SOCIALIST UNITY

by Lizzie Cocker, from the Morning Star

The Con-Dem government has plunged a knife through the heart of state education as it gave big business the go-ahead to suck money away from existing schools to fund “free schools.”

Despite an Ipsos Mori survey finding that an overwhelming 96 per cent of parents and the public are opposed to free schools, Education Secretary Michael Gove made it possible on Friday for parents, teachers and charities to apply to set them up.

The first is expected to open in September 2011.

Critics warned that only the wealthiest parents would have the time and money available to run a free school and said that it is inevitable that management of the schools would be commissioned to private providers.

Under coalition policy the government will give free schools the same amount of money for each pupil that it would cost to place them in a state school.

Unlike academy schools, there are no extra funds for the plans which form part of the original Tory manifesto aspiration to create 220,000 new places to fuel a “supply-side revolution.”

Anti-Academies Alliance national secretary Alasdair Smith said: “At a time when the budget is being cut all it will do is take money from existing schools and so rob the local authority to pay private providers.”

Mr Gove claimed free schools would reduce the attainment gap between rich and poor.

“We want to learn from what’s happened in America, Sweden, Canada, other countries that have given schools a greater degree of autonomy,” he said.

But Swedish education has dropped steadily down international league tables since free schools were introduced.

Sweden’s National Education Agency says that since the policy took effect in the 1990s “fairly unambiguously segregation has increased.”

And a study by Stanford University in California found that pupils in just 17 per cent of US charter schools, the equivalent of free schools, made more progress than their peers in state schools.

Pupils in 37 per cent of charter schools did worse than their counterparts.

Education union NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said the evidence showed free schools are “more costly to run, do not deliver better standards than other well-funded schools and are socially and racially segregated in terms of their admissions.”

Several privateers are said to have been eagerly anticipating the new policy.

Mr Smith said Anders Hultin, the chief executive of Global Education Management Systems which runs 12 private schools in Britain, “was literally rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of running schools in the name of parents.

“Private providers claim to be about parents but it’s about them getting their hand on a steady stream of taxpayers’ money.”

NUT union general secretary Christine Blower said the policy amounted to the “dismantling of our education system, turning it over to unaccountable, unelected companies.

“There should be no place within education for private companies to profit. These profits can only be made at the expense of funding and investment in children’s education.”

From Left Foot Forward

Harriet Harman does extremely well at Prime Minister’s Question Time

As Left Foot Forward explains

the Institute for Fiscal Studies published research before the election showing that “encouraging parents to marry [is] unlikely to lead to significant improvements in young children’s outcomes”. As Left Foot Forward documented before the election, the outcome gaps in cognitive development between children born to married and cohabiting parents are relatively small compared with the outcome gaps associated with a range of other factors.  The finding is consistent with a recent paper by Ruth Lister and Fran Bennett for Renewal, which concluded:

“As a number of commentators have pointed out, it is not possible to conclude from the statistics that marriage itself causes the positive outcomes associated with it and that therefore the stability of a society is a function of the support given to the institution of marriage. In particular, social scientists suggest that the stability associated with marriage can be attributed to the kind of people who choose to get married or to cohabit and to the values that they hold.”

Finally, Labour’s decision in 2007 to allow inheritance tax allowances to be transferable between married couples and civil partners remains contentious with many on the left but marriage was already recognised in the inheritance tax system. This is completely different from introducing a new (and expensive) tax break.

Mr Cameron did not explain why his policy discriminates against lone parents and widows, excludes 11.6 million married people where both husband and wife work, and does nothing for the roughly 600,000 married couples of working age who do not earn over the £6,555 tax threshold.

When Big Business shivers; the unemployed are likely to catch pneumonia
By Jon Trickett MP

The election campaign was dominated by the soap opera of the personality interplays of the Leaders’ TV debates.

But beneath these media obsessions, there were real issues at stake. The most important issue of the economic recovery was completely overlooked. At the core of this debate was who shall pay for the Bankers’ greed and how the country will recover. I will argue later and elsewhere that Labour’s election strategy was significantly inhibited by a lack of boldness, but for the moment it is instructive to explore the terms of the debate between the Party Leaderships.

Two contending visions of how to respond to the crisis should have been on offer. Unfortunately, these visions were only poorly expressed during the campaign.

On one side were the Tory Right who wanted to cut the deficit immediately. On the other, were the Labour and Liberal campaigns who argued that it would be foolish to cut whilst in the middle of a crisis and with the recovery only fragile at best.

