Privatization of (part of) the BBC
The BBC is an expensive service. Much of the funding comes from unpopular
license fees for televisions. The government would like to dump the license fees and get a pile of money from the privatization of the BBC or part of it.
While eliminating licenses is popular, privatization is very controversial. So controversial that the government has denied considering the sale of BBC4 while apparently planning for it.
Labour response is what you would expect.
Government may privatise Channel 4, document reveals
The government has inadvertently provided further evidence that it is looking at privatising Channel 4, after an official was photographed entering Downing Street with a document setting out options for a sell-off.
After months of ministerial obfuscation on whether the sale of the state-owned, commercially funded broadcaster was being considered, the document reveals that proposals have already been drawn up in a bid to raise an estimated £1bn for Treasury coffers…
The report does include several other options including “do nothing”, but the report’s introduction suggests that the government is keen to raise funds from a sale of the 32-year-old channel…
A Channel 4 representative said: “Channel 4’s not-for-profit model enables it to deliver significant public value to viewers and the UK economy with a unique remit focused on innovation, diversity and new talent.”…
Channel 4’s remit [assigned purpose] to cater for minority audiences and take risks is considered by some within the broadcaster as the greatest challenge to privatisation…
Channel 4 privatisation would be an ‘ideological fire-sale’, says Labour
Labour has criticised government plans to explore a £1bn privatisation of Channel 4 as an “ideological fire-sale” that is not in the public interest.
Michael Dugher, Labour’s shadow culture minister, said allowing Channel 4 to be sold off would threaten the broadcaster’s commitment to public service programming…
Former Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson welcomed the proposals, saying there was no reason for Channel 4 and the BBC to both remain state-owned…
“Channel 4 is a great organisation, a pioneer that makes innovative, creative and marvellous programmes. But technology has changed, [viewing behaviour] has changed, there is competition from Amazon, Netflix, BT and everyone else and it all fundamentally questions Channel 4’s ownership structure. A thorough analysis needs to be done on what C4 might look like if it wasn’t owned by tax payers. Is there a better alternative?”
Channel 4, which is state-owned but funded by advertising, has a remit which includes a commitment to provide distinctive, risk-taking programming, support the independent production sector and promote new talent…
Channel 4 chief executive David Abraham told the Royal Television Society in Cambridge last week that the industry had to “wake up to the consequences” of commercial broadcasters such as ITV and Channel 4 falling into American hands, warning that it would be “sleepwalking … into a different country”…
If Channel 4 is put up for sale, there is likely to be huge interest from prospective buyers, although how much the government might make is difficult to determine.
Suitors could include MTV-owner Viacom, which paid £463m for Channel 5 last year, and other US media giants such as Time Warner, BT and Discovery...
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Labels: politics, privatization, UK
Comparative cleavages
This profile of Mexico, from
The Economist does a good job of describing many of the problems faced by countries seeking economic growth.
As I read it, I frequently thought about how Mexico's situation is similar to things in Nigeria, Mexico, China, and sometimes Russia.
How many parallels can you identify?
Of cars and carts: Despite decades of reform, most Mexicans are still a long way from wealth and modernity
OUTSIDE San José Chiapa, a somewhat shabby town of 8,000 in the Mexican state of Puebla, a vast box-like factory complex is rising out of the fields like a mirage, attended by new highways, flyovers and roundabouts for its lorries and executives. Audi, a German carmaker, is investing $1.3 billion into this project. From 2016 production of its snazzy Q5… will be moved here… Cars from San José Chiapa will be shipped around the world…
Volkswagen, Audi’s parent company, has been building cars in Puebla for decades… they have turned Mexico into the world’s fourth-largest car exporter…
The ways prosperity and modernity spread—or do not spread—around Mexico have been a subject of debate and study for a century or so. In 1926 Robert Redfield, an anthropologist from the University of Chicago who did much to introduce the study of modernization… expressed what he observed in terms of a gap between “los correctos” (the correct), the local elite who were gradually absorbing city ways, and “los tontos” (the fools) who stuck with old traditions.
The gap had a spatial dimension. Near the town’s plaza were the biggest houses and the most competitive artisans; interaction with visitors and tradespeople from outside meant that big-city culture was strongest there. Farther out, the jobs became more traditional; midwives, herbal doctors and firework-makers. At the very edge of town people did not even tell the time; there were no watches, and they were too far away from the plaza to hear the church bell. But though such patterns were part of the story, there was more to it. The tontos were removed from modernity not merely by the walk to the town centre, but by their habits of mind.
