Lord (Maurice) Glasman promised us a more academic talk than one fit for policy, when he addressed a small audience in Westminster and academic it was, writes Carl Packman.

Not academic, however, like data-heavy, laden with field reports and case studies, but academic in the nouveau sense, flitting between history, economics, geography and political philosophy; unstructured and unkempt.

The subject of the talk, unsurprisingly, was about Blue Labour, and how it reconstructs and revisits the local, big society, responsible capitalism and community growth streams.

Glasman, in his inimitably tart fashion – looking like Buster Keaton’s GP cousin – explored the deficit of real democratic politics today, the grossly vague answers we have on political economy, the sum total of our political problems, and his timely solutions.

He noted that for the Blue Labourite, seemingly a new creature in town – the answers to what constitute democratic politics comes straight from the rulebook of Aristotle. Once history and geography are removed from the political, he reminds us, democratic politics is reduced to nothing, thus necessitating the traditional and the local in today’s political sphere.

Moreover, a concern of Glasman’s is that citizenship has ceased to be a political category. It is less clear when it ever was in the history of conservative and/or Conservative party politics, but in the Labour tradition, as Glasman would observe, the civic and the relational were cornerstones, and politics today is at risk of losing this to the financial and multinational.

Though Glasman is not pursuing an anti-capitalist politics, not even a conservative anti-capitalism, predicated on fear of the modern, and loathing of change (for the sake of it). His is a dry conservatism comfortable with free trade as a means of keeping check on autocratic hubris.

Something that should keep the left up tossing and turning is that Glasman is conservative in the sense that tradition is preferable because it has sustained the test of time (this is good old-fashioned anti-liberalism), whereas his appeal to radical politics extends only to allow for free trade economics to stop leaders from getting above their stations. He is no disavowed Fabian socialist to be sure.

The problems of politics today, as he sees them, is that policymakers don’t seem to be able to translate the politics of “reciprocity” into something that promotes “prosperity and growth”.

This is a tough point to unpack, but one can only imagine Glasman means that government and local authorities are ill at ease promoting the kind of mutual politics that accepts that state intervention and market solutions are dead ducks.

Of all the ways in which it has been explained how stale politics is today, and how immature politicians and policymakers are at finding solutions, seldom has anyone tried to use such obscure figures for illustration as the ones Glasman uses. He notes that before we can ask Lenin’s question “what is to be done,” we must first grapple with Marvin Gaye’s question “what’s going on?”

In an analogy that breaks it to us gently that neither the state, nor the market, can help us now, opening up a nauseating, almost Sartrean, sense of freedom, Glasman points out that the “problem is not that we’re neither here nor there, but that we’re all at sea”. In other words, we need to embrace being communities and not state subjects or market players.

What does this mean? For Glasman it is trying to break free from today’s limiting politics of “viagra or vivisection,” that is to say growth or cuts. This political limitation is holding back radicalism. It is about promoting regional diversity, where the East Midlands becomes a hub for transport, and where the South West becomes a hub for fishing (and, as Glasman noted, to comic effect, cheese).

In a sense he is calling for regional divisions of labour, rather than too much focus on one financial centre point in the East of London for our prosperity.

Glasman wants us to look back at London’s inheritance, when the City of London was born as a commune in 1191, and not as a “well-endowed lobbyist for the financial sector”. He wants us to learn from this time and renew the vocational economy, institute leadership academies to challenge managerialism, and replace 50 per cent of all existing universities with vocational colleges.

Glasman is nothing if not insanely idealistic.

The outcome of his talk was to demonstrate that community politics, for all the vacuous talk of it for years, from David Miliband’s double
devolution of power to “earned autonomy”, is really coming. And government can even help it along the way. But first policymakers have to think beyond simple binary politics (cuts versus no cuts, Labour versus Tories, states versus markets).

However the headlines, if any at all for this speech, will be on Glasman’s reassurance that he is a committed Ed Miliband supporter.

During the question and answer session an ITN reporter, clearly planning her question rather than listening to what Maurice had just been speaking about, asked whether he felt Ed had broken through yet and proven his leadership and action for 2012 (referring to Glasman’s contentious New Statesman article in January).

