Layer 317. . . The Mace is in Place

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As the TV presenter said - it's been a momentous morning this morning . . at the Chelsea Flower Show.

A wonderful, colourful occasion, full of nice, well-off  people trying their hardest to impress and to keep the old traditions going. To judge only from appearances you'd never guess the amount of shit that's been shovelled and the heavy lifting that's gone on behind the scenes.

Meanwhile, a short distance away, outside the Palace of Westminster, another significant event was taking place:

Protester Brian Haw arrested before Queen's speech

Anti-war campaigner one of two arrested as police clear protest camp on Parliament Square

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/25/protester-brian-haw-arrested-queens-speech

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Inside the palace, having just trotted down from her own palace, the Queen was performing her regular duties. And very well she did them too. A flawless reading of her script, with every word perfectly enunciated, without any hesitation, repetition or deviation. And she's 84 you know! Isn't it just wonderful that she's still the head of state for Australia, Canada and New Zealand? Prince Philip will be 89 next month. Bloody marvellous! I must say he still looks splendid in his uniform with his medals & stars.

It's a bit odd though that the Queen doesn't kick things off with even a "Good morning folks!" A few warm-up exercises might also be good, if the great and the good gathered there didn't already know one another too bloody well already.

So here comes the Sergeant At Arms, with his arms swinging like pendulums, at the head of The Speaker's Procession, making sure the mace is in place - because that has to happen before anything else can happen. Obviously.

We also have the Lord Great Chamberlain, The Earl Marshall, the Lord High Chancellor, and finally, in the centre of the State Procession, the Queen herself, clutching the hand of her consort, surrounded by playing-card people, a mad hatter, a girl called Alice and a hooker-smoking caterpillar. (I made the last bit up. About the caterpillar.)

All of this takes place in complete hushed silence, apart from when some mad person shouts "Hats Off!" to no-one in particular, since no-one seems to be wearing a hat in that particular part of the palace, and apart from when Dennis Skinner shouts something rude or sarcastic about the royals, which is also traditional. This year it's about Fergie's financial dealings.

So here we have it - the wigs, the cloaks, the ermine, the crown! The page boys! What do you have to do to be a page boy?

And now, as we approach the climax ( - the reading of the speech) we have Black Rod, or rather the person who's today deputising for the indisposed Black Rod - someone called The Yeoman Usher - walking towards the House of Commons . . . only for the door to be slammed in his face.

So then there's the pounding on the door with a big stick with a big knob on the end, and finally the cry goes up - "The Queen commands this House to attend her immediately!" And so they do.

There's Harriet walking side by side with the Cameron, and looking very human and real, which is good because none of the New Labour leadership contenders can quite manage it, as they walk along in file like the arseholes they truly are.

The Duke is impressive - looking relaxed, with a slightly sardonic smile on his face. As well he might.

And so to the big speech . . .

This government will abide by its principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility. Good start.

Its priority will be the management of the public finances, and the structural deficit. Mmmmm.

They will make the tax system fairer. They will prioritise work and employment. They will regulate (re-regulate?) financial services. They will invest in high-speed broadband and trains. They'll reconnect pensions with average earnings.

They will limit non-EU "economic migrants". They will make us energy efficient, and sufficient. They will promote flexible working and equal pay. They want a strong and fair society. They want individual and social responsibility. They want more academy schools. They want teachers back in control of the curriculum. They want to improve public health and to reduce health inequalities.

They want to make the police more accountable, to diminish the effects of alcohol on bad social behaviour, and to reduce the costs of bureaucracy.  They will give greater powers to councils and neighbourhoods.

They will instigate parliamentary and political reform. They want to rebalance the relationship between the citizen and the State. They will legislate for 5 year fixed terms between general elections. They want equal sized constituencies, and an elected second house on the basis of PR. They'll hold a referendum on an AV system for electing the Commons. They want a new way of funding political parties.

They want to restore freedoms and civil liberties. They will give additional powers to Scotland, Wales and N Ireland. They want no more powers being given to the EU. They want effective global collaboration - for example on combatting climate change.

They will carry out a strategic defence review. They will work for a 2-state solution and a viable state for Palestinians. They want to reduce the threat from nukes and proliferation. They will maintain a 0.7% of GNP commitment to development and third world aid.

And I reckon a more enlightened Labour party could have gone for most of that lot. So why the fuck didn't they? Because they were New Labour!

