I've known Neal Lawson, who founded the genuinely left of centre (unlike many that claim that title) think tank Compass for several years now.
I'm getting the impression that Neal is getting very fed up with Labour. His piece on immigration in the Guardian today includes a wholly appropriate dismissal of New Labour strategy on a wide range of issues, including immigration. I'd recommend reading it all, but I think the concluding paragraphs too important not to share and trust the Guardian will forgive me when doing so:
So what can Labour do? Start with a core belief and act on it pragmatically to win the country over. The core belief is: Labour has to be a party of solidarity, and "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all". Therefore Labour has to be a party based on internationalism — not just what is good for Britain but what is good for people wherever they were lucky, or not, to be born. From this fundamental belief in the equality of all of us as human beings, we need to develop a political strategy that takes us from where we are to where we need to be.
Analysis of the electorate's view of immigration, by the anti-racism campaigners Searchlight, the thinktank British Future and others, shows there is a majority for sanity and solidarity out there, which could be coalesced. A quarter of the population are hardline anti-immigrant — some of them racist. But another quarter, essentially Guardian and Economist readers, support multiculturalism. The remaining 50% are up for grabs, but can be won over.
It will take courage. But Labour must say that people come before profits, that we must build houses, invest in schools and provide well-paid jobs through a proper green new deal and a living wage. The party must also spell out the truth, that migrants claim less in benefits than the rest of us. And that planned, well-managed immigration can continue to make Britain a brilliant place to live.
The alternative is false hopes based on false solutions — which may help Labour win a few battles, but it will lose the war. We now know that if we don't regulate capitalism, then we always end up regulating people to force them to fit the requirements of the market.
The problem is not immigration but free-market capitalism, which uproots people from their homes and encourages the best to leave. That denies us the tax base to invest properly in people and places. It's not a new immigration policy we need, but a new capitalism.
Indeed.
There's an outline in my book, The Courageous State.
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I heard Neal Lawson speak, very well, at the Green Party conference in Bristol last year. He admitted that, while Labour had all the votes the Greens had all the ideas. Maybe he’s a Green really.
@Chris Foren Chris, as I’m sure you’d agree, who cares what Party (or indeed, what race/nationality) the little boy belongs, who tells us the Emperor’s wearing no clothes? Even more so when he tells us what should be/needs to be done?
We’ve just had “nonsense on stilts” heavily spiced with lies and untruths from our naked Emperor PM, so I welcome real comment such as this from NeAl Lawson and YEARN for Labour to take this on board, or stand aside and let the REAL progressive centre, coalescing around the Green Party maybe, to take over, and stop the current bunch of wreckers in their tracks.
“A quarter of the population are hardline anti-immigrant — some of them racist. But another quarter, essentially Guardian and Economist readers, support multiculturalism.”
Is it really true that 25% of the British population are Guardian and Economist readers?
This is a social democratic country
“Is it really true that 25% of the British population are Guardian and Economist readers?”
If it is true then they are definitely not buying them from newsstands, only the grubby sales capitalism of Auto Trader keeps the Guardian in print. About £150m a year they lose……….
Actually to be a party truly based on internationalism, they should be support a restriction on immigration which causes the most skilled people , usually educated at the state’s expense, to be sucked into the UK from emerging market countries around the world. Try asking the South African government how they feel about the NHS coming to South Africa and poaching doctors and nurses that the country has spent a fortune training.
Fair point
I wish people would stop calling thia capitalism. In capitalism weak companies fall by the wayside, they don’t bribe governments with their stolen lucre to keep themselves going. This is the post-capitalist era if anything then, and quite possible it only ever was just that.
We’re not a democracy either. The Queen, it’s recently been discovered by the broader population, can veto laws she doesn’t like and damn what any of us peasants think. We can’t take that power of hers away by voting then. That’s not democracy, and it never was either. What we like to think of as ‘our’ society is being revealed as the nasty sham it always has been. Some of aren’t surprised.
When this fact – HRH being able to veto that of which she did not approve (or rather, that which might affect her interests directly)-came into the public domain a few months ago, that really put the tin lid on my views of a ‘benign monarchy’ which is tolerable because of the tourist £££ she brings to the country, but other than that irrelevant because the post has no overt power to change what governments require her to rubber stamp. (I accept this is simplistic and that we wouldnt have the classism etc if our cultural psyche did not have ‘we must bow to them’ ingrained in it. But bear with me).
What infuriates me now is, knowing that the monarchy has this power, she/they have stood idly by whilst this government actually damages the economic, psychological and emotional welfare of the vast majority of the people of ‘her monarchy’ -witness the Health and Social Care Bill inter alia – and has done NOTHING.
Whilst her intervention would be undemocratic, I would argue that bills, statutes and laws brought in through the influence of lobbying and corporate capture are in themselves not democratic and therefore warrant further the undemocratic intervention that only the office of the monarch appears to have the power to do. We, the people, certainly dont appear to have any power (yet- until we get better united, collective, cohesive and organised). I cannot believe that HRH postbag has not been full to bursting with pleas from British citizens asking her to intervene in the rape and pillage of our country by feral capitalism and its insidious, corrupting tendrils in every aspect of what was a ‘free society’.
‘Labour’ as a moniker for nu or current Labour is not going to be the answer. The public has a paradigm of Labour’ which will not shift whilst any of the last vestiges of Blair/Brown remain in high profile. The common sense and conviction ‘politics’ (such as Neil Lawson, Nick Shaxton, yourself Richard etc etc and quite a few of your regular commentators on here as elsewhere, thank goodness)is coming from no mainstream party currently – and of course doesnt get share of voice to the general public due to captured media.
But there is such a head of steam building up in this country for change and for truth. The internet is a blessing and a curse. We are out there and we know like minds exist in high numbers because of the internet. But we are also fragmented into tiny movements and interest groups, many with similar aims but not having a unifying totem or character behind which the power of all of us can help to restore our democracy, make the truth spoken by Neil and others more mainstream, and remind and inspire the public that working with and for each other we all succeed, whereas dividied and stratified ultimately we ALL fail.
And also in your book are many references to the need for courageous politicians, Richard. And I’m afraid – though not at all surprised, unfortunately, – that what we have in the shadow cabinet are largely – perhaps exclusively – not of that ilk.
It’s that realisation, perhaps, that’s at the heart of Neal Lawson’s despair (and, indeed, a despair that many of us share). Ultimately that may be why there doesn’t appear to be a ‘core belief’ at the heart of what neo-lib Labour do. One Nation? It appears to me to be a slogan not a belief. Pity, as it could/would play well with the electorate, if based on the kinds of core beliefs Lawson suggests.
But I’m afraid that as we come to the end of another week of your blogs (ok,I know, still Saturday and Sunday to go) one of the disturbing – though again, not surprising, unfortunately – things we seem to have learnt is that even the much lauded policy review – or signicant aspect of it at the least – appears to have already been captured by a select, largely corporate, group of interests. Ultimately that probably tells Neal Lawson and all the rest of us all that we need to know about Labour’s core beliefs, and where they lie.
Depressing, isn’t it
I might have a glass of wine tonight
I couldn’t last night
I think we know how Neal feels
We still live in a democracy…just.
Vested interests dominated US politics in the early twentieth century. However a “New Deal Coalition” was formed, which dominated US politics for more than three decades. Isn’t there a lesson to be learned from this?
Change is in the air and 2013 may be a turning point…
After all who wants to live in a fascist state run by multinationals …faceless dictators? That truly would be the “Road to Serfdom”
This may be of interest…..
http://www.democracyatwork.info/radio/2013/03/capitalism-critiques-and-alternatives/
The ambitions of multinationals and the 0.001% who run them can be thwarted.