Poison pill

The private pension savings of those caught in the secret privatisation of the Thatcher Government are an inhibitor to non-market price compensation for nationalisations. i.e. nationalisation without compensation. One of Thatcher’s early ‘reforms’ was the re-architecting of the pensions industry and its regulation. She abolished SERPS and introduced contracting out, which created the funds for private money purchase schemes. A threat to nationalise without or with below market compensation means that all the personal money purchase pensions would be reduced in value. You could argue that it’s only fair since QE has artificially inflated these funds but it will create a lot of opposition once the financiers realise how to convert it into votes. It’s a Thatcher designed poison pill for socialism. All the bollocks about swapping rights for shares is a distraction. …

Priorities

38 degrees are canvassing supporters on the EU referendum and ask if we believe that the EU referendum is more or less important than their other campaigns. The reasons the right want to leave is that the EU is crucial constraint on what they want to do. It’s as important as the other individual campaigns.

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Slow times

My normal train journey is disrupted by engineering works; when I say disrupted, there are no trains running on the track. I have been using the bus, but at more than an hour, it’s beginning to make a nonsense of a pied-a-terre. The views are much better though.

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Mandate

Some of the Labour Right claim the PLP has a 9.3m vote mandate based on the 2015 manifesto and results. The 9.3m voted for Labour, the mandate is shared! Also many of that 9.3m voted for losing candidates; don’t think that the PLP can claim them as part of their mandate if they choose to oppose the Party. …