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And owing to New Labour's failure to regulate the fat cats and the City, and to forsee a perfectly forseeable financial crash as a consequence of the financial bubble, we now face an era of drastic cuts, increased unemployment and reduced standards of living.

The good news is that the Tories really are sounding pretty liberal, and far more concerned with civil liberties than New Labour. Of course they'll want to keep Trident, but I'll be the first to congratulate them in the unlikely event of the defence review coming out against its replacement.

Unfortunately they'll fiddle the new constituency boundaries, and they'll never support PR, or even AV.

But I keep finding myself feeling strangely optimistic that Cameron really will force his party to be liberal and "progressive" in order to carry on occupying the electoral middle ground. I keep on fantasising that politics in this country might become more enlightened and based on a consensus around well-understood and agreed liberal principles, with the Labour party eventually returning to its socialist roots and making the case for greater equality and the elimination of poverty and social injustice as the way to a better and happier society.

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Some Guardian comments here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/25/queens-speech-bills-coalition?
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Layer 314 . . . The New Politics and The Future of Labour

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The New Politics?

I've just realised that nominations for the next leader of the Labour Party have to be in within 6 weeks. This might cause me some problems . . .

But seriously - it's ridiculous. This is guaranteed to favour those who have been around in the last government for some time, even if the leadership election itself isn't till the end of the summer.

John Cruddas has already counted himself out and says he won't stand. Can't say I blame him - he didn't make a very good fist of the deputy leader contest, in which Harriet H far outshone him.

Maybe Harriet will now be persuaded to get involved and fight to reshape Labour as a proper principled social democratic party.

There's lots of silly talk around about how the government coalition will be hoping to push the next reincarnation of Labour well over to the left, where they will be unelectable because they'll fail to appeal to the centrist floating voters. This stems from the fallacy that the opposition in Parliament must oppose everything the government proposes, and must stand on political ground that's distinctively and exclusively their own.

It's now time for grown up politics where issues and policies are debated on their merits, and time for Labour to make it clear they support the new government's proposals as and when they make good sense. In this way they don't need to vacate the centre ground - which is where you'd expect to find overlap between the rival camps.

If Clegg and Cameron are offering fairness and social justice, then Labour need to say so and to support their offer. If C & C propose policies that are unfair and unjust then they should be attacked, and better, democratic socialist, policies should be put forward.

And if the new government, following the example of the Macmillan government, manages to increase the real income of the majority of people and families, whilst holding back the salaries and capital gains of the fat cats, then more power to their elbow, since this was patently not the case under New Labour.

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There's a very silly column on the Guardian website today, by Simon Tisdall, under the heading,

Obama's keenness to congratulate David Cameron suggests Washington feels less secure about British support

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/18/poodle-politics-uk-us-over

Oxzen posted this:

Why wouldn't Obama welcome a Cameron-led government into office? On a personal level Cameron has shown he shares some of Obama's intelligence, pragmatism, wit and unflappability, whilst the broader picture is that a liberal Democratic administration and a liberal Conservative-led administration occupy exactly the same political ground. This is in marked contrast to the Blair/Brown goverment that was over to the right - in Bush territory where Chicago-school (non) trickle-down economics, unregulated banking and growing inequality, together with an erosion of civil liberties, were the dominant schools of thought.

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I somehow missed this Polly Toynbee column at the weekend. It's worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/15/labour-needs-to-rethink-polly-toynbee

Don't rush for a new leader. Labour has to rethink it all

First, the party needs to shed a whole mindset of tribalism and caution – and take a long, hard look at where it went wrong

First, the autopsy and time for necessary blame and contrition. There can be no moving on until Labour people acknowledge so much that has been badly wrong. No "renewal", "fundamental rethink" or "revitalisation" comes from David Miliband getting in and out of his limo to create the "alternative government". If not sackcloth and ashes, this is a party that should be travelling by tube and not wearing the tie of office.

"We are a loyal party by nature," said one cabinet member. Loyal to what? That is a fundamental question. If political tribe comes first in a country that no longer feels tribal, only 65% voting for either old party, Labour will be lost in a future that is transformed, for much the better, into multi-party pluralism.

Look at the new government with open eyes or risk misjudging the moment. There will be plenty to criticise later, but these Conservatives are leapfrogging over Labour to do radical things that Labour never dared – from docking bank bonuses to raising capital gains tax back to 40%, and better green policies. Know the enemy: this is something new. Jon Cruddas gets it: "It's a good thing that we do not have an extreme right government. That helps the centre-left."

