Douglas Beattie How Labour Wins (And Why It Loses) From 1900 to 2024 Elliott & Thompson, August 2024.
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected copy for review.
Douglas Beattie’s approach to a topic that could take up so many interesting side issues is a Party Campaign Director’s dream: he unfailingly remains on message. As a result, this book is a focussed, insightful read. In referring to major events that could be tempting to dwell upon Beattie instead refers to them with well crafted, directed comments that tell the reader all that is necessary. The Labour Party, its leaders, ministers and shadow ministers, back benchers, party members are at the forefront, in their praiseworthy and not so praiseworthy, attempt to win government, success in doing so and their reaction to being in government. Outside the Labour Party, but important actors in this narrative, are the alternative governing parties, their leaders and supporters; constituents; and the role of polls and the media. The results of the 2024 election of the Kier Starmer Labour Government are not covered – the election is in the immediate future – but what information is there is an excellent precursor to that Labour win. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
Corrina Antrobus I Love Romcoms and I am a Feminist A manifesto in 100 romcoms Quarto Publishing Group – White Lion, August 2024.
Thank you, Net Galley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
Corrina Antrobus has combined short, perceptive commentary with attractive graphics, making this (at first sight) a fun read. However, there is more to this work, and the way in which Antrobus has managed to pack so much wisdom into her commentary, and accompanying lists of suggested rom coms is instructive. While lengthy academic works have their place, so do works such as this – fun, attractive, perceptive, easy to read and providing so much to think about. I like the way in which films seen as women’s films, and therefore possibly lightweight have been given this sort of attention. Look beyond the fun and see what Antrobus really has to say about women, the rom com genre and its treatment of women, and the history of the genre. See Books: Reviews for the complete review.
After the Covid Update: Spring photos; Bob McMullan, the American Presidential Election; Heather Cox Richardson, socialism and Americans; Australian Government Initiative to improve the culture and accountability in Parliament.
Covid Update 23 – 29 August 2024
There were 49 cases (PCR only), 6 in hospital 1 in ICU with none ventilated and 5 lives lost. People are still committed to social distancing, and some are wearing face masks.
More spring photos
Blossoms are already drifting off some trees, although others are still beginning to blossom. A wonderful time of year.
Bob McMullan – American Presidential Election 2024
US election review at 2 September
A lot seems to have happened this week in the US presidential election. But so far it does not seem to have moved public opinion very much. I suspect that the last few weeks have seen the big shift in public opinion. If this is the case, it is down to hard slog from here.
What has been amazing is the change in the Electoral College prospects over the last five weeks. Now all seven swing states are in play. Under Joe Biden it was down the “blue wall” three, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These three are still very important, but Kamala Harris has opened up alternative pathways to 270 Electoral college votes via the so-called Sunbelt states of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina.
(It continues to surprise me that Americans are satisfied with a voting system that renders the votes of all those outside the seven “battleground states” virtually irrelevant).
The biggest event of the week was probably the CNN interview with Harris and Walz. The significance of this had been intensified because the delay in having their first interview after Harris became the presumptive nominee had generated suspicions that she would not be able to handle such an interview.
How did she do? Well enough. She avoided any pitfalls and came across as reasonably confident and comfortable. I thought she missed an opportunity to turn the interview to advantage, but if the goal was to get it done without problems that was achieved. The Vice president was helped in outperforming expectations by the ludicrously low bar Donald Trump had set for her. Saying she would not be able to answer the questions and would have to lean on her running mate to deal with the issues was always stupid and enabled her to leap over the low bar with ease.
What might have been the other big issue of the week was Trump’s embarrassing attempts to resolve the dilemma facing him about the abortion question. It is possible that the great Republican victory in overturning abortion rights for American women, and in the process threatening other rights such as access to contraception and IVF, will turn out to be a pyrrhic victory.
The Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v Wade has had devastating consequences for women in a number of states and that is obviously deplorable. However, the electoral consequences appear to be very worrying for Republicans in general, and Trump in particular.
