Owen Jones

Nepotism Alert – Emily Benn

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

emily benn tony benn

 

“People might ask how I can know anything about ‘the real world’ given who my family are and the fact I am the granddaughter of Tony Benn” – Emily Benn

 

First it was Stephen of House Kinnock. Then came Will of House Straw. Euan of mighty House Blair waits in the wings. And now it is official – Emily Benn, fifth generation of her line, has been selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Croydon South.

At one time, this depressing nepotistic spectacle was mostly a Tory party phenomenon – the Conservatives still boast a grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, Nicholas Soames, among their MPs. But as the ideological gap between the main parties has narrowed and the background of one party’s parliamentary intake has gradually become indistinguishable from another’s, we can only expect cases like this to become more frequent.

Is it necessarily bad to have someone from a political family, a woman in her early twenties, in Parliament? Of course not. Since the interests and priorities of young people are often scarcely acknowledged by Britain’s political leaders, more young faces in the halls of Westminster can only be a good thing. In particular, at a time when huge areas of government spending have been strictly constrained, virtually nothing has been asked of Britain’s pensioners or soon-to-be retirees, so great is the power of the grey vote. More young voters and a few twentysomething MPs are not the whole solution by any means, but it couldn’t hurt.

But is this really best that today’s Labour Party can do, in the age of Miliband? When every other speech from the Labour shadow cabinet (generic ranting against austerity aside) bemoans the lack of opportunities available to disadvantaged young people and the vital importance of listening to them, how will electing a privileged young woman from a dynastic family, almost completely divorced from real life, help to redress the balance?

Emily Benn, of course, is falling over herself to emphasise her humbler side and the extent to which she shares in the same trials and tribulations as the rest of us. In a piece in the Telegraph entitled “What I can offer British politics”, she insists:

“I get up and go to work every day (in the private sector). I have the same friends as everyone else and use the same buses, tubes and trains to get around town. I procrastinate on Facebook, just like the rest of our digitally savvy society, and struggle to find a house I can afford. And right now I am using the very same NHS hospitals as you would, while I accompany my mother to appointments in her cancer battle.”

But while it is true that this routine does indeed mirror the lives of many Britons, it would bring absolutely nothing new to the socioeconomic makeup of the House of Commons. Emily Benn’s career path has essentially been that of any other young(ish) Labour MP: university graduate (Oxbridge was helpful), premium graduate job (working for UBS investment bank, in Benn’s case), dabbling in lower level local politics to show a willingness to “help out”, followed by the nimble leap to national political party life. The only thing that differentiates Emily Benn from the other women in the Labour parliamentary party is the speed at which she achieved the holy grail of being selected by a constituency association – a victory which, if she were to be honest, is entirely attributable to her surname.

Contrast the embryonic career of Tony Benn’s granddaughter with the likes of Owen Jones, the young and telegenic left-wing campaigner, author and talking head. While one can disagree with his politics (this blog certainly does), it is hard to deny Jones’ very tangible accomplishments: a bestselling book that made people stop and think and which influenced the national political conversation, another book on the way, and a respectable track record of grassroots activism to back it up. Jones is often encouraged, even begged by some supporters, to stand at the next general election – though to his credit, he demures and remains non-committal. And few would doubt that Owen Jones would make an energetic, engaged, articulate and highly effective MP were he ever to run.

When has Emily Benn made people stop and think anew about a longstanding social problem? How many people turn out at events to hear her speak passionately on an issue close to her heart? How many newspaper articles does she have to her name, how many books has she published, how many times has Emily Benn’s media profile or debating ability led to invitations to appear on Question Time? In short, aside from her brief tenure as a local councillor, what has she done (aside from graduating university and getting a job like the rest of us) that in any way suggests an ability and promise so great that they earned her the right to carry the Labour Party banner into the 2015 general election?

When The People’s Assembly skulked through London in protest against austerity, this blog contended that a national movement which chooses Russell Brand rather than the likes of Owen Jones as its figurehead should not be surprised when it is generaly dismissed as irrelevant and unserious. The same criticism must now be levelled at the Labour Party, and the way in which local Labour associations are selecting their parliamentary candidates. If Labour insists on choosing famous names, and favouring style over substance, why should voters give them the time of day?