He responded by saying he was “really pleased with how it’s going” and that actually he was “a bit surprised by how much leadership Ed has shown”. So there you have it. Political theorists can advance radical ideas until they’re blue (pun intended) in the face, but journalists just want gossip. Will this speech amount to much? Probably not.

See also:

• Glasman is battling over postage stamps, but growth is the priority – Cormac Hollingsworth, January 9th 2012

• Blue Labour exclusive: David, Ed, Glasman and community organising – Rowenna Davis, September 25th 2011

• Nomination for most influential left-wing thinker of 2010/11: Maurice Glasman – Daniel Elton, September 22nd 2011

• Glasman: Businesses want Labour and the unions to be “partners in growth” – Shamik Das, September 7th 2011

• It may soon be time ‘to draw the line’ on Glasman – Daniel Elton, July 18th 2011

The opportunity for party renewal must be the only positive about opposition; converting political unease and hunger for government into a winning agenda of policies to win the electorate’s votes and affect change.

Pragmatic Radicalism’s quick-fire policy debates, ‘Top of the Policies’, offer Labour Party members the chance to present and discuss ideas, with the future of UK skills being the latest policy area tackled this week in Westminster’s Barley Mow pub, chaired by Michael White of the Guardian.

Pragmatic Radicalism – or @PragRad as it’s now known – is an eclectic mix of Labour voices from all wings of the party, who write and present short policy in the pub ideas. Facing quick-fired Q&A sessions, policies are then voted on in a secret ballot.

Pragmatic Radicalism’s founder John Slinger says:

“The idea of Pragmatic Radicalism is to generate new ideas that will help Labour and the shadow cabinet as they map out a vision for the country.”

A joint event with unionlearn and Unions21, the skills debate saw Jake Hayman, director at Future First, win the vote on the night hands down with his scheme for an alumni network covering every state school in the UK.

He explained:

“Utilising former students as relatable role models, who can raise awareness of key skills needed in the real world of work, motivating current students to take the initiative to develop these skills.”

Second place went to Anthony Painter, political writer and chairman of Hackney University Technical College, after arguing the case to create a new and high quality technical education from 14+, saying:

“Student strengths are varied and so the education system should be.”

My idea has already been given support in principle by Microsoft partnering, for a national skills mentoring scheme. This came in as joint third most popular proposal, along with Allan Graveson, national secretary of Nautilus International, who spoke about the need for fiscal incentives and tax credits for training, with an employment obligation on the organisation or company involved.

Hayman’s alumni idea is backed-up by Future First’s research that shows 39 per cent of 16 to 19 year olds who went to state school do not know anyone in a career in which they would like to work. He wants to find practical role models for them.

My skills mentoring scheme was similar in essence, to start a national register of experts and organisations, to give of their time, advice and expertise (and donations to part-fund scheme) to help as mentors, setting-up opportunities to access on-the-job skills for CV-building, through structured work experience, initially for young people aged 14-25, then rolling the programme out to those re-training for career change.

Mixing it up with old school politics in the pub, other speakers included John Edmonds (GMB) and former MP Parmjit Dhanda. All ideas can be found here.

Pragmatic Radicalism started life as a pamphlet in 2011. There will be more debates this year. If you want to get involved or wish to join the mailing list, please contact PragRad editor John Slinger

See also:

• Where next for Ed’s speeches? - Asher Dresner, June 28th 2011

• Miliband: “Our ambition is to be more than a party; Labour must be a cause” - Shamik Das, June 25th 2011

• Peter Hain: “We must transform the party” - Dominic Browne, May 16th 2011

• Young people are poorly served by the Coalition’s cuts - Nicola Smith, June 8th 2010

• Labour’s green appeal to first time voters - Joss Garman, April 25th 2010

Matthew Sowemimo worked at the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, which trains emerging campaigners

The unprecedented scale of the government’s deficit reduction programme was always going to generated social protest. In this article I will also identify the features of some of 2011’s most effective political campaigns against the austerity programme and what they say about the wider state of our politics. The new wave of social activism will generate both challenges and opportunities for the labour movement.

