Category Archives: Rants&Rambles

Political, Rants&Rambles

ONS

I love the ONS. All of those numbers, those unambiguous facts.
There has been a bit of a storm centred on the Labour Party’s rather mild suggestion that anyone earning more than £70,000 in the UK is wealthy. Yet on the face of it, this seems pretty unambiguously true. Anyone earning that amount of money would be well within the top 5% of earners within the UK but immediately on-line media was full of rejections and deflections. Apparently we should look at asset wealth instead. Either that or tax the beggars to oblivion.

Looking through the ONS figures on tax, there are lots of useful numbers to consider.

In the financial year ending 2015 (2014/15), the average income of the richest fifth of UK households before taxes and benefits was £83,800, 14 times greater than that of the poorest fifth who had an average income of £6,100 per year.But after taking into account taxes and benefits the ratio between the average incomes of the top and the bottom fifth of households (£62,500 and £16,500 respectively) is reduced to 4 to 1.

The richest fifth of households paid £29,800 in taxes (direct and indirect) compared with £5,200 for the poorest fifth.

In 2014/15, 50.8% of all households received more in benefits (including benefits in kind) than they paid in taxes, equivalent to 13.6 million households. This continues the downward trend seen since 2010/11 (53.5%), but remains above the proportion seen before the economic downturn.

On average, households whose head was between 25 and 64 paid more in taxes than they received in benefits (including in-kind benefits) in 2014/15, whilst the reverse was true for those aged 65 and over, as the state pension starts to kick in, the largest single component of the welfare bill in the UK.

Analysis on changes in median household disposable income and other related measures, which used to form part of this report, were published earlier this year in “Household Disposable Income and Inequality, financial year ending 2015”. It looks at the various stages of redistribution of income:

Figure 1: Stages in the redistribution of income

Flowchart of the effects of taxes and benefits on the redistribution of income.

Source: Office for National Statistics

The overall impact of taxes and benefits (especially the latter) are that they lead to income being shared more equally between households.

Cash benefits are paid to mainly to the poorest in society and therefore act to reduce income inequality. In 2014/15, the highest amount of cash benefits was received by households in the second quintile group, £8,900 per year compared with £7,700 for households in the bottom group (Figure 3). This is largely because more retired households are located in the second quintile group compared with the bottom group and in this analysis the State Pension is classified as a cash benefit.

Figure 2: Summary of the effects of taxes and benefits by quintile groups, ALL households, financial year ending 2015, UK

Taxes have increased across all quintiles. The net position is highest in the bottom quintile.

 

Looking at individual cash benefits, in 2014/15, the average combined amount of contribution-based and income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) received by the bottom 2 quintile groups decreased, consistent with a fall in unemployment, as well as the ongoing implementation of the Universal Credit (UC) system.

Claimants of UC and JSA are subject to the Claimant Commitment which outlines specific actions that the recipient must carry out in order to receive benefits. This may also have affected the number of households in receipt of these benefits. JSA rates, along with other working age benefits, were increased by 1% in 2014/15, below the CPI rate of inflation. The phasing out of Incapacity Benefit, Severe Disablement Allowance and Income Support paid because of illness or disability and transfer of recipients to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) has seen average amounts received from the former benefits fall in 2014/15, whilst average amounts received from ESA have risen, reflecting the increased number of claimants.

The roll-out of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which is replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for adults aged under 65, also continued in 2014/15.

We are told that these rollouts and replacements are not cost-cutting exercises, that the government is not deliberately targeting benefits to the ill and disabled, yet that does seem to be their impact.

There was a 20.3% decrease in the amount of Child Benefit received by the richest fifth of households, due to fewer households in this part of the income distribution receiving this benefit. This is likely to be related to the High Income Benefit Charge, which may have resulted in some households electing to stop getting Child Benefit (“opt out”) rather than pay the charge. Since Child Benefit claims process is linked to my on-going entitlement to the State pension (Carers’ Allowance) , we decided to continue to claim and re-pay the tax.

Direct taxes (Income Tax, employees’ National Insurance contributions and Council Tax or Northern Ireland rates) also act to reduce inequality of income. Richer households pay both higher amounts of direct tax and a higher proportion of their income in direct taxes.

The majority of this (16.3% of gross income) was paid in Income Tax. The average tax bill for the poorest fifth of households, by contrast was equivalent to 11.0% of their gross household income. Council Tax or Northern Ireland rates made up the largest proportion of direct taxes for this group, accounting for half of all direct taxes paid by them, 5.5% of their gross income on average.

The amount of indirect tax (such as Value Added Tax (VAT) and duties on alcohol and fuel) each household pays is determined by their expenditure rather than their income. The richest fifth of households paid just over 2 and a half times as much in indirect taxes as the poorest fifth (£10,000 and £3,700 per year, respectively). This reflects greater expenditure on goods and services subject to these taxes by higher income households.

However, although richer households pay more in indirect taxes than poorer ones, they pay less as a proportion of their income (Figure 5).

This means that indirect taxes increase inequality of income. 

Today, Theresa May has committed to not increasing VAT in the forthcoming parliament though obviously the highest rate set is already far in excess of the EU minimum. She obviously hasn’t committed to not extending the reach of VAT, to move more consumer goods into the VAT charge rate.

In 2014/15, the richest fifth of households paid 15.0% of their disposable income in indirect taxes, while the bottom fifth of households paid the equivalent of 29.7% of their disposable income. Across the board, VAT is the largest component of indirect taxes. Again, the proportion of disposable income that is spent on VAT is highest for the poorest fifth and lowest for the richest fifth.ce for National Statistics

Grouping households by their income is recognised as the standard approach to distributional analysis, as income provides a good indication of households’ material living standards, but it is also useful to group households according to their expenditure, particularly for examining indirect taxes, which are paid on expenditure rather than income. Some households, particularly those at the lower end of the income distribution, may have annual expenditure which exceeds their annual income. For these households, their expenditure is not being funded entirely from income. During periods of low income, these households may maintain their standard of living by funding their expenditure from savings or borrowing, thereby adjusting their lifetime consumption.