Ultimately, Emily Benn must ask herself this question – are her potential abilities as a future Member of Parliament so great and so unique that her contribution to British political life will outweigh the harm that she is doing by perpetuating yet another exclusionary British political dynasty?

But we cannot expect Ms. Benn to reach the difficult, truthful conclusion on her own. Therefore, it falls to the constituents of Croydon South to ensure that genuine promise beats hereditary entitlement in May 2015.

Bankers, Toffs and Tory Scum

Samuel Hooper16 Comments

SPS strike protest 2b

 

“Chav-bashing draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred” – Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization Of The Working Class

 

Less than three weeks ago, fifty thousand people marched through central London almost entirely unnoticed. They came to protest the coalition government’s so-called “austerity” policies and to “demand the alternative”, but their message was lost in a fog of confusion about the undefined alternative they wanted to bring about. Was it the rose-tinted stroll back to the 1970s advocated by Owen Jones, or the peaceful, effortless and joyful revolution promised by Russell Brand? We still don’t know, because they still can’t decide.

Today, Britain observed what was hailed as the largest coordinated industrial action since the general strike of 1926 – but apart from some inconvenienced parents who had to endure the closure of their children’s schools, nobody seemed to notice that anything much was different. And what little serious press attention the strikes garnered was focused mainly on Ed Miliband’s untenable balancing act of supporting the strikers but deploring the strike, and the eyebrow-raising fact that the National Union of Teachers was legally permitted to use a 2012 vote by a fraction of its membership to hold a strike in 2014.

There is a lot of frustration on the British activist Left that they are not being listened to or taken seriously – by the public, the media, the Labour Party, anyone at all. But at some point soon, those people hawking conspiracy theories about a right-wing media cover-up or the dead hand of Ed Balls will have to turn the accusing gaze back in on themselves.

The Left has been shrieking about austerity for four years now, but have utterly failed to convince the electorate that they have a workable alternative. Indeed no alternative has been suggested – save for pumping pre-2010 (or even higher) levels of taxpayer money into the same unreformed government programmes, which is as patronising a suggestion as it is lazy. Worse still, the Left’s level of empathy or willingness to understand the viewpoints of others who do not agree with the “Down With Austerity” mantra is almost non-existent.

Big government apologists on the Left forever accuse the Conservative Party, UKIP and others on the right of stoking fears and indulging in emotional manipulation. Cases of grotesque welfare fraud are cherry-picked and non-representative, they insist, while questioning Britain’s immigration policy and relationship with the European Union is narrow minded at best, but more often a sign of shocking, premeditated race-baiting. But the left use these same techniques freely and often, and they do so in a way that hampers their ability to think of bold new policies to connect with middle Britain.

The bankers. David Cameron’s cabinet of millionaires. Billionaire non-doms. Tory scum. According to many on the Left, this motley crew of villains are not only deliberately rigging the system in their favour (arguably true), they actively delight in hurting the poor at every turn. Michael Gove is an arrogant bully and persecutor of teachers, Iain Duncan Smith is a virtual psychopath in his hounding of the destitute and David Cameron is the evil mastermind at the top, answerable only to Rupert Murdoch. It’s the age-old divide: those on the right think that Left-wingers are well-meaning but misguided, while those on the Left seem to sincerely believe that their right-wing opposites are actually evil.

The anti-Tory slogans and bitter invective have always had their place in Britain’s left-wing grass roots, but when this stubborn inability to empathise with or think like the other side starts to infect people who are supposedly the Labour movement’s greatest minds and political leaders, they have a real problem. The British Left, from Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet on downwards, can’t seem to get past the mistaken notion – perhaps sincerely believed after so many years of constant, mindless repetition – that those on the right really do hate the poor and long to trample them underfoot.