Traditionally people with the lowest incomes have lacked a political voice equivalent to the stake they have in policies designed to redistribute wealth and to provide them with services like housing that they could not secure from their own resources.

Many would argue that people on low incomes are bearing the brunt of the government’s austerity programme. So have those with most at stake been at the forefront of popular protest against the government’s policies?

The student protestors dominated protest at the early stage of the spending cuts and conform to the established pattern of those with the greatest levels of social capital and educational levels being the most assertive in representing their views.

Conversely, the initial overspill of protest from the student movement to the arguably more important issue of the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance (EMA) was not sustained. The demographic of EMA beneficiaries was notably poorer and more drawn from ethnic minorities that the student protestors.

The one social group adversely affected by the welfare cuts who took part in popular protests in some numbers were disabled people. However as in many past occasions significant numbers of disabled people are part of national networks of large charities, like Scope and Radar.

Many of these charities have invested considerable resources in mobilising disabled people and supporting their political advocacy. However individuals affected by the housing benefit reforms and the household cap on benefits have lacked any national visibility.

By contrast, the National Trust-led campaign against the government’s forestry proposals was powered by thousands of affluent voters writing protest letters.

The fact that policies like the housing benefit reforms have not led to direct mobilisation of the communities directly affected by them is aggravated by the fact that these groups are far less likely to turnout in general elections.

Barack Obama’s community activism in Chicago was based on the belief that policymakers would become more responsive to poor peoples issues if those voters were brought into the political process. Obama’s own election as a United States senator was an ‘aftershock’ of long term political and electoral re-engagement of poor communities.

The protests that have been most effective are those that have focused on wider systemic political and economic issues rather than defensive campaigns reacting to specific cuts.

UKUncut and the Occupy campaigns effectiveness can be seen in the way they featured high up news schedules; how they sustained their media impact and that they shifted the terms of debate. UKUncut’s campaign challenged the central tenet of the government’s argument that there is no alternative to its spending cuts.

Both campaigns demonstrate the ability of online campaigning to reach out to large numbers of unaffiliated people around a clear focus and to do so in short time frames. Prior to the cuts, grassroots campaigns like Plane Stupid, have used the agility that comes with not having large formalised decision making structures to sometimes steal a march on large campaigning charities.

In the 1990s Adam Lent and I argued that national protest movements formed in areas like gay rights and foreign policy in part as a result of political disaffection with the conservatism and caution of the Labour Party leadership.

The Occupy campaign’s challenge to the City of London about its past and ongoing role in the financial crisis has taken place at a time when Labour is undergoing an agonising reassessment of its record in office, including its policies towards the banking sector. Occupy’s stance on the City of London was clear and urgent and quickly generated quite significant levels public approval.

As a result, Ed Miliband and Vince Cable found themselves acknowledging the force of Occupy’s core political case. Occupy’s experience shows that social movements can expand the political space for progressive politics.

However, the vibrant new social movements pose a challenge for Labour.

The youthful face and energy of groups like UKUncut serve as a sharp contrast to the ageing profile and falling membership of the trade unions and Labour Party. The more social movements are seen to set the agenda on fundamental questions about the economic and political system, the less relevant Labour may seem.

However social movements, by going where mainstream political leaders initially fear to tread, can prepare the ground for stronger progressive commitments.

Occupy Wall Street’s messaging, ‘we are the 99 per cent’, provided a countervailing force to the reactionary Tea Party by channelling popular discontent over the banking bailouts through progressive politics. Within weeks President Obama realigned his political message to argue for a greater contribution from wealthy Americans to pay down the deficit.

Labour needs bold and vibrant social movements not only to help prepare its path to power but also to govern effectively.

This year will see new potential policy conflicts that could rally protest and there will be a further test of whether those who are most socially marginalised absorb more pain without protest.

2012 is likely to see renewed pressure from within the Conservatives part of the coalition to abandon or water down climate change commitments, particularly as growth continues to stagnate. This year will see a new wave of benefit cuts come into force just at a time when unemployment is rising.