Spatial divisions in Mexico’s modernisation are still obvious today… The country’s industrial clusters devoted to the manufacture of cars, planes, electric goods and electrical equipment… are largely to be found in a band next to its northern border…
This part of the country is criss-crossed by trunk roads, railways and gas pipelines which make it an attractive manufacturing destination…
It is in these regions that you find an elite not unlike Redfield’s correctos. Its members have benefited from the reforms that have made Mexico a model of free trade and sound money over the past two decades…
But the bulk of the population continues to live in a land that President Enrique Peña Nieto described in his inaugural address, three years ago, as one of “backwardness and poverty”. This is the Mexico of changarros (makeshift food stands), informal markets, cash-only family firms, peasant farmers and indigenous communities, as well as a vicious underworld. It is where half the population remains poor, on government figures… Its inhabitants may not pay tax, but extortionists, bent lawyers, judges and officials often shake them down for cash.
It is wrong to think of the division between the modern Mexico and the rest of the country as purely one between north and south. As San José Chiapa shows, the distance between them is not just to be measured in kilometres; it is to be mapped in terms of formality and informality, the rule of law and its absence, of race and of culture…
[Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University’s Centre for International Development]… would like to get more people into the big cities… Geography may not be everything, but it does matter. He thinks the most important thing is to get unproductive workers the specific improvements in their skills they need for better jobs and with safe, reliable ways of getting to those jobs…
Those taking a more sociological view, though, see a different problem. They say that many Mexicans feel that the top-down model of development does not offer them the sort of stability they value. That stability, such people think, is instead to be found in the small businesses in which they mostly work—businesses that are embedded in a culture of family ties rather than rugged individualism…
Some link this cultural reluctance to modernise to the dogged survival of the México profundo—the chunk of society where cultural links to the ancient Mesoamerican civilisation are still strongly felt…
The persistent attachment to scruffy, informal farms and firms may be in part a cultural choice; it is surely also, though, a consequence of earlier failures…. The romantic notions of the México profundo are often peddled by interest groups that benefit from this status quo, such as unions and old-fashioned political bosses with power bases in peasant communities.
In “Why Regions Fail”… James Robinson of Harvard looks at some of these failures and policy biases and the way they affect the south of the country, which is poorer, more unequal and less urbanised than the rest. In colonial Mexico indigenous groups were exploited to benefit a small elite; in the latter two-thirds of the 20th century, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) controlled a one-party state that left the south in the hands of local barons, he says. It was starved of public funds and infrastructure; to an extent it was made poor, not left poor. “We know today that the south has less efficient legal systems that are less good at enforcing laws and southern states have governments that are more clientelistic and corrupt in the way they interact with citizens,” Mr Robinson writes. He contrasts this with more inclusive institutions emerging elsewhere in the country…
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Labels: cleavages, economics, Mexico, rule of law
UK government deficit
After you look at the headline and before you read the article, how will this development affect government in the UK? How will it affect politics? and What facts do you want to know before you try to answer the first two questions?
UK deficit rises steeply after surprise fall in tax receipts
A fall in income tax receipts sent Britain’s deficit spiralling to £12.1bn in August, the widest shortfall in government funding since 2012…
Dampening the euphoria last month about the first surplus for three years, the deficit represented a big jump on last year’s figure…
The combination of higher spending and lower tax receipts meant the cumulative deficit of £38.4bn this financial year is only marginally down on the £42.8bn at the same point last year.
Vicky Redwood, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said the government was still on track to reduce its anual borrowing, but at a much slower pacer than previously forecast…
The Treasury said: “Britain’s hard work is paying off with cumulative borrowing £4.4bn lower than at this point last year. We have more than halved the deficit but there’s more to do with debt remaining higher than 80% of GDP.”…
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Labels: economy, government, politics, UK
Who is Xi?
Not since Deng Xiaoping has the personality of a Chinese leader mattered as much as it does now. So, what matters?
What You Need To Know About China's Strongman President: President Xi Jinping is making a bid for personal power and national revival.
President Barack Obama… host[ed] one of the other serious contenders for most powerful person on Earth: President Xi Jinping of China… Just three years after taking the reins of power, Xi has already placed his stamp firmly on his country…
With Xi almost guaranteed another seven more years in power, Obama and his successor will both need to wrestle with China-U.S. relations in the age of Xi. Here’s what you need to know about him.
 |
| Xi Jinping |
Xi has quickly emerged as maybe the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. China’s previous leaders largely shunned the spotlight, portraying themselves as part of a group ruling by consensus. Xi has instead built a huge personal brand by employing strongman tactics at home and abroad.