Everything moves on. The argument will be between those who think Labour must reclaim the mythical "centre ground" and those who see how far politics have just jumped in a social democratic direction. Will Labour get it on the new pluralism? Neither old party may be able to govern alone again: better government comes from coalitions. Labour's last 13 years would have been much improved by a Lib Dem alliance.

Here is the authenticated list of what Labour offered the Lib Dems: a new levy on banking, the mansion tax on high-priced property, raising personal allowances to the Lib Dems to £10,000 (at the same pace as the Tories offer), no ID cards, the DNA database cut, fixed-term parliaments, an alternative vote referendum Labour would campaign for (the Tories won't), the Wright plans for Commons reform and fair party funding, no third runway at Heathrow, new freedom of information laws, 13 of the 15 civil liberties reforms in the Lib Dems' freedom bill and the pupil premium for poor children. If all that had been policy long ago, Labour would have kept its good civil liberties reputation as the party that brought in the Human Rights Act. Why cling to the third runway, alienating green voters, if it was so unimportant?

New Labour always muffled its messages and triangulated away its strengths. By 1997, the country was ahead of it and expecting more – but Blair restrained radicalism. Even when the country seethed with fury at the greed of bankers and boardrooms – yes, even the Daily Mail – Labour did not dare to attempt radical redress. Fear born in the 1992 lost election trammelled all that they did and said. "Fairness" was meaningless without bold action against the unfairness of entrenched privilege. Markets had to be praised and public services castigated to prove their mastery of the mythical "centre ground". What if there is no such thing – and the winner is the one who best captures the public imagination? Cowardice costs votes.

Profound rethinking takes time: rushing the leadership election is a grave error. Some imagine Tory cuts and fury with Lib Dems will gift power back to Labour. Hard questions need new answers. What went wrong on inequality? Why did 18% of vital C2s defect, angry over their static incomes, housing and immigration? Face the facts: Labour lost badly and needs a jump start, a blood transfusion and every other metaphor for new life it can summon.

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Layer 308 . . . New Labour Were The Nasty Party Too; A News Conference and a Double Act

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Who would you prefer as a work colleague if you were Nick Clegg - Ed Balls or William Hague?

I had an interesting text exchange with an old friend this morning:

Friend: I think the Tory poison is beginning to infect me. I heard William Hague on the radio earlier and I thought he really made sense. Aaaaaarrrrgghhh!

Me: True! His intelligence was never in question - just the ideology. And I'd much rather listen to his voice than Balls, Brown, Blair, Blunkett, Mandelson, etc.

Friend: I thought it was just me. If we voted according to voices [!] he'd be No. 1. And of course he didn't go to public school. But I still can't get the picture of him as a 17 year old at the Tory conference out of my head.

Me: I know. To me he'll always be the Mekon. But he also has a sense of humour, unlike New Labour. I think he's come a long way since the days of the baseball cap.

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And this is true.

But William's not the only one who's now older and somewhat wiser. Others who've gone down the Portillo road include Ian Duncan Smith and Teresa May, our new home secretary, who, to her credit, was the first to speak out (at the party conference!) and tell the Tories they were perceived as the Nasty Party.

Portillo, of course, has quit mainstream politics, but there are other pragmatists, and indeed pro-Europeans, like Kenneth Clark, in the new cabinet - so we're entitled to hope, at least, that Cameron will be more of a pragmatist than the hard-line ideological rightist that his party's funders might like him to be. If he really intends to be the first one-nation Tory leader of modern times then the hung parliament and the coalition give him the perfect justification.

Hague's been calling it "a new kind of government", and this is the really important issue. For those of us who believe in the new kind of politics that would be required under PR and the inevitable coalitions that PR would necessitate, this is the perfect chance to model how such a system can work - for the benefit of the country but also for the sake of a healthier political culture.

We need a culture where people get together and talk reasonably and with respect for others' views, instead of bellowing at one another from across the political divide. We need collaboration and not hostility. We need the careful discussion of ideas and proposals, and not government by prime ministerial dictat. We need reasonable people and not raving egomaniacs.

It seems fair to assume that part of the rejection of Labour's offer of coalition was a realisation by the LibDems that they'd very likely be treated as inferiors and minions, which has been part of the New Labour culture for so long. The government we've had since '97 has been stupendously arrogant and abrasive, and has treated all opponents, including those in the professions and the unions, as fools and inferiors. For that they can thank those who led them and provided the models of cloth-eared and bullying behaviour - Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Campbell, Blunkett, Prescott, etc. Fucking good riddance to the lot of them.