Will the newly established internet-driven loose and informal campaign groups become more structured mass movements with memberships that systematically take part in ongoing actions, or are the days of the mass mobilisation of groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament now a thing of the past?

See also:

• Welfare reform bill in tatters after Lords defeats – Shamik Das, January 12th 2012

• UK Uncut: Stop the traffic to stop the NHS being run over – Tim Holmes, October 7th 2011

• Networks can be deliberative, accountable and consensual in decision making – Aaron Peters, January 4th 2011

• Daily Mail echoes UK Uncut campaign against tax avoidance – Will Straw, December 6th 2010

• A consensus on community organisation – Will Straw, March 31st 2010

The Parliament Square protest camp was evicted last night by the Metropolitan Police.

The Guardian reports:

The Metropolitan Police said that officers had arrived on the scene at around 7.30pm on Monday to remove “all tents and sleeping equipment”.

The move comes after the passing of the police reform and social responsibility (PRSR) bill, for which the home secretary had created an amendment that outlawed the setting up in Parliament Square of “any tent, or any other structure that is designed, or adapted… for the purpose of facilitating sleeping or staying in”.

The square has been the site of a number of protest camps over the years, with this just the latest one to be evicted.

Brian Haw, who occupied the square from June 2001 until his death in June 2011, was even the subject of a law specifically written to end his protest – the serious organised crime and police act of 2005, which contained a clause banning all unauthorised protest within an area roughly half a mile around parliament.

This failed to have the desired impact due to the fact that Haw’s protest had technically started before the act was in effect. It has still been used several times in the intervening years to prevent other protests which would otherwise have been legal, such as Maya Anne Evans’s; she was arrested shortly after the passing of the law for reading out the names of dead soldiers.

More recently, the ‘Democracy Village’ which was evicted today, was originally set up on the square itself, before being evicted by the Greater London Authority in July last year following a court order and moving onto the pavement around the square.

This, however, is owned by Westminster Council, and so eviction required a separate order, made possible by the new PRSR bill.

This move follows David Cameron’s statement, concerning occupy London, that:

I have got this rather quaint view – you shouldn’t be able to erect tents all over the place.

I think protesting is something you, on the whole, should do on two feet, rather than lying down.

Left Foot Forward has reported before on the crackdown on protest in London, which previously has been largely done by abusing the extent to which public spaces in the city are owned by private companies:

Boris Johnson – and Ken Livingstone before him – has been instrumental in making London the home of international finance. Want to camp outside City Hall? Unfortunately, More London Estates is unlikely to allow that.

Occupy a major shopping district, so as to draw attention to the problems of consumerism!? It had better not be Carnaby Street, Westfield Stratford or Westfield White City, although if you’re lucky and the police permit, you may be able to march down Oxford Street or Regent Street.

All of these areas were once public land and therefore the public were free (within reason) to protest on them.

A private company on private land can deny any person access at any time for almost any reason. That is fine if that private land is, for example, a shop or an office block. But when it is a street, square or park, and when it is indistinguishable from the private land around it, it creates problems.

Currently, the PRSR bill only outlaws tents in a specific area; but it is a worrying sign of the extent to which the government is happy to follow the example of the one before it, and use primary legislation to shut down protest it disagrees with. Civil liberties were one of Nick Clegg’s yellow lines – will he fight over this?

See also:

• Occupy LA evicted as America clamps down on protest - Alex Hern, December 1st 2011

• How we sold off the right to protest to the one per cent - Alex Hern, November 3rd 2011

• Seek solutions to protests, not problems - Mike Morgan-Giles, November 2nd 2011

• The privatisation of public space is harming our ability to protest - Alex Hern, October 30th 2011

• The “occupy” protests come to the City this Saturday - Shamik Das, October 12th 2011

Peter Oborne has declared that the last thirteen years of Labour’s rule can now be seen as a failed experiment, proving “that the Conservative analysis is better and more truthful”.

The piece has a triumphalist tone, but it starts on an untruth and doesn’t get much better from there.

