Attention spans

There is an election today. Had you noticed it? You might not have done. It's an election in a country still gripped by one of the worst financial crises of post-war Europe. Remember now? The country that earlier this year had people salivating over a word that they had been scarcely aware of before, oxi. Oh yes, that country. The one that had left-leaning commentators gushing clichés about cradles of democracy and the like. The one that had neo-Keynesian economists like Krugman and Sachs allying with eurosceptic conservatives such as the Telegraph's Evans-Pritchard, urging actions on macro economic policy whilst dismissing the micro economic conditions that would have undermined them. There was nothing wrong with their critique of austerity, or of its impact on Greece, it is just that they didn't align their prescriptions with the real country. The pro-Euro writer, Yannis Palaiologos, author of some superb reportage in The13th Labour of Hercules: Inside the Greek Crisis, is scornful:

I am referring in particular here to high profile U.S. economists, like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, who have led the global anti-austerity campaign and have made my country a cause célèbre in that struggle. They have been right to argue that too much austerity has been imposed on Greece, and that further debt relief is required. But in recent months, as relations between Athens and its creditors have deteriorated, they have served Greece’s cause very poorly indeed...

...an exit from the euro, which Greeks never voted for anyway, either in January or in July, would have been an unmitigated catastrophe, dwarfing the costs even of the bad deal struck on July 13.

And now that Greece did that deal, they and their followers have lost interest. Greeks only mattered to them as the objects of their theories. They would always walk away.

It is the same for many on the left. Think back to the enthusiasm bubbling up from that inspiring insurgent movement, surging from the grass roots to power, with its tie-less leaders and a cool motorbike riding finance minister. The one that failed. It's been abandoned too.

After some badly-chosen anti-German jibes about tanks and collaborators, and a few days of tweeting about coups when Germany had pushed through a new €83 billion funding package for the country, albeit with horribly stringent conditions, the left found a new object of desire. Not only is he often tie-less, but he wears a vest. OK he has hung out with a few fascists and anti-Semites from time to time, but, hey, he was only trying to make peace. And he crowd sources questions. The Tory press are smearing him because they are really scared (not thinking that they can't believe their luck). This is the new politics now. It will change everything. OK, I know he isn't actually elected to government, but he won! Who says he is unelectable when two hundred and fifty thousand activists have just voted for him? (Er, the electorate is forty-five million).

This band of hope, these evangelicals following the latest Messiah, would do well to have a glance back at their previous saviour. Securely in the lead in the polls, Tsipras called an election. But now the polls are level. He may lose to the conservative Nea Dimokratia. Popular Unity, the former Left Platform that split from Syriza, faces a wipeout. Everyone I talked to said the same. There is no enthusiasm, people don't know who to vote for, turnout will be low as disillusionment is high. And if the left doesn't at least try to understand the reasons for this failure, learn from it, and adjust its aims and strategy accordingly, then they will fall to defeat after defeat. The movement will die, leaving children growing up in poverty, families depending on food banks, with no one to speak for them and to defend them. Fantasy politics is self-indulgence, nothing more.

And as for the Greeks, struggling under austerity policies that make Tory Britain look positively munificent, don't they deserve a bit more solidarity than their brief moment in the international limelight as the object of the wet dreams of middle class lefties, before they move on to their next austerity porn star? Or are they just yesterday's craze, mouldering in the bottom of the toy box?

Greece has deep structural problems, but it is also a resilient country. This is a lovely piece from Marcus Walker and Myrto Papadopoulos.

 ... many Greeks have given up waiting for their politicians to find a way out of the country’s long economic crisis. Instead, national recovery and renewal will come about through the sum of ordinary people’s efforts, more and more people say.

Athens-based photographer Myrto Papadopoulos travelled the country in the week before the elections and asked Greeks from widely different walks of life how their country could finally leave its crisis era behind it. What she discovered was a mixture of resignation about Greek politics and belief in the innate creativity and resourcefulness of ordinary Greeks.
The obstacles to change are formidable, and include chronically fractious and unstable politics. Building a more functional Greek economy and polity will take years—perhaps a decade or even a generation, many Greeks say. But they insist they will get there. 

 Let's not forget them as they rebuild.

UPDATE
Syriza won. This time as a pro-Euro, centre left party, defending Greece's interests within the terms of the memorandum, rather than pledged to ending austerity.

UPDATE 2

Syriza have reformed the coalition with ANEL, the right wing ultra-nationalist party, again raising the question of whether this is a leftist or a nationalist government. Popular Unity, the left wing of Syriza that split away over the deal with the EU, failed to enter the parliament having fallen below the 3% threshold. Turnout was a record low of around 56%. Voting is compulsory in Greece.

And a clarification, the failure I was referring to in the post above, was the failure in their stated aim of ending austerity. They ended up doing a deal that intensified it and now they have to implement it.

A good reflection on the result from Nick Malkoutzis here.

Hysteria

Here is a screen grab from a newsreel of Remembrance Day 1948 at the Cenotaph.

The band is playing God Save the King. Clement Attlee is singing loudly, next to him a scowling Winston Churchill remains silent. In 1948 the war was a recent memory, its commemoration deeply personal.

It was dumb politics by Corbyn not to sing the anthem at the Battle of Britain commemoration as it gave the press something to attack, but how puerile the whole debate has become. Remembering the awful cost of the necessary defeat of fascism should be personal, reflective and not a set ritual that leads to abuse if you deviate from the approved routine by wearing the wrong overcoat or failing to mumble the words to the national anthem. It is trivialising something profound.

Visitors

Bugger politics. Cats, that's what the internet is really for.

This is what I saw when I opened the shutters this morning.

The mother is a feral cat that I've been feeding. I'm going back to the UK in a couple of days time so I feel really sad now.

So what now?

Atul Hatwal was wrong. As was I. In my case this is not an unusual occurence. Wishful thinking and a failure to account for how much the membership had changed since 2005 gave credence to doubts about the accuracy of the polls. Mind you, it was becoming clearer that this was going to be the case as the election got nearer. Labour insiders knew that it was all over.

It wasn't even close. Corbyn won convincingly in the first round. The only section in which he didn't have an overall majority and thus would have brought second preferences into play was the members's section, but then his lead was so big there it would have been hard to overturn. His victory amongst the £3 registered voters and Trade Union affiliates was overwhelming. The party has also seen all women candidates defeated. That may be significant to its appeal.

I was never New Labour. I thought the contributions of the Blairites to the campaign were grisly and counter productive. My god we needed an alternative to their anodyne politics and economic orthodoxy. What I was hoping for was a new, intelligent left; egalitarian, modern, inclusive. One that would build a credible alternative model of political economy, enhance economic security, embrace principled internationalism and cherish individual liberty. Instead we have the Guardian comments pages. Yes, a new leadership in the spirit of Seumas Milne.

Well, it won't be boring. There is a lot that can happen before 2020, but I don't think that it will end well. I am sixty-three in a few days time. I'm worried that I may not see another Labour government in my lifetime.

Janan Ganesh is right:

The enemy of sound political judgment is the desire for distinctiveness. Commentators sometimes parse straightforward events for surprising nuances or daring new angles because it makes for good copy. But it is better to be right than original. No, a Corbynite Labour party will not cause trouble for the Tories. Mr Cameron will not find him a confounding adversary across the parliamentary dispatch box. Demonstrations will not shake the government. They will not even shake the streets they are held on. Politics will not be reinvented. Mr Corbyn is not “on to something” with his critique of capitalism and western foreign policy. This is a passing commotion whose principal victims are the millions of low-paid Britons who need a serious party of the centre-left.