A secondary theme was of taxation. The Labour Government had introduced a policy of raising National Insurance which has the virtue of being ever so mildly progressive. National Insurance falls most heavily on higher income earners and on the employers. This rise would not come into play until next year when the recovery is more secure. On the other hand, the Tories said that National Insurance is a tax on jobs. What they did not say is that they would abolish the NI rise by increasing VAT. This is a regressive tax which falls as heavily on poor as it does on the rich.

The truth is that Labour Governments have never increased VAT but our campaign was inhibited completely by Treasury orthodoxy, and so we would not rule out a VAT increase, we failed to capitalise on the secret Tory tax plan.

It is not difficult to see a loss of self-confidence in New Labour’s campaign which dates from the time when a host of business leaders attacked the NI proposal, an attack coordinated by the Conservatives.

But what is curious is that the Tory policy is not in the short term interest of the business community. If the government begins to cut expenditure or increase taxation, or both, then there will be a fall in demand in the economy. If demand declines, then there is a diminishing capacity to sell your products and therefore a decline in profitability. This in turn leads to workers being laid off and further falls in demand. And so we enter a further recessionary downward spiral.

Within days of the Tory/Liberal coalition, the business community began to show signs of anxiety as the realisation began to emerge that the new government might actually endanger profitability.

The Financial Times noted that “ London equities were back under heavy pressure on Friday, as traders worried about the potential impact of austerity measures on economic growth.”

In fact the pace of the selling grew as the Friday session developed and as traders began to digest the new government’s intentions. The FTSE 100 lost 129 points to 5,307.08, a loss of 2.3 per cent in a single day.

The decline was broad-based, with all but two of the benchmark index’s constituents falling, more than wiping out the 0.9 per cent advance of the previous session, when strong earnings news provided some momentum.

The FT quoted a market analyst as saying that the FTSE was being marked down as “Investors are having to recognise that as economies start to get to grips with the important fiscal cuts needed to reign in deficits, consumers will have less cash to spend and this could impact on company earnings and economic growth. We have seen investors continue to move money out of the banks and miners and into the safe havens of the dollar and gold.”

The markets have suffered even further today, following the new Chancellor’s announcement that the Labour government had been ‘fiddling forecasts’ and sterling dropped to its lowest since March 2009. Playing party politics with investors’ confidence in the UK reminds me of the old story about the Pharaoh on his deathbed; he leaves his son three tablets of stone containing advice on how to run the empire and tells him to only read them in order when the previous one has failed. The son runs the empire successfully for a number of years until the public start to turn against him, he goes to the first tablet which advises ‘blame your predecessor’, which he duly does and calms the situation for a while, when the pubic start to revolt again he turns to the second tablet, which advises ‘re-structure your empire’. The son puts in new systems and changes the entire way his empire is governed, which works, for a time and eventually he has to turn to the third tablet, which says ‘write out three tablets of stone for your successor.’ The Conservatives are currently on tablet number one.

Equally interesting were some comments from the boss of Sainsbury’s, Mr Justin King. Before we turn to Mr King’s comments we should recall the fact that his is hardly in the personal category of someone who need worry overmuch about a bit of fiscal squeezing. Last year he was reported as receiving an income of about £5 million. Readers may also recall that this gentleman was one of the business leaders who launched the Exocet critique of Labour’s National Insurance rise in the middle of the election campaign.

Last week Mr King naturally welcomed the new government, saying he was pleased it had “addressed the budget deficit with more candour in the first four hours than in the four weeks before the election”. This was because they Cameron’s team had announced that the full NI rise would not proceed. However, the realisation had perhaps only just occurred to him that the Tory alternative to National Insurance might be a rise in VAT. Suddenly his euphoria turned to caution. He warned the Tory Lib coalition that removing VAT exemptions on food would hit the poorest shoppers the most. As the Chief Executive of a major food retailer, it might hit his pocket too!

Today the new Chancellor has announced new measures which will send further shivers down the spines of business. It is said that he has discovered further black holes in the budget and it is being suggested that he will add the PFI finances of the last decade on to the public sector balance sheet. In the meantime there will be cuts on public programmes within 7 days.

All this is economics straight out of the Chicago school. There can be no question that the coalition government will place us into a further downward spiral. Businesses which depend on expanding demand within the economy can expect difficult times ahead. As always, though, when Businessmen shiver it is the poor, the old, the ill and the unemployed who catch pneumonia.