Oborne writes:

In retrospect, the Brown/Blair period may be seen as a prolonged experiment which taught the liberal Left that its ideas cannot work, do not work, and have no chance of ever working.

The vital importance of this experiment lay in the special circumstances of the post-war period. Throughout this time, the liberal Left, as general election results show, has tended to be unpopular with voters. But its progressive ideas have enjoyed a disproportionate amount of traction among British governing elites.

In fact, as we reported in one of our very first posts, general election results show no such thing:

The graph showed that the Conservative Party had never, in the post-war era, had a majority of voters. The graph, produced by Left Foot Forward, shows the Conservative vote plotted against the combined Labour and Liberal/SDP-Liberal Alliance/Liberal Democrat vote in every election since 1945.

For 2010, the share is 52 per cent Lab-Lib, 36.1 per cent Conservative. Not quite an abject rejection of the liberal Left, as Oborne makes out.

Given those proportions, it would hardly be surprising if, as Oborne claims, the liberal Left:

dominated the higher reaches of the universities, education, the public service bureaucracy, local government, Whitehall, the media (and in particular the BBC), the churches, and the police.

For the last sixty years, the liberal Left have dominated the voting public – for that domination to not be reflected in a branch of public life is concerning. The idea that the police were, by the mid-nineties, overwhelmingly left-wing will come as news to many, however.

His analysis of the present seems just as doubtful. He argues that:

In practically every area of British public life – state spending, the economy, education, welfare, the European Union (where Ed Miliband refused to condemn Cameron’s pre-Christmas veto), mass immigration, law and order – Conservatives are winning the argument and taking policy in their direction.

Given the Conservatives are in government right now, it shouldn’t be particularly surprising that policy is heading in their direction.

What the Conservative strength on policy demonstrates isn’t that David Cameron is a re-aligning prime minister in the vein of Thatcher and Atlee, but that in one very specific way, he has changed the political scene: the liberal Left which Oborne blames for the ills of Britain has been sundered in two.

With the liberal part of the liberal Left in government, it would seem as though policy should be moving slower in the Conservatives’ direction than in a Conservative majority government. Yet that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Oborne is a fearsome polemicist, but when it comes to using stats, he should be more careful. Acting like the liberal Left is an unpopular elite is not borne out by the facts, and seems to be about as backwards as one can get.

See also:

• What are Clegg’s yellow lines? – Alex Hern, December 9th 2011

• Lib Dems: We are delivering on our End Child Detention pledge – Tom Brake MP, November 18th 2011

• A progressive majority for change – Will Straw, May 7th 2010

• Is Britain heading for a progressive majority? – Will Straw, April 24th 2010

• Britain’s 60-year progressive consensus – Will Straw, September 9th 2009

The Olympics is notorious for its brand protection; the value of sponsorship runs into billions of pounds, and no-one is allowed to put that at risk, writes Alex Hern

For the most part, those protections will only affect some unlucky shopkeepers in the Stratford area who will be forced to scale back some of their hoardings…

But some protections go a bit further.

Schedule 4, chapter 3 of the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 details the specific expressions which are deemed to suggest to the public that there is a specific relationship to the London Olympics, and it is rather broad.

The verboten phrases are any containing something from the first group with something from the second:

(3) The following expressions form the first group for the purposes of sub-paragraph (2)—

(a) “games”,

(b) “Two Thousand and Twelve”,

(c) “2012”, and

(d) “twenty twelve”.

(4) The following expressions form the second group for the purposes of sub-paragraph (2)—

(a) gold,

(b) silver,

(c) bronze,

(d) London,

(e) medals,

(f) sponsor, and

(g) summer.

Some of these combinations look fair – “London 2012″, for instance, probably brings to mind the Olympics. Others, not so much.

Want to promote something happening in “Summer 2012″? You should probably rephrase that. “August 2012″ ought to be fine. And if you’re running a school sports day, you can give out medals, but you probably shouldn’t call it “school games” if you do – that might be a bit too far.

Going beyond the primary leglislation reveals yet more terms which one ought to steer clear of. The brand protection guidance (pdf) issued by LOCOG reveals that the words “javelin” and “2012″ are protected trademarks.