But the anti-austerity protesters, the public sector strikers and their sympathisers on the Left are fighting a bitter battle against a straw man, a distorted vision of the real spectrum of right-wing thinking. While the British right generates ideas and (albeit limited by coalition) implements them in government, the Left rail against a cartoon foe of their own imagining, and almost completely fail to engage with the substance. Voters are able to discern this disconnect – the British left’s gradual conscious uncoupling from reality – which is one of the reasons why the Labour Party is making so little traction in what should be very fair political weather.

Attacking the usual left wing bogeymen – the bankers, toffs and Tory scum – is not an exciting, compelling pitch for an alternative to our present course. It’s the equivalent of a child’s temper tantrum. And whatever truth there is in the insults does not make up for the yawning chasm that exists where viable alternative left-wing policies should be.

In fact, such is the degree of hysteria and inability to comprehend the attitudes of others on the British Left, it is becoming comparable to the worst excesses of the Tea Party in America, where die-hard “patriots” can see no other motive for Barack Obama’s actions than the deliberate, treasonous undermining of the United States by a foreign-born, illegitimate president.

The hardcore US tea partiers have their hallucination of a Kenyan-born, Marxist stooge sent to make America collapse from within, while the British activist Left have their two-dimensional cartoon of the Bullingdon-bred, Eton-educated aristocrat who wants nothing less than the total dismantling of the social safety net and the subjugation of the poor in permanent poverty to be a source of cheap, expendable labour for his friends and benefactors in big business.

In America, the Republican Party tried to ride the Tea Party tiger, but ended up being eaten. The GOP is now completely beholden to its extremist base, and as a result is entirely unable to propose meaningful, workable legislation on anything from deficit reduction to healthcare to immigration reform. In Britain, the Labour Party is perilously close to suffering the same fate – willingly believing its own hyperbole about the callous Tories, and trying to convince itself (and us, the voters) that everything will be okay if only we start pumping more money into existing government programmes and taxing “the bankers” to pay for it all.

This is a depressing state of affairs on both sides of the Atlantic. To self-identify as a Republican in America today is increasingly akin to admitting that you are a reactionary, bigoted nincompoop, either beholden to corporate special interests or too stupid to realise that you are being manipulated by them. And unless something changes very soon, to self identify as a Labour supporter in Britain will proclaim to the world that you are a success-fearing simpleton who would rather see everyone dragged down to the same level of mediocrity than permit spectacular achievement at the expense of government-enforced equality of outcome.

The infinite monkey theorem states that a chimp sat in front of a typewriter will, given infinite time, at some point be bound to unthinkingly hit upon the long and complex sequence of keys that reproduces the complete works of William Shakespeare. By the same logic, if the British Left continue to hold strikes and mass rallies against austerity, probability dictates that eventually they will quite accidentally come up with a politically viable alternative to the coalition government’s spending plans. But unlike the monkeys, they and the Labour Party do not have infinite time.

The 2015 general election is less than ten months away.

How 50,000 People Marched Through London Unnoticed

Samuel Hooper11 Comments

SPS austerity demonstration 001

 

In 2007, satirical news site The Onion reported on the 30th annual Modesto County Ninja Parade, where the townspeople turn out faithfully every year in the futile hope of spotting the stealthy, invisible ninjas as they furtively slip through town.

A similar event took place in London today: the “No More Austerity: Demand The Alternative” protests organised by The People’s Assembly, in which as many as fifty thousand noisy protesters in central London managed to make themselves almost completely invisible. Invisible, at least, to the news media, the general public and the politicians whom they had presumably hoped to persuade.

Even if the resulting headlines were along the lines of “Wealthy Shoppers And Tourists Inconvenienced On Regent Street”, the presence of such a large number of people in central London should have won some attention from the national media, but at this time only the Guardian and Huffington Post UK have carried anything about the event.

This is not a good return on investment on the part of The People’s Assembly, coming in the same week as the ideologically opposite Centre for Policy Studies’ Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty, which generated multiple news stories and a strong wake on social media. Something, somewhere is going wrong for the opponents of austerity, and the most convincing explanation involves a fault in both the message and the messenger(s).

First, the message.

