Come and get hot sex, says schools minister

Some years back we suffered the mental indignity of being haunted by the image of David Mellor getting back to basics in a Chelsea Shirt. Now - and a do advise my more sensitive readers to look away now - we have Michael Gove uttering the words 'hot sex'.

Insert risque caption here

There's ample room for justified outrage at this city being marketed as an erotic playground for the rich at a time when average workers find it increasingly difficult to live here. And there's proper concern to be had about the education system being run by a man who seems more and more like a Harry Enfield character every day. 

Right now, however, I'm positively salivating at the thought of all the Youtube spoofs that will appear over the next few days.

Bombs for life

Ain't Twitter grand?

The account @paulawyd belongs to Paula Thompson, a member of the group Catholic Voices. Now, lest the hearts of the over-excitable elements of the liberal-left get pounding, this organisation is an organ of the Roman Catholic Church in much the same way that Progress is an organ of the Labour party.

With no official ecclesiastical recognition, and obsessed with abortion and same-sex marriage, Catholic Voices is making waves in the media. This in spite of the fact that the capacity of its collection of wannabe theocrats to be a 'voice' for a predominantly Labour-voting and socially tolerant religious constituency might be doubted.

Founded by a member of Opus Dei along with a man whose qualifications to defend the intrinsically marital and reproductive nature of sex could be questioned, CV has been making waves as a kind of religious Right equivalent of the Living Marxism/ Sp!ked group. They are incredibly good at getting into the media. They're even incredibly good at getting into the media when not invited. Here's a Voice on Question Time (7:37 onwards):



CV epitomise a worrying trend towards the growth of a religious Right in Britain. Thompson's tweet echoes an American tradition of making abortion clinics sites of conflict. Another bunch of righteous warriors, capable of doing far more damage than the odd lunatic tweet, follow this through to its geographical conclusion. I give you Forty Days for Life.

All of this is really quite irritating in all sorts of ways to me as a socialist, a Christian, and someone who just thinks folk should broadly be able to get on with their lives without people being arseholes to them. It deserves more thought and engagement than I can give it this morning. I leave you, though, with a question. If you were a Labour Party member in Oxford, would you be very about one of your councillors being a member of CV?

Neither London nor Brussels

Since Margaret Thatcher shuffled off to the great free market in the sky it seems a credible guess that Nick Clegg is the least popular politician in Britain. Therefore, to state what should be blindingly obvious, there is no achievement in winning a public debate against him. In the face of all the 'UKIP comes of age' hype to which we've been subjected since Clegg and Farage locked horns on Wednesday, it needs to be stressed that the public considering that you've won against Clegg in debate is only a victory in the fashion that being voted a better GP than Harold Shipman would be.

On UKIP I have nothing really to say. The best analysis I have seen came last year from Lenin, and I refer the inquisitive reader to him. I think Miliband is pretty stupid to call for him to be excluded from leaders' debates. These debates are a depressing marker of a descent into presidential politics, so I really shouldn't care too much about what happens at them, but there we are.

What I do care about is the lack of any serious Left voice over the EU. What we witnessed the other evening was an internal row within British Capital. To over-simplify a little, Clegg (and 'progressive' opinion more generally, including the Labour front-bench) speaks for an alliance between those elements of the bourgeoisie proper whose profit depends on access to European market, Farage for more Atlantic-orientated Capital and those parts of the petty bourgeoisie who can't be tempted into the Brussels club by Guardianista noises about the bright new international peaceable future.

The section of the population who don't find representation in this otherwise admirably inclusive dichotomy are the vast majority - those dependent on wages to survive. Confusion abounds in this area, it is not unusual to hear people claiming the Social Charter (the role of which as a kind of insurance policy for competing national Capitals deserves more analysis anyway) as a great victory for workers handed them by the EU, in spite of it having nothing to do with that institution, instead being a treaty of the distinct Council of Europe. Less obviously inaccurate advocacy of the EU as good for workers has a more delusional character. Billy Hayes here seems to think that neoliberal policy is accidental to the developed EU, as though sufficient will-power on the part of social democratic parties could bring about some kind of continent-wide analogue of the post-war consensus. He's not the first person to suggest this, the only problem being that the institutions he envisages being claimed for Beveridge and Keynes were set up precisely to drive a stake through the heart of those thinkers.

A Left voice on the EU is lacking. We have to start saying loudly, more clearly, and less nationalistically (*cough* No2EU), that neither Clegg nor Farage have anything to offer the workers of Europe. The EU as a project serves to sustain profit, not the workers who produce those profits. Even moderate ameliorative measures are ruled out of court by EU legislation - in particular, any government seeking to reverse privatisation would find itself severely constrained. The Eurozone crises following the crash of 2007-8, with austerity imposed centrally on the poorer periphery of the Union, give a taste of the direction in which further integration on the EU model leads. Workers nowhere in Europe have a long-term material interest in the EU, nor in any country's continued membership of it.

A socialist and internationalist alternative is needed - that much is just a trite slogan, but true in spite of that. At no time since the 1975 referendum has advocacy of any such alternative been weaker in Britain. Given that the EU as an issue is likely to dominate increasingly in coming years, this should concern us.

Friday Video Corner

Stunning

That was a party political broadcast

...on behalf of anyone who isn't Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman.

Yes, the BBC have being putting some of that much talked-about licence fee towards a hatchet job on one of Britain's most prominent Asian politicians in the run-up to May's election. Broadcast as last night's Panorama, the best they could get on Rahman was that he ignored the advice of council officers, and doubled council funding for Bengali run charities. The BBC join the dots for us telling readers of their website that, "Almost two-thirds of those who turned out to vote [last election day] were from his own Bangladeshi community."

One anticipates hearing next year that David Cameron has been returned as MP for Whitney by members of his "own white British community". 

Now, this should be a non-story. It is entirely correct that elected politicians be able to over-rule unelected officers. What does deserve comment is the glee with which some Labour figures have greeted the attack on Rahman. 

Panorama shows why Tower Hamlets deserves a different kind of Mayor http://t.co/4HZ18HXEWz @johnbiggs4mayor
— Tower Hamlets Labour (@TH_Labour_Party) March 31, 2014

Two points here.

First, Rahman himself is correct. There is more than a hint of racism about Panorama's report. Labour should distance itself from the programme and refrain from using it if it doesn't want to be accused of putting short-term electoral gain ahead of basic anti-racist principle.

Second, the whole anomalous situation in Tower Hamlets is entirely the fault of the NEC, who removed the duly selected candidate in a fit of pop-Islamophobic frenzy.

Ken Livingstone stood as an independent and was subsequently readmitted to Labour, serving as a Labour mayor. The same approach should be adopted towards Rahman. The divisions in Tower Hamlets need healing, not deepening.

ETA: Dave Hill here is worth a read. As is Reuben Bard-Rosenberg here.