Great letter from Caroline Lucas in the Observer this morning.
I am sure many in the Labour Party will wonder what it is that's stopping Labour taking her position:
Ed Miliband's article was an object lesson in mealy-mouthed prevarication. On the one hand, he acknowledges that the protesters pose a challenge to politics to close the gap between their values and the way the country is run. On the other, he dismisses their "long list of diverse and often impractical proposals".
I should love to know which he finds most "impractical": their call for an end to global tax injustice, or perhaps their proposal that our democratic system should be free of corporate influence? Or maybe it's their support for the student demonstrations this week, or the strikes planned for 30 November?
Until he can demonstrate which side Labour is on, Miliband's assertion that "the Labour party speaks to that crisis and rises to the challenge" will remain hollow rhetoric.
Indeed, the real challenge that the occupiers present to politicians like Miliband is that they are staging the debate that mainstream parties have been studiously avoiding since the economic crisis started — the question of how to completely refocus the values and goals of our economic system, rather than trying to get back to business as usual as fast as possible.
I was proud to have been asked to address the Occupy rally in London last weekend, and proud to be able to say the Green party stands fully behind their goals. It's a pity that Labour can't do the same.
Caroline Lucas
MP for Brighton Pavilion
Leader, Green party
Disclosure: I have co-authored with Caroline.
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I blogged on Stefanie Flanders BCC website a few days ago. I said that more and more people are mentioning alternatives to fractional reserve banking on newspaper blogs (Independent and Guardian-don’t know if that is true for the Telegraph), including me but neither the papers nor the BBC examine the alternatives. At one time my comment was rated at 6th out of 80.
This is not to blow my trumpet but to point out there are growing forces for reform in the country. Is there a way to bring them together?
Caroline referes to “our economic system”. There’s the error, in my view. It’s not ours, it’s the banks, and everything we do in it makes them richer. Everything, that is, except sit on our backsides, never work and not consume anything. They can’t make any money out of us that way which perhaps explains the otherwise irrational insistence from the likes of Grayling and IDS that eveyone work more, absurd in the face of shrinking job opportunities and government policies which deliberately foster unemployment.
When we create money ourselves and return any profits such as seignorage or interest to the community at large, then this will be our economy. Till then this is someone else’s casino and no matter how we change the rules the house will always win.
BB
You should have been at #occupynorwich today
You’d have found me saying a lot of things you agree with
Well said Caroline I sincerely hope you gain a lot of votes out of this. Because, unlike Ed Miliband and all the other vacuous puppets who ‘lead’ the mainstream political parties, you’ve shown true leadership.
If only these weasels would get it over with and pin their true colours to the mast:
David Cameron – Leader of the Banker Party
Ed Miliband – Leader of the Banker Party-Lite
Nick Clegg – Leader of the Diet Banker Party
I went to #OccupyLSX yesterday (Sat) and spent a few hours in the Tent City University. Talk by John Hilary – Director of War on Want discussing global issues. Prof Ha-Joon Chang talked to some items from his book 23 things they don’t tell you about Capitalism. (That should make interesting reading – he left copies in the #OLSX library)
Well done to #Occupy for creating a real environment to explore alternative ideas and for generating real discussion and debate.
I agree with Caroline Lucas – they are actually having the debate that should be going on in the wider political community.
I warmly recommend Ha-Joon Chang’s book
And I was delighted to find the debate as good and as strong at Norwich today
And here’s the man himself on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whVf5tuVbus
BB
realistically, we can’t replace capitalism overnight. Maybe we shouldn’t even try.
If I was Ed Milliband (god forbid) I’d say
“We are a small country, we can’t LEAD, only follow.We could be like America with massive divides between rich & poor, huge urban areas that are ruled out of bounds for the vast bulk of the populace, penitentiaries filled to the brim.
OR we can be like Germany. We’ll need lower house prices, & a massively reduced role for finance. We’ll get: everyone employed, a thriving manufacturing sector, genuine co-operration
This isn’t capitalism though William. In capitalism, when a business fails, it disintegrates and bright new companies are formed from the wreckage. That process has been arrested by the refusal to preserve the banks no matter what. The rule of survival of the fittest judged by competition is no more. That cycle is broken. Once you preserve the unfit instead of letting them go to the wall, you end all meaningful competition. Since they cannot be beaten themselves, they must end up eventually beating and so owning everything else. I’m not sure what you’d accurately call what we’re in now but it certainly isn’t capitalism.
BB
Oops – I meant the decision to preserve the banks no matter what 🙂
BB
Ha-Joon recently attended a meeting of the Cambridge branch of the Fabians to discuss his book and the meeting was extremely interesting. I came across his work when I studied for a Masters in Development Studies at UEA. I can also recommend his other book – Bad Samaritans. Ha-Joon really is an expert and very approachable – I have emailed him several times and he has replied. I just cannot understand why the Labour Party is not calling upon his expertise to critque the current model of capitalism.