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Press Conference #1

Surrounded by azeleas, wisteria and birdsong, at twin lecterns in Spring sunshine on the lawn of No 10, Clegg and Cameron held their first press conference this afternoon.

They spoke of being united behind three key principles - freedom, fairness and responsibility. Which is not that far from liberty, fraternity and equality. Pretty revolutionary stuff.
They spoke of their determination to work in the national interest and not narrow party interest. They talked about the politics of give and take. They said we'd had too much short-termism. They said we were going through a historic and seismic shift in our politics. They talked about recasting our political system, and working to a common purpose.

Cameron said we need a political culture where reasonable, civilised and grown up behaviour is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness. 

Clegg said our society has been scarred by too much unfairness and inequality.

Did we ever hear this from the New Labour crew? Did they ever really do anything significant about it?

Clegg talked about everybody having the chance to be the person they want to be. About clean, open, plural politics. About a bold reforming government that puts fairness back into Britain. About handing back liberty and privacy. About British traditions of tolerance and fairness being restored.

Now let's see if they can walk the walk.

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Layer 307 . . . Meet the New Boss

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Meet the new boss -
Same as the old boss . . .

The Who
Won't Get Fooled Again

So it's 'steady as she goes' Britain - the country's new leaders stand on pretty much the same political ground as the old ones.

Had we not had a hung parliament and a coalition then without a doubt we'd now have a centre-right government. As things stand, however, the new government, thanks to the LibDem presence, has had to commit to the far left of the right-wing spectrum - i.e. somewhat to the left of where the Blair/Brown governments stood. We'll now get banking regulation, abolition of the FSA and return of control over banking to the B of E, greater decentralisation, abolition of the targets culture, fixed term parliaments, a vote on AV/PR, etc. There will also be, potentially, more parliamentary scrutiny and influence over the executive. The executive will have to be more open and transparent about decision-making , thanks to the coalition. There will be much less government by a clique around an over-powerful prime minister.

It's not hard to imagine that Cameron will indeed turn out to be a one-nation Tory, the likes of which we've not seen since the days of MacMillan, or possibly Heath. He'll be helped, not hindered, by the coalition, in his efforts to modernise the Tory party, make it more 'progressive', and minimise the influence of the real 'nasties'. He may even get some of the real dinosaurs and regressives to push off and start their own party. I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he really would like a more equal society, and is less intensely relaxed about the super rich than New Labour was.

Another up-side is not having to listen to the smug and arrogant voices of Balls and Mandelson, Alexander and Cooper, ever again. Thanks to them being thrown down to the same level as the rest of us we can now give them the humbling they so richly deserve.

The Milibands are another matter. It's going to be interesting to observe the political progress of David and Ed. Cruddas and Compass will also be worth watching.
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Layer 306 . . . Changing of the Guard

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I'm glad Harriet's going to be acting leader for the time being, and she'll be fronting the media. She's always been her own person and hasn't had to rely on Blairite or Brownite patronage. She'll talk sense. She can also be honest and not feel any need to bullshit. I hope she also sets out an agenda for renewal, and is frank about the errors of New Labour.

I hope Clegg and co expose the arrogance of NL in their contacts with them today, and explain exactly why they felt repulsed by the NL mob.

We can now get on with putting the boot into these fucking losers - Balls, Milibands, Mandelson, Adonis, and assorted shitheads. I want to see huge dollops of shit poured over their pathetic and narcissistic heads.

Can't believe the TV people invited a fucking clown like Prescott to commentate on these momentous times. He's as much an irrelevance as Blunkett, Reid and Mandelson. I want to see Mandelson strung up on a metaphorical lamppost.

We should also wish Cameron well in his efforts to sideline the neanderthal wing of the Tory party, which he will have to do in order to keep the LibDems sweet. If he brings in a bunch of the Tory knuckle-draggers then he'll be well and truly fucked.

It's going to be interesting to find out what kind of promises the LibDems have been able to extract.

Depressing to think who's going to be Chancellor and Foreign Sec. Bozos.
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Layer 175 Return to Base, Nihilistic Despair, The Alpajarras, Jeem, Jamming, and Healthy Living.

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Trying to get your head around what's happening in the world when you've just spent two weeks off the planet is a bit like trying to open a memory-intensive word processor on your computer when you only have 5 megabytes of RAM available. There's just too much information needing to be uploaded, assimilated and processed, with far too little processing power on tap.

It's very tempting to just switch off, close the curtains and stay ignorant.