When expressed as a percentage of expenditure, the proportion paid in indirect tax declines less sharply as income rises (Figure 6) compared with the level of indirect taxes paid as a proportion of household disposable income. The bottom fifth of households paid 20.1% of their expenditure in indirect taxes compared with 17.6% for the top fifth. These figures are broadly unchanged from the previous year.

After indirect taxes, the richest fifth had post-tax household incomes that were 6 and a half times those of the poorest fifth (£56,900 compared with £8,700 per year, respectively). This ratio is unchanged on 2013/14.

The ONS also considered the effect on household income of certain benefits received in kind. Benefits in kind are goods and services provided by the government to households that are either free at the time of use or at subsidised prices, such as education and health services. These goods and services can be assigned a monetary value based on the cost to the government which is then allocated as a benefit to individual households. The poorest fifth of households received the equivalent of £7,800 per year from all benefits in kind, compared with £5,500 received by the top fifth (Effects of taxes and benefits dataset Table 2). This is partly due to households towards the bottom of the income distribution having, on average, a larger number of children in state education.

Overall, in 2014/15, 50.8% of all households received more in benefits (including in-kind benefits such as education) than they paid in taxes (direct and indirect) (Figure 7). This equates to 13.6 million households. This continues the downward trend seen since 2010/11 (53.5%) but remains above the proportions seen before the economic downturn.

The trend seen for non-retired households mirrors that for all households, except that lower percentages of non-retired households receive more in benefits than pay in taxes, 36.9% in 2014/15, down from a peak of 39.7% in 2010/11.

In contrast, in 2014/15, 88.7% of retired households received more in benefits than paid in taxes, reflecting the classification of the State Pension as a cash benefit in this analysis. A retired household is defined as a household where the income of retired household members accounts for the majority of the total household gross income2. This figure is lower than its 2009/2010 peak of 92.4% but is broadly similar to the proportions seen before the downturn.

There are a number of different ways in which inequality of household income can be presented and summarised. Perhaps the most widely used measure internationally is the Gini coefficient. Gini coefficients can vary between 0 and 100 and the lower the value, the more equally household income is distributed.

The extent to which cash benefits, direct taxes and indirect taxes together work to affect income inequality can be seen by comparing the Gini coefficients of original, gross, disposable and post-tax incomes (Effects of taxes and benefits dataset Table 10). Cash benefits have the largest impact on reducing income inequality, in 2014/15 reducing the Gini coefficient from 50.0% for original income to 35.8% for gross income (Figure 8). Direct taxes act to further reduce it, to 32.6% in 2014/15. However, indirect taxes have the opposite effect and in 2014/15 the Gini for post-tax income was 36.4%, meaning that overall, taxes have a negligible effect on income inequality.

Figure 3: Gini Coefficient impact of taxes and benefits

Impact of cash benefits and taxes on income inequality. Cash benefits has the most effect on the gini coefficient for post-tax income

Source: Office for National Statistics

 

Political, Rants&Rambles

Peter Pan is forced to Grow Up

I was hoping that Theresa May knew or understood something about the brexit process that I was missing, and I’m sure that she must have more information. She’s the PM after all, the woman in charge.
Part of me was convinced that the only reason she had for being PM was the absolute convictions that although brexit was a disaster, with anyone else but her it would be an even more fucked up disaster ie. she would work in “damage limitation” mode making th most of her competency.
But at least from the outside it’s beginning to look as if she’s been caught up in the happy, clappy enthusiasm mode of some of her fellow prisoners in government, all of them trapped in the galley of the ship desperately rowing and subject to the flogging of “leave” campaigning zealots. As the months have gone by, it seems clear that rather than risk the difficulties of selling limited contributions to the EU in return for access to the single market or customs union, she’s settled for the clearest route out, and damn the financial consequences.
Some of the assumptions being made are beginning to look rather dubious. The idea that negotiations can be kept secret seem doomed to fail if the twitter riff sourced from the FAZ below are to be believed, and some of it does ring very true. I can imagine David Davis rattling on about his civil liberty battles with Ms May frowning in the background.
It’s also entirely believable that the UK government may well have underestimated the level of detail to be negotiated as part of agreeing citizens rights post brexit.
Basically we’re been governed by a bunch of broad brush cowboys who, thanks to the EU diplomatic corp. haven’t had to worry themselves about the detail for decades and now cannot conceive of the idea that the detail is where the devil might be found. Maybe if the EU were similarly slapdash all would be well but it must be clear to everybody by now that the EU is in love with the detail, with dotting the i and crossing the t.
I’m sure Merry Somerset Webb from the FT is right to suggest that in ten years we’ll all look back and wonder what the fuss was about, renegotiating (slightly) our trade deal with the EU. Well, maybe twenty years…

Today’s FAZ report on May’s disastrous dinner with Juncker – briefed by senior Commission sources – is absolutely damning.

1) May had said she wanted to talk not just Brexit but also world problems; but in practice it fell to Juncker to propose one to discuss.

2) May has made clear to the Commission that she fully expects to be reelected as PM.

3) It is thought [in the Commission] that May wants to frustrate the daily business of the EU27, to improve her own negotiating position. 

4) May seemed pissed off at Davis for regaling her dinner guests of his ECJ case against her data retention measures – three times.

5) EU side were astonished at May’s suggestion that EU/UK expats issue could be sorted at EU Council meeting at the end of June.

6) Juncker objected to this timetable as way too optimistic given complexities, eg on rights to health care.

7) Juncker pulled two piles of paper from his bag: Croatia’s EU entry deal, Canada’s free trade deal. His point: Brexit will be v v complex.

