Politics – davelevy.info

A manifesto for the Labour Movement for Europe

I am standing for election to the LME national committee in the London region.

I’ve been a member of the LME for many years.

It’s interesting that over the last couple of weeks it seems that even the government recognises that we need a better trade agreement with the European Union and that the “reset” is not going well.

Mood is not enough.

The simplest and most complete relationship is of course full membership which I support. We need to rejoin.

Brexit is a mistake and more and more people realise this.

But the UK cannot rejoin the European Union until it is ready to be good citizens, this will not happen without Labour commitment and leadership.

If elected I will seek to bring the LME to a position where it campaigns to rejoin the single market in preparation for rejoining the European Union and calls on the Party to commit to full membership of the EU and to argue for rejoining as good citizens.

This Labour government has the impossible policy of seeking to Fix Brexit; this is not possible. The Labour Government’s cherry-picking approach is making little headway and the claim that they will not sign deals not in the interests of the British people while pursuing a topic by topic approach makes achieving deals at speed exceedingly hard and provokes resistance in the European Union and its member states.

Labour needs to commit to rejoining when the time is right, commit to joining the single market as soon as possible i.e. this parliament and if elected to the National Committee, I will do my best to see that the LME plays a role in bringing Labour to these positions.

That’s what I want to do, and that’s why I want to be on the committee as I think my views will make a difference however I’m a lifelong IT worker having worked in development, operations, and policy, finishing with time in privacy compliance. I also served on committees running the predecessor to the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. These skills and experience might be useful to the committee and organisation.

I am on the national committee of Another Europe, and work with Citizens Takeover Europe. I am a Labour Party member in Lewisham North.

The vote is by a preferential voting system, I’d ask for your first preference and to transfer to anyone else who argues that we need to rejoin.

Image Credit: by me, CC 2017 dfl1955 BY-SA …

UK–EU Defence: Stronger Together

How damaging is the European union’s rejection of the UK’s attempts to join its SAFE programme; SAFE Is the European Union’s new defence funding programme.

The most succinct report that I can find is on Euroweekly News in an article, entitled, “UK excluded from €150bn EU defence deal” which states that,

On November 28, the UK government announced that negotiations to join the EU’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defence fund had failed, marking a significant blow to what had been billed as a “reset” of UK‑EU post‑Brexit relations.

However, Euroweekly News, also states that SAFE has a 35% access to 3^rd party countries, which some might consider generous given that the programme is to be funded by ECB bond issue of €150bn. The cap is however per contract which would, almost certainly, for instance, make selling warships ineligible for SAFE funding, not to mention the fact that numerous EU countries can build both warships and warplanes. The EU were asking for a UK contribution, some might say, a large contribution, to the fund, before lifting the cap to 50%. It also interests me that the whole argument is about selling to the EU, and not the UK buying European weapons, although the Euro benefit to this is massively undermined by the UK decision to buy US warplanes and more US nukes.

The UK proving once again that it is “a nation of shopkeepers” walked away from this deal.

Defence co-operation was meant to be the most advanced topic of the EU-UK May reset agreement. Even with defence on the table, cherry-picking is unacceptable to the European Union as is the UK’s insistence that every deal must benefit the UK.

Image Credit: NATO …

Untimely Atlanticism, a note on the UK-US Tech Prosperity Deal

I wrote a response to the US/UK Technology deal which was eventually published in the Chartist Magazine. They entitled it, “Untimely Atlanticism” with a sub title, “US AI data centres drain power and offer little for UK jobs while in Europe opportunities call “. The rest of the article, is overleaf, behind the "Read More" button. I talk about the new data centres, their immense scale, the digital colonialism, the import implications of the deal, and question the short term and long term economic benefits of AI. I finish by oitin g out the European co-operation might be more beneficial. ...

On the autumn statement 2026

Rachel Reeves in front of No 10/1 with a red box

A quick note on the budget, remembering I wasn’t as critical of last year’s as some, at least not on macro-economic grounds. I was obviously against the failure to abolish the two child cap, but also against the failure to properly fund universities, students, and local government.