Keynote speaker and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas kindly agreed to be interviewed shortly before she took to the main stage to address the crowd in Parliament Square at the end of the demonstration route. As always, she spoke with great empathy about the plight of people living on or beneath the poverty line, but her policy prescriptions seemed inadequate to the change that she wanted to effect:

 

Calling for higher taxes, a crackdown on avoidance and the scrapping of Britain’s nuclear deterrent – even if you ignore the many side effects resulting from such actions – would only serve to perpetuate an unreformed system of subsidising people who ultimately need (for their sake and the nation’s) to be lifted into self-sufficiency.

When posed with this same question, and the fact that the demonstrators face an up-hill battle in the face of near political consensus from the two main parties (in substance if not in rhetoric), event headliner and spokesperson Russell Brand was only able to repeat his sunny prediction of a joyful, non-violent revolution that would somehow make everything okay:

 

And this is perhaps the main reason that the anti-austerity protests went almost unnoticed today – the messengers were simply too conflicting, and unable to consistently articulate their cause in a way that could win agreement from sympathisers and respect from opponents.

Owen Jones led the way with his excellent, impassioned speech to the assembled crowds. It was fiercely partisan and occasionally played fast-and-loose with the truth about the origins of Britain’s economic problems, but it was also a persuasive and well delivered speech by a very thoughtful, intelligent, charismatic person.

Shockingly, though, event stewards were tugging at Owen Jones’ sleeves to get him to stop talking and make way for the next speaker almost as soon as he had taken the stage, forcing Jones to bring his remarks to an early conclusion:

 

By contrast, comedian Russell Brand, given the honour of closing the entire event (save a couple of musical acts to play everyone out), was permitted to speak at length and say whatever he wanted. Consequently, Brand delivered a meandering (if charmingly self-deprecating) address that made little sense when placed under close scrutiny:

 

“I’ve given you even my vanity”, said Brand after baring his chest as he donned a Fire Brigades Union anti-austerity T-shirt handed to him on stage. But it wasn’t his vanity that The People’s Assembly needed. What they needed was a telegenic intellectual heavyweight with strong ties to the types of people that the demonstrators claimed to represent – the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable and the sick.

The crowd needed someone to tie together the threads of everything that had taken place during the march and rally, drawing together all of the disparate arguments in order to successfully argue that more government spending would actually be a good thing right now (a tough sell when faced with public sentiment and the attitudes of the main political parties).

The speakers at the “No More Austerity” demonstration were well-intentioned (though misguided, in the view of this blog), but a social or political movement that chooses Russell Brand rather than Owen Jones as its figurehead has little ground to complain when their message is met with confusion or indifference on the part of the media and the public.

When celebrities take it upon themselves to become figureheads for a political cause, they have a duty to get to know their topic inside out. To be a good, credible ambassador they must read up not just on the main issues but all of the tangential and second-order considerations so that they are able to engage with politicians and experts as peers and equals.

When Angelina Jolie attended and opened the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict in London last week, there was no doubt among anyone present that she knew exactly what she was talking about and was more than qualified to speak on the issue. And so when Jolie stood side by side with William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, it did not seem the least bit odd or inappropriate (though Hague certainly benefited disproportionately from the Hollywood magic).

Russell Brand, on the other hand, seemed unable to articulate the “alternative” that he and the fifty thousand other demonstrators are demanding. What’s more, he also ignored or trivialised the various political and organisational hurdles that stand in the way of implementing their favoured policies, falling back instead on the denialist notion that a “peaceful, effortless, joyful revolution” will come along and somehow make everything okay. This would be bad coming from a spokesperson, but from one of the supposed leaders of the movement it is completely untenable.

The fact that the alternative was alternately so weakly and idealistically expressed in different ways throughout the day also increases the level of doubt among the public and sceptics (such as this blog) who perhaps believe that the state did expand too far and do too much before the financial crisis, and that some kind of a correction is needed.

By deploying a self-destructive combination of mixed messages and poorly chosen messengers, the people who answered the call to protest today – various trades union, local organisations and interest groups – managed to sabotage their own efforts, becoming virtual ninjas in their own secret parade.

But the sad truth is that many more than 50,000 people in Britain creep meekly through their entire lives, without their struggles, priorities or concerns ever being noticed by the government or others in more fortunate circumstances.