This week Trump has tried to distance himself from the extremists of the anti-abortion, anti-IVF brigade but he has pulled back into line by their threats of withdrawing support. He has reluctantly had to confirm that he will vote against a Florida referendum which would overturn a 6-week abortion ban in that state. The irony is, if he had not conspired to overturn Roe v Wade, such a referendum could not have been held.
The abortion and reproduction rights issue is a significant part of a growing gender divide in US politics. Given his history of abuse of women and his attitude towards their rights it is easy to understand why women are deserting Trump. It is , however, important to understand that the election is close because of support for Trump from white men.
And the election is close. The polling over the last week has shown a stable but narrow lead for Kamala Harris nationally and in sufficient states to win the Electoral College if reflected in the final results. On a national level, the 538 averages have weakened slightly for Harris, from 3.4% to 3.2%. RCP averages have strengthened slightly, from a 1.7% lead for Harris to 1.8%. Such miniscule changes are statistically irrelevant and show an essential stability in attitudes.
On a state-by-state basis, 538 ends the week with Harris leading in 6 of the 7 battleground states (all but North Carolina). However, the margins are narrow and drifting a little. RCP finished the week with Harris in front 5 of the battleground states including North Carolina but trailing in Nevada and Georgia.
All this means that the election shows every sign of being very close Even given the tendency for polling to underestimate support for Trump, an objective observer would probably prefer to be in Harris’ position than Trump’s, but it is possible to make the case for either of them.
Early voting begins this month so the stakes are very high. The next week should see a continuation of current campaign trends before the debate on 10 September.
Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>
This is an edited version of Heather Cox Richardson’s letter 28 August 2024. I think that the discussion of socialism, and the American interpretation of this, together with former President Trump’s commentary makes an interesting discussion. The edited section of the newsletter referred to events that have been in the news, and although they miss HCR’s excellent commentary, discussion of the events at Arlington Cemetery and Trump’s interview with Dr Phil can be found elsewhere.
…When asked his opinion of Vice President Harris, Trump once again called her “a Marxist,” a reference that would normally be used to refer to someone who agrees with the basic principles outlined by nineteenth-century philosopher Karl Marx in his theory of how society works. In Marx’s era, people in the U.S. and Europe were grappling with what industrialization would mean for the relationship between individual workers, employers, resources, and society. Marx believed that there was a growing conflict between workers and capitalists that would eventually lead to a revolution in which workers would take over the means of production—factories, farms, and so on—and end economic inequality.
Harris has shown no signs of embracing this philosophy, and on August 15, when Trump talked at reporters for more than an hour at his Bedminster property in front of a table with coffee and breakfast cereal at what was supposed to be a press conference on the economy, he said of his campaign strategy: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s going to destroy our country.”
Trump uses “Marxist,” “communist,” and “socialist” interchangeably, and when he and his allies accuse Democrats of being one of those things, they are not talking about an economic system in which the people, represented by the government, take control of the means of production. They are using a peculiarly American adaptation of the term “socialist.”
True socialism has never been popular in America. The best it has ever done in a national election was in 1912, when labor organizer Eugene V. Debs, running for president as a Socialist, won 6% of the vote, coming in behind Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft.
What Republicans mean by “socialism” in America is a product of the years immediately after the Civil War, when African American men first got the right to vote. Eager to join the economic system from which they had previously been excluded, these men voted for leaders who promised to rebuild the South, provide schools and hospitals (as well as prosthetics for veterans, a vital need in the post-war U.S.), and develop the economy with railroads to provide an equal opportunity for all men to rise to prosperity.
Former Confederates loathed the idea of Black men voting almost as much as they hated the idea of equal rights. They insisted that the public programs poorer voters wanted were simply a redistribution of wealth from prosperous white men to undeserving Black Americans who wanted a handout, although white people would also benefit from such programs. Improvements could be paid for only with tax levies, and white men were the only ones with property in the Reconstruction South. Thus, public investments in roads and schools and hospitals would redistribute wealth from propertied men to poor people, from white men to Black people. It was, opponents said, “socialism.” Poor black voters were instituting, one popular magazine wrote, “Socialism in South Carolina” and should be kept from the polls.
