Just in time for the Bournemouth Conference, Alan Milburn re-surfaces with a think-piece about New Labour, in the Guardian.  Sadly, he only demonstrates the barren socialist ground which Blairism has become.  There's plenty about the inaccessible abstraction which he calls "fairness", deftly replacing "equality" in his socialist firmament.  But nothing about Labour acting to strengthen each individual - in Place of Fear..

• My response
  is deeply sceptical

Is it a bird?  Is it a loan?  Is it a Pertax?

Warning!  I think I may be shifting my position, on University Top-up Fees!  My hunch is that Gordon Brown is being very subtle indeed...

I favour, you may recall, a Graduate Tax, levied on all future graduates, by way of percentage premium on their primary income-tax liability.  That was Charles Clarke’s initial preference.  And I reckon that what is emerging is indeed a subtle new form of Graduate Tax, without the redistributive element.

• If I am right, the
  implications are enormous.

back to top

Wanted! 
New Model of the UK

What is your "model" of the UK?  How do you configure your own "nation state", in your mind? In business, one talks about a "business model", as a means of describing how a trading system operates, or is planned to operate - the language comes from psychology, more particularly epistemology ("the theory of knowledge").

Government actions such as the recent threat to limit LA taxation presuppose a model - of the economy, the polity and the society - which subtly informs all thinking.  It is vital that that model is "correct" - otherwise, the wrong policy conclusions will flow.  We should debate that model, openly.

• The Irish timetable has defeated me - I'm working on my own model, to see whether you agree.

Hazy, on your
Direct Debits?

We pay over £160m every year, by way of out-of-date Direct Debits, reports online Bank Cahoot.  I checked mine recently, and found that I was still paying £42 per month, on out of date commitments!  £500 a year!  No wonder organisers love us to pay by Direct Debit!  When did you last check yours?

back to top

Mounting anxiety 
a real political challenge

Subtlety is needed, in the drive to deliver "reassurance" to our people.  I have no doubt that Jackie Ashley (writing in The Guardian) is right: there is at large a mounting sense of anxiety and fear which is unsettling our lives.  "Much of the developing Labour agenda for the next few years," she says, "seems designed to reassure insecure voters that the Government has a grip (on the situation)". 

And so it should.  Countering anxiety is a key function of modern government.  The methodology however is complex, and indirect - see my essay Multiple Differential Uncertainty.

• Politicians must
  learn new subtleties.

Rawnsley is wrong

I admire and enjoy the writing of Andrew Rawnsley - and often share his judgments.  But not this time.  He contends that if only Tony Blair had based his February War Case openly on the objective of "regime change", he would have carried Parliament and the public with him. 

Rawnsley is, I think, wrong in that contention: such a case would have provoked a public outcry.  Blair understood that correctly.  And Rawnsley misses the point that Mr Blair the Barrister needed above all a rationale for lawful war - he was hoist at his own professional petard - and the "imminent threat" assertion was -

• The only one that fitted the bill.

back to top

Abdroids in the family

This weekend, this sketch is striking terror into tens of thousands of UK small-business households.  Clever accountants have over the years devised a myriad schemes of tax avoidance, based on this sketch.  They have introduced, into the lives of ordinary business families, the abdroid - or "artificial personality" - that's the dotted circle. 

Now, the Inland Revenue (who are very clever people, as University Challenge has conclusively proved...) has refused to accept the sophistries of the accountancy profession, and the Revenue is unpicking their tax avoidance schemes.  Is the Revenue rolling back the advance of the abdroids?

• Let me explain...

Which way is "Left"?

Tony Blair is said to have denounced a "Labour Government of the Left" as a delusion, in his approach to the TUC at Brighton.  But which way is Left?  In my view, the path to political success now lies in devising key socialist strategies which will appeal to everyone, including the English middle-classes. The trade unions are the ones trapped in the old politics, without socialist perceptions.  They are certainly not on the Left.

• My challenge to the Trade Unions (and to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) is to embrace the new socialism.

back to top