And it is the last sentence that matters.

On the eve

This isn't a particularly original 'Corbyn-can't-win-a-general-election' piece in The Economist, though it's probably right enough. It was my historian's take on this section that interested me:

According to Geert Hofstede, a Dutch psychologist who has devised a means of quantifying such things, Britain is the most individualistic country in Europe; a place of “rampant consumerism” where “the route to happiness is through personal fulfilment” rather than collective endeavour. Polling by Ipsos MORI supports his claim, showing that each successive generation is more sceptical of organised religion, the welfare state and government in general. 

Why I was interested is that I have seen the same thing written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about working class attitudes and political beliefs. More recent social historians have also picked up on this observation too. Is this a constant feature of British political culture? And, if so, how can an electoral party of the left respond?

This tendency is usually understood as an explanation as to why the British left was anomalous to the general European experience. Whilst mass socialist political parties were taking off in continental Europe, British socialism only produced relatively marginal organisations. The result was the formation of the Labour Party. It was a compromise from the beginning. Trade Unions provided the mass membership, socialist parties the political energy. The result was that Labour has never been a socialist party; instead it is a party that contains socialists.

If it is a given that we have always been a private, materialist, and individualist nation, what is the role of a left political party? When faced with this wall of indifference, political activists have polarised between being the Jehovah's Witnesses on the doorstep - evangelicals seeking to bring us back to the true path, convinced that we have been deliberately duped by a satanic media - and the cynics - who think that all they have to do is to gives us bread and circuses and please us by being nasty to foreigners and the poor. Both are minorities within minorities, and both miss the point.

British individualism is not amoral. It can recognise the collective benefits and self-interest of institutions like the NHS, whilst it can also embody a sense of justice and is prone to outbursts of collective morality – like the current one caused by a dead child on a Mediterranean beach, which Cameron so misread. And this is the space the democratic left can and should occupy. Balancing a defence of collective goods and a sense of justice with individual well being, not some specious 'centre ground.' This is what Eric Hobsbawm was writing about in his classic essay from the late 1970s, The Forward March of Labour Halted?, at a time of another Labour Party nervous breakdown.

The appeal of the evangelist is always limited, but is given strength by the cynics. People, on the whole, spot a phoney easily and resent being patronised. However, that doesn't mean that they are in the market for unmitigated authenticity. And in this long, eloquent piece, Taylor Parkes, a committed leftist explains his doubts over the faction Corbyn represents. I particularly liked this:

What's more, there are certain... issues with Corbyn and the company he keeps. He doesn't just have skeletons in his closet, he hangs up his shirts in an ossuary. This is not a trivial matter. Those who underestimate the problems this will cause are fooling themselves (and in some cases, losing sight of their own moral compass).  

Don't get me wrong. My desire for a Left or leftish alternative to permanent austerity is so strong that I could weigh all these things up and still decide that yes, a Corbyn government is something I could vote for – albeit with my mouth in the shape of a wavy line and a hand to my brow. But let's not fantasise. Most British voters will respond to Corbyn much as they'd respond to a man weighing five stone five, with blood trickling out of his left ear, asking for a loan. The very phrase “a Corbyn government” has a whiff of pixie dust about it, something chimerical. This doesn't worry the Corbyn faithful. 

The prospect opening up is of a new Tory hegemony arising out of an unconvincing electoral victory. They can't believe their luck. The Lib Dems were easy meat, the SNP destroyed Labour's power base in Scotland, and now Labour may be about to go mad. As Parkes puts it,

Yet again the Left is in a corner, driven there not just by slick manoeuvring from the Right, but by its own persistent stupidity.

We will have to see what emerges from this ill conceived, badly timed and incompetently run leadership election. Tomorrow's result will be significant, whichever way it goes.  

Seeking refuge

This is a nice, myth-busting piece on the refugee emergency from Channel 4's Lindsey Hilsum. Her conclusion puts events into perspective.

If we didn’t have empathy we’d have died out long ago. The story of humanity is a story of movement, migration, birth and adaptation. This is just a tiny chapter.

She's right. But let's not underestimate the severity of the problems, especially here in Greece, where the refugee and financial crises converge.

There is one thing that we should be emphasising though. This is not simply a Syrian refugee crisis, but a Syrian crisis. And though horribly late, there is one consistent demand from Syrians hoping to salvage some hope from the catastrophe - a no fly zone. It would be a limited intervention to stop the bombing, killing, starving and gassing of ordinary people. It is a proposal which has been resolutely opposed by the British anti-war movement. So much so that Syria Solidarity protested at the Stop the War Coalition's conference this summer.

As is often the case, the voices who would complicate the simple narratives are missing. So here are links to the non-violent opposition, supporters of the Syrian revolution. And what do these peaceniks call for?

Extremism breeds from injustice - the biggest killer of civilians in Syria today is the 'barrel bomb'. These are often old oil barrels filled with explosive and scrap metal and rolled out of government helicopters and planes miles up in the air onto hospitals, schools and homes. 

The UN Security Council unanimously banned them a year ago. Nothing has changed since then - nearly 2,000 children have been killed since UN Resolution 2139 was signed on February 22, 2014.

Many of us were against foreign military intervention in Syria. But in September 2014 the US-led coalition started bombing Isis in our country. Now there is a deep hypocrisy to letting the Assad regime fly in the same airspace and kill civilians. Many more than are killed by Isis. 

The international community must follow through on its demands and stop the regime’s barrel bombs and air attacks - even if that means with a 'no fly zone'.

And:

TO THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL: "Barrel bombs - sometimes filled with chlorine - are the biggest killer of civilians in Syria today. Our unarmed and neutral rescue workers have saved more than 22,693 people from the attacks in Syria, but there are many we cannot reach. There are children trapped in rubble we cannot hear. For them, the UN Security Council must follow through on its demand made last year to stop the barrel bombs, by introducing a 'no-fly zone' if necessary." - Raed Saleh, head of the White Helmets, the Syrian Civil Defence.

By all means applaud the ones who got out, welcome them, support them, but remember those millions trapped behind who have no hope of reaching the European paradise. They need help too. And even if we still end up with some dystopian settlement in a fragmented failed state, the only hope is to stop the bombs and give a chance for a recovery of Syrian civil society that still clings to life amongst the rubble. And please, listen to their voices.

Football crazy

Fans with a conscience. In Germany:

Greece goes one better. Iraklis fans at an away game in Lesbos.

Excluding reality

It's the old problem of the anti-imperialist left. However much Corbyn's supporters talk about smears or guilt by association, it is obvious and self-confessed that when Corbyn shared platforms with homophobic, misogynistic anti-Semites, he was not trying to engage in diplomacy, but advocacy. Of course, in his own mind, he wasn't promoting their message, but supporting Palestinian rights, whilst opposing both western intervention in the Middle East and Islamophobia. His defenders elided the charge of his lack of judgement to one of personal anti-Semitism, cleverly dodging the real issue. But I want to ask a different question. Why does Corbyn hate Palestinians?

He must hate them if he wants them to be ruled by nasty theocrats. He must do if he wants to support Islamist movements that will oppress the substantial Palestinian Christian minority and place the rest under a vicious regime. Then again, he also wants to apologise to the Kurds for liberating them. That's nice.

I'm being facetious of course, but this is the crux of the problem of a particular type of thinking. Populist authenticity is part of Corbyn's appeal, but it isn't reality, merely a distorted image of it. The politics of delusion is one that excludes the object of its concerns.