What's happening in politics on these sad little islands was pretty well summed up by Marina Hyde in her usual excellent column in the Guardian on Saturday:

A new politics? Let's revert to a state of nihilistic despair

Do you remember "A new politics"? It was that turn-of-last-month movement for restoring faith in the way in which we are governed. It sort of coincided with the vague tetchiness that capitalists had just blown up capitalism and the plebs were expected to foot the bill.

Once upon a time – June, basically – a series of scandals made it voguish to go around saying that not only ought the public to be exempted from funding lavish accommodation for MPs' ducks, but that the whole rotten system needed reform. Even some members of parliament themselves were saying it. Honestly, they really were.

She goes on to describe a typical debate in parliament:

You need hardly be told that the debate played out to a typically underpopulated chamber, or that government engagement tended toward the half-hearted. Indeed, one had the overwhelming sense that the home secretary really just couldn't be done with the hassle, and anyway the argument was way over his head. "I accept that I am not a lawyer," Alan Johnson declared blithely. "I am a hack politician. I go by the advice I get."

This man is home secretary. It's all very well for call-centre operatives and Little Britain characters to drone "Computer says no" at the public, but when you hold one of the great offices of state, and are in charge of an annual budget of £10bn, it does make you look a bit of a spanner. Can you imagine Roy Jenkins addressing the house during the debate on capital punishment with the words: "Don't look at me, luv, I just work here"?

Wednesday's "debate" . . . seemed to crystallise so much of what repulses the electorate about their representatives. The secretary of state . . . seemed to wear staggering incompetence as a badge of honour.

This pretty much sums up what I've come to understand about how our governance works – politicians (i.e. 'our' representatives) at both local authority level and nationally have no wit, no imagination, no wisdom, no experience of real life, no guiding philosophy or ideology, no level of enlightenment whatsoever. All they do is put their signatures on documents drafted by bureaucrats who have no wit, no imagination, no wisdom, etc, etc.

Marina then quotes from a letter written by the appalling Denis MacShane MP (nee Denis Matyjaszek):

“The Commons will survive this scandal as it survived earlier scandals ... The great historian Macaulay wrote that there was nothing 'so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality'. The British public is in one of its fits of morality right now but this will pass."
Do excuse our ridiculousness, Denis. We are now back in our state of nihilistic despair, and you will find that rather less of a caprice.

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I suppose we have to give honest broker Alan Johnson at least a little credit for his admission that he's just a hack politician who has no particular expertise or even any critical faculties - who just does what he's told by his 'experts'.

Read here what Wikipedia has to say about 'MacShane', his record as a parliamentarian, and his expenses claims:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_MacShane

This ridiculous shithead wrote a column in the Guardian last Thursday in which he actually advocated Tony Blair as the first 'president' of the European Union. It's like he's living in a parallel universe, let alone on another planet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/16/tony-blair-eu-president

A realistic assessment of Blair's suitability for the post is given in a column by John Palmer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/15/tony-blair-european-president-labour

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Since returning to base I've been catching up with some spiritually refreshing music, and thanks to Spotify have been listening to the entire output of the divine Webb Sisters. Out of curiosity I also tried “Webb Sisters Radio”on last.fm, which is a curious Internet vehicle for listening to music. This is an outfit that started life in Shoreditch, whose aim seems to be to feed you music that's supposedly similar to the artists you actually enjoy. All I can say is that the solo female singers they send to your computer – supposedly lyrical, melodic, original, etc; supposedly similar to the Webb Sisters – just highlight the sheer brilliance of the Webb Sisters themselves, whose work is outstanding in every way: vocally, lyrically and musically.

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Last week I met a guy called Jeem who plays the piano accordion. He's tall and thin, has long hair and a crazy kind of Dali moustache.

He was playing in a little square outside a cafe called El Tilo, in a village called Capileira, up in the Alpujarra mountains, which lie next to the Sierra Nevadas.

He was playing some Spanish tunes, and I sat down and started to video him. He then switched to playing a great arrangement of “Season of the Witch”, which he also sang. Sitting on the terrace of Bar El Tilo (the lime tree) we were treated to a range of different styles and tunes, including some 12 bar blues.

At the end of his ‘set’ the people in the cafe gave Jeem a good round of applause. He then came round with a hat and collected cash from the customers.

It turned out he’s from Arizona, having been brought up initially in Chicago. He decided to leave the US 17 years ago, feeling disgusted at the turn to the Right the country had made under Reagan and Bush The First.