8) May wanted to work through the Brexit talks in monthly, 4-day blocks; all confidential until the end of the process.
 
9) Commission said impossible to reconcile this with need to square off member states & European Parliament, so documents must be published.
 

10) EU side felt May was seeing whole thing through rose-tinted-glasses. “Let us make Brexit a success” she told them.

11) Juncker countered that Britain will now be a third state, not even (like Turkey) in the customs union: “Brexit cannot be a success”. 

12) May seemed surprised by this and seemed to the EU side not to have been fully briefed.

13) She cited her own JHA opt-out negotiations as home sec as a model: a mutually useful agreement meaning lots on paper, little in reality.

14) May’s reference to the JHA (justice and home affairs) opt-outs set off alarm signals for the EU side. This was what they had feared.

15) ie as home sec May opted out of EU measures (playing to UK audience) then opted back in, and wrongly thinks she can do same with Brexit

16) “The more I hear, the more sceptical I become” said Juncker (this was only half way through the dinner)

17) May then insisted to Juncker et al that UK owes EU no money because there is nothing to that effect in the treaties.
 
 18) Her guests then informed her that the EU is not a golf club
 

19) Davis then objected that EU could not force a post-Brexit, post-ECJ UK to pay the bill. OK, said Juncker, then no trade deal. 

20) …leaving EU27 with UK’s unpaid bills will involve national parliaments in process (a point that Berlin had made *repeatedly* before).

21) “I leave Downing St ten times as sceptical as I was before” Juncker told May as he left

22) Next morning at c7am Juncker called Merkel on her mobile, said May living in another galaxy & totally deluding herself

23) Merkel quickly reworked her speech to Bundestag to include her now-famous “some in Britain still have illusions” comment

24) FAZ concludes: May in election mode & playing to crowd, but what use is a big majority won by nurturing delusions of Brexit hardliners?

25) Juncker’s team now think it more likely than not that Brexit talks will collapse & hope Brits wake up to harsh realities in time.

26) What to make of it all? Obviously this leak is a highly tactical move by Commission. But contents deeply worrying for UK nonetheless.

27) The report points to major communications/briefing problems. Important messages from Berlin & Brussels seem not to be getting through.

28) Presumably as a result, May seems to be labouring under some really rather fundamental misconceptions about Brexit & the EU27.

29) Also clear that (as some of us have been warning for a while…) No 10 should expect every detail of the Brexit talks to leak.

30/30) Sorry for the long thread. And a reminder: full credit for all the above reporting on the May/Juncker dinner goes to the FAZ

Rants&Rambles

Free for what?

Free speech is held up as an inherent good, an invaluable bastion of the democracy, the freedoms of the Western developed world.

We are told that modern day “snowflakes” contest this self-evident truth and look to curb our everyday freedoms but in fact what is often contested is not the right to free speech, but rather the definition of free speech. What does it mean?

At one of the premieres of his landmark Holocaust documentary, “Shoah” (1985), the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann was challenged by a member of the audience, a woman who identified herself as a Holocaust survivor. Lanzmann listened politely as the woman recounted her harrowing personal account of the Holocaust to make the point that the film failed to fully represent the recollections of survivors. When she finished, Lanzmann waited a bit, and then said, “Madame, you are an experience, but not an argument.”

Lanzmann’s blunt reply favored reasoned analysis over personal memory. In light of his painstaking research into the Holocaust, his comment must have seemed insensitive but necessary at the time. Yet ironically, “Shoah” eventually helped usher in an era of testimony that elevated stories of trauma to a new level of importance, especially in cultural production and universities.

 Widespread caricatures of students today as overly sensitive, vulnerable and entitled “snowflakes” fail to acknowledge the philosophical work that was carried out, especially in the 1980s and ’90s, to legitimate experience — especially traumatic experience — which had been dismissed for decades as unreliable, untrustworthy and inaccessible to understanding.

The philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, examined the tension between experience and argument in a different way.

Instead of defining freedom of expression as guaranteeing the robust debate from which the truth emerges, Lyotard focused on the asymmetry of different positions when personal experience is challenged by abstract arguments.

His extreme example was Holocaust denial, where invidious but often well-publicized cranks confronted survivors with the absurd challenge to produce incontrovertible eyewitness evidence of their experience of the killing machines set up by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Not only was such evidence unavailable, but it also challenged the Jewish survivors to produce evidence of their own legitimacy in a discourse that had systematically denied their humanity.

Lyotard shifted attention away from the content of free speech to the way certain topics restrict speech as a public good.

Some things are unmentionable and undebatable, but not because they offend the sensibilities of the sheltered young. Some topics, such as claims that some human beings are by definition inferior to others, or illegal or unworthy of legal standing, are not open to debate because such people cannot debate them on the same terms.

All people must be free to speak, if we are to have free speech, and that is self-evidently not possible if one group is excluded from being “people”. Freedom applies to the rights of all people to be included, as well as what is said.

The recent student demonstrations at various campuses can be understood as an attempt to ensure the conditions of free speech for a greater group of people, rather than censorship.

Liberal free-speech advocates rush to point out that the views of these individuals must be heard first to be rejected. But this is not the case. Universities invite speakers not chiefly to present otherwise unavailable discoveries, but to present to the public views they have presented elsewhere. Yet when those views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech as a public good.

The great value and importance of freedom of expression, for higher education and for democracy, is hard to underestimate. But it has been too easy for commentators to create a simple dichotomy between a younger generation’s oversensitivity and free speech as an absolute good that leads to the truth.

We would do better to focus on a more sophisticated understanding, such as the one provided by Lyotard, of the necessary conditions for speech to be a common, public good. This requires the realization that in politics, the parameters of public speech must be continually redrawn to accommodate those who previously had no standing.

Because the idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate as fully recognized members of that community.