Diamond Geezer suggests some helpful alternatives (colourful bullet points his):

• Instead of “Today is January 3rd 2012″ say “Today is three days after 2011.”

• Instead of signing legal documents “03/01/2012″ write “03/01/12″

• Instead of “My baby is due in June 2012″ say “I’m having a baby in a special year, I am very blessed.”

• Instead of “Do you have any 2012 tickets?” say “Do you have any Inspirational National Event tickets?”

• Instead of “2012 is turning out to be a shit year already” say “I think I’ll just pop down to John Lewis and buy a cuddly Mandeville.”

This legislation is six years old, so the blame for the overbearing protection of an international brand falls squarely at the feet of the last government.

Hopefully those in charge of enforcing the 2006 Olypmic games act legislation concerning the August sporting jamboree in the year 2012 twelve months to come focus on what really matters – winning gold medals shiny bits of metal.

See also:

• Sports minister: School sport “nothing to do with me… but the School Games are” – Shamik Das, December 15th 2011

• A toxic cloud over London 2012 – Barry Gardiner MP, November 4th 2011

• How we sold off the right to protest to the one per cent – Alex Hern, November 3rd 2011

• Boris fiddles as London prepares for transport chaos – Alex Hern, October 19th 2011

• Here’s what Boris didn’t say… – Alex Hern, October 4th 2011

If you want to get your MPs attention, write them a letter. Don’t “like” them, don’t give them +1s or retweets, and certainly don’t post comments on their YouTube videos. Dust off your primary school textbooks on whose address goes where, and don’t forget to end “yours sincerely”.

This is according to a report released by PR firm Edelman, who surveyed 91 MP’s staff members to find out the best and worst ways to get their attention.

Although the majority of the report is concerned with campaigning methods, from twitter to face-to-face meetings, the most interesting results were those for the question, “How important are each of the following in turning a policy issue into a policy priority for you?”:

Politics remains, fundamentally, local. For some, this will be common knowledge, but it is instructive for those fed up with the ineffectiveness of campaigns run through appeal to weighty national interests: appeal to the economy, or tell your targets how it affects their local area.

But once you’ve written your perfectly targeted campaign, how should you get it to your MP?

The response to the question, “When constituents contact your member, how effective are each of the following modes of contact?” can help.

Largely, the old methods remain the best. All the various forms of personal contact – writing, phoning, or meeting in person – are head and shoulders above the rest.

Social media is noteable less for its effectiveness as it is for its rapid rise. While two years ago, less than one in ten surveyed could could Twitter being effective or very effective, now it is over a third.

Whether this rise will tail off or continue is anyone’s guess; however, based on track record, it may not be best to listen to staffers’ predictions on that matter.

Not a single staffer surveyed last year thought they’d be using twitter by 2013, but this year over 40 per cent think they’ll be using it by 2014. Politically aware they maybe, but when it comes to predicting technological trends, MPs and their staff seem just as swayed by fads as the rest of us.

So to be an effective campaigner, the old rules remain as true as ever: work on a personal, local level.

Don’t be distracted by new tools which seem to make life easier to contact many people at once, because even if the politicians themselves like them, chances are they’re more likely to read a letter or listen to a phone call.

And don’t invest in start-ups on the advice of an MP.

See also:

• What kind of “civil disobedience” tactics will the unions use? – Dan Whittle, September 15th 2011

• 36 hours in Old & Sad – Dave Roberts, January 15th 2011

• Fighting the cuts: The false choice between networks and organisation – Nigel Stanley, December 2nd 2010

• Suffragettes remain campaigning role-models a century later – Deborah Grayson, October 10th 2010

• Community campaigning is Labour’s messy futureDr Jon Wilson, September 30th 2010

Mark Pack is head of digital at MHP Communications and is a co-editor of Liberal Democrat Voice

Liberal Democrat peers used to be in a remarkably privileged position in the party. Not only because they have held office without the pesky need for elections but also because for many years the third party in the House of Lords has been the key swing vote when the government has been wanting to get legislation through.