This is a typical example. Planet Syria have written an open letter to the Stop the War Coalition, of which Corbyn is the National Chair:

Syrians who have had to hold in their arms the bloodied disfigured bodies of their loved ones really wish they could take part in discussions regarding the fate of their own country, but they’re often not invited. It is regrettable that Syrian speakers who represent these victims and have lived the quintessential painful Syrian experience have not been invited to take part in this panel…

We have been living this nightmare for almost half a decade now and we feel we are entitled to take part in conversations regarding our fate. We are dismayed at the number of anti-war panels and lectures that have taken place in the West which have failed to include Syrians in their impressive lists of participants. We hope you won’t continue to exclude us from these important conversations about the fate of our country because when you do so, you further disempower the very same Syrians who have been disempowered by various perpetrators in this conflict. 

It is worth reading it all. It confirms my suspicion that the politics of the peace movement is more about feeling self-righteous than supporting the oppressed.

Insanity

This is getting to be exactly the same as the Scottish independence referendum. After the no vote was announced, yes voters were either indulging in bizarre conspiracy theories or blaming the BBC for "the politics of fear." How about thinking, "we lost because more people voted to stay in the Union?"

Now the Corbyn supporters in the Labour leadership election are cranking up their paranoia. We have had accusations of smears (please note telling the truth or making a principled objection is not a smear, mad articles in the Daily Mail are) and now a prominent member of the SWP and opponent of the Labour Party complains that the vote is being rigged because he has been excluded. The Independent doesn't go that far with this piece, but still confuses an internal selection process with a general election.

Labour is trying to accomplish the impossible: become electable while shunning voters. Thanks to Labour’s decision to purge its own supporters ... it now risks descending into an anti-democratic farce. 

"Own supporters?" Er, it is trying to exclude people who are NOT Labour supporters, but only pretending to be so that they can vote for whatever reason.

So now Labour is a "McCarthyite" party, "apparently more concerned with preserving its purity," and may become "less a broad church and more a secret society."

I repeat, this is an internal process. It has now been opened up to these £3 supporters as well as members in a crazy, mismanaged new initiative. OK, let's let the Labour leadership be decided by SWP members, Greens and Tories, each with their own agenda. Cats? Yes, let's let cats vote. The felineist rescinding of Ned's vote is a national disgrace ("is it because I is tabby?").

What a mess. And this from a party hoping to run the country.

Meanwhile, despite the hype, Atul Hatwal still doesn't think Corbyn will win. If he is right, I am dreading the ordure that will flood out from his supporters who seem to think that democracy is a process whereby you get what you want regardless.

Watch

Two reasons ...

... why Rugby League is such a nice sport.

1. Lizzie Jones, widow of Danny Jones, the Keighley player who collapsed and died whilst playing, is to sing at the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley.

Following Danny's untimely death, the RFL has made heart screening for players at Championship and League 1 clubs mandatory and the profile the tragedy has gained is already having a positive impact. Lizzie said: "I spoke to a nurse this week who approached me saying that a young man came into the hospital where she works complaining of chest pains.
"He's young, he’s a cyclist and is very fit but had seen what happened to Danny and how it all came out of nowhere. "That prompted him to go to hospital that day where an ECG revealed he did have a problem with his heart, which the doctors are now treating. "
That decision saved his life: Danny saved his life; he’s already saving people and that's an important legacy.
"He's not just a number. If he can save lives then that’s all I want.”

2. Keegan Hirst, Batley prop forward. has come out as gay. He isn't the first openly gay Rugby League player, as this report says. Gareth Thomas was the first, though he came out whilst still playing Union. Nevertheless, the support he has received is overwhelming. Do watch this video. And the response:

Batley Bulldogs captain Keegan Hirst was cheered to the rafters - just hours after he made the revelation in an exclusive interview with our sister paper the Sunday Mirror, published yesterday. The six-foot-four married dad-of-two looked visibly moved by the support he had received as he left the pitch at Batley’s Fox’s Biscuits Stadium following his side’s narrow 28-22 loss to local rivals Dewsbury Rams.

Football does self-congratulation better than anyone, but socially it is still in the dark ages.

Hard labour

Here are two pieces that go beyond the superficiality of much of the debate around the Labour Party leadership contest. One is pro-Corbyn, the other anti. But their allegiances are only a by-product of their analysis. It is the same for the way many people feel about leadership candidates, they are seen as empty vessels into which we pour our hopes. That is why they always disappoint and are only redeemed in retrospect.

First, Sarah Perrigo, who once taught me on my MA thirty years ago now (!), analyses Labour's performance and demolishes a few myths. There are things that I disagree with in her article but these are the main areas where I think that she is right:

1. Labour's defeat was not as bad, nor was the Conservative victory as convincing, as the Cassandras make it out to be. It was a complex result, simplified by the electoral system. The debate over PR will not go away, neither will the obstacles to power under the current system.

2. The Blair government had real successes, but was also cautious, fearful and nothing like as "new" as it proclaimed itself to be. It didn't challenge political culture, preferring to be progressive by stealth, making it harder to defend. Its "big tent" was also smaller than it seemed. Traditional Labour voters and working class communities were left outside as they "had nowhere else to go." (They did have somewhere else to go of course, they went home. Turnout crashed in 2001). It was a missed opportunity.

3. The failure to challenge the Coalition strategy to blame Labour for a global crisis was a disaster. It prevented any effective opposition to economic policy and made Labour vulnerable to negative campaigning over economic competence.

4. The idea that Labour lost solely because it was anti-aspiration or too left-wing is unsustainable. Election data does not bear that out. The reasons for the defeat are complex and more long term.

5. Labour members were treated as if they were fans rather than members, just like football supporters, and were patronised into passivity. But even football fans are getting stroppy these days, as fan-owned clubs, supporters' trusts and independent supporters' associations show. Loyalty is not unconditional. This is one of the reasons why Corbyn would appeal more than machine politicians.

Her support for Corbyn is based on her perception that his candidacy would open up the debate she wants on the nature of the Labour Party. I'm not sure about that. It can just as easily be seen as another chapter in the factional struggles within the party, especially as his campaign is partly being driven enthusiastically by the activist groups organised around the anti-war movement. We will have to see.

In the second piece, Martin Kettle does not support Corbyn, but he also sees Labour's problems as longer term and structural. The myth he tries to confront is the one that it was the Iraq war that started Labour's decline. That led him to try to draw a parallel between the current state of Labour and that of the Liberal Party before the First World War, as described by George Dangerfield in his Strange Death of Liberal England. It's stretching it a bit, but he sees the 1997 Labour landslide in the same light as the 1906 Liberal landslide as "a victory from which the party never recovered." Kettle picks out three vaguely similar issues to keep his comparison going:

1. There is the question of the Union. Labour's policies on devolution handed the initiative to the nationalists.

2. The relationship with a declining trade union movement is problematic: "Just as the Liberals in the last century were unable to embrace labour, so the Labour party today is unable to free itself." A sectional party of organised labour would be a minority one.

3. Though both of these are pretty tenuous, the third is interesting because he re-frames the women's suffrage campaign within the context of a struggle for democratisation of the state and society. It is often forgotten that Labour was elected in 1997 with a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on proportional representation. It never saw the light of day after Labour won a huge majority under the existing system with 43% of the vote. The electoral system that favoured them then, disadvantages them now. New Labour also failed to revive local government, submerged industrial democracy under aggressive managerialism, and restricted party democracy. A centralised system that empowers a minority can be as easily used against you as it can be by you.

