Dutch Election - Wilders Falters, Labour Crash, Green Left Gain

The political establishment across Europe are celebrating yesterday’s Dutch general election result, where Gert Wilders' party, PVV, did not make the large gains that opinion polling have been suggesting. The turn-out, at 80%, was unusually large.

The PVV stood on an unambiguous platform of anti-EU, anti-Muslim immigration policies, and it was thought would follow the right wing popularist trend of Brexit and Trump in recent protest votes. Well done to the Dutch people for rejecting this type of divisive politics.

The high turnout and spread of votes amongst several parties, played a part in halting PVV's advance, but perhaps more significantly, the centre right VVD party, stole some of the anti-immigration rhetoric from PVV, and the public row with Turkey probably helped as well.

Echoes of the UK, where the Tories are playing the same game, and thereby gaining former UKIP voters with anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric. It is a widely held view that the rise of the National Front in the UK in the 1970’s was halted by the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government, which was big on patriotism.

The Labour Party, PvdA, were the big losers, after participating in a coalition government with the centre right party VVD, with further echoes of the Lib Dems, this time, in the UK, and a continuing slide by social democrat parties in Europe that have embraced neo-liberalism. PvdA went from 38 seats to just 9.VVD won the most seats, with 33, down 8.

Smaller parties were the main gainers, with the Dutch GreenLeft Party (GroenLinks in Dutch) gaining 10 seats, going from 4 to 14. As the name suggests the party is a left wing environmental one, and describes itself as "green", "social" and "tolerant." Not explicitly ecosocialist, it is after all a reformist party, but certainly heading in an ecosocialist direction.

The result demonstrates that a Green Left party can take significant votes off social democratic parties, particularly in the bigger cities. GreenLeft topped the poll in Amsterdam.

A coalition government will have to be built between at least 4 parties, but GreenLeft have said all along that they will not participate in a right or centre right government. It would be wise to stick to that after what happened to the PvdA at this election.

This is an English translation of a statement by GreenLeft about yesterday’s Dutch general election. 

From their website GroenLinks:

Thank you for voting, thank you for your commitment to the campaign. We have shown along that ideals do matter in politics. We showed together that we can get the country moving. We have written history.

Together we form a great new movement, which connects green and leftist values together. A movement for change. We go on.

Join us so we can listen to you. We need you, to share concerns with each other. To exchange new ideas. To discuss how we proceed not only from The Hague, but also in the country to bring real change in the Netherlands.

Let's change the Netherlands together.

Congratulations to GroenLinks from Green Left in London.  

Lords Vote for Parliament to have a Say on Brexit Deal has made a Snap General Election More Likely

The House of Lords tonight voted by a majority of 98 for Parliament to have a final veto over whatever deal the government agrees with the EU, for the country’s post Brexit relationship with Europe.

MPs in the House of Commons will now vote on this amendment, and the one the Lords passed last week to unilaterally allow resident EU citizens the right to stay in the UK. Tonight’s vote in the Lords causes potentially more problems for the government, in that it strikes at the heart of the government’s Brexit strategy.

This strategy, if we can call it that, is to demand everything from the EU and if we don’t get it, to make no deal at tall. If this amendment is passed by the House of Commons, MPs will effectively be able to send the government back to the negotiating table, to try and get something better.

Of course, whether the House of Commons will vote for the amendment is another matter, as it will require perhaps 20 or 30 of the pro-EU Tory MPs to vote for it. It could be that the government makes some kind of compromise offer, if they fear losing the vote, but this government has shown no signs on compromising over its Brexit stance.

If the vote is passed in the House of Commons, I suspect the government will be amenable to calling a snap general election. If the Tories won the election, which looks highly likely at this stage, it would give it an extra authority over Parliament in terms of a mandate for its Brexit position. Risky maybe, but it would give the government the opportunity to get its way, if it won.

The 2011 Fixed Parliament Act, would have to be got around, but the potential rewards of a snap election for the government are huge. The 2011 Act allows for two ways an election can be called, other than the 5 year fixed term.