This idea that it was dangerous for working people to participate in government caught on in the North as immigrants moved into growing cities to work in the developing factories. Like their counterparts in the South, they voted for roads and schools, and wealthy men insisted these programs meant a redistribution of wealth through tax dollars. They got more concerned still when a majority of Americans began to call for regulation to keep businessmen from gouging consumers, polluting the environment, and poisoning the food supply (the reason you needed to worry about strangers and candy in that era was that candy was often painted with lead paint).
Any attempt to regulate business would impinge on a man’s liberty, wealthy men argued, and it would cost tax dollars to hire inspectors. Thus, they said, it was a redistribution of wealth. Long before the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia brought the fears of a workers’ government to life, Americans argued that their economy was under siege by socialists. Their conviction did indeed lead to a redistribution of wealth, but as regular Americans were kept from voting, the wealth went dramatically upward, not down.
The powerful formula linking racism to the idea of an active government and arguing that a government that promotes infrastructure, provides a basic social safety net, and regulates business is socialism has shaped American history since Reconstruction. In the modern era the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954 enabled wealthy men to convince voters that their tax dollars were being taken from them to promote the interests of Black Americans. President Ronald Reagan made that formula central to the Republican Party, and it has lived there ever since, as Republicans call any policy designed to help ordinary Americans “socialism.”
Vice President Harris recently said she would continue the work of the Biden administration and crack down on the price-fixing, price gouging, and corporate mergers that drove high grocery prices in the wake of the pandemic. Such plans have been on the table for a while: Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) noted last year that from July 2020 through July 2022, inflation rose by 14% and corporate profits rose by 75%. He backed a measure introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)—who came up with the idea of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—that would set standards to prevent large corporations from price gouging during an “exceptional market shock” like a power grid failure, a public health emergency, a natural disaster, and so on. Harris’s proposal was met with pushback from opponents saying that such a law would do more harm than good and that post-pandemic high inflation was driven by the market.
Yesterday, during testimony for an antitrust case, an email from the senior director for pricing at the grocery giant Kroger, Andy Groff, to other Kroger executives seemed to prove that those calling out price gouging were at least in part right. In it, Groff wrote: “On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation.”
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Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/14/harris-food-prices-economy-speech-00174112
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-dnc-economic-plan-price-gouging-ban-inflation/
https://www.newsweek.com/kroger-executive-admits-company-gouged-prices-above-inflation-1945742
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4214/text
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8xqy0jv24o
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15 March 2021 Demonstration at Parliament House
Perhaps the Outrage and Optimism sign was justified. Labor Senator Katy Gallaher reports on the Labor Government initiative.
Australian Government Initiative to improve the culture and accountability in Parliament
| Katy’s Policy Explainer |
| Parliament House should be a model workplace, but in 2021 the Set the Standard Report made it clear that this was not the experience for many staff. Labor is taking important steps to improve the culture and accountability in Parliament. On 21 August, we introduced a Bill to establish the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission (IPSC). Here’s what you need to know: What’s Happening? Our Government introduced legislation to establish the IPSC, an independent body that will enforce behaviour codes in Parliament. This means it will investigate complaints about bullying, harassment, and discrimination involving Parliamentarians, their staff, and others working in parliamentary workplaces. What Can the IPSC do? The IPSC will have the power to conduct investigations and impose sanctions when necessary. It will work closely with other support services to ensure that there’s a fair, confidential, and impartial process for handling serious workplace issues. This new body is all about making sure that everyone in Parliament is held to the highest standards of behaviour. Why Is This Important? Creating the IPSC is a key step in making Parliament a safer and more respectful workplace. As I’ve said before, the 2021 Set the Standard report laid bare the serious issues of bullying, sexual harassment, and sexual assault at Parliamentary workplaces. This new commission ensures that there’s real accountability for those doing the wrong thing. In short, the IPSC will play a vital role in ensuring that everyone in Parliament is treated with the respect and fairness they deserve. |
Robin's Room 