Manchester's Mayor - A half baked idea

So Manchester is getting a mayor, and the applause appears near universal. To my mind, however, for socialists, proponents of devolution, Labour supporters and proponents of accountable democracy, this represents not a bright new dawn, but a repetition of the worst elements of devolution which has been experimented with over the last forty years. Hopefully, Labour will wake up and burst this bubble – not through wholesale opposition, but the bold, brave and universal devolution that the whole of the UK needs.

So what’s my opposition, and why? And what’s the response from socialists who want a new constitutional settlement?

I don’t get the cult of Russell Brand...

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m with an awful lot of Russell Brand’s positions. But I don’t get the cult. I don’t get why this man is becoming a poster-boy for direct action and reforming capitalism, and I don’t like it. Why don’t I? Perhaps I’m just unhappy with somebody outside of the normal elite taking on a political role. The normal elite includes me: party political member, elected local politician, PPE graduate. Perhaps I’m part of the problem, but I want to articulate why I feel deeply queasy about the whole thing.

So, let me put the questions I’ve never had answered:

Why Labour Won in Southwark

So it’s been quite the 72 hours. At ten to four yesterday, by quirk of the alphabet, I had the pleasure of being the first councillor to be announced as elected in Southwark. I was by no means the last, followed not only by my fantastic comrades Dan Garfield and Lorraine Lauder in Faraday ward, but 47 other councillors across the borough of Southwark.

It was a win that brings together so many different stories.

Why UKIP's getting it badly wrong...

Nigel Farrage’s interview where he claimed ‘no British person’ would be his secretary, and so he has to employ his German wife, has rightly been used as evidence of the confusion at the heart of UKIP. Evidently the UKIP leader has little knowledge of how plenty of ordinary British workers do far more unpleasant jobs, with worse hours, and for lower pay, than the good Frau Farrago.

However, the awkward pauses in the Nick Robinson encounter expose another significant hole in UKIP’s ideology and mission; and a hole that Nick Clegg has no interest in pointing out. Farrage did highlight that UKIP was not in favour of preventing immigration for skilled workers, which is why the thrust of their latest dubious election campaign is that Eastern Europeans are taking work from builders, not bankers. But what’s the difference?

Tuition Fees versus a Graduate Tax - A False Choice

So the student loans system, of which I was one of the first members, begins to unravel. Who would have thought that the government lending money, with no guarantee of payback, at low rates of interest, and increasing the threshold for repayment, would result in the government losing out? Perhaps somebody with a GCSE in maths? I’m pleased Labour has started to address the problem with today’s announcement that we’re pledging to cut tuition fees to £6,000.

But this isn’t a long term solution to the crisis in funding, and Labour knows it. Now the idea of a ‘graduate tax’ is gaining traction as a way of paying for our world-beating education system, and a real alternative to loaning money on economically obtuse terms. I must confess a layer of bemusement covering my steadfast opposition to this idea – as somebody who is fortunate enough to pay back a significant sum out of his pay packet every month, the current system already feels like a graduate tax to me. Despite the macro-jiggery-pokery of changing a loan to a tax, there does feel to be something deeply unjust about me paying the same amount for a university education I’ve barely finished as O do to a pension that I will likely barely claim, while property-owning baby-boomer colleagues prepare for a well-earned retirement, founded on modest incomes built by university education they’ve never directly paid for. A graduate tax couldn’t practically find every graduate working today, and so its arbitrary start point will simply perpetuate this frustrating and unjust system of taxing those graduates who can afford it least.

Getting HS2 on the Right Track

And so, with the ConDems struggling to fill legislative time, much parliamentary attention is turning to the building of the controversial HS2 rail link, and quite rightly. On the surface, developing a railway network that brings us up, in part, to standards that in the rest of Europe and most developed economies met almost a quarter of a century ago seems like a no-brainer. Indeed, anything that makes the UK smaller, the centralised capital less far away, and invests serious cash into our still struggling economy is certainly a good thing. Much of the debate now centres on the cost, with Labour showing real fiscal credibility on scrutinising promises to keep to the £50bn spending limit (not to mention the fact that our Olympics guru, who delivered 2012 on time and on budget, has been tasked with doing the maths).

Young Workers' Month

March is a big month; Lent begins on Wednesday, Cheltenham races the week after, and the scramble for three birthday presents in between will occupy a lot of my time. However, if I can distract you briefly from your studying form in the Racing Post or daily Holy Hour, there is a brilliant initiative running for the full 31 days – Young Workers’ Month.

Set up by active, young trades union members (from the grassroots, no astro-turf here), the idea is to stop hand-wringing over the problems faced by young workers and start meaningful, innovative organising to fight back and get over them. Of course, much of the effort will be about young people talking, engaging and organising together, and using our shared generational experience to point out the rough deal young workers are getting under this Liberal/Tory government and in the increasingly unchecked free market.

However, let’s remember that the intention of the current government is to set worker against worker, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the generational divide. Tory talk about ‘gold plated pensions’, the tuition fee betrayal of the Lib Dems, the spectre of removing benefits so as to deny independent living from young people on the basis of their age alone can make it feel that the government reserves a special hate for youth. But we can’t have this distract us – it’s past generations who built our NHS, older workers who struggle to find support for training to keep them up-to-date and employable, and older people who are under-represented on our screens and in popular culture. The feeling that your age group’s voice is marginalised and your skills side-lined is one that’s held below 30, over 50 and everywhere in-between.

Young Workers’ Month is our opportunity to reply with one voice to this strategy of division. Young workers don’t get a rough deal because they’re young – they get a rough deal because they’re workers. Young Workers’ Month is as much about building solidarity between all working people, regardless of age, as it is about young people standing together.