The first is for a vote for an election by two thirds of MPs in Parliament, so opposition parties, particularly Labour, would largely need to vote for it. The other way is that a no confidence vote is passed against the government, and after 14 days, another government that did command the confidence of a majority of MPs, could not be formed.

The first option is probably easier, although Labour may block it, despite what its leader Jeremy Corbyn has said about wanting an early election, not all Labour MPs may want this. There are two other possibilities, the 2011 Act could be repealed by a majority in the House of Commons, or it could be bypassed as an exception to the Act, as a one off. Again a simple majority of MPs is required for this.

The former Tory leader Lord Hague has thrown his weight behind the government calling an early election, by one of the means available, as he thinks the government would win easily and so increase its authority over Parliament on Brexit.

The Prime Minister, Theresa May, has said all along that she is not in favour of an early election, as there is no need for it, and no desire from the public for it, but if her Brexit plan is knocked sideways by the Lords vote tonight, and if enough Tory MP rebels can be found to support the Lords, she may have little choice.

It would be a major humiliation for May, if her whole strategy was rejected in this way, and it would leave her vulnerable at the next scheduled general election in 2020, if she made it as far as still being Prime Minister in 2020, which is doubtful. The Tories are ruthless at ditching leaders, and she would be a sitting duck.

It is time her enemies in the Tory put down a marker, Nicky Morgan, George Osborne et al, that they start the process of getting revenge on May for the way she treated them when she became Prime Minister. Will they do it? The odds are still against, but maybe, just maybe.

Stoke and Copeland By-election Results Show the Folly of Labour’s Hard Brexit Stance

Let us start with the constituency of Stoke in yesterday's by-elections, which at least the Labour Party managed to retain on Thursday. On a low turn-out of just 38%, Labour won with a 37.1% share of the vote, which is a fall of 2.2% of the vote share from the last general election in 2015. I suspect that most of the fall in support went to the Lib Dems who increased their vote share by 5.7%.

Labour were fortunate, that in a constituency that voted strongly to leave the EU at last year’s referendum, and where UKIP had finished second in 2015, the UKIP candidate and new leader, Eddie Hitler loolalike, Paul Nuttall, ran an abysmal campaign. Caught out telling lies about losing close friends at the Hillsborough football disaster, that he lived in the constituency, has a PHD and was a professional footballer, and making several policy gaffes, like wanting to privatise the NHS, he threw Labour a lifeline. Even then, Nuttall did manage to increase his party’s vote share by 2.1%, but it was not enough.

If UKIP can’t win a seat like Stoke, with their leader standing, then there is little hope for them anywhere else. Labour apparently, did manage an effective ground operation, with hundreds of party members doing the hard slog of door knocking in poor weather, but against a more credible opponent, they would probably have lost. The Tories also increased their vote share by 1.9% on 2015.

Which brings us to the other by-election on Thursday, Copeland in Cumbria, which the Tories won from Labour with a 6.7% swing from Labour to Tory. A seat held by Labour for 80 years and the first by-election loss by the main opposition party to the governing party since 1982, when the SDP split the left vote and the Tories won from Labour, with a 10.2% swing, in Mitcham and Morden in south London. The Tories went onto win a landslide victory in the 1983 general election.

So this was a historic loss by Labour and must be deeply worrying to the party. A national swing of 6.7% from Labour to Tory would see the Tories gain 52 seats from Labour, reducing the party to around 170 seats and a Tory overall majority of 114. And remember the constituency boundaries will likely change before the next general election, which favours the Tories by around 25 additional seats.

The increase in the Tories share of the vote at 8.5% is almost exactly the same as the 9% fall in the UKIP vote since 2015, and this will be the most troubling aspect for Labour, because it looks as though the Tories have stolen the UKIP vote, which is hardly surprising given the hard Brexit stance of the government. The Lib Dems also increased their vote share by 3.8%, which makes matters even worse for Labour, as they look to be in a pincer movement, with the Lib Dems picking up voters who wanted to remain in the EU and those wanting to leave, moving to the Tories.

Corbyn supporters have been quick to blame the two MPs who stood down and Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson for comments they made in the week leading up the election, but this is a weak excuse. Nobody really listens to Blair or Mandelson these days, they were not a factor in these results.

