Socialist, My Arse!

I like John McTernan, he seems a sensible chap to me and has always been good company when I've run into him on the odd occasion, but if you ask me his 'socialist' message for Scotland is a old of old tosh.

For a start it makes absolutely no mention of equal pay although it does pay lip service to the notion of equality - the so-called bedroom tax gets a mention even though in numerical and financial terms, equal pay is a much bigger issue.

Maybe it's because a serious discussion about equal pay in Scotland would expose the terrible track record of the Labour Party which controlled CoSLA (the employers' body) for years and most of the big Scottish councils until 2007 when proportional representation finally cut them down to size.

A serious discussion of the pay gap between traditional male and female council jobs would also throw the spotlight on the spineless behaviour of the Labour supporting trade unions who turned a blind eye to the issue for many years.

The last Labour Government did indeed do some good things, but John skates over a lot of areas where Tony Blair and Gordon Brown failed to use their overall majority in the House of Commons effectively.

Introducing proportional representation for Westminster elections, for example, reforming the benefits system and making work pay - and as for income tax Labour's new found enthusiasm for a higher tax rate was discovered only in the dying days of Gordon Brown's disastrous time in office, yet wealthy individuals (many of them good 'socialists') have been avoiding paying any income tax for years.

So I am gradually coming round the the view that the only way to inject a real sense of democracy and accountability at Westminster is for Scotland to leave.

Because if so many of these things could not be achieved during 13 years of a majority Labour Government, my feeling is they probably never will be under the present system at least.    


John McTernan: Labour needs message of socialism

Ed Miliband needs to ask Scotland what kind of country it wants to be. Picture: Getty

By JOHN MCTERNAN - The Scotsman

John McTernan has some advice for Ed Miliband: his party needs to remind Scots that we need social solidarity, and ‘we’ means GB

ED Miliband got a warm reception in Motherwell last week, as did his shadow cabinet. He made a powerful, socialist case for the United Kingdom, but it was just the start. He and his parliamentary colleagues – in the Commons and the Lords – now need to wear out their shoe leather criss-crossing Scotland. They need a powerful and consistent argument, expressed in a stump speech. Here’s my first draft for Ed.

“Friends, the question on 18 September is the same question that has been asked in Scotland since Keir Hardie stood in the Mid-Lanark by-election, 126 years ago. What kind of country should we be? Keir Hardie lost that fight, but he won the war. How? By fighting and winning a seat. First in West Ham in London. Then finally in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales – the seat he held for the rest of his life. Keir Hardie’s answer then is my answer now. We need the Labour Party and we need socialism. And England, Wales and Scotland need a Labour government.

“Equality is at the heart of Labour today, just as it was a century ago. This has never been an easy struggle to win. There are powerful forces that are ranged against us. But we have prevailed. And we will again.

“The first Labour MPs were told that the simple things they wanted – jobs, decent homes and free health – were impossible. Now those demands are backed by every political party. Though, as we see today, not delivered by them. We make progress, but the fight goes on.

“Today’s inequality demands new solutions. That’s why Labour backs the living wage. That’s why Labour will increase taxes on those most able to pay. That’s why Labour will build homes and tackle rising rents.

“Today’s inequality has new friends. The Tory and Liberal Democrat government, for example. We will repeal their bedroom tax. We’ll reverse their tax cut for the rich. We’ll cut energy prices for families and businesses.

“But inequality has other friends too. Does anyone here seriously believe that the biggest companies in Scotland pay too much tax? No, I didn’t think so. But Alex Salmond does. He wants to cut their corporation tax. Like George Osborne, he wants to start a race to the bottom. On top of that, he’s against raising income tax for the richest.

“I’m not saying it’s wrong for him to hold those views. I am saying it’s wrong for Scotland. I’m not saying it’s wrong for him to support Tory policies on business and the economy. I am just saying it’s wrong for the SNP to say that makes them a social democratic party. It’s a democracy. The SNP are free to promote inequality. But they shouldn’t pretend they are on the side of working people. Raising the cost of a beer is one thing – slashing the tax bills of CEOs is quite another.

“Scotland has a proud history of social solidarity. From Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald to Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander, it has provided Scots to lead the Labour Party. Scotland wants a Labour government. It voted for one last time, and the Liberal Democrats gave Scotland the coalition, austerity and the bedroom tax. Some people say that because of that we should break up Britain. They say a one-off event – the first ever peace-time coalition – should make us tear up a 308-year-old partnership. Now that would really be taking the huff.

“No-one, not even the Swedish Social Democrats, can win every election. When you lose, you redouble your effort to win the next time. When the SNP won an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament, no-one suggested scrapping devolution. Instead, we fought to regain the trust of Scottish voters and come forward with new policies and powers for the parliament. You don’t change the rules when you lose, you change yourselves.

“And change is what Scotland and the UK needs. We saw in 1997 how quickly the damage of 18 years of Tory government could be reversed. Section 28 abolished. Civil partnerships introduced. The right to join a union restored. Rights for paid holidays. New maternity and adoption rights. Schools and hospitals rebuilt. Public spending doubled. Pensioner poverty ended. A million children – 100,000 in Scotland – taken out of poverty. A national minimum wage and tax credits. Unemployment falling until the Great Recession. Peace in Northern Ireland. The constitution transformed. A Supreme Court. Lords reform. The Human Rights Act. The Welsh Assembly. The Northern Ireland Assembly. The Scottish Parliament. The rebirth of Britain. We did it. We did it together. Those were great achievements. Could we have done better? Of course. You can always do better. Have we learned from the experience? Yes, we have. I am proud of the government I was part of, but not satisfied.