Free-speech protections — not only but especially in universities, which aim to educate students in how to belong to various communities — can never mean that someone’s humanity, or their right to participate in political speech as political agents, can be freely attacked, demeaned or questioned.

The recent controversies over the conflict between freedom of expression and granting everyone access to speech hark back to  1963, when Yale University had rescinded an invitation to Alabama’s segregationist governor, George C. Wallace. In 1974, after unruly protests prevented William Shockley from debating his recommendation for voluntary sterilization of people with low I.Q.s, and other related incidents, Yale issued a report on how best to uphold the value of free speech on campus that remains the gold standard for many other institutions.

Unlike today’s somewhat reflexive defenders of free speech, the Yale report placed the issue of free speech on campus within the context of an increasingly inclusive university and the changing demographics of society at large. While Yale bemoaned the occasional “paranoid intolerance” of student protesters, the university also criticized the “arrogant insensitivity” of free speech advocates who failed to acknowledge that requiring of someone in public debate to defend their human worth conflicts with the community’s obligation to assure all of its members equal access to public speech.

What is under severe attack, in the name of an absolute notion of free speech, are the rights, both legal and cultural, of minorities to participate in public discourse.

The issues to which students are so sensitive might be benign when they occur within the ivory tower. Coming from the brexit campaign trail and now the US White House, the threats are not meant to merely offend. Like President Trump’s attacks on the liberal media (or indeed right wing press attacks on the British judiciary) as the “enemies of the people,” these insults are meant to discredit and delegitimize whole groups as less worthy of participation in the public exchange of ideas.

Rants&Rambles, Science

Who wants to live forever?

People are very afraid of cancer, with good reason. Unlike other things that kill us, it often seems to come out of nowhere.

But evidence suggests that cancer may be preventable, too. Unfortunately, this has inflamed as much as it has assuaged people’s fears.

As a physician, I have encountered many people who believe that heart disease, which is the single biggest cause of death among Americans, is largely controllable. After all, if people ate better, were physically active and stopped smoking, then lots of them would get better. This ignores the fact that people can’t change many risk factors of heart disease like age, race and family genetics.

People don’t often seem to feel the same way about cancer. They think it’s out of their control. A study published in Science in January 2015 seemed to support that view. It tried to explain why some tissues lead to cancer more often than others. It found a strong correlation between the number of times a cell divides in the course of a lifetime and the risk of developing cancer.

In other words, this study argued that the more times DNA replicates, the more often something can go wrong. Some took this to mean  that cancer is much more because of “bad luck” than because of other factors that people could control.

But this is not really what the study showed. Lung cells, for instance, divide quite rarely, and still account for a significant amount of cancer. Cells in the gastrointestinal tract divide all the time and account for many fewer cancers. Some cancers, like melanoma, were found to be in the group of cancers influenced more by intrinsic factors (or those we can’t control), when we clearly know that extrinsic factors, like sun exposure, are a major cause.

Further, this study was focused more on the relative risks of cancer in one type of tissue versus another. What we really care about is how much we can reduce our own risk of cancer by changing our behavior.

A more recent study published in Nature argues that there is quite a lot we can do to prevent cancer. Many studies have shown that environmental risk factors and exposures contribute greatly to many cancers. Diet is related to colorectal cancer. Alcohol and tobacco are related to oesophageal cancer. HPV is related to  cervical cancer, and hep C is related to liver cancer.

And you’d have to be living under a rock not to know that smoking causes lung cancer and that too much sun can lead to skin cancer.

Using sophisticated modeling techniques, the researchers argued that less than 30% of the lifetime risk of getting many common cancers was because of intrinsic risk factors, or the “bad luck.” The rest were things you can change.

Most recently, in JAMA Oncology, researchers sought to quantify how a healthful lifestyle might actually alter the risk of cancer. They identified four domains that are often noted to be related to disease prevention: smoking, drinking, obesity and exercise.

They defined people who engaged in healthy levels of all of these activities as a “low risk” group. Then they compared their risk of getting cancer with people who weren’t in this group. They included two groups of people who have been followed and studied a long time, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, as well as national cancer statistics.

Of the nearly 90,000 women and more than 46,000 men, 16,531 women and 11,731 men fell into the low-risk group. For each type of cancer, researchers calculated a population-attributable risk, which is the percentage of people who develop cancer who might have avoided it had they adopted low-risk behaviors.

About 82% of women and 78% of men who got lung cancer might have prevented it through healthy behaviors. About 29% of women and 20%t of men might have prevented colon and rectal cancer. About 30%t of both might have prevented pancreatic cancer. Breast cancer was much less preventable: 4 percent.

Over all, though, about 25% of cancer in women and 33% in men was potentially preventable. Close to half of all cancer deaths might be prevented as well.

No study is perfect, and this is no exception. These cohorts are overwhelmingly white and consist of health professionals, who are not necessarily like the population at large. But the checks against the national data showed that if anything, these results might be underestimating how much cancer is preventable by healthy behaviors.

This also isn’t a randomized controlled trial, and we can certainly argue that it doesn’t prove causation.

A bigger concern to me is that people might interpret these findings as assigning fault to people who get cancer. You don’t want to get into situations where you feel as if people don’t deserve help because they didn’t try hard enough to stay healthy. Much of cancer is still out of people’s control.

In this study, “low risk” status required all four healthy lifestyles. Failing in any one domain put you in the high-risk category, and that seemed like a lot to ask of people.

On further reading, though, it’s clear that the requirements weren’t overly burdensome. Not smoking was defined as never having smoked or having quit at least five years ago. That’s clearly good for health. Moderate alcohol consumption was defined as no more than one drink a day on average for women, and no more than two for men. It in no way requires abstinence.

Adequate weight was defined as a B.M.I. of at least 18.5 and no more than 27.5. The cutoff for “overweight” is 25, meaning that you don’t have to be thin; you just have to be less than obese (B.M.I. 30). Finally, exercise was defined as 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity. That’s a reasonable and quite achievable goal.