Both pieces call for a more thorough re-think of what a modern, social democratic party should look like and the sort of society it wants to create, whilst I would add my plea for a re-imagined, credible political economy. Both see a failure by the Party to respond to social change being apparent early. Even in victory, the signs were there - turnout in 2001, winning on 36% of the vote in 2005. Neither of the warning signs were heeded. We all have different times when something happened that changed the way you thought. Mine was December 1997. It saw the beginning of the sense that 'they are all the same,' even though there were still significant differences. It was then that the New Labour government voted to cut single parent benefits. Despite the protests of some forty or more rebels, party loyalists queued up to make speeches in support of the proposals. The same people were defending the identical measures that they had attacked stridently only months before. The lack of sincerity was breathtaking. It was unnecessary and, even though working families tax credits began to fill the gap later, it marked the first time when some voters "looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

We are living with the consequences.

Genius

Just who dreamt up this electoral system for the Labour Leadership?

A Conservative party member has told 5 live that he's managed to secure three votes in the Labour leadership election - and intends to vote for Jeremy Corbyn as he will lead the party into "electoral oblivion".

 You can listen to the clip here.

Exclusive:  Labour strategists grapple with the problem:

The pleasures of the flesh

It gets to me sometimes, the relentless wholesomeness, the earnest denial of pleasure, the smug self-satisfaction at not having that extra piece of cake - even though you want it, really want it. There are columnists who go on about obesity, look on us fatties pityingly, and then act as our defenders - because we have an incurable disease! Then there is the war on gluten, the paleo diets, the insufferable idea that booze comes in units (which need limiting), and don't get me started on "wellness gurus." As for political asceticism and its mean-spirited sense of self denial in pursuit of a higher purpose ... I give up. And at peak despair along comes an unreasonable rant that I can really relate to. Bravo Suzanne Moore!

The anti-austerity movement is real and necessary, but the need of middle-class people to pretend to live austere lives is beyond me. It demonstrates a fantasy of class difference fuelled by guilt that I don’t share. If you have been poor, you don’t want to be again. Now a peculiar re-enactment of poverty is available to all in the name of being Green or even healthy. Entire conversations revolve around people who, unprompted, will list the things they are depriving themselves of, with a further 10 minutes on their fascinating “intolerances”. The rise of the individual detox sits alongside the rise of food banks, whose users have no choice about the manner of their deprivation.

This isn't new, and asceticism can be a response to the experience of poverty too. Keir Hardie was a temperance campaigner. But I am more instinctively drawn to Nye Bevan, the original champagne socialist. Enjoy the good things in life to their fullest extent, but make sure that everybody else can too.

Virtue isn't a vote winner, but neither is hypocrisy. To preach morality in public, whilst enjoying vice in private, is punished. In contrast, openly embracing pleasure, flaunting it even, is rather attractive to everyone except the disapproving middle class reformer. People are entitled to their own misery I suppose and they are quite capable of enjoying different things, but what I hate is when they seek to impose their own faddish mores on everyone else. I like to quote this from a fascinating bit of social reportage from 1911. Seems So! A Working Class View of Politics, was written in Devon vernacular by Stephen Reynolds and based on conversations with Bob and Tom Wooley, two fishermen. This summed up their attitude to temperance reforms.

"There's a lot to be learnt in pubs, an' 'tis a fine affair, I reckon, for to hae a good chatter over a glass or two o' beer. If you didn't do that you'd go to bed an' sleep. An' that's all some o'em wants 'ee to do, seems so - work an' sleep - an' never enjoy no life."

Bloody puritanism. It's everywhere. I hate it.

Labour pains

It is a curious thought that the National Chair of the Stop the War Coalition could become leader of the Labour Party, but I still don't think it will happen.

A little while ago I posted a link to a critique of the accuracy of a YouGov poll that put Jeremy Corbyn in the lead. Since then another poll has been published by the same organisation that puts him further ahead and gives him an absolute majority of the first ballot. The same methodological reservations apply. I don't think either poll is trustworthy or representative of the views of Labour members as a whole. If I was a gambler, I would be down the bookies right now to bet on him not winning, though he may not now finish fourth.

The great imponderable though is Labour's new electoral system of one member one vote. It sounds fair enough, except that for some bizarre reason they decided that you didn't need to be a member. For a one off payment of £3 you can have a vote and then disappear off into the sunset. You don't need to do anything. Just vote to determine the future of an organisation you don't belong to. The figures for how many have registered, and their political views, are opaque.

The aim of the open primary was ostensibly to swamp the left with the votes of a much more 'moderate' membership and electorate. That didn't turn out right, did it? Any system can be gamed, but people get complacent when they assume that what they think is what the majority think; a delusion shared by many Corbyn supporters.

What has happened though is that the poll, however dubious, has created a bandwagon, such that nobody is talking about anyone else. The same happened with UKIP in the general election. The effects are ambiguous. The media frenzy may create support, but it also generates panic and belated opposition as people suddenly realise that their opponents need to be taken seriously. We can't know, but my guess is that without that first poll his candidacy might have sunk beyond view, even if he was generating enthusiastic meetings. It would have needed his rivals to provide a bit of credible opposition, mind you. They haven't been very good at it so far.

So where does his support come from?

First, there is the anti-war movement. It is organised, vociferous, very anti-Israel, against all foreign interventions (except Russia's apparently), and its organisation is an alliance of Stalinists, the SWP and Islamists, supported by well meaning humanitarians. This is where his foreign policy, his apologias for tyrants, and some of his dubious friends come from. He is not over scrupulous about who he is prepared to share a platform with. There is nothing original about his thinking. It is the party line.

Second, there is an activist left and their sympathisers. They are always prone to hero worship and just as likely to cry betrayal (usually by a corrupt media and sometimes because of a hidden conspiracy) when they have to confront reality. I count among their number really nice people who are friends, but when I look at what they share on social media, some of their politics is bat-shit crazy.

There is an overlap between the two, but the noise they generate does not reflect their size as part of the electorate. They are mainly middle class and vote Labour anyway (apart from a few Greens). Labour's problem is that it has lost working class votes and that is as troubling as the need to have a broader appeal in marginal constituencies. I don't think these two groups are assets for recovering this lost ground.

Finally, there are the trade unionists, socialists and social democrats anxious for a change in the consensus in political economy. They are appalled by growing poverty, punitive benefits regimes, the need for food banks, and the diminishing of the public realm. At last they seem to have a champion, but is he a convincing one? I remain sceptical, especially given the experience of Syriza's confrontation with a world that was not as accommodating as they thought.

When I look at Corbyn's candidacy, it is only the last group that has any credibility. But the others will make the most noise, whilst attention will turn rightly to foreign affairs where he should face tough interrogations. This is not a marginal issue. It goes right to the heart of what type of left we have; about left anti-Semitism, the susceptibility to conspiracy thinking, and the willingness to cosy up to some deeply unpleasant regimes. Combine this with the difficulty he will have in commanding the support of the Parliamentary Party, most of whom oppose him, and simply his age – he will be in his seventies by the time of the next general election – and the prospect of his leadership would appear to be little more than that of an interregnum, much in the style of George Lansbury after the 1931 split.

I have long argued that Labour has an incredibly hard task ahead to rethink an alternative political economy that is both credible and capable of attracting the undecided and the alienated at the same time. It has to embody the values of the left, but it must be deliverable. Labour needs to do this if it is to seize the next opportunity when change will be possible. The last moment was 1997. The next one is not now and I doubt if it will be 2020 either.