He now spends his time travelling by bus between places in the mountains and places on the coast, playing in squares and markets and streets, spreading the happiness.

He said he’d loved Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’ from the first time he’d heard it, way back in the sixties. I said his version sounded a lot like the one recorded by Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll, which he’d apparently never heard.

(Type “Season of the Witch” into the search box on Spotify and you can hear about 10 different versions. I still love Brian Auger's Hammond instrumental.)

He said he’d started playing the accordion when he was 6 years old, though it seems unlikely he could even have picked up a full-sized piano accordion at that age.

Jeem’s the kind of guy who really appeals to me – laid back, laconic, talented, humorous, thoughtful and idealistic. It feels good to be around people like that, as they go around raising spirits.

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We bumped into him again later that day, sitting on a bench, his accordion in its case beside him, plus his folded stool. He chatted some more about his musical influences, and how he intends to learn to play in the classical French accordion style of Bal Musette. I’d have liked to have chatted more, and listened some more, but the hour was getting late.

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The Alpajarras are definitely my kind of mountains – high, but not too high; lush and warm and accessible. The kind of mountains with well-established paths that enable you to walk up to the tops and the ridges, and not have to scramble or rock-climb.

It would be good to go back there next year, rent a room somewhere, and spend several days, maybe even a month, exploring the region on foot. I'd also like to get back to Granada and the Alhambra, and get to know those places better. Learning some Spanish would be a good idea as well.

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Jeem talked about hanging out with other musicians and having jams that go on late into the night. The ability to play an instrument and jam with others is an absolute gift. It's too late now for my kids, but I'll try to make sure my grandchildren get hold of instruments at an early age and learn to play them.

Imagine a world in which every home, and every market and square in every village, town and city was enlivened by live music. How great would that be? Instead we buy our kids TVs, DVDs, Playstations and Wiis. These things have their place, but their very ease of use takes up time and opportunity that could be put to much better use.

The only public singing that takes place spontaneously in Britain is when drunk people and/or sports spectators lose their inhibitions and let rip with cacophonies worse than frustrated cats and dogs.

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This was the first time in ages I've been in Spain during the summer months, and the first time I've paid some attention to the way the Spanish people use the beaches as places to gather at weekends and after work.

I guess it's similar to the other places around the world that enjoy 'Mediterranean' types of climate – places like Australia, California and Brazil, where descendants of the original colonists get together by the sea and hang out in the same fashion as their European forebears have done for centuries – informally and joyfully soaking up the power of the sun in beautiful places where whole communities can meet and mingle.

Last week, down at the little bay, there were still more than 30 cars parked each evening till just before sundown, with at least 60 – 80 people scattered along the shoreline enjoying the sun, the sea and one another. Some had barbeques and little fires, with fish and meat grilling on little sticks pushed in the ground. Others would head off to eat in bars, cafes and homes. There's a deep simplicity, enjoyment and relaxation in such a social lifestyle. Being able to sit on beaches and terraces in the open air and to eat and drink every day al fresco has such huge benefits.

Back in London, these days, smokers in particular like to sit at tables in the streets. But let's be honest – what is point? In coats. Near traffic. Polluted. Noisy. Sucking poison into lungs.
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Layer 159 Towards A New Politics: Bring It On.

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As I was saying yesterday before running out of time and energy - hopefully people are waking up and realising that the only thing they have left to believe in and trust is themselves. Not the City. Not Westminster. Not the Queen. And not God either.

In yesterday's Guardian, Jonathan Freedland was saying something similar:

The Speaker exits with revolution in the air. I say, bring it on

The essence of the piece is summed up in his final paragraph:

“In the 21st century, we can no longer accept that 646 individuals plus an unelected monarch are sovereign. Power should belong to all of us. And if that means revolution, bring it on.”

He also makes these key points:

“For years, those of us who yearned for a radical shakeup of our constitution were told we could dream on. Save it for the seminar room, the critics said: what people care about are jobs and services, not dry, academic discussions about governance.

Well, guess what. They care now.

Michael Martin the first Speaker of the House of Commons to be forced out since Sir John Trevor in 1695 . . . in the age of revolution.

It is revolution that is in the air now, as voters share a sense of revulsion that has no recent precedent. When the nation loathes not this individual or even that political party, but the entire governing class – yearning to throw out the whole rotten lot of them – then the ground begins to tremble.