In China, Xi has consolidated enormous personal power through a blistering crackdown on both corrupt officials and civil society activists. The prosecution of powerful officials (many who happen to be Xi’s political rivals) and the detention of civil rights lawyers… Some scholars argue that the twin crackdowns reveal Xi’s vision for China’s future: not a liberal, electoral democracy, but an efficient authoritarian state with a strong leader at the helm…
Those stances have built popularity and political capital that Xi may spend on broad-ranging economic and environmental reforms. In 2013 the Chinese leadership announced its intention to kick-start sputtering economic reforms, shrinking the role of the state by giving market forces a “decisive role” in the economy.
Those reforms are meant to power the Chinese economy through a tough transition: away from traditional sources of growth (cheap exports and heavy industry) and toward a new economy built on services, consumption and innovation…
Xi has branded his administration with the trademark phrases “the Chinese dream” and “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” That branding reinforces a narrative that the Chinese Communist Party has been preaching for decades: after a “century of humiliation” characterized by foreign invasion and domestic strife, China is finally returning to its rightful place of prominence in the world…
Taken together, Xi has attempted to build a public image as a strong leader devoted to the people. While there are few reliable gauges of public opinion, surveys and anecdotal evidence suggest Xi remains immensely popular at home.
But ahead lie enormous challenges for China as a whole and Xi in particular. Can he transform the Chinese economy without generating massive unemployment? Can he truly root out corruption while also quashing the sprouts of independent civil society? Can he crack down on official perks without provoking a mutiny within the Chinese Communist Party? Can China expand its influence abroad without driving other countries into the arms of the United States?…
[Matt Sheehan is the China Correspondent for The World Post. This opinion piece was publshed by The World Post, a partnership of The Huffington Post and Berggruen Institute]
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Labels: China, leadership
Vague profile of Xi Jinping
This morning's
New York Times has a profile of Xi's experiences during the Cultural Revolution. I don't think it tells us as much as it claims to.
Cultural Revolution Shaped Xi Jinping, From Schoolboy to Survivor
When the pandemonium of the Cultural Revolution erupted, he was a slight, softly spoken 13-year-old who loved classical Chinese poetry…
His father, a senior Communist Party official who had been purged a few years earlier, was seized and repeatedly beaten. Student militants ransacked his family’s home, forcing them to flee, and one of his sisters died in the mayhem. Paraded before a crowd as an enemy of the revolution and denounced by his own mother, the future president of China was on the edge of being thrown into a prison for delinquent children of the party elite…
The purges, zealotry and mass strife that Mao unleashed during the Cultural Revolution left a lasting mark on every Chinese leader who has succeeded him. But Mr. Xi stands out because he is the first party chief from the generation of the Red Guards — the youth who served as Mao’s shock troops — and because he fell so far before beginning his trek to power, from a family in the party elite to an unmoored life as a teenage political pariah.
Some of Mr. Xi’s critics argue that his experiences during the Cultural Revolution inform his authoritarian ways. But the imprint of that time was more complex than that, said Patricia M. Thornton, a professor at Oxford who is researching the Cultural Revolution and its legacy.
Mr. Xi’s generation venerated Mao, she said, but his family suffered in the violence that Mao unleashed, and Mr. Xi’s outlook is rooted in an elitist rejection of that turmoil…
Unlike some youths from elite backgrounds, Mr. Xi did not turn against the party or Mao, but learned to revere strict order and abhor challenges to hierarchy, said Yongyi Song, a historian and librarian in Los Angeles who has long studied the Cultural Revolution…
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Labels: China, history, leadership
Seeking outside influence
Nigeria and Mexico are seeking foreign investments. China is investing — especially in Africa and Latin America. Iran has been largely walled off from foreign investment by sanctions and desires to avoid foreign influences.
As most sanctions seem to be on the verge of ending, are there investment opportunities? And who wants them? What does it all mean for government and politics in Iran?
Not so fast: Enthusiasm for post-sanctions Iran is being tempered by realism
ACROSS Europe, businessmen pack conference halls to discover how to unlock Iran’s vast potential after three decades of isolation… Not only would they enjoy access to Iran’s 80m people, but to a hub for trading with hundreds of millions more in Iran’s troubled neighbours…
Sanctions have indeed created pent-up demand, but they have also dried up the liquidity needed to finance it. The price-tags delegates place on Iran’s needs—$15 billion for its railways, $200 billion for its energy sector, $30 billion for tourism—look exciting, but paying for them is a different matter. Oil prices are down by half, sharply reducing revenues as well as the incentives to invest when reopening happens.