The Labour Party loves to go all misty-eyed over Attlee. They forget the most important phase of his leadership. That was the period before the war when he headed the rebuilding of the party around the right, marginalising the far left with ruthless pragmatism, whilst accommodating talented left wingers when desirable. There would have been no Bevan in power without Bevin. They forget, too, his eventual embrace of rearmament against Nazi Germany and his opposition to appeasement. This isn't an attempt to argue from analogy, but to point out that throughout the Labour Party's history there has always been a struggle between the romantics and the pragmatists. The pragmatists always end up winning. And I think they will this September as well. I make no promises about eating hats, nor am I foolish enough to put my money where my mouth is, but I still don't think that Jeremy Corbyn will be elected leader of the Labour Party.

Sums

A career beckons somewhere in high finance.

Soap opera

Tony attacks Jeremy, John goes for Tony, people tell Liz to drop out to prevent Jeremy winning (showing that they don't understand how preferential voting works), Liz says 'no way,' Andy dithers, Yvette stays quiet. People are called morons or heartless. Margaret even called herself a moron. The longest Labour leadership contest in history drags on and on. And all the while the media goes berserk. Everything in the press and online seems to be about Corbyn; not what he stands for of course, little of the debate has been about anything substantive, but what it means for the Labour Party if he would win it - vote winner or loser - the remaking of the Party or the final nail in its coffin. And what has sent everyone into this flat spin is a poll. One that has Jeremy Corbyn in a clear lead in the contest. Yep, just one opinion poll. Cast your mind back and think how unerringly accurate the polls were in predicting the election result. Wouldn't it be a good idea to pause and think?

 Atul Hatwal has. And his conclusion?

Sorry, that Labour leadership poll is nonsense. Jeremy Corbyn is going to finish fourth

 He continues:

The general election hopelessly wrong-footed most commentators for two reasons: dodgy polls and shouty lefty Twittervists.
The polls created an illusion that Ed Miliband and Labour were a nose in front. Labour’s voluble activist base on Twitter then leapt on every iffy poll and each tweet describing yet another great session on the #Labourdoorstep to amplify and broadcast the narrative that Ed Miliband was about to become prime minister.
Understandably, most journalists looked on and followed the crowd. The pollsters and the Twittervists seemed to be saying the same thing.
A self-reinforcing spiral of delusion took hold that was only broken when the public’s actual votes shattered the Westminster’s conventional wisdom on the evening of May 7^th.
Now, it’s happening again in the Labour leadership race.

I think he's probably right.

Tantrums

Have you ever noticed that when someone is in the wrong they get angry with other people rather than question themselves? Like here?

Truce

C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre: c'est de la folie
(It is magnificent, but it is not war, it is madness.)
Pierre Bosquet on The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854.

Syriza charged towards the EU's fortifications, only to be cut down mercilessly by the Troika's cannon. I have written in this way because I want to show Shuggy that I have a greater command of inappropriate historical analogies than the average journalist. Those analogies abound, Tsipras has been "waterboarded" and "crucified," whilst this has been typical of the genre:

This is war. This time the Trojan Horse is in Germany's arsenal. It is called Europe. The Germans have now parked it at the gates of Athens. But the siege and slaughter may erupt all over the continent.

This is not war. It is not torture. It is diplomacy and economics. Yes it was brutal. The concerted verbal battering Tsipras took from the political right in the European Parliament was unpleasant enough, but the reports from inside the Eurogroup point to it having been a nasty and vituperative meeting.

That doesn't make it a coup or an attack on democracy. For it to be the latter it would mean that a referendum result in Greece, by Greek people only, is binding on the other 18 states. The Greek government is in place, it hasn't been removed. Greece had a choice, not much of one, but a choice nonetheless. It could default and presumably leave the Euro, or it could seek financial support to stay in the Euro. It chose the latter. The terms by which a loan is offered is usually determined by the lender. They have the money, they have the power to lend or not. All the wittering about infringements of sovereignty are meaningless, because entry into EMU in the first place meant giving up sovereignty and seeking a bailout certainly does. So why the hostility?

The most important point is that we have a collective sense of equity and justice about the terms of any loans. Many villains in our literature are usurers. We are appalled by the rates of interest charged by payday loan companies and the way they exploit the vulnerabilities of the poor. We look at the suffering of ordinary people and our compassion turns to anger. We are aware that in bargaining all the power lies with the lender, the deal is not wholly voluntary. And this perception of right and wrong has been aroused. People look at the conditions and think; these are unjust, they are not creditors, they are extortionists.

And this is where the democracy angle does come in. Greek voters had elected an anti-austerity party and voted against austerity in a referendum, none of that could be binding on the other countries, but it should have been a consideration and allowed a pause for thought. Yet what we saw was that it was dismissed with irritation and seen as something to be deterred from happening elsewhere. There is a distinction to be made between power and influence. The Greek referendum had no power over any of the other states, but it should have influenced them. It was a clear sign of major discontent with the policies that have been imposed on them since 2010. If this is government by consent, it is of only the most grudging kind. What is more, it is absolutely clear that the terms of the bailout were not what were wanted by Greece.

The world looked on amazed as Tsipras went to the EU and surrendered completely only to be told to surrender some more. Even the most entrenched anti-Syriza elements swung round to support Tsipras. The final deal modified some of the maximalist demands (notably on the €50 billion monetization - not just selling - of assets fund; now to be based in Greece, 25% of proceeds for new investment in Greece, 50% to buy back Greek banks after the recapitalization, and 25% to pay debt instead of 100% as first reported). But the overall effect will be deflationary and cut living standards further. You have to wonder when the great Greek slump will finally end.

Take all this together, throw in incipient anti-German sentiment (whilst forgetting the Finns) and you have the perfect recipe for resurrecting World War II stereotypes. But what really happened? The best journalism I have read has come from Marcus Walker of the Wall Street Journal (great articles, but in the name of sanity don't read the comments). He knows both Germany and Greece well and called it right from the moment Syriza was elected. This piece, published just before agreement was reached, is pretty convincing:

Behind Europe’s show of force lie three main factors: Fury at Mr. Tsipras’s delay tactics, shock at the rising cost of any and all Greek scenarios, and a worsening clash between German-led Europe and the IMF.
Since his election in January, Mr. Tsipras has oscillated between his hard-line and pragmatic advisers, Greek officials say. The pragmatists urged him to sign a bailout deal early, even if it meant accepting politically hard-to-sell austerity measures, because the terms of any deal would get tougher as the months passed and Greece’s economy deteriorated.
Nonsense, argued others such as now-ousted finance minister Yanis Varoufakis: Greece would get the best bailout terms, including less austerity and more debt relief, if it waited until the last moment before debt default. Europe would get scared of the destabilizing fallout from a Greek euro exit, this camp argued.
Mr. Tsipras went with the second school of thought, figuring also that his left-wing Syriza party would only swallow a bailout deal involving austerity if the alternative were imminent economic meltdown.
For months, Mr. Tsipras saw to it that Europe’s normal channels for negotiating bailout terms—the Eurogroup, and teams of EU-IMF inspectors—were paralyzed. He instead bet on face-to-face talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, believing that she would make a fundamentally political decision to keep Europe united, even at the expense of German economic orthodoxy.
It proved an epic miscalculation. Backed into a corner by Mr. Tsipras’s referendum, in which Greeks overwhelmingly rejected their creditors’ austerity demands, Ms. Merkel hardened her line. A deal with Athens that let Greece off tough economic reforms would be worse for Europe than splintering the eurozone, she argued. 

 Even if the hand had been played better, it was a weak one. Aces always beat twos.