That is why the expenses affair dwarfs the sleaze episodes of the 1990s. Then the outrage focused on the Tories alone, allowing Labour to present itself as the clean, unsullied alternative. It's different now. People revile the party of Elliot Morley, Hazel Blears and Shahid Malik, with their bogus mortgage claims, flipping and home-cinema systems – but they can hardly hail the men of moats and manure in the Tory party. All they feel is contempt for the system itself.

They're right too. For the great expenses fraud is not some freak ailment in an otherwise healthy body politic. It is a symptom of a system that is wholly dysfunctional, diseased to its very heart.

Speaker Martin's fate was to embody several aspects of that rottenness. Its secrecy, fighting through the courts to keep expenses hidden; its profligacy, claiming £4,000 for his wife's taxi fares and spending £700,000 refurbishing Speaker's House, as well as its antiquated procedures and clubbishness.

With his departure, though, he has performed a valuable service. The fact that nothing like it has happened for more than three centuries confirms that these are indeed revolutionary times – and that radical, convention-breaking change is possible.

That does not mean simply dealing with the specific business of allowances, though of course that is necessary.

It's the attitude that says, "We're in charge: who are you to challenge us?"

It is this, not the mechanics of expenses, that has to change. It will require MPs to see themselves not as masters of their own universe, who expect the taxpayer to pamper them with silk cushions and country houses as if that is their divine right – but as employees of the people who elect them.

Rhetorically, our politicians have nodded to this notion: Blair promised Labour would be "servants of the people." But now we know they never truly saw themselves that way. If they did, they would have had to undertake the revolutionary move our ancestors shied away from more than 300 years ago – and which has eluded us ever since.

It is the shift from our current system – which rests on the belief that the crown-in-parliament is sovereign – to the simpler notion that it is the people who are sovereign in their own land.

Plenty of other nations have made that move, most famously the US, whose founding document asserts that power starts with "We the people". But we never did. Instead, in Britain, power still belongs at the top – with the crown and the palace of Westminster

Today the Guardian launches online A New Politics, a call for a radical shakeup of our constitution, arguing for reform of everything from party funding to the role of the attorney general. But the common thread that must run through any new constitution for Britain has to be the shift from parliamentary to popular sovereignty. Once you understand that in a true democracy the people are sovereign, the next moves become obvious.

Of course the second chamber has to be elected: a sovereign people chooses who writes the laws that govern them.

Keep applying the same logic and it all becomes pretty obvious. Of course there should be fixed parliamentary terms: it's the boss who decides when the employee's contract terminates. Yet in our system it's the other way around, with the prime minister telling us when he plans to "go to the country".

Should there be a written constitution? Naturally. If you own a house, you have a copy of the deeds; if you buy a car, you get an owner's manual explaining how it works. And we are the owners.

Attached to that document could be a full statement of our rights. Not the "Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" proposed by the two main parties, because that implies our rights are handed down by our masters, conditional on good behaviour. But fundamental rights are ours unconditionally – because we are in charge.

All the flummery and archaic language should be banished too: it shrouds parliament in a cloud of mystique, opaque to all but a select priesthood. But if it belongs to us it should be conducted in a language and a style any one of us could understand.

This is the simple rule that should be run over every part of our constitution. Right now it is shaped by the assumption that the crown, today represented by the executive, is in charge, in harness with a parliament it dominates. Any change must rest on a different premise, that the people are sovereign.

This is why Gordon Brown's statement was disappointing . . . Twice he made the ritual bow before "respect for parliamentary sovereignty". He doesn't yet understand that it is this very idea that lies at the heart of the problem.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/19/speaker-constitutional-reform-mps-expenses

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The problem with simply replacing the Queen with a president is that we end up with George W Bush, aided and abetted by a compliant legislature pretending to be representatives of “we, the people”, when in fact they're the puppets of their parties, which in turn are the playthings of corporate and billionaire funding.

Still, having an elected head of state and an elected Upper House would be progress, providing we had a media and an Internet-linked electorate that kept them all under proper scrutiny and analysis, providing we have a political culture that people are able and willing to engage with.

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Here are some extracts from Seamus Milne's piece in the Guardian yesterday:

Purge the professionals and let party democracy breathe

This meltdown creates opportunities as well as dangers. But more than technocratic fixes, we need real political choice.

"What started as a political scandal has tipped over into a full-blown crisis of Britain's entire political system. There's no doubt that the Commons Speaker's resignation was long overdue. But if MPs imagine that by scapegoating Michael Martin for their own scams they will appease popular revulsion, they are dreaming. The drip-drip revelations of help-yourself entitlement have only entrenched a gulf between the political elite and the public that's been widening for two decades: the product of narrowing political choice, professionalisation of politics, shameless government deceit about war and peace, and devastating financial collapse.