Corbyn’s critics have laid the blame at Corbyn’s doorstep, but are reluctant to launch another leadership challenge, after Corbyn’s easy win last year. They are putting pressure on Corbyn to stand down for the good of the party, but they tried this last year too. Corbyn strikes me as a stubborn individual and he is unlikely, now at least, to resign the leadership.

But the plates are shifting, Dave Prentis, leader of the second biggest trade union in the UK, UNISON, released a statement which implied that Corbyn was partly to blame for the Copeland defeat.   

The main difference though to last year is that Corbyn’s support amongst newer members appears to be falling. These members are overwhelmingly pro-EU and have been saddened by Corbyn insisting Labour MPs vote to trigger the Article 50 process which will formally see us leave the EU.

As we saw in these by-elections, Labour’s Article 50 debacle isn’t even popular with voters who want to leave the EU, or Labour would have held Copeland and done better in Stoke. History may conclude that the Article 50 vote in Parliament, was the beginning of the end for Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

I think Corbyn is now beatable in a leadership challenge, and if he doesn’t stand down, I think one will come before the next general election in 2020, probably in 2018. If the opinion polls don’t improve, and worse if more seats are lost to the Tories (and Lib Dems), there will surely be an attempt to oust Corbyn.

And what of the Greens? Well, we did poorly in Thursday’s by-elections, but these areas are not fertile ground for the Greens. In the south of England we should concentrate on challenging the Lib Dems for the 48% of voters who voted to remain in the EU. There must be people who will not vote for the Lib Dems because of their part in propping up the Tories, and the Greens are just as pro EU as the Lib Dems.

We should look to widen the crack in Labour’s support from remainers, it could well be very fruitful come the general election. 

Blair Seeks Redemption with call for Anti-Brexit Uprising

Photo credit: The Guardian

In a speech in London today to the pro-European Union (EU) campaign Open Britain, former Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, urged the British people to ‘rise up’ against leaving the EU.

Pressed on whether he thought there should be a second referendum, he said: "All I'm saying is a very, very simple thing, that this is the beginning of the debate - that if a significant part of that 52% show real change of mind, however you measure it, we should have the opportunity to reconsider this decision.”

Blair, who was Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007, has never really regained his political credibility since his fateful decision to join the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The dodgy dossier, spin and downright lies employed by Blair to persuade Parliament of the necessity of the invasion, was laid bare by the subsequent failure to find  any weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

He struggled on as Prime Minister until 2007, but Iraq was the beginning of the end of Blair’s premiership. He was damaged goods and it was only a matter of time before the Labour Party moved to oust him.

In the intervening years, apart from regularly defending his decision to go to war on a false prospectus, Blair has always given me the impression that he craves to be back in the political limelight, but Iraq has hung like a millstone around his neck.

But it looks as though Blair has spotted an opportunity at redeeming his reputation by advocating that Britain should not leave the EU, despite last summer’s referendum in which a majority of the British people voted to leave. Brexit is of course the biggest political issue of the day, and so Blair is likely to get a hearing in the media, unlike perhaps his thoughts on the middle-east peace process, for example.

Blair is right to point out that the decision made on 23 June last year was a snapshot of the views of the British public, which doesn’t necessarily mean that this view can’t change, especially as the implications of leaving become clearer. We should remember too, that at 52%-48% for leave, this was hardly an overwhelming mandate anyway. Views can change, and do, one narrow decision on one day in 2016, cannot be set in stone forever.

The Lib Dems political revival is being built on a pro-EU platform, with some success, and it has surely not been lost on Blair that if they can be forgiven their broken promises when in coalition with the Tories, then why can’t he be absolved from past mistakes, when championing such a noble issue as the future good of the country?

Well, I’m not sure Blair has been forgiven, particularly by many leave voters who blame him, with some justification, for allowing the sharp increase in immigration from eastern Europe, when his government failed to apply a ten year ‘emergency brake’ on immigration, which was allowed under EU rules.

