workers revolt: some in the Left are listening but not the Conservative party

In my previous entry, I predicted that the left would try to smother the strike story, due to their love affair with internationalism. Although the usual pious diatribes against xenophobia can be found in the pages of the Guardian, my prediction has proved happily incorrect, at least in part, with much disquiet and vocal comments from people such as Frank Field and John Cruddas, talking of a race to the bottom. Both are critical of Brown's economic philosophy. Now that their membership have led the way, the unions are also saying that they have been telling the Government about this problem for years. If only they had told us.

It is the Right however, or at least its most important representative, Davos Cameron's Conservative party, which stands up for the “free movement of labour” principle. Cameron himself set the tone with his criticism of the prime minister for pandering to the BNP with his British Jobs for British Workers speech. While this is true as far as it goes, anyone with experience of political discourse in this country will know that raising the spectre of the BNP is really a signal that the speaker does not want to discuss the issues. At Davos, Cameron waxed lyrical on the need for a new moral capitalism. Cynics might doubt this and wonder if the standard bearer for a new “progressive conservatism” has missed a vocation as PR frontman for a Corporate Social Responsibility department in a major corporation – perhaps Total. Moral capitalism and his criticism of the last 15 years sounds promising, but it needs application to specific issues like this one to see what it means.

A more honest comment on the Andrew Marr show, the de-facto deputy leader, William Hague said that free movement of Labour was one of the aspects of the EU that we strongly favour. Marr, author of the much plugged (by the BBC), centre-left history of post-war Britain, allowed Hague to move quickly away from this topic. Ken Clarke on the Today programme today said that the free movement of labour was ultimately good for us all, that it was only because of the recession that people were protesting, the solution was to work for economic recovery. He also castigated the prime ministers infamous soundbite as “populism”. How long can they maintain a distinction between democratic politics and populism remains to be seen. Interesting that the Independent reported Peter Mandelson saying that British workers could go to Europe to find jobs, which shows how the debate cuts across party lines, with the establishment in both Labour and Conservatives favouring the globalisation/free market agenda. It also vindicates Peter Hitchens' comments that there is no point Clarke and Mandelson arguing across the dispatch box, because they agree on everything.

In the Telegraph, the Saturday Leader and the Sunday Leader contained homilies against the evils of protectionism, reflecting the establishment position and its Torygraph nickname. Also anti-protectionist articles by George Walden. The Daily Mail had two seemingly contradictory leaders, one criticising mass immigration, the other defending free markets against protectionism, which shows the ambivalence on the right between neo-liberal market ideology and the instinct to defend one's country. The last word is left to Christopher Booker, who comments (under "Unions learn the cost of Union membership") that since Delor's speech in 1988, the TUC have been highly supportive of the EU project, something they might regret now. All Booker can do is point out the inconsistencies, which brings us to the nub of the matter, that domestic politicians can do nothing in the face of EU Law. Asking whether EU Law is just or not leads to the question of whether EU membership is worth the disadvantages. Cameron's “moral captitalism” speech immediately is put to the test.

Links to follow later