Now both Britain's governing and business classes are discredited. And what the Daily Telegraph, orchestrator of the expenses leaks, yesterday called "a very British revolution" is going to have to go a good deal further than a change of guard in a largely ceremonial post of fake feudal flummery to steady the horses. Gordon Brown seems at last dimly to perceive what has to be done.

But the public doesn't want apologies, cheques or promises of further inquiries – it wants heads on a platter without further delay. That's why the only way to restore some confidence in Labour MPs – the most damaged by the scandal – is to drive through a sweeping round of reselections by local parties.

To avoid the kind of stitch-ups by regional officials which have packed parliament with New Labour clones, the normal procedures would have to be opened up. But putting all but the most blameless MPs through a process of reselection would offer the chance both to revive local democracy and replace some Tweedledum career politicians with more independent, rooted and working-class candidates.

But Brown is still balking at sacking his communities secretary Hazel Blears for her expenses profiteering, letting it be known he has "full confidence" in her while at the same time describing her behaviour as "totally unacceptable".

A purge of miscreants, however, is clearly not enough. What has become a crisis of democracy can only be overcome with a programme of democratic reform. Both Brownite and Blairite members of the cabinet are now talking about launching a constitutional convention to reshape the whole political structure, covering everything from an elected Lords and independent select committees to electoral reform and an overhaul of party funding.

Anything that cracks open the system and dispenses with perennial British complacency about the "mother of parliaments" has got to be welcome. But technocratic fixes won't by themselves solve the problem. Unless parliamentary democracy is about choice, it's meaningless. The legacy of New Labour is a contest over the narrowest of political and economic options, presided over by highly centralised party machines, where internal democracy has withered and party members have drifted away.

There is no reason why any of the reforms being discussed would automatically overcome that dismal inheritance. Unless new parties are able to break the existing political monopoly – a mountain to climb under first-past-the-post even in current circumstances – that would require an end to authoritarian party control, space for internal pluralism, and the local right to choose election candidates freely.

For Labour in particular, such an upheaval would mean a reconstitution of the party. But without a profound change in the kind of people who are chosen as MPs and a reconnection between electors and elected, underpinned by a right of recall, this crisis of representation will not be overcome.

The political crisis triggered by the Commons expenses scandal is itself linked to the economic crisis that preceded it. Both are the product of an economic model that brooked no alternative, was built on greed and drove people to see themselves as consumers rather than citizens. And just as in the case of the economic crash, the constitutional meltdown creates opportunities as well as dangers for progressive and radical politics.

By bringing to a head long-running alienation from mainstream politics at a time when the economic system is seen to have failed, the crisis offers a chance to bust the cosy political cartels that have underpinned it, and create new alliances for a real change of direction. Everything is potentially in play, including the survival of the parties in their current form. If Brown were able to seize the moment, the government could shape the direction of reform.

But there is also a risk that disgust at the antics of the political class can feed a reactionary mood that rejects the idea that politics can improve people's lives and embraces the call for a small state at a time of retrenchment. Not surprisingly, the atmosphere in Downing Street is febrile. As one close ally of the prime minister told me yesterday: "There is a dangerous void. If the governing elite doesn't grab the opportunity, the people will overthrow them."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/20/speaker-mps-expenses-party-democracy

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For anyone needing some gen on Hazel Blears here's a very comprehensive piece by John Harris:

'It will take years for my reputation to recover'

The sight of Hazel Blears brandishing her cheque on TV may prove the most enduring image of the whole expenses furore. But how did this straight-talking, working-class MP become the focus of the scandal? And can she possibly survive it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/21/hazel-blears-expenses-cheque-labour

Surely the real question is, what reputation? Surely her reputation is for being a hideous Blairite unprincipled conniving NuLabour clone? No recovery necessary.

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A New Politics website.

The “A New Politics” section of the Guardian's website can be accessed here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/series/politics-and-reform

Lots of good stuff, and lots of responses and contributions from readers.

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The Christian Brothers and Sisters.

For anyone who can stomach it, the Guardian's report on the abuse of children in Ireland by The Christian Brothers and The Sisters of Mercy can be seen here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/20/child-abuse-catholic-schools-ireland

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_Christian_Brothers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_to_Inquire_into_Child_Abuse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisters_of_Mercy
.