“That’s why I’m committed to shaking up cosy cartels. In banking – where we need to give consumers and small businesses the services they deserve. In energy – where we need real reform, and customers need a break. Our price freeze, opposed by Alex Salmond, is just the start. In Whitehall – where, having learned the lessons of devolution, we are going to set England’s cities and counties free from the man from the ministry. And in housing, where we’ll fix the failed markets with one million homes in five years – 20,000 a year here in Scotland.

“Scotland led the way but the Tories have now lost the North and English cities. In 53 weeks there will be a Labour government. And the Tories will be in opposition. Tearing themselves apart over Europe; the only issue they seem to be passionate about any more. The Liberal Democrats? Well, they’ll be trying to find the people who thought getting into bed with the Tories was a good idea in the first place. And Labour? Labour will be making the changes the country needs.

“The coalition has done some terrible things. But they can be reversed.

“The break-up of Britain can’t.”

Socialist, My Arse! (7 April 2014)

Here's a post from the blog site archive in which the Private Eye lays bare the greedy behaviour of Westminster MPs.

Now I can't understand how anyone can justify spending public money in this way with MPs of all parties 'filling their boots' and profiting to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds from the London property market.

Socialist, My Arse! (10 February 2013)

Private Eye continues to expose the behaviour of the 'not so great and good' at the Palace of Westminster - through its regular HP Sauce column - so here's the latest offering for your interest and amusement

HP Sauce

"So, farewell then John Lyon, who has just retired from his four-day-a-week £105,000 job as parliamentary commissioner for standards after presiding over the worst era of fiddling in the history of the Commons. 

Consistency was not his catchphrase. He was keen totake up complaints from the BNP, including one against Denis McShane. But he let off lucky David Laws, who gace £50k of taxpayers' money to his live-in partner in the form of "rent" - a fiddle no other member had been bright enough to think of.

Lyon refused to investigate some of the biggest examples of MPs' boot-filling, such as the thousands claimed in so-called petty cash. Oddly enough, one of the most regular exploiters of the petty cash wheeze, which allowed MPs to trouser up to £250 a month without receipts, was Kevin Barron MP - who just happens to chair the standards and privileges committee that oversees the commissioner's work, now better known at Westminster as the double standards committee. Since we described Lyon in 2009 as "feeble" and an "establishment stooge" (Eye 1241), he has done nothing to prove us wrong.

Well, almost nothing. In his last act before retiring, Lyon belatedly woke up to the worst abuse of the expenses system - the massive claims for mortgage interest payments. He opened an inquiry into Maria Miller MP, who claimed £90,000 over four years for a house she alreaduy owned where her parents lived. The new commissioner, Kathryn Hudson, now has the delicate task of of deciding whether to ask the culture secretary to repay the money and how long Miller might be suspended for claiming seven times the amount that forced McShane to resign. 

If Hudson does take Miller to task, other MPs who made a fortune from the London property market before 2010 - step forward again, Kevin Barron, who sold his taxpayer-funded flat for a profit of almost £500,000 - will begin to tremble. Dare she antagonise the chairman of her own double standards committee, a challenge her predecessor conspicuously ducked? Watch this space."  

I don't know about anyone else, but I do laugh to myself when I stop and think about the contortions of some Labour MPs - who like to portray themselves as 'good socialists'.

While their party leader - Ed Miliband - bangs on about the 'something for nothing' society, of course.

Socialist my arse - as people might say here in Glasgow
.

Public Money (1 December 2012)

The latest edition of Private Eye has another timely piece about Westminster MPs and what I would describe as a rather cavalier approach - towards spending public money.

Only this time an 'honourable' Labour member is in its sights.

"HP Sauce"

"Kevin Barron MP, chairman of the standards and privileges committee, said Denis McShane's illegitimate expenses claim was "the gravest case" he had ever come across.

What a sheltered life Barron must lead! Although his committee found it impossible to say how much McShane had claimed "outside the rules", they thought it "may have been in the order of £7,500".

The rules that he broke were thise stating that an MP can claim no more than three European trips a yea, with business-class travel and four-star hotels. McShane made more than three trips a year after 2005, in his capacity as Tony Blair's unpaid Euro-envoy, but he travelled on EasyJet and stayed with friends to keep the costs down to the same sort of level as would cover the officially sanctioned trips. 

In total, his Euro-expenses between 2005 and 2008 came to about £12,000. That is what Kevin Barron describes as "the gravest case that has come before this committee". 

Can this be the same Kevin Barron who sold his taxpayer-funded flat at a £500,000 profit after the 2009 expenses scandal, and then exploited a loophile in the rules (following the ban on MPs claiming mortgage interest) by renting a flat from fellow MP John Trickett so he could carry on claiming the housing allowance? "    

Now there's a thing - an eye-watering profit of £500,000 all paid for by the public purse

And I wouldn't be in the least surprised if some of these Labour members who have benefited in this way - continue to regard themselves as good socialists.

I hope one of the newspapers publishes a list of all MPs who have made a small fortune from the London property market - on the back of their housing allowances.