The anti-austerity demonstrators envision a world where a larger, more redistributive and active state perpetually watches over and cares for these people, ensuring their welfare. Others, including this blog, take a different view – that people should be liberated and empowered to the maximum extent possible to flourish on their own, rather than being condemned to an entire lifetime as a “client”, “service user” or “benefit recipient”.

This is an important national debate for Britain to have, one that our elected politicians are poorly placed to lead, occupying the narrow ideological centre ground as they nearly all do. So it is left to the likes of The People’s Assembly and the IPPR on the left, and think tanks such as the Centre for Policy Studies and insurgent parties like UKIP  on the right, to have the proxy debate that would otherwise not take place.

Those on the right might be tempted to rejoice that the “No More Austerity: Demand The Alternative” march received so little attention, and that both message and messenger seem confused and contradictory. But in the long run, it’s not a good thing. The political right cannot test and sharpen their own arguments and ideas when their left-wing sparring partner is struggling even to express itself clearly.

The disorganisation and lack of media awareness shown by The People’s Assembly could well help to ensure that David Cameron’s Conservative Party sneak back across the finish line in the 2015 general election and form another government. But without being held properly to account by the left, the Conservatives will continue to overlook or ignore the needs of some of the weakest and poorest people in Britain (often people who were led down the path of government dependency and then left high and dry by an arrogant Labour government), and fail to help them as best they can with Conservative policies.

Even if the resultant human suffering is not a cause for their concern, the fact that such unaddressed dissatisfaction will eventually bubble up and lead to the Conservatives being punished at the ballot box should make the alarm bells sound.

It was hard, if not impossible, to dislike the people who so stealthily marched through central London today. Setting aside the rightness or wrongness of their policy ideas, it was clear that they genuinely, passionately want the best for the poor, the weak, the dispossessed and for each other.

Laughing, joking or talking earnestly amongst themselves, the only vitriol you were likely to hear from the “No More Austerity” demonstrators was reserved for the usual bogeymen of the left – the bankers, the city fat cats, the multinational corporations and sometimes the inevitable “Tory scum”.

But perhaps the invisible 50,000 should reserve some of their anger for the comrades who organise them, and who craft and articulate their common message. This demonstration, though not huge, should have generated more media coverage, more comment, and more positive action than it did. At present, some of their leaders are badly letting the side down.

And the 50,000 austerity protesters – not to mention the suffering people for whom they claim to speak – cannot afford to have another invisible demonstration.

 

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The BBC, Impregnable Fortress of Conservative Bias?

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

owenjones

 

List your top three current threats to British national security and democracy.

What did you write down? Government electronic surveillance and public apathy toward the erosion of privacy? The government bullying a national newspaper into destroying its computers as a vengeful and intimidating act in response to the Edward Snowden leaks?

How about the government detaining relatives of journalists at the airport under risibly inappropriate anti-terrorism laws? Or maybe you cited Russia’s increasing assertiveness and Vladimir Putin’s apparent desire to reassemble the USSR? Islamic extremism and the threat of terrorism? Climate change? The Only Way Is Essex?

Not if you are Owen Jones, the ubiquitous, telegenic new face of left wing punditry and author of “Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class”. According to Jones, British democracy and journalism are most under threat from that evil right-wing juggernaut that extends into all of our homes – the BBC.

Jones has apparently had it with claims from the right of leftwing political bias at the BBC, and has responded with a whinnying, foot-stomping tantrum in The Guardian where he single-handedly attempts to redress the balance. As he sees it, the BBC has become a hotbed of right-wing propaganda, stacked with conservative personalities and pumping out unchallenged conservative viewpoints 24/7:

The truth is the BBC is stacked full of rightwingers. The chairman of the BBC Trust is Chris Patten, a former Conservative cabinet minister. The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, was once chairman of the Young Conservatives. His former senior political producer, Thea Rogers, became George Osborne’s special advisor in 2012. Andrew Neil, the presenter of the BBC’s flagship political programmes Daily Politics and This Week, is chairman of the conservative Spectator magazine. His editor is Robbie Gibb, former chief of staff to the Tory Francis Maude. After the BBC’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders left for a £400,000-a-year job at that notorious leftwing hotbed, JP Morgan, she was replaced by its business editor Robert Peston.

