UK Politics: Election diary, WEEK 4

Jeremy Corbyn

From the UK Website Left Horizons

By John Pickard

November 27, 2019 

This was the week that the two main parties launched their election manifestos, although the Tories’ was much less weighty and, as one wag described it, more of a “minifesto.” Labour’s manifesto is the most radical since 1945.

The crisis of British capitalism is so deep and entrenched that a Labour government will have an enormous task implementing its policies. This is explained elsewhere, in an excellent article by the Marxist economist Michael Roberts. But the  manifesto is genuinely seeking to address all the day-to-day problems of austerity faced by the overwhelming majority of the population and it will be welcomed by all Party members. Entitled It’s Time for Real Change, it chimes with the gut feeling of millions of people, offering as it does policies like these:

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*Increasing health budget and bringing all NHS services and employment back in house

·    *Nationalising key utilities to stop profiteering from public services

·    *Raising the national minimum wage and scrapping Universal Credit

·    *Blocking the increase in the age of the state pension

·    *Building 100,000 homes a year and controls on rented accommodation.

As one Labour supporter put it, “what’s not to like?” The Financial Times (and other Tory newspapers) were predictably scathing about what they saw as an anti-business raft of policies, but this august paper of British capitalism couldn’t fail to put its finger on exactly why the political ground is moving below its feet:

We know about austerity…we just have no answers

 “…real wages have still not returned to their pre-crisis peak. Homelessness has risen. Basic public services such as the criminal justice system, social care and local government are dire. Privatised water and rail companies are not delivering for users. Large parts of the population feel excluded from the bright spots of prosperity, mainly in the south-east.” Thus, the Financial Times is able and willing to list the problems, but unwilling to accept that the system the paper defends is incapable of solving them.

The Financial Times is not unique. Even the Mail on Sunday was forced to bend to public sentiment, at least a little bit, by echoing the outrage of million of people about the tax-dodging that is endemic in capitalism. “One in four of the UK's top companies pay no tax,” its headline shouted out last weekend, “while we give THEM millions in credits”.

It went on: “Almost one in four of Britain’s biggest listed companies paid no corporation tax in this country last year – and almost half fail to disclose their tax payments to the UK at all, according to research by The Mail on Sunday. Analysis of the latest annual reports and accounts of all the companies in the FTSE 100 found that 47 companies gave no obvious figures for tax paid in Britain. Of the 53 who did, 12 showed they paid no tax at all and, of these, six actually received a tax credit.” It is very surprising for the Sunday Mail to even mention these facts, although they don’t explain the full extent of the problem – for the rich and super-rich (including the owner of the Mail newspapers) income tax is optional and usually avoided – and nor can they offer any solutions.

Tories offering nothing beyond ‘getting Brexit done’ 

In contrast to Labour’s manifesto, genuinely offering improvements in the lives of the big majority of the population, the Tory manifesto predictably focused on ‘getting Brexit done’. Beyond that there was nothing on offer for ordinary people, except jam tomorrow: it was a real minifesto. Even the Financial Times thought the Tory manifesto was a “leap of faith”.

Another thing we learned last week was that the political donations to the Tories have leapt ahead of Labour, and that they were overwhelmingly from rich backers. The Tories took in £5.67m, according to Electoral Commission, and that was only from donations of above £7,500. On the same measure, Labour only took in £219,000, less than a twentieth of the Tories’ big donations, but they would have received a lot more in small donations from ordinary working people, with not a penny from private equity tycoons, property moguls or theatre impresarios or Russian exile pals of Putin.

Rich donating to the Tories’ coffers

We got some idea where the funds are going as well, because the three main parties are now well into six-figure sums for their spending on social media advertisements. Up to last weekend, most money had been spent on Facebook and Instagram ads (Twitter having banned political ads). Labour had spent up to that time £128,000 on Facebook and Instagram and £15,000; the Tories £143,000 on Facebook and much less, £3200, on Snapchat. It also seems that the Labour were massively outspending the Tories on Google ads, with £64,000-worth placed, compared to Tories £12,500, although that may well change.

We can’t let this go by without mentioning the dirty tricks the Tories have got up to on social media. On the day of the launch of Labour’s manifesto, they published a video of Labour MP Jess Phillips appearing to rubbish the manifesto. She was quoted as saying, "You can never, ever deliver all of those things that you are pretending to deliver when you go to the electorate." In fact she had said those things, but it was in an old interview, on October 3, when she was speaking in general terms about election promises, and before the election was even called. That did not stop Tory Central Office issuing this video in such a way as to give the impression it was said on November 22, in response to Labour’s manifesto.