I was surprised to realize that I’m already “low risk.” I bet many people reading this are “low risk,” too.

As we talk about cancer “moonshots” that will most likely cost billions of dollars and might not achieve results, it’s worth considering that — as in many cases — prevention is not only the cheapest course, but also the most effective.

Simple changes to people’s behaviors have the potential to make sure many cancers never occur. They have a side benefit of preventing health problems in many other areas, too. Investment in these efforts may not be as exciting, but it may yield greater results.

Rants&Rambles

Identity

Amidst the recriminations and collective shock in the face of Trump’s victory (and the myriad other reverses suffered by progressives in 2016), a consensus is emerging: the weakness of the left is attributable to its embrace of “identity politics”.

Rather than focussing on the interests and priorities of the majority, the story goes, the left has for too long embraced a simplistic and sectional politics in which the interests of racial and sexual minorities have taken centre stage, at the expense popularity and electability.

A recent outburst from the perhaps unlikely figure of Stephen Kinnock typifies this narrative. “What we need to see in the progressive Left is an end to this identity politics”.  & in its place “we need to be talking far more about commonality rather than what differentiates from each other – let’s talk about what unites us.”

Similar pronouncements have recently been made by Bernie Sanders, as well as a number of left-liberal commentators on both sides of the Atlantic.

However, this unease about so-called “identity politics” has been a longstanding feature of left commentary and scholarship.This disdain for identity politics is not isolated to a few individuals: it is a widespread sensibility expressed by Marxists and left-liberals alike

But what, precisely, is this “identity politics” that inspires such animosity?

At a basic level, “identity politics” refers to any politics that seeks to represent and/or advance the claims of a particular social group. But in the narratives outlined above, it has a more specific meaning: in left circles, “identity politics” is, as Nancy Fraser pointed out back in 1998, used largely as a derogatory term for feminism, anti-racism and anti-heterosexism.

The implication was – and very often still is – that gender, race and sexuality are identity-based in the sense that they are seen as flimsy, superficial and, to use Judith Butler’s memorable phrase, ‘merely cultural’.

This is contrasted with its constitutive outside, class. Class relations, in the eyes of the identity politics critic, exhibit a depth, profundity and materiality that ‘mere identity’ lacks. Furthermore, the alleged universalism of class is contrasted with the narrow, sectional concerns characteristic of so-called identity politics.

emancipation-156066_1280

But what, precisely, is wrong with this framing of the problem?

To start with, the implied distinction between “identity” (read: narrow, shallow, self-interested) and “class” politics (read: broad, deep, universal, authentic) misconstrues the character of these different strands of progressive politics, in at least three ways.

All forms of politics arguably involve some kind of appeal to an identity, insofar as they clearly involve claims to speak for a politically salient constituency (and thus an “identity” of sorts). This applies as much to “class” as any other dimension of power and identity. Indeed, these appeals to “class” are quintessential identity politics: they appeal to an identity category – the (presumed white) working class – whose interests have been shamefully neglected by elitist, out of touch leftists and liberals.

The question is not, therefore, universalism or identitarianism, but whether or not we acknowledge the “identitarian” character of our political claims. Something akin to this is eloquently described by James Clifford in a 1999 essay entitled ‘Taking Identity Politics Seriously’, where he argues that ‘opposition to the special claims of racial or ethnic minorities often masks another, unmarked ‘identity politics’, an actively sustained historical positioning and possessive investment in Whiteness’.

Few contemporary feminists or anti-racists would adopt the  view that one’s identity necessarily gives rise to specific forms of politics. Indeed, the recent history of feminism, queer politics and anti-racism is precisely one of challenging identity by analysing and questioning the various ways in which heteronormativity, capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy shape identity-formation.

Basically there is a frankly bewildering inference made by Pinnock et al that the left in its various guises has spent its time of late doggedly pursuing the interests of women, sexual minorities and racial minorities. The reality, however, is that left-wing movements and political parties in the UK and US have an at best patchy track records on race, gender and sexuality, as recent scholarship by the likes of Janet Conway, Julia Downes, Lara Coleman and Abigail Bakan make clear.

All the way from the moderate liberal left to the radical Marxist left, race, gender and sexuality continue to be cast as minority concerns at best, and “bourgeois distractions” at worst, while sexism and misogyny (including, but not limited to, the sexual abuse of women comrades) remain depressingly prevalent across a variety of left spaces.

Consequently, left-wing denunciations of identity politics yield a number of alarming consequences: they naturalise gendered and racialised hierarchies by casting white, male class politics as universal. Such a narrative is therefore not only powerless to challenge, but actively complicit in, the re-energised white supremacism which, as Akwugo Emejulu has recently outlined, has been fundamental to the context of Trump’s victory.

What is more, to pit class politics against identity politics casts women, racial minorities and sexual minorities as outside the boundaries of true, authentic “working classness”. As such, the political claims of working class ethnic minorities, queers and women increasingly go unheard. This is exacerbated by the continued use of “left behind” as euphemism for “white working class”, with its inference that white poverty is unnatural, exceptional, worthy of our attention, while black poverty is either invisible or simply part of the natural order of things. Who is seen to “count” as authentically working class has thus become a key terrain of struggle in the era of Trump and Brexit.

Let us, therefore, not be under any illusions about how these dismissals of “identity politics” function: they are, in effect, a kind of dog whistle to those on the left who might, for instance, agree that black lives matter, but ultimately believe that when push comes to shove it is the (white male) working class that matters more.

As others have pointed out, this is tantamount to being called upon to sacrifice a range of constituencies – women, racial minorities, queers, immigrants (and at times perhaps also trans people, non-binary and gender non-conforming folk, sex workers) – on the altar of political expediency. Putting aside any doubts as to whether this would actually work in terms of galvanising electoral support, this is clearly a morally bankrupt form of politics.