What next? There are still obstacles to overcome before the deal is sealed, but if it is, for Greece, there will be more austerity. An economy suffering from lack of demand, will have even more sucked out of it. This will cost livelihoods, businesses and lives. But there is hope. The banks will reopen, the opportunity is there for Syriza to fulfil the second half of their mandate - reform of the state and the elimination of corruption - and investment could start a slow recovery. But the perception of victimhood and the bruised national pride will not go away easily.

Yet this is not the end. Germany's reputation has been battered. The damage to the EU's prestige is immense. This spells further trouble, and from more formidable opponents than Greece. The main contradictions of EMU have not been faced. Orthodox economics may have come out of this skirmish victorious, but has lost supporters. Until the flaws in the construction of the Euro are dealt with, crises will keep arising. And that major flaw, the inability to correct imbalances by redistributing surpluses from the wealthy members to the poorer, whether through fiscal union or through financial instruments like Eurobonds, is the main challenge.  Redistribution, a social democratic concept, sits uneasily with orthodoxy. We might, just might, be at the start of a sea change in elite economic thinking. It is long overdue.

UPDATE
The IMF weighs in. This isn't over yet.

Sex

There's some nasty diseases about:

There's a big salmonella outbreak in the US because people keep kissing chickens 

Well what would you expect with puritans like these.

That should have got a bit more traffic to this neglected corner of the internet.

Interlude

Mythical bollocks

This is the worst start to any article on the Greek referendum that I have had the misfortune to read. Nothing could be more cringe-making, surely.

 From the cradle of democracy, a lion has roared.

No, please no. Owen Jones, who else?

Such horrible hyperbole is typical of the sort of journalism we get from someone who knows little of modern Greece. Please, it's not the Greece of antiquity. It's a beautiful Balkan nation with a fascinating, but troubled, recent history; one that has democratised itself since emerging from a military dictatorship only forty years ago. (This is what Joseph Stiglitz called "its strong democratic tradition.") Yet the press regularly call on the classics to fill out their cliché quota, not always accurately.

So, it was good to see a classicist, Natalie Haynes, put them straight on a few things. My favourite line is this one.

As for the referendum result, I doubt the phrase “Greek Tragedy” has been used so much since Vicky Pryce was convicted of having once liked Chris Huhne more than any reasonable person could.

Cruel. But then so is much Greek mythology.

Politics

Referendums are usually about power, not democracy. They are a risky strategy, people do not always vote the way they are supposed to. Pinochet's downfall in Chile is a perfect example of a tactic that failed. But what has happened in Greece is, to my mind, not so much a demonstration of popular resistance to the economics of austerity, but a sign that Tsipras is a capable politician. The referendum has done what it was supposed to do. It consolidated his power.

First, troublesome individuals have been removed. Varoufakis resigned, as did Samaras, the leader of conservative ND.

Second, by convening a meeting of all party leaders, Tsipras has put together a national coalition behind a joint negotiating position and secured their backing. He has neutralised domestic opposition.

Third, he has opened up divisions between his opponents. There are signs that a Franco/German split is developing over Greece.

Now that Tsipras is secure, there are only two possible scenarios remaining. First, there is a deal. The joint statement is based on a vague list of aspirations.

The common goal is to seek a solution that will ensure:

• The adequate coverage of the financing needs of the Country
• Reliable reforms, based on the criterion of the just distribution of burdens and the promotion of development, with the least possible recessionary effects.
• Powerful, front-loaded, growth program, first and foremost for combating unemployment and for the encouragement of entrepreneurship.
• A commitment towards the beginning of substantive discussion on dealing with the problem of the sustainability of the Greek public debt.

If a deal is signed, it will include austerity measures. Tsipras has already shown that he has been willing to accept many of them in the previous round of discussions.

Though Tsipras has consolidated his power domestically, the Greek negotiating position is still weak. There may be a greater perceived risk of political rather than economic contagion, but will the creditors see appeasement or victory as the best way of discouraging it? And so, the second scenario is also possible, Greek exit from the Euro.

This time we should have a clearer idea much more quickly than before.

UPDATE:

They didn't choose appeasement. I am not surprised. 

Euro-zone leaders demand Alexis Tsipras offer them a deal harsher than the one Greek voters just rejected.

What now?

The turkeys did not vote for Christmas, but Christmas has not been abolished.

This very good piece from Nick Malkoutzis summarises the incoherence and uncertainties of the Greek referendum.

The mere fact that tens of thousands of people joined demonstrations for the No camp — under the banner of a Syriza-led government that has displayed nothing but amateurism since it took office in January, in a week when pensioners jostled under the sun to collect 120 euros from their retirement pay — is proof that hope is in short supply. We should consider whether we have reached the point where what is being attempted in Greece is at the outer edges of political and social sustainability.

A supplementary

I have just found another piece from last month, a profile of Mark Mazower. It is perceptive insight on the Greek crisis.

There are two telling quotes in there:

As a friend of Greece, does Mazower think that the country should return to the drachma if European policy does not change?
“I don’t know the answer to that. I think Greek public opinion is very sensible on this issue. It says that Greece must remain in the euro and that eurozone policy must change.”

And,

"...we academics have a tendency to think that once we have shown what is right and what is wrong, then everything else will fall into place. That’s why we become academics and not politicians."

Too true. My cue to leave the stage.

In Greece

I am back in Greece, but have been otherwise engaged. And now I seem to be in the epicentre of a major international crisis. You would hardly notice in this part of the country if it hadn't been for the queues at the ATMs as I drove back from Volos a week ago.

Even though I am here, I am an outsider to both the country and the language. As are most newspaper columnists - and many economists - and that hasn't stopped any of them from pontificating. I am swamped by commentary and by recommended articles. Many boil down to a morality play. Either the innocent Greeks are fighting back against their evil oppressors or the lazy, corrupt Greeks are robbing industrious Northern Europeans. Some columns have both happening at the same time. The majority are based on fleeting trips to Athens. Most cherry pick and by doing so miss out the details that make this crisis far from simple.

To repeat, I am an outsider. I am not even an economist. I am an historian though, and much of this has resonance with past crises. We have been here before and this colours my views. All I can really offer as a form of analysis are links and an overview of what I see are the main elements, all of which contribute to this particular crisis. Taking a deep breath, here we go.

1. Ideology.

Austerity/economic orthodoxy is the dominant ideology at the moment. It has a long pedigree, including amongst its antecedents; the gold standard, the economics of Hoover and Brüning, the May Report and the fall of the 1931 Labour Government. It isn't a happy history. It ended up with the Second World War. The Keynesian opposition to orthodoxy, piloted by Roosevelt through the New Deal, became dominant after the war. Keynes' approach to government budgets was that they should be balanced over a business cycle, rather than over a calendar year. Government should always act counter cyclically, investing during a downturn and retrenching in times of growth. In dealing with debt, Keynes prioritised increasing income (growth) over reducing spending. A Keynesian approach would see it as madness to cut spending and suck demand out of an economy at a time of recession. It would risk turning it into a slump, causing immense hardship and reducing government income, thereby cancelling out any gains made through savings. Orthodoxy always kept some adherents, most notably in the IMF, but regained its dominance through a renewed challenge to Keynes from a resurgent classic liberalism, adapted into a doctrine of neoliberalism (a specific term now used loosely by the left as a 'boo word') and entrenched by the Thatcher and Regan governments.

Amartya Sen published an excellent essay defending Keynes, explaining the neglect of his insights and placing his approach in a historical context here.

Syriza promised a Keynesian approach to the Greek debt crisis and an end to austerity. The problem was that it was impossible to deliver when the institutions were ideologically convinced of the correctness of the opposite. Syriza failed to change the world. It was if they had gone to the Vatican and came out surprised that the Pope was still a Catholic. Vacillating between accusation and compromise, they weren't good diplomats. They had three cards to play, but all were trumped - see Duncan Weldon here. They were right about the economics of austerity, but had no way of delivering an alternative. So what happens next?