Dirty Tory tricks again

Not content with this deliberate lie, the Tories also launched a fake website with the domain name labourmanifesto.com, which they proceeded to circulate on Twitter. It looked Labour – with a picture of Corbyn and the right colours – but it carried anti-Labour slogans. Someone handy with the internet turned the tables on the Tories and took the domain Torymanifesto.com, to do the same to them. The latter person had their Twitter account blocked, but the Tories, predictably, did not.

It is far too early to draw any conclusions from opinion polls and we know, in any case, that they are partial and biased. They take no account of swings of moods and changes taking place quite rapidly. On the eve of the general election of 2017, the latest poll predicted that Theresa May was going to get a 78-seat majority, on the basis of a 10-point lead. History will not repeat itself, but there is no reason to doubt that the polls will close as we get nearer to December 12^th. In the meantime, view them with caution.

It was interesting that after the first two-way TV debate, most polls thought that Corbyn had come out a clear winner. Britain Elects polled 33,000 people and the result was Corbyn 57% and Johnson 28%. An ITV poll of 30,000 gave a similar result: Corbyn 78%, Johnson 22%. A Martin Lewis poll of 23,000 gave the result: Corbyn 47%, Johnson 25%. The Times polled 8,000 and got: Corbyn 63%, Johnson 37%. Even LBC, no friend of Labour, showed a poll on Twitter of over 9,000 respondents, with Corbyn ahead by 49% to 29%. Only YouGov, polling a measly 1,646 came out for Johnson, with 51% against 49% for Corbyn. Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to guess which poll was being quoted on the BBC – yes, you’ve guessed it, the YouGov poll.

Another, much larger poll, also by YouGov, has been kept out of the news bulletins (see chart above). In 2017 there was a clear majority for Labour among all younger age groups. That pattern is less stark today, but it is still basically intact. Labour is polling as follows: 18-29 year olds, 51%, 30-39 year olds, 41%, 40-49 year olds, 32% - and this was before the manifesto commitments on pensions  

We see this week that the BBC are up to their dirty tricks again. Two weeks ago, they aired film of Boris laying a wreath at the cenotaph in 2016, no doubt out of embarrassment over his dishevelled look this year. They claimed it was a “mistake” to show 2016 instead of 2019 footage, although it would have needed an editor or producer to order the older footage from the archives. Now they’ve made another “mistake” by editing out laughter during the two-way TV debate. The audience laughed at (not with) Johnson when he muttered something about truthfulness being important. In a later review of the programme, the BBC edited the laughter out, “to save time” they said. We know that it was no “accident” but a deliberate ploy for Johnson’s benefit, to “save face” not time.

The safety, security and well-being of Jews are not threatened

The Tory BBC had a pretext all day yesterday to flag up the fake “anti-Semitism” pervading the Labour Party, in all the prime spots in all their radio and TV news broadcasts. In fact, it was almost impossible to turn on the news on that day and not see a discussion on anti-Semitism, with well-chosen anti-Labour ‘experts’ interviewed. This was all thanks to the intervention of Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis. We knew this was going to be a dirty election campaign and the Chief Rabbi just turned it up a notch. It is notable that the Mirvis made no criticism of the anti-Semitism of Tory candidates and seems to take little interest in Islamophobia (again, rife in the Tory Party) or any other form of racism. No MP has a record of combatting racism and anti-Semitism like Jeremy Corbyn and the Chief Rabbi knows this. The idea that the safety, security and well-being of Jewish people are somehow threatened by Labour is an outright lie and the Chief Rabbi knows this too.

Chief Rabbi welcomed Johnson’s election as PM 

So what do we have? We have a long-standing opponent of socialism and an on-the-record supporter of Boris Johnson who is abusing his position as a religious ‘leader’ to intervene. He deliberately chose the day when Labour was launching its anti-racist manifest. The ‘Tweetosphere’ and social media in general was been full of Jewish Labour Party members that day, denouncing the intervention of Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, but they will not get the same exposure on the BBC or in the papers as the Chief Rabbi. Nor has there been much attention paid to the British Council of Muslims explicitly condemning the Tories for fostering Islamophobia.

We will not be dismayed by this. Labour members know that “anti-Semitism” is just not an issue on the doorstep. Austerity is. The NHS is. We can also take some comfort in the idea that when the establishment – a pillar of which is the Chief Rabbi – begin to create fictitious religious divisions to win the argument, they are clearly getting worried.