Any solution that insists we forget, minimise or ignore the disadvantage of those who are not white and male is not one I want to sign up to.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Leading Light or Lead Balloon?

Labour’s predicament is that Jeremy Corbyn is hugely unpopular. His poll ratings are worse than for any comparable leader in British polling history. The gap between his standing and that of the PrimeMinister Mrs. May is now alarmingly wide. In a recent poll, 17% approved of Corbyn’s leadership and 58% disapproved. The comparable figures for Mrs. May were 46% and 33%. (In both cases, the rest had no opinion).

A recent article in the left-leaning Guardian newspaper suggested that the policies of the Labour Party were actually quite popular with the electorate right up to the point where Corbyn’s name was associated with them.

There are those amongst his many supporters within the party who argue that Corbyn is being judged both prematurely and by the wrong standards. Those attracted to him were looking for a different model of leadership, whose role is to empower, to galvanise and to operate as a standard bearer of a new mass movement.

In this context it could be useful to explore James MacGregor Burns’s distinction between ‘transactional’ and ‘transforming’ leadership. The former envisages leadership in terms of a transaction between the leader and other players in the party. For example, a leader may seek the co-operation and compliance of others through offering a range of incentives, such as policy concessions and personal advancement. Each party to a bargain would be aware of the power resources, proclivities, and preferences of others, and would engage in a process of mutual adjustment.

Transforming leadership, in contrast, envisages as the crucial leadership functions teaching, inspiring and energising, with fervor and dedication in the service of promoting a party’s collective purposes. Endowed with clear visions, transformational leaders are primarily concerned with the advocacy and pursuit of wide-ranging values – such as social justice and equality – and are loath to engage in too many compromises that might jeopardise them.

This approach meshes well as the radical (or ‘hard’) left’s model of the party. Labour’s prime purpose should be to give effect to the ideals and objectives with which it was historically associated. These should be embodied in policies determined by the wider party, and not by any parliamentary conclave. The role of the leader should be to ‘rally their own side effectively’, to appeal to the party’s base and to facilitate both its democratisation and ‘an empowerment of a new grassroots movement.’ Corbyn’s role as a transforming leader is, in short, to invigorate, mobilise and enthuse as the new voice and standard-bearer of a remoralised party.

Corbyn’s ability to perform this role has undoubtedly been severely handicapped by an unrelentingly and often venomously hostile media. It also needs to be said that his limitations as a communicator and his inability to convey the impression of a man possessing the skills and stature of a prime minister in waiting has not helped.

This is widely recognized (at least by his critics). But, even more fundamentally, his very concept of leadership– the leader as transformer – is flawed.

Here it may be useful to take the argument further by citing Weber’s distinction between ‘the ‘ethic of responsibility’ and the ‘ethic of ultimate ends.’ A political leader who accepts the former is animated by a prudential and calculating spirit, is acutely aware of the consequences of any action, and sees political choice in terms of balancing priorities and awkward trade-offs.

But the ‘ethic of responsibility’ can too easily slide into opportunism, careerism, self-serving actions and mere expediency. It is this that the ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ vehemently rejects. It stands for a more steadfast, determined, and uncompromising form of politics driven by principle and honesty. Corbyn’s appeal for many in Labour’s ranks is that he embodied this ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ and rejected Labour’s customary mode of leadership, with all its equivocations, evasions, and half-measures.

The danger is that the personal appropriation of a higher morality and a disregard for pragmatism and compromise can transmute into unyielding and obdurate political stance. As Weber commented, ‘the believer in an ethic of ultimate ends feels “responsible” only for seeing to it that the flame of pure intentions is not quenched.’ 

This might be compatible with effective leadership when a leader directs a tightly centralised party with full mastery of its key institutions. But Corbyn presides over a party in which power is dispersed among a whole range of institutions, several of which are centres of resistance to his rule. Labour is riven by multiple divisions, over policy, strategy, ideology and, most of all, internal organisation.

Most damagingly, it is suffering from a veritable crisis of legitimacy.

At present, Corbynistas and their critics lack a shared understanding of the ground-rules and values (democracy, accountability, and representation) which should underpin and validate the way in which power is distributed, decisions taken, and sovereignty located. In short, Corbyn both lacks consent and is hemmed in by institutional constraints, without control of decisive levers of power and the confidence of key players.

In such circumstances transforming leadership imbued by an ethic of ultimate ends is peculiarly inappropriate. Labour is a pluralist organisation composed of people attached to a range of often divergent interests, objectives, and values. When this is compounded by profound internal divisions, the skills of a transactional leader are essential.

This mode of leadership ‘requires a shrewd eye for opportunity, a good hand at bargaining, persuading, reciprocating.’ It demands an orientation to leadership governed by the ethic of responsibility, incorporating an open and conciliatory style of engagement, a ‘capacity to modulate personal and political ambitions by patient calculation and realistic appraisal of situations’ and an overriding emphasis upon the importance of reaching consensus and coalition-building. It involves accommodating public opinion with membership preferences, regulating disagreements, astute political maneuvering and a capacity, above all, to hold the party together.

Corbyn has merits – decency, honesty, integrity – but it is not at all evident that concept of leadership is what the party requires.

Home, Rants&Rambles

Healthy

In our house we are counting down months towards retirement, which is both a positive expectation and a financial worry.

It isn’t about how long we expect to live for necessarily since the cost of living will change as our old age changes. The first ten years will be relatively expensive as we plan to travel and enjoy our lives. We’ll also  probably end up spending some money helping to make our kids independent lives a little easier.

Then we’ll probably start to settle down and travel less extensively, live closer to home, more baby sitting and less rock climbing.