So this budget is, to me, a bit meh and I agree with Fisher, why wait for a year? Still nothing on HE or Local Government finance, and the wealth taxation is very weak and poorly focused. No capital gains tax equalisation, no financial transaction tax.

The freezing of tax free allowance amounts is probably more damaging to those on the margin of the upper rate tax band but as I read it, it’s a piece of accounting magic. There were no plans to change it for the next two tax years anyway, and they can change their minds, although some of the impact will occur after the next election.

Also the FT reports that leading business people consider it insufficiently stimulating of growth, which in their case is probably not code for, “We need to rejoin the single market and customs union.”, although there are many, including me and Liz Webster, that are saying so; our macro-economic arguments recently augmented by a report from the US non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research and by Ryan Bourne’s recanting of his pro-Brexit position.

Image Credit: from freemalaysiatoday cc 2024 by …

Digital Justice in the EU

Image Sign in front of the CJEU's Palais de la Cour de Justice

The Commission of the European Union has issued a report proposing what they call the digitalization of justice. At the moment, this is mainly about best practise, although it seems they plan to improve digital access to the European court’s case law. A commentary has been made by the EU’s agency for fundamental rights cautiously welcoming the report but highlighting both the risks to privacy and the threat that such schemes will fail to improve justice for citizens, or worse. A further commentary can be found at the EU Observer, taking an equally cautions approach. …

The EU Hokey Cokey

I watched the first day of the EU UK parliamentary partnership assembly. The first session was on general issues & trade and the second on defence. I made some notes which you can read overleaf. Following the agenda of the meeting, I talk of Trade and Defence in two parts. Throughout, I question the UK's half hearted commitment. Use the read more button to see the whole article. ...

Parties need pluralism

I was writing about something else, and wrote this on party management. It’s coherent, but doesn’t belong in what I am writing, and so I thought I’d share it now,

“Your Party” is planning a Sortition based founding conference. It has probably chosen this for reasons of control but, “Your Party”’s problems occur in many parties, and I am reminded of the white paper “The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour: Party Leadership vs Party Management in the British Labour Party…, a white paper to the PSA” by Emanuelle Averil on New Labour, which examines its managerialism and the destruction of its activist commitment and influence.

The paper was published in 2015 before the General Election. I read it in 2017 and strangely ended up sitting next to her at Conference ’19. I posted my comments in a blog, A note on Emanuelle Averil’s “the unintended consequences of New Labour” and in that article I selected some quotes. While being 20 years old, these comments seem equally relevant today, particularly about the Labour Party. I quote her on how suppressing the activist layer was mistaken and led to a failure to connect to the electorate, how factionalism suppresses plurality which made renewal impossible, how triangulation led to voter alienation and its control freakery led to a toxification of its image.

We might debate about the noughties, but it’s clearly true today. …

Immigration based on compassion and dignity

The Government have announced major regressive changes to the Asylum regime. These are all regressive, & vindictive. They must be opposed, and those MPs & Peers opposing these measures supported. This article looks at a couple of statements in opposition, and points at the Momentum model motion. While various press sources seem to have seen the proposals, I can't find the formal government statement. (10:57), see overleaf for more ...

About the AI Boom

Five things

There’s no positive business model, they can’t replace staff, or at least not without new supervisors.
They are now borrowing to invest in each other.
Hallucinations are a feature, it gets things wrong,
The rule base’s ownership is obscure and Code is Law
It’s [deliberately] wasteful of resources which people need to live.

It’s useless as a pillar of a growth/industrial policy. …

Labour’s membership

The Labour Party staff stopped reporting membership to the NEC earlier this year, but they reported the end of year membership to Annual Conference and of course the electoral commission.

A number of years ago, I made a chart showing Labour’s membership from 1989 to 2021; I have just updated it using the end of 2024 figures.

There are stories published that Reform have overtaken Labour in terms of membership numbers; it would take an extraordinary amount of departures for this to be true. This article in the New Statesman published under a pseudonym as a gossip column is headlined as such and points at Labour List reporting the membership in Feb as 309,000. …

« Previous