In France

Christopher Caldwell, in the New Statesman reviews Christophe Guilluy’s body of work including “Le crépuscle de la France d’en haut”. It’s an examination of France but we in Britain should recognise the coming hour glass economy, the growing politics of anti-globalisation, the new definitions of identity and multi-culturalism, even in the home of secular republicanism. In France we add, the poverty of the rural economy, and the massive public housing stock. The French, like us, have an imperial past creating an immigration flow above and beyond that of economics.

He argues that in France immigration is bringing in cheap labour to act as the new servant class to the bourgeois. I can’t find the chart, but the Financial Times during the referendum campaign illustrated that immigrants to the UK were spread, fairly evenly across the skills spectrum and the point has been made very powerfully about the number of immigrants working in the NHS as Doctors, Nurses and other carers. The same is true in both Banking and Construction. Possibly an important difference, certainly I am of the view that the number of people coming here to work is based on demand and stopping them or sending them home is madness and wrong.

The article examines Hollande’s election campaign and how it sought to rebuild Obama’s coalition of ethnic minorities, graduate and post-graduates, women, youths and non-Catholics in France; arguing that this wasn;t a majority but was the core of one.

It’s a long read, but I found it worth while; there are lessons for us in Britain. …

Kaahn!

And now I discover why it’s still worth buying and reading the New Statesman magazine. I have just read George Eaton’s full article on Sadiq Kahn’s first year as Mayor of London. It is trailed here on the New Statesman site and the full article is as yet unavailable on the web. It is quite timely as I was challenged as to what good he was doing for those who voted for him by people last week.

He has been busy, freezing the fares on the buses and tubes, launching the Night Tube, introduced a toxicity charge for the most polluting vehicles and imested in skills provision for London’s workers. hasn’t he introduced the bus hopper fare? I know he’s shit-canned the Garden Bridge which I am in two minds about. He has set a 38% affordable housing target for new builds (up from 12%) and redefined the meaning of affordable. The housing policy launch was reported by Dave Hill here…. He has appointed the first female Met Police Commissioner and also appointed a women to the position of Head of the Fire Brigade.

The article also points out that much of Boris’ activity was planned and approved under his predecessor’s (i.e. Ken Livingstone’s) term of office but that Kahn has had no initiatives to inherit, apart from the Garden Bridge, Water Cannon, the Vanity Lard bus, the Helter Skelter without a mat and the Dangleway.

The interview also covers his opposition to the Progressive Alliance; he states that, “There should be no no-go areas for Labour”. He recalls that he was advised to focus on core areas only but (righty) refused. I think that Labour supporters deserve to have a Labour candidate to support, but am ready to take advice from local activists.

  …

Hurdles

While, post election, should Labour lose seats, any decision by Corbyn to resign will be a reflection  of the balance of forces in the party, if the number of votea increases the argument he should stay is as strong as it was for Kinnock. …

Public Interest

So no prosecutions for Electoral Fraud, now there’s a surprise! A blogger, calling him or herself the Secret Barrister explains in detail here, that the Conservative Party at a national level have been found guilty of electoral fraud and that investigations into further prosecution of their, then, national treasurer are still continuing.  At a local level, the CPS had to determine if there was sufficient evidence of corruption (prison) and/or false accounting (fines) to warrant prosecution. They decided that there was insufficient evidence of corruption at a local level, because the national party had told them the expenses were national party expenses, which they then, in some part, under reported. They also decided there was no public interest in prosecuting them for false accounting. The secret barrister describes this as charitable.

Given the amount of words used by the Electoral Commission, in levying the maximum fine, stating that part of the Tories’ offence has been the undermining of public confidence in the PPERA and its electoral expense control, one might have thought that the CPS would consider that there are public interest grounds for prosecuting those for whom evidence of false accounting was solid.

Who appoints the DPP? …

France

Last Sunday, Emmanuel Macron defeated the fascist Marine Le Pen in the run off election for the Presidency of France by a margin of 2 – 1 despite the late playing of “the you’ve been hacked” card. Others have accurately observed that the right wing part of the Republican Alliance held firm and voted for Macron, an ex-socialist government minister. We can observe, particularly, after President Trump’s dismissal of the FBI Director Comey, and the Congressional Republican’s supine & sectarian acceptance that populist dictators only succeed with the support of the once democratic right! The right in the US and the UK need to think very hard about what they’re doing. Vive la France. …