I listened to a political radio phone in show on the BBC last night, just as the news of Blair’s speech was breaking, and it was met with scorn by many of the callers. Even some callers who want to remain in the EU, although agreeing with Blair’s arguments, didn’t think it helpful that he personally is the messenger. That credibility thing again.

As one caller put it, ‘you can’t believe anything he says after Iraq.’

I’m no fan of Blair’s, he is one of the main reasons why I stopped voting Labour and joined the Green Party, but he may be onto something here.

At least he is issuing a rallying call to the 16 million British people who voted to remain in the EU, which may begin to lift the gloom that has enveloped many remainers. Particularly since Corbyn led Labour’s abject capitulation to the Tory agenda on Brexit.

Let us argue the case against the government’s reckless interpretation of this great political and cultural matter, whoever the messenger happens to be.

Labour Returns to Focus Group Politics over Brexit

The Article 50 Bill which paves the way for the UK to exit the European Union (EU) was, as expected, passed through the House of Commons tonight, without amendment. The Bill will now head to the House of Lords. The government did say though that Parliament will be able to reject the settlement when finalised.

The Labour Party took a rather confusing position yesterday, as its spokesperson on exiting the EU, Sir Keir Starmer, hailed it as a great concession by the government that MPs will be allowed a take it or leave it vote on the deal. Then the vast majority of its MPs voted for its own amendment giving MPs a veto over the deal.

The concession is nothing of the sort, as Alex Salmond, the SNP MP commented, ‘Hobson’s choice, is no choice at all.’

By this morning Starmer was still claiming it as victory for Labour, saying that the Prime Minister would not leave the EU with no deal other than World Trade Organisation terms, but this is probably just wishful thinking at best. At worst a piece of political spin Alistair Campbell would have been proud of.

In reality, opposition MPs will have to accept whatever Theresa May can get from the EU, or they will get the blame for forcing the hardest of Brexits on the country.

Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP wrote on her website:

‘With the Government’s own spokesperson confirming that nothing of substance has been newly offered today, it’s clear that the earlier celebrations from the Labour benches were excruciatingly premature.’

‘This defeat cements the Tories extreme Brexit plans and provides ample evidence to wavering MPs that they should vote against this Bill at a third reading if they want to protect the UK from falling off a Brexit cliff edge.’

Game, set and match to the government, with Labour just looking impotent. Labour only have themselves to blame, by making it clear that the party would vote for the Article 50 Bill, whether or not its amendments were accepted, which gave the government no reason to concede anything. This concession is what has already been promised by the government months ago.

We know this has been a tricky issue for Labour, with most of its voters voting to remain in the EU, but most of their Parliamentary seats in the north of England and in Wales voting to leave. Even so, I have been puzzled by their approach, since the party as whole was pro-remain and having elected a leader on the basis of principled politics, rather than chasing the whims of a few voters in swing constituencies.

Well, all that appears to have changed. An interesting piece in yesterday’s Guardian sheds some light on Labour’s approach to Brexit. Written by Anthony Wells who works for the opinion pollster YouGov, he reports on a study of Labour leave and remain voters, in which they were offered four different scenarios of how Labour should react to Brexit.  

The least unpopular option with both sets of voters, although not necessarily the most popular with either side, is of a soft Brexit, that is, leaving the EU but staying in the single market. In other words, the lowest common denominator. This stance is of course the same one that the government has taken, although not a single EU leader thinks this is realistic.

We were promised that with Jeremy Corbyn as leader, Labour would abandon triangulation and the obsession with focus groups of the new Labour years, but this looks uncannily similar to the tactics of the Blair/Brown government.

The trouble with this approach now, is if the government makes a pig’s ear out of the negotiations with the EU, which is probable, Labour will be unable to do anything about it, other than effectively choose an even worse option. And when they had the chance to gain some real influence over the negotiation, Labour waved it through, for fear of upsetting some of its supporters.

They will hardly be able say that they looked after the best interests of the country during the Brexit process, when in fact they meekly accepted the government’s agenda. Labour is now irrelevant on the biggest political issue in the UK for decades and will deserve the heavy defeat they will almost certainly get at the next general election, whatever spin they are trying to put on the situation now.