Control freakery at #lab23

Control freakery at #lab23

Sunday’s conference was not a good day for Labour Party democracy. Amongst all the debates on rule changes, and speeches and a sofa session on winning the coming election and despite a rules based promise to be able to refer back sections of the National Policy Report, Conference was only offered the opportunity to accept the NPF report as a single document.

Labour needs a manifesto that offers hope and change to address the problems that the British people face. The NPF report was finalised in a secret session earlier this year and it is typical of this leadership that the vote to accept it was the first item of conference business and occurred before any debate and vote on the members and affiliates motions. The priority ballot results were announced and nothing challenging was prioritised by the CLPs.

The British people need a Labour government to solve its problems, of the cost of living crisis, infrastructure decay, wealth inequality and corruption. Labour’s leadership needs to unite the party and recognise that its membership have good ideas. The clamour for clarity on Labour’s policy offer is growing, curiously from unexpected sources but the control freakery of the leadership is effectively closing down and ignoring the views of the membership and once again violates the rules based promises of conference sovereignty. …

What’ll be debated at #lab23

What’ll be debated at #lab23

The two leading factions have announced their recommendations for how CLP delegates should vote in the #lab23 conference priorities ballot. Only 12 motion topics are debated, six of which are the result of a ballot of the CLP delegates. The rest of this article looks at the factions' recommendations and laments the likelihood that important contrarian views will not be debated. To read the article in full, use the 2Read More" button ...

Innovation happens elsewhere!

Innovation happens elsewhere!

“The innovators dilemma” is a book by Clayton Christensen, first published in 1997. In it, he explores the paradox that successful companies that do everything right can still fail. The source of this failure, or that observed by the book, is new entrants to markets pushing market disrupting technologies and products, allied to a management inertia avoiding the necessary changes. This article looks at how these threats impact business strategy, its decision-making (particularly investment decisions) and political parties, specifically the Labour Party.

The innovation problem for political parties was brought to my attention in an unfinished white Paper by Emmanuelle Avril of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and in the text she quotes the Innovator’s Dilemma. I conclude that, Innovation happens elsewhere and is inexorable.

The complete article is available overleaf …

Brexit/Brejoin is on #lab23 agenda

Brexit/Brejoin is on #lab23 agenda

As a member of the AEIP National Committee, I have been campaigning to reverse Brexit. The personal politics that led me to stand for their NC is based on both an abstract commitment to what the EU could be and a detailed observation of the economic and social advantages of common citizenship, together with the economic advantages to the nation of belong to the European Union. The absence of the EU’s freedom of movement to work and the common citizenship rights do not affect the rich. Overleaf, the full article looks at the arguments to rejoin the single market, and charts the last act of Lewisham Deptford CLP in sending a motion to #lab23 calling to rejoin the single market. It also documents the speech I made.

To see the full article overleaf, use the "Read More" button. ...

Brexit & modern supply side economics

Brexit & modern supply side economics

I have just read Jonathn Portes’ review of Peter Foster’s book “What Went Wrong With Brexit?”. Portes looks at the economic damage, the under investment in human capital and the continued timidity of our politicians. In this review, I [hope I] add to the debate by looking at long term goals and short term modern supply side programmes, most importantly in my mind, rejoining Horizon Europe.

There's a couple of things in the article which interest me. Portes in the subtitle ensures that we understand the damage that Cameron and Osborne 's austerity has done to the UK economy. A critical conclusion from this article is that the problems in the British economy are endemic, predate the Brexit vote but are made worse by the increased bureaucracy in conducting foreign trade, and the miserly modern supply side policies of this Tory government. Portes suggests that the realistic choice, because of our political leader’s timidity is between minimal change to the future trade and cooperation agreement or rejoining the single market. Portes suggests that the minimal change suggestions i.e. fixing Brexit will not be as easy to achieve as its proponents hope.

I finish my review by looking at the contradictions in Sunak's policy by continuing to exclude the UK from Horizon Europe. It is curious that Sunak permits this policy to stand, given that he is a fan of Paul Romer's work on investment & innovation. Romer argues that growth is driven by investment in Human Capital. re-joining Horizon Europe, would be a simple remediation of a number of barriers to growth.

For the full review, press the "Read More" button.

The 14th amendment and oath-breakers

The 14th amendment and oath-breakers

In the linked video, Michael Pocock, a lawyer correspondent on the Meidas Network expresses his delight at Baude and Paulsen’s white paper, “The Sweep and Force of Section 3” which argues that the 14th amendment to the Constitution prohibits Donald Trump from holding any federal office, including that of President as the clause forbids holding office by former office holders who then participate in insurrection or rebellion. Baude and Paulson are well known and respected judicial scholars and members of the Federalist Society and known supporters of the originalist doctrine of interpretation of the Constitution. The rest of this article, see overleaf, reproduces the powerful abstract and links to two further news commentaries. ...

Triangulation and abuse

Triangulation and abuse

It is clear that Labour’s leadership are executing the New Labour playbook with a touch of 20th century triangulation by pandering exclusively to communities that don’t vote for them and adding the practice of trolling those that do. On issues from foreign policy, public sector pay, fiscal policy and the EU, we can see this to be so.

In James Surowiecki’s book the Wisdom of Crowds, he examines the behavioural economics game of “Ultimatum”, which shows that you can’t take people for granted, if people don’t like the rules they won’t play the game.

In Ultimatum, players are divided into groups of two, and one is the proposer, who proposes how to split $10,000, the second player can accept or reject. If rejected, neither gets anything. Economic rationalism suggests that the second player will always accept any offer; however, reality tells a different story. The second player on the whole rejected lowball offers that they think to be unfair. Interestingly, in a second round, both players were told that the proposers had got high scores in a test, and in those circumstances the average at which proposals were rejected fell; if people thought the proposer’s deserved the privilege of proposing, then offers the accepters might once have considered unacceptable became acceptable.

In politics, as in life, you can’t take people for granted! You’d have thought that Labour had learnt this truth.  …