How shocking that successful people (whom the BBC naturally looks to recruit for senior positions) have held strong political views or been allied with political parties in the past. What should happen instead, according to Jones, is that candidates for BBC positions are automatically rejected if they appear on the electoral roll, have voted in a past election or have ever expressed a political opinion on social media.

His outrage at the staffing of the BBC’s business and economics positions is particularly unreasonable. One might think that those who have worked in business and have a functional understanding of the financial industry are well placed to write or broadcast about it – assuming they are professional and operate under the same editorial policy as everyone else – given their expertise and links to the industry. But Jones seems shocked that the BBC didn’t select someone from Occupy Wall Street or Greenpeace to take on these high profile roles.

And it is not just the personalities that Owen takes issue with, but also the resulting coverage. When the global financial system teetered on the brink of disaster in 2008, Jones was apparently livid that the BBC interviewed so many people with knowledge of the industry who could explain to audiences what was happening. These people, despite being involved in the system and deeply impacted by what was happening, were not the right people to speak to, according to Owen Jones. He would have preferred more interviews with sleepy left-wing academics, aging hippies and assorted other people ready and willing to say variations on “I told you so”:

When the financial system went into meltdown, BBC interviews were dominated by City voices like stockbrokers and hedge fund managers, rather than critics of a sector that had plunged the country into disaster.

And at the end of his hit-piece, Jones makes his true intentions fully transparent. He has no interest in correcting this non-existent right wing bias at the BBC and restoring what he would see as some kind of non-partisan parity. No, he wants to transform the BBC into a fully-fledged mouthpiece of the left. It’s about giving conservatives a black eye for perceived past injustices using the BBC as a weapon, and he is willing to indulge in any amount of hyperbole or scaremongering to achieve this end:

For too long, the right has got away with weaving a fairytale of BBC leftwing bias. Until the left starts complaining – and loudly too – the BBC’s agenda will be shaped by supporters of government, big business, the free market and western foreign policy. That does not just subvert honest journalism: it undermines our democracy.

The Owen Jones phenomenon is not unique – whenever someone has a cause to promote (often a losing or flawed one, it seems) there are accusations and recriminations that the media has not jumped on the pro-whatever-the-idea-is bandwagon and given it unwavering support. Any and all instances of giving coverage to the opposing point of view is scrutinised, and any occasional discrepancies – which almost always even out over the long run when it comes to any issue or party – are held up as the “smoking gun” evidence of institutional bias.

Owen Jones' views being airbrushed and ignored on BBC television
Owen Jones’ views being airbrushed and ignored on BBC television

 

If Owen Jones were to take a step back from his outrage and really consider the BBC’s media coverage, someone as intelligent as he seems to be will surely have to concede that he overstepped the mark with his criticisms. No, the BBC has not shared his stridently left-wing viewpoint on almost every issue – but nor can they. They have a charter to represent and produce content for the entire country, not just left-wing activists. And from the charter come strict editorial guidelines and policies, which are carried out diligently and in good faith by human beings working to a high standard but as prone to error as the rest of us.

All of us – left or right leaning – can point to instances where television and radio and online news output has left us feeling hard done by, or shouting at the screen, convinced that the buffoon they chose to represent our side of the argument is a stooge, deliberately undermining our own, perfectly logical beliefs. But that’s just the nature of having strong political opinions. And as concerned, active citizens we should put our efforts toward actively convincing people of the merits of our arguments, not running off to a non-existent referee for redress whenever we feel the other side came out on top.

Owen Jones has enjoyed considerable airtime across the British political media, and has had ample opportunity to set forth his own strong opinions in a very articulate, persuasive way. It was the BBC, which he now chooses to castigate, that gave him many of these opportunities as part of their news coverage.

To then accuse the BBC, who have done so much to help his own career as a left-wing ‘intellectual’ and pundit, of political and institutional bias, is more than a little rich.