2. Illusions.

There is a narrative doing the rounds that the emergence of other indebted countries like Spain, Ireland and Portugal from recession is a sign that austerity worked (conveniently forgetting the fiscal expansion of quantitative easing). I fail to see the return of growth two or three years after you would have normally expected it, in countries with degraded capacities, after the mass emigration of some of its most talented young people, and with increased inequality and poverty, as a conspicuous success. Rather, it is a tribute to the resilience of those societies. But even if austerity can work, was it worth the cost and the destruction of ordinary people's lives?

There is also the sense on the left that Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain are the vanguard of a new mass movement of radical social change, rather than an expression of populist and traditional resentment against the elites by people who have had enough and just want to return to normal. Historically, this has been a resentment that has been exploited in times of crisis as much by the right as by the left. And the Greek government is a coalition between Syriza and ANEL, a far right bunch of ultra nationalist conspiracy theorists (which is why the government's minister of defence believes in chemtrails!). There has always been a question mark about whether Syriza is a leftist or nationalist project and at the moment, rather like the referendum on Scottish independence, the rhetoric on the 'no' side is assuming an unpleasant nationalist tone. Is Tsipras really Greece's Alex Salmond?

The final illusion is that referendums are somehow a pure form of direct democracy, rather than an expedient political tool for a party facing difficulties. Syriza has admitted as much. So we have the curious spectacle of a referendum on whether or not to accept terms that are no longer on offer for a bailout that has expired. The choice thrown down is to accept austerity or to negotiate a bit less austerity. The EU is insisting it is about Euro membership, Syriza say it isn't, but then, if it was, Greeks would vote overwhelmingly to stay in the Euro. The left-wing historian, Mark Mazower, who, unlike many commenters, has written on modern Greek history, knows Greece well and speaks Greek, denounces Sunday's referendum here. Catherine Fieschi places it in the context of a populist challenge to representative democracy where "we seem to be leaving the agora and headed toward a new coliseum."

3. German strength.

This is part of the problem, paradoxically. The whole point of the EU was to cement Franco/German relations and constrain German power. This is a constraint that Germany wanted eagerly. It is haunted by its history. Germany does not want to dominate Europe. That is why it insists on rules, rather than the exercise of power. Ironically, German obduracy leads to accusations of the very thing it is trying to avoid.

German savings, wage restraint and surpluses, the product of its ordoliberalism, may be a virtue in a state with its own currency, but are a weakness in a currency union without corrective mechanisms. They produced the flood of credit that financed their exports to deficit nations at the periphery. Low interest rates, again a product of German economic strength, produced credit booms elsewhere. The crisis was made in Germany, even if it was implemented by the debtor nations, especially in the case of Greek sovereign debt.

4. Greek weakness

I have read many fantasies about how well the Greeks would do if they defaulted and left the Euro. And it may yet happen. But they all discount how badly Greece would be placed. It would be locked out of currency markets and would have a soft, depreciating currency from which they could not benefit. Exports may become cheaper, but they don't have many. Imports would become far more expensive and most energy is imported. The poor will suffer most. There would have to be a major restructure of the economy for Greece to benefit - and boy do they need one - but it will not be an easy answer. It may well have been better if they hadn't joined. They still would have had a crisis, though not this one. But they did and leaving is another matter altogether, although, as Frances Coppola writes, the process may have started already.

Anyone who has had any dealings with the Greek state knows that it is, well, different. Just how different is made clear here by one of the most trenchant opponents of austerity, David Blanchflower.

"The reality is that Greece has a highly uncompetitive economy and no credible tax collection system. The problems mostly are in the product, capital and housing markets that remain unaddressed. According to the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings, Greece ranks 61st, just behind Tunisia. Greece is 155th in the ability to enforce contracts, just ahead of Laos and Botswana. There has been no reform to speak of. Greece is characterised by endemic tax evasion, a poor tax collection infrastructure, parochial patronage policies, corruption and huge delays in the administrative courts dealing with tax disputes. Greece also has deep structural problems, mostly in product markets with oligopolies in almost every industry, closed professions, administrative and bureaucratic impediments to entrepreneurship alongside barriers to trade and exporting, none of which have been addressed. This baby certainly isn’t over. The worry is if the inevitable Greek default spreads."

The Greek state is slowly improving, especially now it is beginning to develop online access, but still needs major reforms. The bureaucracy is labyrinthine and obstructive. The Greek people would welcome change. But why haven't they had it? In the article I linked to earlier, Armartya Sen makes an important point.

But the real (and strong) case for institutional reform has to be distinguished from an imagined case for indiscriminate austerity, which does not do anything to change a ­system while hugely inflicting pain. Through the bundling of the two together as a kind of chemical compound, it became very difficult to advocate reform without simultaneously cutting public expenditure all around. And this did not serve the cause of reform at all...

The compounding of the two – not least in the demands made on Greece – has made it much harder to pursue institutional reforms. And the shrinking of the Greek economy under the influence mainly of austerity has created the most unfavourable circumstances possible for bold institutional reforms.

He is right, but the opposite is true too. Determined opponents of austerity also linked the two and opposed reform as well as the cuts.

The responsibility for the Greek sovereign debt lies with the Greek state. Arguably, the starting point for resolving it should have been reform linked to investment and debt relief. Instead, Greece got cuts - internal devaluation - with little change. Combine this with fear of the consequences of a banking failure post-Lehman and you have the recipe for socialising the losses of private investors' bad investments by compensating them with the wages, pensions and savings of ordinary people.

 5. The Euro.

Throughout the current phase of the crisis, there has been little talk about reforming the structural failings of the Euro. Monetary union without fiscal union has meant that there is no mechanism for transfers between surplus and deficit areas. Differences in competitiveness can no longer be managed through currency exchange rates or interest rates, so the only alternative is through internal devaluation, a competitive lowering of living standards - a race to the bottom as the cliché has it. The Euro was supposed to bring convergence, instead it resulted in polarisation. This report from Stephen Fiddler is an excellent summary.

This is not new either. It is a more comprehensive version of the 19th century experiment, the Latin Monetary Union. It was a failure that was finally killed off in 1927.

There is more, much more, but an explanation that omits any of these elements will be incomplete. Macro economic policy may be wrong, but a change of direction would do little without micro economic change. The flaws in monetary union need rectifying. Looked at today, the whole situation is a pretty potent cocktail and a complete mess. The problems are getting worse too. Under Syriza, the economy has tanked. It is also a story of incompetence, intransigence, and a narrowness of vision. There is much uncertainty. Martin Wolf explains the dilemmas well. 

Looking back at the links in this post, most are from trenchant opponents of austerity. Yet many also support a yes vote. It wasn't a deliberate choice on my part, but it does illustrate how this referendum has divided allies. They share a similar analysis, but differ on the consequences. I have Greek friends who will vote both yes and no, but there is no one I know who isn't voting on the basis of a choice between bad and worse. So I am going to finish with links to two posts. The first is from Yiannis Mouzakis, a very regretful yes voter. The second is from a very angry, Irate Greek (Theodora Oikonomides) who will vote no.

The crisis is rooted in a profound ideological clash between orthodoxy and a revived Keynesianism. It has been taking place in a setting of flawed and failing institutions. It has been handled ineptly and, at times, stupidly. When the history of the crisis comes to be written, not many will come out with any credit, but then we still don't know how that book will end. 