I’d suggest in all seriousness it’s because overall (with honorable exceptions) they’re intent on carving a cosy niche for themselves up the backside of that self-same current model of capitalism (which it isn’t – see my comment above). They’re no better than the Tories in this regard and I’m saddened that more people can’t seem to come to terms with this..
BB
Can you pass this on to Caroline: http://www.newint.org/blog/2011/11/07/occupy-london-protest-astroturfing-grassroots-movement/
I understand what you are saying – and would not presume to suggest that because I have been to Occupy it agrees with what I say
Equally, I think it appears mistaken to suggest Occupy is not saying something and to prevent people wishing to interpret it from doing so
There is a delicate balance here, but democracy must allow representation, and that embraces the risk of misrepresentation
This isn’t rocket science. Either Ed is prepared to do something to reduce wealth inequality – in which case he could do worse than start by demanding the tax havens be closed and a FTT be introduced – or he isn’t. Either he is prepared to support public sector workers in their struggle to maintain their pension rights or he isn’t.
Sitting on the fence may have been good enough for Cyril Smith, but it shouldn’t be for the party that is meant to be the voice of socialism in Westminster. Any attempt to hold the middle ground will just see the political centre shift further to the right.
Cameron and Clegg have lied and broken their pre-election promises time and time again. A competent Leader of the Opposition should be able to expose this pair of frauds for what they truly are. But so far, many people are wondering if all three major parties are, in effect in the pockets of big business. None of them seem prepared to stand with the 99% against the 1%.
Come on Ed. Get Dennis Skinner to teach you how to lay into this incestuous group of banks, mega-corporations and right wing politicians. Or stand aside and let someone else carry out the job that you’re meant to be doing.
He {Milli} has to tread a very fine line.
There is only one widely-read national ‘paper supporting Labour, the others will support the conservatives even if they promised to enforce involuntary euthanasia of all those poor and over 65.
If the Labour party move to the left they will not be elected.
They face an uphill task anyway, although the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries seems to have stalled a little.
Ed is not a natural talker, he never will be.
Mr Blair was.
Gordon Brown wasn’t.
He doesn’t even look as though he believes what he is talking about.
Taken together, it will be game-over for Labour at the next election.
If the conservatives get re-elected and can dump the libdems (virtually guaranteed since they look to be losing most of their mp’s next time around) then we will be in for another 20 years of “it it moves, sell it” politics.
I give Ed another 6 months (and hence Labour)….if they go to the polls with him they will get slaughtered.
Maybe he will discover a talent to say things people like and believe ?
I don’t think so though.
My plans revolve around a 35 -55 seat conservative majority next time.
People don’t elect parties that have wrecked the economy and destroyed the NHS
Richard, i’m too young to remember but how did Thatcher get re-elected?
War in 1983
@JohnM – I’m afraid I simply do not agree with your analysis – the whole Occupy movement is a very clear indication that there is a tremendous groundswell of anxiety, concern, desire to know and desire to learn and understand and MOST OF ALL, a desire to take charge and engineer real change, all of which seemed to be taking root in the last crisis, in 2008, when even the mainstream media were talking about busted systems and the need for a new capitalism.
Unlike in 2008, when the ‘behind-the-scenes’ puppet-masters managed to wrench the debate back onto the same tired old railway-tracks of argument and debate, this time it seems to me far too many people have seen through the scammers who are in charge, and this time they are determined to keep on keeping on asking questions and suggesting changes. The Emperor can only fool others (and himself) that he has a fine new suit of clothes for so long, and it only takes a few – very few – people to listen to the little boy’s cry of “He’s not wearing anything”, for their eyes to open.
That, I believe is happening (alas, I cannot say yet that it has definitively happened), evidence only the hauling over the coals of the detestable Murdochs, pere et fils. Would that have happened in 2008? I think not. Indeed, I believe that what is now happening is the long-delayed after-shock of the Velvet Revolutions of 1989, which saw Communism collapse into a heap of incoherent rubble, a time when the Czechoslovak Prime Minister, Adamec, was booed at an industrial plant that he visited, and told by the workers “We aren’t children!”
Just as earthquakes have not only aftershocks, but more importantly time and space shifts, so that an earthquake on one side of the Pacific Rim is echoed by another quake, maybe years later on the other side, now I believe the corrupt and ineffective neo-liberal paradigm (which has only enriched the right-wing equivalents of the Soviet Politburo and Party ‘nomenklatura’) is also collapsing into a rubble of its own incoherence and clearly unjust enrichment.
Ed must seize this opportunity – he must be one of Richard’s “courageous politicians” and side with the forces of real change, and not with the ‘nay-sayers’ and the ‘let’s play it safe’ people who led Gordon Brown to agree with Alistair Darling’s pusillanimous terrror of full-blooded, real, nationalisation of RBS (which could NOW be, could before the Election have BEEN, a National Investment Bank, as Richard argues, and which would, I am sure, have kept Gordon Brown in Number 10 – a man who would SURELY have known better what to do than the current headless chickens!!).