A shorter version of this article appeared in the Guardian

by John Millington from the Morning Star.

Chancellor George Osborne will drop the axe on public-sector workers next week when he unveils the details of this year’s £6 billion spending cuts before a full emergency Budget on June 22.

It is expected that the Chancellor of the new Con-Dem coalition government will be able to push through original pre-election Tory manifesto commitments to slash public spending after the Lib Dems reneged on their promise not to make cuts in the first year.

RMT union leader Bob Crow warned Britain is facing “fiscal fascism in all its Thatcherite glory - and, even worse, it is being propped up by the Lib Dems.”

Mr Crow said: “The Tories have always been the party of mass unemployment because that suits their class and keeps the workers under the cosh.”

And public-sector union Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: “Already the new government of the rich and the right, with undisguised zeal, is plotting cuts way beyond anything that they talked of during the election campaign.”

Mr Osborne attempted to draw the public’s attention away from the impending assault on public services by focusing on scrapping quangos and setting up the “independent” Office for Budget Responsibility to make economic growth forecasts.

In a development which will give big business the green light to set economic policy, Mr Osborne bragged about giving up some of his powers as Chancellor.

Accusing Labour of “fiddling” the figures to hide the scale of the crisis, he said: “We need to fix the Budget to fit the figures, not fix the figures to fit the Budget.”

But shadow chancellor Alistair Darling called the accusation “just plain wrong.”

He added: “Every new government tries blaming the last one. This just shows the old politics is alive and well with the Lib-Con coalition.”

Falling in line with the neoliberal agenda of making working people pay for the crisis, Mr Osborne said tackling the deficit was the most important thing “after 13 years of fiscal irresponsibility.

“The Treasury’s assessment is that there is a strong economic case for an immediate spending reduction of £6bn,” he said.

The Chancellor even suggested the coalition government’s plans could “enhance” front-line services, adding: “In the end this is about value for money.”

Meanwhile Lib Dem Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws attempted to distract attention from his party’s back-peddling, revealing that his predecessor Liam Byrne had left a note on departing the Treasury, stating that “there is no money left.”

But Mr Byrne insisted the message was meant as a private joke.

Left Economics Advisory Panel co-ordinator Andrew Fisher said: “Osborne and Laws are lining up taxpayers to be rewarded for bailing out the banks by now having their public services cut.

“The banks have not only got off scot-free but are now are now dictating how the public finances should be dictated.

“The myth that front-line services can be protected while back office support is slashed is as nonsensical as it sounds.”

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths said the alternative of tax increases for big business would have to be fought for by a “broad-based coalition against the cuts, nationally and in our local communities.”

Mr Crow added: “The Labour movement and the community groups cannot afford to wait - we need to be preparing to fight back right now.”

from wikipedia:

Nick Clegg was born in Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire, in 1967, the third of four children. His father, Nicholas Clegg CBE, is chairman of United Trust Bank, and is a trustee of The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, where Ken Clarke was an adviser. Clegg’s paternal grandmother, Kira von Engelhardt, was a Russian Baroness whose German-Russian aristocratic family fled the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Clegg’s paternal grandfather, Hugh Anthony Clegg, was the editor of the British Medical Journal for 35 years. Clegg’s great-great-grandfather, the Russian nobleman Ignaty Zakrevsky, was attorney general of the imperial Russian senate. His great-great aunt was the writer, Baroness Moura Budberg.

Clegg was educated at the private Caldicott School at Farnham Royal in South Buckinghamshire, and later at the private Westminster School in London.

He spent a gap year as a skiing instructor in Austria before attending Robinson College, Cambridge in 1986. In 2008 it was reported that while at university, Clegg had joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association between 1986 and 1987, with contemporary membership records citing an “N. Clegg” of Robinson College. (At the time, Clegg was the only person of that name at Robinson.)

Breaking news from the BBC.

Labour concedes that its talks with the Liberals are not going to lead to a government.

BBC reports indicate that the Liberal Democrats are due to sign deal with Tories to put Thatcherites back into Number 10.

Given that Labour seems to have made a better offer than the Tories over electoral reform, then clearly the Liberals preferred to usher in another era of Conservative rule.

Some progressives.