Fear and loathing in academia

I have been reading piece after piece about the stifling of opinion in American and, to a lesser extent, British universities through crippling political correctness, enforced by student activists setting themselves up as the thought police. One tutor has recently gone so far as to write a viral article claiming to be "terrified" of his students. This is so outside my experience, even after more than thirty years teaching, that I assumed that something must be seriously wrong with higher education in the United States. However, I couldn't help feeling uncomfortable about it and that sense of unease raised questions.

The main one was how typical was this? Is this general practice or are we facing another moral panic? I have seen a few bits of unpleasant idiocy over the years, but the overwhelming experience I have had of students is that they are nice, generally polite, and occasionally cut and paste stuff from the internet.

There are some real problems. This example of posh radical feminists getting skewered by a right wing magazine for their intolerance seems a bit overwrought, but the way in which radical groups have promoted misogyny, homophobia, and recruited people from British universities to become, for instance, executioners for ISIS is of far greater importance. The Kipnis case should also raise alarm bells. Then we have all this "infantilizing" stuff about safe spaces, trigger warning and micro aggressions, which has generated a huge press.

But it was still good to read this:  

I was a liberal adjunct professor. My liberal students didn’t scare me at all

Amanda Taub injects some sanity and tells everyone to calm down.

I covered sensitive topics in my courses, including rape, capital punishment, female genital mutilation, and disputed accounts of mass atrocities. Our classroom debates were contentious, and forced students to examine their own biases. I kept an "on-call" list that pressured students to participate actively in those discussions. I did not use trigger warnings.
I never had any complaints.
I bring up my own experiences as a reminder that if the plural of anecdote isn't data, the singular of it sure as hell isn't, either. The fact that I enjoyed my time teaching doesn't tell you anything about the state of education in America — and neither does the fact that the pseudonymous author of this Vox article is a liberal professor who is terrified of his liberal students.
And yet the response to his article, which as of this writing has now been shared more than 190,000 times on Facebook, shows it has struck a nerve. This is something people are genuinely concerned about — enough that the thoughts of an unidentified man from the Midwest feel like a revelation, as if some secret truth everyone suspected has finally been exposed.
In other words, it's truthy: it offers a conclusion that feels as if it should be true, even though it isn't accompanied by much in the way of actual evidence. In this case, that truthy conclusion is that the rise of identity politics is doing real harm — that this new kind of discourse, whether you call it "identity politics" or "call-out culture" or "political correctness," is not just annoying or upsetting to the people it targets, but a danger to academic freedom and therefore an actual substantive problem to be addressed.

Instead she nails the big problem - management.

The Kipnis case was triggered by the complaints of just two students. Why were they taken seriously? It's management that has been too terrified to deal with jihadi recruitment on campus and too venal to listen to senior academics warning it not to take the Gaddafi cash. It's management that has revelled in the power to stifle dissent (and raise their own salaries) bestowed on them by the new managerialism. But it's easier to blame students.

So yes, there is a classic moral panic going on, which is not to say that there are no egregious examples of illiberal idiocy taking place. But we need to remember that behind the "safe spaces" and demands for "trigger warnings" there are real issues. It is just that this isn't the way they should be dealt with. And I have come across students who have had difficulties with topics and comments that have been handled badly. The whole point is that these have to be managed professionally and individually, not by some crazy warning label applied to classic literature. That is what good teachers do. The first thing that I used to tell new tutors in adult education is that they had no idea what was out there in the classroom, that they needed to be aware and sensitive, and if they encountered students with problems to refer them back to us straight away so that we could get the right help in place. Tutors need supporting, not undermining.

So what about the students? Well, they are mainly young and middle class. Mostly, they are serious, depressingly earnest, and without much in the way of life experience. Youth is not a zealot-free-zone. I am not surprised they jump on ideological bandwagons. But as long as an institution is prepared to set and enforce standards for free discourse and mutual respect, the zealots would be little more than extremely irritating. Ah, but now, say the critics, they are treated as customers (presumably instead of as serfs) and that is why it is all going wrong.

There is nothing wrong with treating students as customers, after all they are paying a lot of money for a service and should expect to get something in return. The problems set in once another managerial orthodoxy comes into play - "the customer is always right." The obvious rejoinder is that that they are, except when they are wrong. Customers can also be unpleasant, bullying, offensive and violent. There are times we need to protect staff from them. The idea that the customer is always right, is wrong. To treat students as customers does not mean indulging their worst behaviour and prejudice. It doesn't mean supporting them when they are manifestly in the wrong. It means teaching them well and treating them fairly. The big problems arise when managers ignore this basic principle, shy away from defending social equality and intellectual freedom, and conform to the latest whims of conventional wisdom.

This whole assault on political correctness smacks of educational conservatism. It is couched in the language of the moaning about students that used to infuriate me. And look at its targets; equality and inclusion. Unconstrained censoriousness about bugger all, supported by managerial persecution of marginalised part-time staff, does not mean that we should not be trying to address inequality or finding a more polite and inclusive way of talking and thinking. It simply means that we should be doing it better.

Confusion reigns

We live in unusual times. Whilst the Guardian publishes apologias for Sepp Blatter, the place to go for hard-hitting criticism of the Tory government is, er, the Daily Telegraph.

Well, Theresa May's Psychoactive Substances Bill is a classic of incompetence. Matthew Scott comments:

... the Government seems to have decided that banning 500 substances is not enough. It must ban almost everything that gives pleasure.
And what a ban. Of all the many idiotic, ill thought out and pointless laws ever passed, this would be the one of the silliest. And its draftsmanship would make the asinine Dangerous Dogs Act look like the magisterial 1925 Law of Property Act.
The production, supply, offer to supply, import and export of any “psychoactive substances” will carry potential 7 year gaol sentences.

I suppose they have a point. The terrible scourge of nutmeg needs sweeping from our streets and off our custard tarts. Then we have to outlaw curries (not to mention rye bread). I mean, think of all those chilli addicted zombies, exploited by the cruel curry pushers to be found lurking on street corners, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting at the moment they are most vulnerable - that mysterious time known as "after the pub."

The sheer madness is that the Bill would ban everything unless an exception is made. This breaches the usual legal principle that a person may do anything that is not specifically prohibited by law. Instead people may not consume anything with psychoactive properties unless specifically permitted by law. And so the drafters of this legislation have to dream up exemptions to the blanket ban (coffee, alcohol and tobacco, for example), but they are guaranteed to miss something because the list of substances that "affects the person's mental functioning or emotional state" is virtually endless.

And the age of romance is well and truly murdered:

What stronger emotional response is there than that produced by the beautiful scent of roses delivered to the woman you love? Sorry, that very emotional response is enough to engage Section 3, and if you happen to hand them to her outside a school, or worse still arrange for someone under the age of 18 to deliver them, the Court is obliged by Section 6 to treat those facts as “aggravating features” for the purpose of sentencing. And don't think you could avoid the law by giving her perfume instead of flowers: the esters and oils in perfume are designed to seduce, which is of course an emotional response.

The legislation is lunacy and runs against basic Conservative principles. (As does the even stranger decision to force housing associations to sell their own private property against their will at a discount. At least with privatisation the state actually owned what it was flogging.)

Scott concludes,

The Bill is a textbook example of bad legislation, It is unnecessary, incomprehensible, largely unenforceable, and, by encouraging professional criminals into a new area of business it is likely to prove entirely counterproductive.  

It seems that the hubris of a massive victory achieved with all of 37% of the votes has sent the Tories crazy. No, hang on. Utterly bonkers.