If Ed does not do this, then alas, he WILL lose, he WILL be like Brutus, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, who observed:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Brutus did not “take the flood”, and lost. Ed will similarly fail if he does not step outside the ‘comfort zone’ of “a little here, and a little there”, and follow the clear trail blazed by Caroline Lucas, who, quite frankly on current performance is the one I would like to see NOW in Number 10!
Andrew
Agreed
And great to see you yesterday
Richard
All the newspapers, except the odd one, are telling those who vote that it was the Labour party that did that.
Mr Miliband is saying nothing noticeable against that.
You’ll note that the destruction of the NHS is being trotted-out as a “streamlining”, “waste cutting”, “bringing in good management” .
GP consortia to cut costs? Note nothing is being said to inform that GP consortia will massively INCREASE costs by removing the many benefits of mass purchase, not to mention that drug costs will be higher and that many consortia will be negotiating contracts with pharmacies…..so many will be remote from the patient.
All wrapped up in long contracts with expensive buy-out penalties, as in the PFI.
Perhaps you (or your wife) may not have noticed the use of generic drugs by pharmacies ?
Now, I also note that the gov is telling people not to buy drugs online because they are made by foreign companies and may not be good quality. Many of the generic drugs are made abroad, in the asian continent, by the same companies making the much criticised generic viagra (for instance).
Usually with “anglicised” names.
Samsingh pharmaceuticals becomes Peters pharmaceuticals (as an example…names changed to protect my bank account)
My wife never prescribes by brand name
It is her intention always to prescribe generics
Your problem is?
I’m not quite understanding your logical flow in this comment
I hope you are right Richard and people do not elect parties that wreck the economy and destroy the NHS.
The Tory right are however exceptionally skilful at weaving a narrative based on partial truths and I am sure work is well under way to prepare for the next election and tell us that the NHS and the UK economy have been saved from certain disaster after 13 years of Labour and dangers from Europe/public sector slackers with gold plated pensions /bureaucracy/ welfare scroungers etc etc.
Labour needs to get smarter at this.
It’s weird isn’t it – there’s a universal belief that Labour needs to get smarter
But it isn’t
At least yet
“War in 1983”
And in 1987?
Artificial boom pre collapse
Richard is right that Thatcher won the 1983 election because of the Falklands war(which incidentally was completely unnecessary – except to the Tories) but she didn’t wreck the economy or privatise the NHS. What she did do, was sell off all the “family silver” which some greedy ppl thought was good as they made money from the shares they bought (in the services they already owned!).She freed up the Financial services which was the foundation for the mess we’re in today, but which at the time made a lot of ppl in London very rich indeed,whilst in the North of England in particular, the coal mine closures and devastation of our manufacturing companies caused massive unemployment. The old trick of divide and rule! leadership was useless
These are some of the reasons she won elections, but also, the Labour leadership was useless and the Labour Party divided. Similarly, Blair won elections because the opposition was hopeless.
There will have to be something extraordinary to happen for Cameron to win again. People have long memories!
As far as the politics of winning an election are concerned, the electorate have deplorable memories.
Reinforced by a constant “diet” of one-sided reporting in the press.
Still…….maybe the sun will side with Labour next time ?
Not much chance of that.
So, a few “enrichment” moves as the election approaches, a few boundary changes in a few areas, the massive support from the “mainstreammedia”, a few “Cameron bashes the eu” stories, even more “unions are risking our reforms” stories…………….
It’s not as if we have not had these before……..and, of course, Bob Crow will have an
underground strike the week before…..the guy seems to have a down on Labour.
Labour never win elections, the conservatives lose them.
But of course, my logic is a bit stretched sometimes as Richard has said…
The way things are now the conservatives are going to win by enough seats to wave goodbye to Cleggs guys, if there are any remaining after the election.
And no, I don’t support CamClegg…..yet.
It’s not that I don’t have sympathy to apects of the “Cause” but I do find it midly amusing how left wing bloggers love to indulge in mutual back slapping. What good is persuading others of the same mind? It’s great to reinforce your beliefs, but where is the reaching out? 99% vs 1% ,do me a favour it’s more like 5% left wing vs 94% Centre vs 1% elite .
The UK has an inherently conservative electorate, they don’t like bankers of course, but neither are they keen on left wing -academics, Students, pretend students, media types, etc .Tough fact but true.
Now
Just true in your little huddle
Which is no doubt mutually self reinforcing
And yet they voted in a democrat leaning towards socialism.
Not only that, but one decidedly not white.
At the moment he looks like a one-termer…..but the other side are a bit split at the moment.
Oh get real
Obama a socialist?
You have to have nearly fallen off the edge to think that