And finally we’ll settle into proper old age when our biggest weekly trip will be to the supermarket and relatives, maybe the bridge club once a week, with a (hopefully) brief last two years when physically it all goes “tits up”. The last seems to be true whenever you die, whether at 60 or 90: the last two years can be grim.

Life expectancy at age 65 for men in the UK reached 18.4 years in 2012–2014 and for women it reached 20.9 years. This means that a man aged 65 could expect to live to age 83 and a woman to nearly age 86.

In 2009-11, Disability-Free Life Expectancy (DFLE) for males at birth was 63.9 years, for females it was longer at 64.4 years. Despite having shorter DFLE, males expect to spend a greater proportion of their lives (81.0%) free from disability, compared to females (77.8%). basically women live longer but not in perfect health. Disability can hide a multitude of sins at this age, but given our socio-economic class the cards are stacked in our favour a little.

 

Before we all rush to book one-way tickets to Dignitas when we are 80, it is important to remember that many older people have no social care needs. If you ask people what they would do, knowing now what they do about old age, to prepare for it.

The advice went something like this: make a will, make a living will, put in place power of attorney, have a pension, avoid being overweight, don’t smoke, drink moderately, stay active, think about your needs in old age before you get there and, if necessary, downsize and move to somewhere more suitable, don’t stick your head in the sand about old age, have a social network, stay mentally active, keep out of hospital if you can (a geriatrician told me that 10 days in hospital is equivalent to 10 years of muscle wasting in elderly people), work for as long as you can, and find what you enjoy and do it.

That is as much as we have control over. Except, knowing all this, we may also want to start voting for a political party that invests in elder care. You know, just in case.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Yes, but…

Some of the political absurdities that we now have to wade through as part of the brexit discussions or debate.

The UK trade secretary would break the law if he did his job

After he took the role of international trade secretary, Liam Fox boasted that he would have “about a dozen free trade deals outside the EU” ready for when Britain left. But it is of course illegal for Britain, as an EU member state, to negotiate bilateral trade deals. Fox later quietly backtracked on his promise. No one knows what he’s doing with his time at the moment.

Theresa May’s promises on food labelling are straight outta North Korea 

In a speech at the Conservative party conference, May promised that Britain would now control how it labels food. But these rules have nothing to do with the EU. They come from a general code at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). For May to deliver on this promise, she would have to adopt the North Korean model of total isolation. She either didn’t know what she was saying was nonsense, or didn’t care.

Eczema sufferers should worry

If you want to sell pharmaceuticals in Europe, they have to have been cleared by European regulators. While we’re in the EU, that’s the case for the UK too. But what happens after we leave? Will a British regulator take up the slack? A fast, hard Brexit of the type being demanded by some Tory MPs would leave a window between leaving the EU and setting up our own regulators. During that period, drug firms wouldn’t be able to get their products authorised for the UK market, so, for a while, there would be no new eczema creams, asthma inhalers or any other new treatments available to British patients.

The government is pretending bad news doesn’t exist

Directors of trade bodies – many of them facing economic and regulatory disaster – went in to brief David Davis when he was made Brexit secretary. But before they got to his office they were taken to one side by civil servants and advised to go in saying Brexit was full of “opportunities”. Anyone who didn’t tended to be asked to leave after five minutes.

Most people aren’t that fussed about freedom of movement

If there’s one thing everyone accepts the Brexit vote demonstrated, it’s that people want to end freedom of movement. Except this isn’t true. Poll after poll taken during and after the campaign found that between 20% and 40% of leave voters either support immigration or prioritise the economy over reducing it – or just want to remain in the single market.

We need an army of trade negotiators. We barely have a platoon

Or at least we didn’t when we voted to leave Europe. Whitehall is now on a massive recruitment drive. We urgently need an army of general trade experts and ones with specialist knowledge in areas such as intellectual property law. The costs are painfully high. Some are quoting day rates of £3,000 to do consultancy work for the UK government. If they are hired full-time, their salaries will be lower – probably around the £100,000 mark.

Banks will have a good excuse to sack people 

City bankers don’t have time to sit around waiting to find out what May’s Brexit plan is. In order to avoid losing passporting rights in Europe, they have to register an office with regulators on the continent – a process that could take years. They are therefore likely to make “no regret” decisions, meaning they will do things they wanted to do anyway. In this case, that means moving back-office administrative staff to locations with cheaper rents and lower salaries, such as Warsaw. The less you earn, the more likely you are to be affected.

The frontline of Britain’s battle with Europe could move from Brussels to Geneva 

Brexiters argue that if we don’t get a good deal from the EU, we can fall back on WTO rules. They couldn’t be more wrong. The EU is a member of the Geneva-based WTO too. If the UK tries to unilaterally separate its trade arrangements from the EU without getting its agreement first, Brussels can trigger a trade dispute. For Britain to secure a decent relationship with the WTO, it needs to make sure it is on good terms with the EU.

There are no rules for what Britain is doing because no one has been stupid enough to try it

If Britain does pursue a hard Brexit, things get murky. There are no rules on how an existing WTO member leaves a customs union, because no one has ever been crazy enough to try it. Lawyers at the organisation are trying to sort out how this works and what the process will be.

Britain is going to pretend it’s still in the EU (don’t tell anyone) 

If Britain is to going to ensure stability during its transition from the EU to independent membership of the WTO, it will have to replicate all the EU’s tariffs (charges on imports and exports). This makes a mockery of everything Brexit stands for, of course, but if we changed any tariff, it would trigger an avalanche of trade disputes and lobbying operations. If Britain was to raise tariffs on ham, for instance, it would trigger protests and formal dispute claims from not just European ham producers, but those all over the world.

The UK steel industry could collapse overnight

There’s an EU agreement at the WTO preventing China from dumping cheap steel in Europe. Without it, plants such as Port Talbot would collapse as Chinese product flooded the market. When Britain leaves the EU, it will claim that it is still a signatory to this agreement and the Chinese will object. This dispute is likely to last for years. If Britain loses, it will likely lose its domestic steel industry.