Top Conservative Peer, Baroness Warsi, launched a bizarre attack yesterday on Muslims, claiming that she did not want to see more Muslim members of parliament. Speaking at a dinner in Yorkshire in honour of the president of Kashmir, the Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion said:

“one of the lessons we have learnt in the last five years in politics is that Muslims that go to parliament don’t have any morals or principles.”

These are the Tory targets:

Look,  it isn’t rocket science. The whole list of Tory targets is here.

While the chatterers (like me!) are debating the wisdom of whether or not Peter Hain and Ed Balls should have hinted that Labour voters might consider tactical voting, in reality only 30 of the Tory top 150 targets are currently held by the Liberals. The Tory’s need to gain 116 seats, and in their top targets to reach that number only 23 are currently Lib Dem held, but talking up the Liberals may make a crucial dfference by boosting the Lib Dem vote in Labour/Tory marginals, and thus gifting the Tories a slender overall majority.

In the majority of marginal seats, the only effective vote to stop a Tory government is to vote Labour.

Look at this list, if the constituency you live in isn’t on this list then your vote will not be likely to effect the outcome of the general election. If you do live somewhere on this list, then vote to stop a Tory government. (There is a further handful of seats, like Somerton and Frome, Sollihull, Ealing and Guildford where the Lib Dems could take seats from the Tories, see this list)

There are in addition a handful of constituencies where Respect or the Green party are posing credible challenges, and the election of MPs from these parties would be a fantastic boost for democracy and the left.

Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein will also be attractive options for voters in Wales and Ireland.

Two years on, the cost of the Tories in London is clear
By Len Duvall AM, from Labour List

This week marks the second anniversary of Boris Johnson’s election as Mayor of London. With just days to go until the country goes to the polls, what does the administration of Cameron’s Bullingdon Club colleague tell us about how a Tory government might look? If they really are the party of change, what kind of change can we expect?

On all the big issues facing London – housing, public services, transport, crime, safety and the environment – the Tories’ record in power is not a good one.

There are over a third of a million households on London’s housing waiting lists – families often living in over-crowded and poor conditions and with little security. Yet despite this urgent need, one of Boris Johnson’s first moves was to scrap the policy that half of all new housing should be affordable. And he has gone back on his election pledge to build 50,000 affordable homes by 2011.

Despite promising to chair the Metropolitan Police Authority to get more police on the street, Johnson is actually cutting 455 officers and has refused to guarantee the neighbourhood policing model of one sergeant, two PCs and three PCSOs for every London ward.

And while he rails against public sector “fat cats” in his Daily Telegraph column, he has presided over massive pay rises for himself and his most senior staff, while cutting jobs lower down the chain.

His re-organisation of City Hall has made the GLA more white and more male.#

Just a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that London’s childcare affordability team is being scrapped. With the future of early years and Sure Start centres in jeopardy from the Conservatives, Boris Johnson’s decision puts 10,000 childcare places for low-income families under threat.

But it is arguably transport which has suffered most thanks to Tory rule in London.

Boris Johnson has failed to persuade his party to commit to Crossrail. He has cancelled a funded Thames crossing in East London that would have brought jobs and regeneration to the area. And wasteful, regressive decisions like halving the size of the congestion charge zone, replacing London’s modern bus fleet and wasting over £1.5m per vehicle on building five new double-deckers have been paid for by the biggest real terms fare rises in Transport for London’s history.

Hardworking Londoners faced 20% bus fare rises in January thanks to Boris Johnson’s decisions. And rather than keeping fares down and protecting public services, he has instead spent his political capital campaigning against tighter regulation for financial services and a higher rate of tax for those earning more than £150,000. He has spent his time talking up the chances of bankers leaving London, warning they have been “punished enough”, and has campaigned against taxing City bonuses.

On the environment, London has gone from being a world-leader in tackling climate change to losing the chair of the influential C40 group. Under the Conservatives, plans to charge the most polluting vehicles a higher rate of congestion charge have been cancelled.

And while up to 5,000 Londoners die prematurely because of the city’s poor air quality, Boris Johnson prevented a scheme going ahead which would have charged the most polluting vehicles for driving into Greater London.

This is the cost of the Conservatives in London: a less green city, higher fares for hard-working Londoners, reduced services and a lack of support for people who need a home they can afford.
For anyone who thinks the Tories have changed, Boris Johnson’s two years in charge of London reveals their true face. The presentation may have improved, but at every opportunity the “nasty” party will fall down on the side of the few, not the many.

Left Foot Forward have also entered the fray with this: