See, You Do Need The Knowledge

This is one of the great conservative and patriotic victories of the organised working class.

Here's to many more, in many more cities and countries.

Among More Reasonable Viewers

Dawn Foster writes:

For those who have worked in housing, homelessness and advocacy, Ken Loach’s latest film, I, Daniel Blake will seem more documentary than fiction.

The two protagonists are both subject to arbitrary and damaging periods of extreme poverty after their benefits are stopped. 

Daniel – a 61-year old joiner recovering from a heart attack and rejected for Employment Support Allowance (ESA) – is hit by the bedroom tax after the death of his wife, while Katie, a young single mother with two children, is evicted after complaining about the black mould in her flat that hospitalises her son. 

After a year in a hostel in London, she is shunted far from her family to Newcastle and after getting the wrong bus during their first days in the city, is sanctioned for turning up slightly late to a benefits appointment. 

Neither of these tales is unusual given the intense focus on lowering the number of people on Jobseekers Allowance and ESA, and both sanctions, and the ludicrous telephone assessment for ESA that Daniel undergoes, are arbitrary measures focused not on helping individuals but on cutting expenditure while hitting targets. 

But critics from a certain political bent have found it unpalatable. 

If the film causes discomfort, perhaps your political system should be the target of your ire rather than a director and the screen representation of thousands of near identical stories across the country. 

Sanctions are meted out constantly for ludicrous reasons; people are evicted from appalling housing simply for requesting basic repairs; families in hostels are moved far from home with no support; and many people have died shortly after being declared fit for work. 

It takes a special arrogance for people who have never sat in a foodbank or been near a job centre to proclaim that these cases are unrealistic.

Poverty and, by extension, the benefits system, together work to instil shame and isolation in those subjected to such miseries.

Political and media narratives reinforce the idea of people in need as architects of their own misfortune and to blame for the fact that they’ve fallen through the cracks.

But there simply aren’t enough houses and jobs available to end homelessness and reach full employment overnight.

Rather than admit this, and work to ensure that there is a safety net for people who are sick, homeless and unemployed, lives are instead treated as a problem on a balance sheet.

If you sanction enough claimants, withdraw employment support allowance, and shift people from temporary accommodation in the cities where they’ve always lived to towns far away, the issue is deemed solved.

That people are left reliant on foodbanks, living without electricity and forced to sell furniture simply to feed their children because they’ve been sanctioned is ignored.

Instead, the fact that someone who once claimed Jobseekers Allowance or ESA has been sanctioned is offered as proof not of a dysfunctional system arbitrarily aiming to meet targets, but of the claim that those left with no support were gaming the system and not entitled to support in the first place.

I, Daniel Blake is an uncomfortable film for anyone to watch, but more so if you are intent on disregarding the experiences it presents.

If you believe that too many people would rather claim benefits than work, being forced to confront the human fallout of the system doesn’t sit comfortably with you.

Facts can be inconvenient in that way: the film is meticulously researched and each scene has played out in countless lives around the country.

I report regularly on poverty, and have visited many houses where the residents are embarrassed to admit they can’t offer you a cup of tea as there’s nothing in the meter – and many people who visit foodbanks are dizzy with hunger.

I watched this film with a friend, who works in the housing benefit department of a London council, and he remarked that he’d seen it all before.

People who disregard Loach’s film as unrealistic proselytising might do well to spend some time actually asking the people affected about their experiences of the labyrinthine housing and benefits system.

But more than that, they should consider why they’re so threatened by the stories presented in I, Daniel Blake.

The characters are people who are rarely represented in the media and often scapegoated and dehumanised. Loach presents his characters as complex but utterly failed by the system that nominally helps them, stuck in sub-standard homes with no money to pay basic utility bills, beaten down by shame and punished for fighting for basic rights.

These are the people who are ignored for political expediency – that Loach has shone a light on the human cost of austerity has rattled the government’s defenders, but could forge more empathy and understanding among more reasonable viewers.

The Party of War

Peter Oborne writes:

Last month, Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected as Labour leader.

It was his second victory by an overwhelming majority in a year, and it should have given Corbyn uncontested authority.

Yet he is still regarded with mutinous contempt by a significant proportion of his own side. They flatly refuse to accept Corbyn’s leadership.

This became clear on Wednesday night, when more than 100 Labour MPs failed to support a three-line whip on British policy towards the Yemen.

It was disloyalty on an epic scale. 

Corbyn cannot be faulted for calling a debate on Yemen.

For the past 18 months, Britain has been complicit with mass murder as our Saudi allies have bombarded Yemen from the air, slaughtering thousands of innocent people as well as helping fuel a humanitarian calamity. 

Corbyn clearly felt that it was his duty as leader of a responsible and moral opposition to challenge this policy.

He nevertheless bent over backwards to make sure that the Yemen vote was uncontroversial.

The Labour motion therefore stopped short of calling for the suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia which has been demanded by many charities and campaign groups. 

This is because Corbyn and his foreign affairs spokeswoman Emily Thornberry were mindful that some Labour MPs represented constituencies where local jobs depended on the arms industry.

So they contented themselves with demanding an independent United Nations inquiry into crimes committed by all sides – not just the Saudis – in this terrible and bloody conflict.

They reasonably suggested that Britain should suspend support for the Saudis until this investigation was completed. 

Green light to Saudi 

This is the position taken by the bulk of the international community, by all reputable aid agencies and, as far as I can tell, by almost all ordinary Yemenis.

In her excellent speech on Wednesday afternoon, Thornberry set out the reasons why the Saudis could no longer be trusted to investigate their own affairs. 

Yet more than 100 Labour MPs – not far short of half the Labour Party – defied Corbyn.

As a result, Labour’s call for an independent inquiry was defeated by 283 votes to just 193, a majority of 90.

But for Labour abstainers and absentees, Corbyn’s motion would have been carried and parliament would have voted for an independent investigation. 

The vote is bound to be interpreted by Saudi King Salman as a vote of confidence in his deeply controversial assault on the Yemen.  

It will also lift pressure on the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as he resists a growing international clamour for Britain to throw its weight behind an independent UN investigation.   

To sum up, on Wednesday night, the British parliament sent the green light to Saudi Arabia and its allies to carry on bombing, maiming and killing. 

I have reported politics from Westminster for almost 25 years and can recall few more shocking parliamentary events. 

Party of War 

Shocking – but not surprising.

The Yemen vote demonstrates something that has been apparent ever since the vote on 18  March 2003 to support the invasion of Iraq: the party of war holds a majority in the Commons.

It comprises virtually all of the Conservative Party and the Blairite wing of Labour. 

As Nafeez Ahmed wrote in July, there is a clear and demonstrable connection between the vote for war in Iraq, opposition to an Iraq inquiry, support for the calamitous intervention in Libya, and opposition to Jeremy Corbyn.  

Ahmed showed the majority of those who tried to unseat Corbyn last summer were interventionist.

Some 172 supported the motion of no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership. 

By coincidence or not, exactly the same number of MPs have supported Britain’s calamitous overseas wars.  

Now let’s look at the Labour MPs who put a smile on the faces of King Salman and Boris Johnson by defying Corbyn’s three-line whip and abstaining in Wednesday night’s vote: once again we are at least partly talking about a confederacy of Blairites.

It turns out that Ann Clywd, who made such a sparkling speech in favour of war during the 2003 Iraq debate, has abstained over Corbyn’s call for an independent investigation of Yememi war crimes.

So have John Spellar, Gloria de Piero, Fiona MacTaggart, Barry Sheerman, Angela Eagle, Liz Kendall, Luciana Berger, Lucy Powell, Mike Gapes, Stephen Kinnock, Tristram Hunt, Margaret Hodge etc etc. 

Even Keith Vaz, who was born in Aden and makes a big deal of his Yemeni antecedents, defied Labour’s three-line whip and abstained. 

It is important to highlight the fact that some of the most prominent opponents of Jeremy Corbyn did traipse through the division lobbies with their leader on Wednesday night.

Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper are just three examples.

And, of course, the majority of those who abstained on Wednesday were not in parliament for the Iraq vote in 2003.

The Neocons and the unforgiven

Nevertheless there is a telling pattern here. 

For the past 15 years, parliament has been governed by a cross-party consensus in favour of war. 

During that period, Britain has undertaken three major foreign interventions, each one of them utterly disastrous. 

In each one, military success was swiftly followed by political and, ultimately, state failure.  

Despite the hard-won experience of 15 years, there is still a parliamentary majority in favour of intervention. 

Very few parliamentarians opposed all these interventions. 

Jeremy Corbyn was among them and he has never been forgiven for it. 

This brings me to the final paradox of Wednesday night’s vote: the intimate connection between politicians who style themselves as moderate or occupying the centre ground in Britain and neoconservative policies overseas.  

For the past 20 years, the so-called "modernisers", whether Blair’s Labour or Cameron’s Conservatives, have been in charge at Westminster. 

As has been well-documented (not least by Labour’s Jon Cruddas), they have hollowed out British politics through techniques of spin and electoral manipulation. 

It is these same modernisers who have caused havoc in the Middle East, condemning the region to bloodshed and war. 

They were at it again on Wednesday by sending a signal to the Saudi dictatorship that it was acceptable to carry out its murderous policies in the Yemen. 

Thirteen years after Iraq, neoconservatism still rules.

The International Health Service

The NHS is not open to everyone in the EU. It is rightly open to everyone who is in the United Kingdom when they fall ill.

When Harrison Ford was injured at Pinewood, then was he flown back to the United States for treatment?

Here is the reason why not: 

“One of the consequences of the universality of the British Health Service is the free treatment of foreign visitors.

“This has given rise to a great deal of criticism, most of it ill-informed and some of it deliberately mischievous.  

“Why should people come to Britain and enjoy the benefits of the free Health Service when they do not subscribe to the national revenues? So the argument goes. 

“No doubt a little of this objection is still based on the confusion about contributions to which I have referred. 

“The fact is, of course, that visitors to Britain subscribe to the national revenues as soon as they start consuming certain commodities, drink and tobacco for example, and entertainment. 

“They make no direct contribution to the cost of the Health Service any more than does a British citizen. 

“However, there are a number of more potent reasons why it would be unwise as well as mean to withhold the free service from the visitor to Britain.

“How do we distinguish a visitor from anybody else? Are British citizens to carry means of identification everywhere to prove that they are not visitors?

“For if the sheep are to be separated from the goats both must be classified. What began as an attempt to keep the Health Service for ourselves would end by being a nuisance to everybody.

“Happily, this is one of those occasions when generosity and convenience march together.

“The cost of looking after the visitor who falls ill cannot amount to more than a negligible fraction of £399,000,000, the total cost of the Health Service.

“It is not difficult to arrive at an approximate estimate.

“All we have to do is look up the number of visitors to Great Britain during one year and assume they would make the same use of the Health Service as a similar number of Britishers.

“Divide the total cost of the Service by the population and you get the answer. I had the estimate taken out and it amounted to about £200,000 a year.

“Obviously this is an overestimate because people who go for holidays are not likely to need a doctor’s attention as much as others.

“However, there it is, for what it is worth, and you will see it does not justify the fuss that has been made about it.

“The whole agitation has a nasty taste.

“Instead of rejoicing at the opportunity to practice a civilized principle, Conservatives have tried to exploit the most disreputable emotions in this among many other attempts to discredit socialized medicine.

“Naturally when Britons go abroad they are incensed because they are not similarly treated if they need the attention of a doctor.

“But that also I am convinced will come when other nations follow our example and have health services of their own.

“When that happens we shall be able to work out schemes of reciprocity, and yet one more amenity will have been added to social intercourse.

“In the meantime let us keep in mind that, here, example is better than precept.”

Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear: A Free Health Service, 1952.

Support and Assurance, Indeed

Watch out for the corporation tax and business rates receipts from Nissan.

Or don't, because there aren't going to be any.

At least, not this side of either the 2020 General Election or a second referendum on EU membership, whichever happened sooner.

The Government had no plan for a Leave vote.

It had expected much, but not all, of the South outside London to vote Leave.

But it had simply never considered that that might happen anywhere else except the pockets that had returned Conservative MPs in 1997 and 2001, and not even all of those.

Overall, Remain would have won comfortably.

That was why the Sunderland result shook the money markets.

Like the rest of the results in the North East (including the Remain vote in old Royalist and Hanoverian, hence "Geordie", Newcastle), it came as no surprise up here.

But it was completely unexpected down there.

And the surprises kept coming.

It is axiomatic that they were reactions against neoliberal globalisation, of which the European Union is of course an integral part and a significant driver.

So the buying off has started in earnest.

Perhaps this is with an eye to a second referendum. Perhaps it is in order to stop there from ever "needing" to be one.

Either way, we now have an Industrial Strategy, complete with a Secretary of State.

That seems to consist entirely of paying multinational corporations to pay people in Labour Leave areas.

At the very least, Nissan has obviously been promised that there was no suggestion of British withdrawal from the Single Market.

Well, you can't be in the Single Market without freedom of movement.

That is not absolute; the United Kingdom's particularly liberal application of it is by our own choice, again under corporate influence.

Nevertheless, it is integral.

So that's that.

There will be no change whatever to the current arrangements in relation to immigration from the member-states of the European Union.

Quite bizarrely, and unlike any of its predecessors, this Government cannot even stand the sight of the South.

It wants to slap HS2 on it, and now also a third runway at Heathrow.

If Labour really got its act together against those, then it would reap the electoral harvest.

The Conservatives' attitude to their own Leave areas is that of previous Labour Governments to their electoral heartlands, or of immemorially Labour local authorities to their communities:

"You have nowhere else to go, and even if you had, then you still wouldn't go there, and you know that as well as we do."

What of the claim that those areas do now have somewhere else to go?

The root of the trouble in UKIP is that it openly does not like, or even want, the voters that it already has.

Instead, it longs forlornly to be a party of Old Labour voters in the North, and it makes no bones about that longing.

The Industrial Strategy is not going to buy the Conservative Party many, if any, votes in the places that will benefit from it.

But it won a General Election without those last time. That is beside the point.

Perhaps this is with an eye to a second referendum. Perhaps it is in order to stop there from ever "needing" to be one.

Turnips

"Turnips!" to the whole thing, say I.

Pumpkins? Pumpkins? We'll be keeping Thanksgiving next.

As well we should, to give thanks for the fact that the Puritans left England.

Have the kiddies carve little Puritans' heads and make little hats for them.

But do not carve those heads out of pumpkins.

Carve them out of turnips.

You Can With A Nissan

One of the best things about referendum night was that Sunderland shook the money markets.

The North East used to be rich.

But the areas that had been betrayed by globalisation, and which had thus been impoverished, were finally asked what they thought about a key aspect of it.

And they answered.

The same thing has just happened in Wallonia, which also used to be rich.