You can’t just copy and paste EU law 

Ministers want to transfer all EU laws into Britain using the so-called great reform bill. The trouble is, they don’t know where to find them. The Equalities Act, for instance, is a messy mixture of EU and UK legislation. In every area of law, there are bits and pieces of EU directives. Good luck tracking them all down.

Article 50 isn’t actually a trade deal

Leaving the EU involves three things: an administrative divorce, the untangling of British and EU law, and (probably) a new trade deal. But only the first aspect is dealt with in article 50. The rest is up to Europe’s discretion. If they want to just talk admin, we can’t do much about it.

British divorcees in Europe may become half-married

If European countries don’t like the way article 50 talks go, they could decide to not recognise legal decisions from London. At a snap, British divorcees who live in Europe would suddenly find themselves in a state of marital limbo – with their home country recognising their divorced status, but their adopted country considering them married.

Britain (and its tabloid press) could end up demanding a hard border with Ireland

Britain and Ireland enjoy legal protections against EU immigration law which allow them to “continue to make arrangements between themselves relating to the movement of persons between their territories”. This should prevent Brussels imposing a hard border for people in Ireland. But there are no protections against tabloid scare stories. After Brexit, we can expect campaigns about Polish plumbers crossing into England from Ireland to work. It will be nonsense – Polish people could just as easily use tourist visas – but it could be politically effective. If a hard border returns to Ireland, it will be because of Britain, not the EU.

Screwing up trade with Europe = screwing up trade with the world 

Leaving the single market will sever Britain’s relationship with its largest trading destination, but the problems don’t end there. Europe also has agreements with other major economies such as the US and Japan allowing it to transport goods without expensive and slow border checks. If Britain leaves the single market, we’ll lose these too. Oops.

What’s good for the burger lover isn’t good for the beef farmer …

A bilateral trade deal with the US would see cheaper burgers in the UK. The Americans have lower animal-welfare standards, use growth hormones in their meat and have larger farms. This won’t be good news for British farmers, who will also be facing sky-high export tariffs and a possible end to subsidies. And it won’t be good news for animal rights campaigners. But burger lovers might be pleased.

… not to mention British vets, who don’t enjoy watching cows being slaughtered 

EU law insists on an independent veterinary presence in abattoirs. The problem is that 95% of the vets doing this job in Britain are European – most of them from Spain. The problem is one of demand. British vets study for years to cure family pets, not watch cows being slaughtered. But Europeans have less of a cultural hang-up about that type of thing and are also willing to accept the lower wages involved. If Britain doesn’t train up more domestic vets for the abattoirs, it won’t be able to sell meat to Europe or properly check it for disease.

Our battered fish isn’t actually our battered fish

British fishermen want the UK to prise open the incredibly complex European system for allocating national quotas of fish stocks and renegotiate the whole thing. That will take a long time and a lot of manpower. If they get it wrong, the UK could face problems. The type of white meat we like for fish and chips doesn’t actually come from the UK – most of it comes from the seas around Norway and Iceland.

Britain may be about to adopt lower US standards on … everything

The Americans have lower consumer standards than Europe on pretty much everything, from chemical safety to data protection. A bilateral trade deal will see them demand we lower our standards so their products can enter our market more freely. Given how desperate we’ll be, we’re likely to comply.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Majority

The difference between leave and remain was 3.8% or 1.3 million in favour of Leave. However, in a close analysis, virtually all the polls show that the UK electorate wants to remain in the EU, and has wanted to remain since referendum day. Moreover, according to predicted demographics, the UK will want to remain in the EU for the foreseeable future.

And it makes not a penny of difference because the PM has sent the letter to the EU and we have asked to leave.

There have been more than 13 polls since June 23rd which have asked questions similar to ‘Would you vote the same again’ or ‘Was the country right to vote for Brexit’. People haven’t changed their minds. If you voted leave then you still want to leave. If you voted remain then you still want to remain, but of course many people failed to vote.

Eleven of the polls indicate that the majority in the UK do not want Brexit largely because of those who failed to vote.

It’s important to remember how tight the vote turned out to be. The poll predictions leading up to the referendum narrowed but a significant majority of late polls indicated that the country wanted to remain. The leader of UKIP even conceded defeat on the night of the vote, presumably because the final polls were convincing that Remain would win.

In fact, according to the first post-referendum poll (Ipsos/Newsnight, 29th June), those who did not vote all 12.9m of them,  were, by a ratio of 2:1, Remain supporters. It is well known that polls affect both turnout and voting, particularly when it looks as though a particular result is a foregone conclusion. It seems, according to the post-referendum polls, that this was the case. More Remain than Leave supporters who, for whatever reason, found voting too difficult, chose the easier option not to vote, probably because they believed that Remain would win.

brexit-polls-oct-2016Percentage lead of LEAVE or REMAIN according to the polls post June 23rd

By now (March 2017) with Article 50 initiated, there will be approximately 563,000 new 18-year-old voters, with approximately a similar number of deaths, the vast majority (83%) amongst those over 65. Assuming those who voted stick with their decision and based on the age profile of the referendum result, that, alone, year on year adds more to the Remain majority.

A Financial Times model indicated that simply based on that demographic profile, by 2021 the result would be reversed and that will be the case for the foreseeable future.

Sadly nothing less than a second, fairer referendum could redress the unfairness felt by the exclusion from the electorate of both the 16-18s and the non-UK EU residents. This all paints a very sorry picture of the effectiveness of UK democracy. Brexit is not the will of the people in the UK. It never has been. Had all the people spoken on the day the result would almost certainly be what the pollsters had predicted, and what the UK, according to the polls, still wants, and that is to Remain.

We are where are. Calls to unite together behind the brexit banner are loud and insistent.

They can fuck off.