That has meant many peers were well used to having direct access to ministers, and moreover being in a strong position to extract some concessions. As a result, many peers can point to numerous changes they have achieved to legislation.

By comparison, Liberal Democrat MPs, despite having the democratic mandate, have usually had very little power as votes in the Commons have been a foregone conclusion.

But since the party has gone into coalition, the balance of Parliament influence amongst the party’s peers and MPs have reversed. Rather than being the key swing vote, Liberal Democrat peers are now but part of an overall coalition government majority.

In the Commons, many Liberal Democrat MPs are now in government. It is not even a matter of it being easier to get to talk to a minister, they are the minister.

Moreover, helped by the primacy of the Commons, revolts by Liberal Democrat MPs which could cost the government its majority are now no longer the neglected, poor relative of revolts by Liberal Democrat peers - but the patterns of rebellions have, so far, received relatively little attention.

That is why over at my day job, MHP Communications, we’ve put together this infographic looking at the Liberal Democrat rebels:

The most rebellious and the least? Andrew George 28; David Laws 0.

See also:

• Clegg under fire over voter registration, party funding and youth unemployment – Shamik Das, November 15th 2011

• Baroness Williams: Coalition “bewitched by a flawed US system” – Shamik Das, September 3rd 2011

• Tory and Labour peers look set to frustrate Clegg on Lords reform – Shamik Das, June 17th 2011

• Govt. must go beyond cosmetic changes to health bill warn Lib Dem activists – Dr. Prateek Buch & Dr. Evan Harris April 5th 2011

• Clegg set to face tough time over health, schools and spending cuts – Shamik Das, September 20th 2010

Throughout this Eurozone crisis, we’ve heard a lot about David Cameron’s ‘red lines‘ on Europe – the measures he absolutely will not agree to, no matter what the result.

But what we have heard little of are the ‘yellow lines’; those areas which the junior partner in the coalition will not compromise on.

If you had asked grassroots Liberal Democrats twelve hours ago, they may well have told you that Britain’s role in the centre, rather than the periphery, of the EU was one of those lines.

Nick Clegg himself gave that impression in November, when he said:

“We must move together. The greatest danger we face is division. That is why, while the United Kingdom fully supports deeper fiscal integration within the euro zone to support monetary union, we would not wish it to become a club within a club.

“To retreat from each other now would be to leave ourselves isolated in extremely tempestuous times.”

Today, he is singing a different tune:

“I regret that last night it proved to be impossible to find a way forward as a group of 27 on European treaty change. I have said for months that it would be best to avoid arcane debates about treaty change altogether and if we had to proceed down that road, it would be best to do so in a way that did not create divisions in Europe.

“The demands Britain made for safeguards, on which the Coalition Government was united, were modest and reasonable. They were safeguards for the single market, not just the UK.”

The question on the lips of Liberal Democrats today must be: Are there any areas on which Nick Clegg will not compromise?

The common view of the Lib Dems before the election was as the party of students, civil liberties and Europe. The betrayal on the first of those three is legendary. The Lib Dems went from a manifesto committment (pdf) to “scrap unfair university tuition fees” (p33) to voting for a near tripling of those fees.

The party hasn’t been much better on civil liberties. Their commitment to end child detention has become a commitment to end some types of child detention. They have supervised a creeping militarisation of the police, been silent on the use of kettling during peaceful protest, and voted for removing the right to see a solicitor for free after arrest.

These may have been what Lib Dem voters thought were the priorities, but the leadership can reasonably claim that they detailed four very different priorities (p6-7):

• Fair taxes that put money back in your pocket

• A fair future creating jobs by making Britain greener

• A fair chance for every child

• A fair deal by cleaning up politics

Are these the yellow lines? That doesn’t look hopeful either.

The Lib Dems did manage to pass measures raising the tax threshold to £10,000, but as we’ve reported, by breaking the key promise – that they would be “paid for in full by closing loopholes that unfairly benefit the wealthy and polluters” – and instead paying for it with the VAT rise, the overall package becomes highly regressive.

