stayed mainly Labour and the posher suburbs solidly Tory.
That all changed in the general election. Caroline Lucas’s victory in the Brighton Pavilion seat was historic in many ways, not just the first Green MP in England, but the first in the world to be elected by first past the post. It was a landmark success locally too, as her support came from traditional Labour areas and even from some Tory areas. It dramatically demonstrated that the Greens had reached the key threshold of credibility locally as a real alternative to the traditional duopoly.
During the recent local elections, the city was covered in Green posters as people sensed the possibility of the city breaking the mould again. On the doorstep, there was widespread hostility to the both the national coalition government and the local Conservative minority council leadership for pushing through unpopular cuts, and support for the idea that the Greens and Labour should work together.
But after the celebrations, the hard work begins. The Greens will be the largest party and are likely to seek support from Labour to form an administration, but a formal coalition is now unlikely given Labour’s poor showing.
The Greens campaigned on a very radical programme: against the cuts; for a Green New Deal of creating local jobs for home insulation and renewable energy schemes; and for extending local democracy and participatory budgeting.
But the new Green council will inherit a Tory cuts budget that it voted against just a few months ago (while Labour abstained). The Greens had skilfully succeeded in amending the Tory budget before the election to remove the worst local cuts, but they have not yet been able to create sufficient popular support for confronting central government cuts and refusing to implement them.
The most likely scenario is of the Green-led council introducing democratic reforms and sustainability policies, while desperately grappling with the budget and struggling to avoid making cuts to the services of those who overwhelmingly voted for it.
Officially the local Labour Party has been fiercely anti-Green in recent years (though amusingly many members privately admit to voting for Caroline Lucas in the general election). Its election campaign was very negative and aimed squarely at rubbishing the Green Party. Its leadership sees the Greens as its main enemy and will seize any opportunity to make life difficult for them.
But there are good omens. Caroline Lucas is on the left of the Green Party and obviously has huge influence locally. Overwhelmingly the councillors and leading local party members are instinctively anti-cuts and supportive of working with the local trade unions. They are wary of sweetheart deals with Labour to stay in power at any cost. They want to be different and to stick to their radical principles.
Above all, the emergence of the Greens in Brighton and Hove is hugely significant symbolically, and potentially represents the first real popular political alternative to the mainstream since the GLC and left Labour councils of the 1980s. Such credible political alternatives are rare and need to be nurtured and supported by all progressives and radicals. Constructive criticism is necessary, but so too is solidarity and support as this new political current genuinely attempts to map out a new political alternative.
Davy Jones is a member of Brighton and Hove Green Party.

Parties, movements and radical change

admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:00:23 +0000

I am constantly struck by the failure of the radical left to explicitly seize the moral high ground. The right (especially the evangelical right) are not averse to doing so when it suits them, yet socialism, internationalism, ecological sustainability, feminism, anti-imperialism all have very strong ethical foundations. Appealing broadly on key issues to a very basic humanity and compassion potentially connects us to audiences that for some years have been removed from radical left politics- the many people in various religious and moral camps.

This may cause some on the left to question long-held beliefs, such as on the use of violence, but that’s no bad thing. The enormous success of the London Citizens movement in bringing together trade unions and religious groups should be a lesson to us all. We tend to focus too much on detail and not enough on the big ethical issues underlying our politics. For example, half the world’s GDP is routed through tax havens which means half the potential tax revenues are lost. This is so grotesquely unfair to people who pay their taxes that it allows us to explain to them that there is enough money in the world- it’s just who’s got it and the tax systems set up to protect them that’s the problem.

Identify the issues

We need to identify the issues where there is real possibility of a broad anti-capitalist, anti-establishment consensus emerging in the UK (and internationally) and focus on these.

It is possible to change mass consciousness on certain issues in a relatively short space of time. They key then is to turn this into a permanent (or near to permanent as possible) step forward, ideally framed in law as well as in the popular consciousness. It’s been noted in other contexts how social attitudes to drinking and driving changed dramatically in a generation to one of outright hostility to such selfish and dangerous behaviour. The same is now happening on global warming and living within environmentally sustainable limits. Radical left activists must build the broadest possible unity around such issues and be at the heart of arguing for such transformations, using them to explain the links to other social, economic and political issues.

Respond rapidly and create permanent resources

Insufficient time and effort goes into translating successes into permanent acquisitions, not just ideologically but also physically and virtually. To be able to respond rapidly and effectively, the radical left needs embedded resources and infrastructure. This will take many forms such as resource centres, websites, socio-political networks and funding sources. Rather than forming another party or newspaper a shrewder investment may be to create and sustain permanent resources for the range of needs the radical left needs for its activities.

Remove the barriers

There are some structural issues that are critical barriers to progress for radical left politics. The most obvious is the electoral system. Proportional representation is no panacea but crucial if radical left politics is to enter the mainstream electoral and political arena. Another barrier is the party system and elections. The party system, especially in local elections, is a major barrier to making radical breakthroughs at a local level. The radical left needs to develop proposals and campaign to make it much easier for independent candidates and small parties to stand in local, national and European elections.

Recognise opportunities

As Hilary Wainwright hints in her article it is also crucial to seize any opportunities to create and sustain forms of local democratic debate and accountability as ongoing spaces. For example, for its own reasons this government has decided to promote participatory budgeting but is it just a panacea? No, current developments in Porto Alegre show this.

To incorporate local processes of structured debate and discussion about what needs to be done and how money should be spent locally would represent a huge step forward for the UK. Potentially it could raise debate about the need for structured discussion of the national budget and priorities, weaken the power of the traditional local parties to have exclusive access to this discussion and help reawaken interest in politics.

The crucial thing is for the radical left to recognise such opportunities when they arise and to seize them rather than sneer from the sidelines at the government’s motives.