Making Britain greener doesn’t look like its a no-compromise promise either. We’ve reported time and again (and again and again) about how the self-styled ‘greenest government ever’ is nothing of the sort. They’ve done no better on their promise to clean up politics. The right to sack MPs has been forgotten, civil liberties are on the back-burner, and they have been thoroughly stitched up on Lords and electoral reform.

So the Lib Dems’ last hope for something that they can point to as a line which they will not cross is their promise to children. The pupil premium is a mere reallocation of funds, and class sizes have risen since the election. The one promise that Clegg’s party have kept from their “first priorities” appears to be their pledge, in line with Gove’s reforms, to “give schools the freedom to make the right choices for their pupils”.

It appears that the only lines Lib Dems won’t cross are the ones which Tories don’t want them to. If that is the case, it is no wonder that grassroots activists told us this morning that they don’t know what to think anymore.

See also:

• Lib Dems: We are delivering on our End Child Detention pledge – Tom Brake MP, November 18th 2011

• Hammond hammers another nail in the coffin of the “greenest government ever” – Alex Hern, September 30th 2011

• Clegg’s defence of Human Rights Act as welcome as it is timely – Dr Prateek Buch, August 26th 2011

• Clegg’s £10k tax allowance is no Tory concession; it’s a Tory dream – Tim Horton and Howard Reed, May 12th 2010

• Cameron’s misleading claim on schools funding – Sunder Katwala, January 26th 2011

Occupy LA became the latest American occupation to be forcibly evicted today, as police moved in just after midnight to clear City Hall Park where the protestors had been camped for exactly two months.

The LA Times reported:

Hundreds of police officers in riot gear swarmed out of Los Angeles City Hall early Wednesday, batons across their chests, surprising and engulfing the Occupy L.A. protesters who had been camped in the surrounding park for two months.

“Shame on you!” protesters shouted, as the officers ran to pre-assigned spots, instantly dividing the park into small, easily controlled segments. “Get back!” police shouted to those who came too close.

The operation began at 12:13 a.m., on orders from Deputy Chief Jose Perez, watching from the steps of Los Angeles police headquarters across the street.

Two minutes later, it was effectively over.

Through a combination of effective tactics, daunting numbers and — significantly — restraint by both sides, police managed to bring the encampment to a largely peaceful end, avoiding the melees that marred the eviction of protesters from similar camps in Oakland, New York and elsewhere.

The LA occupation had managed to survive through the wave of evictions which occurred two weeks ago, as Salt Lake City, Denver, Portland, Oakland, and New York City were all evicted on the same night. These evictions were, we now know, co-ordinated by Homeland Security, in a concerning extension of its powers.

Wonkette reported, in their characteristic manner:

Remember when people were freaking out over the Patriot Act and Homeland Security and all this other conveniently ready-to-go post-9/11 police state stuff, because it would obviously be just a matter of time before the whole apparatus was turned against non-Muslim Americans when they started getting complain-y about the social injustice and economic injustice and income inequality and endless recession and permanent unemployment?

That day is now, and has been for some time. But it’s also now confirmed that it’s now, as some Justice Department official screwed up and admitted that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated the riot-cop raids on a dozen major #Occupy Wall Street demonstration camps nationwide.

The reports of the conference call reveal that more was co-ordinated than just time:

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear.

In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

The struggle for a legal reason to evict the protesters – the strength of the first amendment would likely render any attempt to directly end the protest illegal – also explains the mysterious obsession that has suddenly taken place in America with sanitation. All of which makes recent headlines such as “St Paul’s Cathedral cleaners outraged over ‘dirty protest’” in the right wing press a mite concerning.

See also:

• How we sold off the right to protest to the one per cent – Alex Hern, November 3rd 2011

• The movement to evict Occupy London gains pace – Alex Hern, October 31st 2011

• The privatisation of public space is harming our ability to protest – Alex Hern, October 30th 2011

• Occupy London needs to catalyse a new Left – Ben Mitchell, October 27th 2011

• Top five reasons why you can’t protest (according to the right) – Alex Hern, October 26th 2011