In the meantime nepotism, legal unpredictability and state companies masquerading as private ones will all bedevil business. “The corruption is still at unbelievable rates,” says Sharif Nezam-Mafi, [an organizer of a Zurich conference for potential investors]. Financial experts insist that President Hassan Rohani remains on track to privatise the inhisarat, or state monopolies, which dominate the economy, are blacklisted by sanctions and often have close ties to the Revolutionary Guards…
Not all is gloom… Mercedes and Volkswagen are said to be gearing up to replace Peugeot, which once ranked Iran as its second largest market.. Coca-Cola is planning a major expansion in 2016… Politicians and businessmen again speak excitedly of the Persian Gulf. But the reality is that the Iranian phoenix may take some time yet to become airborne.
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Labels: economy, Iran, politics
A political opponent in Russia? Really?
Putin's United Russia has done such a good job of monopolizing political power and sidelining opposition, that it's hard to remember a time when there was a real opposition party.
I have to think back to
Yabloko, which was organized to oppose Yeltsin's government, but support democracy.
Yabloko (The Russian United Democratic Party) continued to campaign against United Russia in the new century, but it hasn't elected anyone to the Duma since 2003.
The Economist has now profiled a pretty solitary opponent of Putin's government.
His goal of creating "a modern state with European characteristics" in contrast to Putin's goal of building on exclusively Russian tradition and genius, reminds me that this is another battle in the
Slavophile vs. zapadniki culture war.
Lonely but not lost
 |
| Alexei Navalny |
ALEXEI NAVALNY, Russia’s most conspicuous opposition politician, would not look out of place on the presidential campaign trail in America, with his strident speeches and polished manner. But in a country where politics is mostly bland bureaucracy, Mr Navalny, a 39-year-old with broad shoulders and bright blue eyes, cuts a striking figure…
The Kremlin has tried to bar Mr Navalny from politics. He is not allowed to hold office because the Kremlin gave him a criminal conviction… His own party, called Progress, was disqualified. Yet in the real world of Russian politics… Mr Navalny is a professional politician who has had a greater impact on the country’s future than any member of parliament or leader of a “licensed” political party outside government in recent times.
He first gained recognition as the main leader of a series of street protests in 2011 when he rallied parts of the urban middle class against the Kremlin. His stated aim of building a modern state with European characteristics appealed to many who had once voted for Mr Putin. In 2013 he received 27% of the vote in the Moscow mayoral election… The Kremlin contrasted his alleged pro-Westernism with its own narrative of imperial nationalism that culminated in the annexation of Crimea…
His perseverance seems almost irrational given Mr Putin’s approval rating of over 80%. But Mr Navalny argues that the constituency that came on the streets in 2011 and voted for him in Moscow in 2013 has not disappeared, even if it is demoralised. “Russia is a country of large cities where at least 30% of the population supports our views,” he says…
For Mr Navalny the main goal of participating in regional elections is to show that an opposition party can clear the 5% legal threshold necessary to win representation. He hopes such a feat will revive popular interest in politics and revitalise the democratic electorate, not least ahead of the parliamentary elections in 2016…
Next for Mr Navalny is a further evolution of his public image. He aims to assume the mantle of the eastern European protest leaders who won power in Soviet satellite states in 1989, eventually leading their people into the European Union…
“My task is to create a new type of patriotism without Russian tanks going into Czechoslovakia, Poland or Ukraine. If Russia needs an expansion, it has to be a cultural and scientific one… My main motivation is to prove that Russians are no less suited to democracy than any other people.”…
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Labels: leadership, politics, Russia, slavophile, zapadniki
Saying the right things
In his quest for foreign investment, President Buhari is saying the right things. Can he follow those words with effective actions?
President Buhari - No Going Back On Looted Funds Recovery
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his administration remains focused on the recovery of stolen funds.
He spoke in Paris yesterday while addressing leading French businessmen and investors at the headquarters of the Movement of the Enterprises of France (MEDEF).
 |
| President Buhari and French President Hollande |
Buhari… reaffirmed his administration's determination to curb corruption in Nigeria…
Buhari also stated that the privatisation of key sectors of the Nigerian economy, which started under previous administrations, would be pursued and expanded to include other sectors.
According to President Buhari, privatisation exercise under his leadership, will be conducted in an open, transparent and competitive manner.
He said his government was poised to redress the serious infrastructural gaps in Nigeria, raise production to create more jobs, build capital and stimulate further growth and prosperity of the country…
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Labels: corruption, infrastructure, leadership, Nigeria
Translation troubles
The first sentence of this
Xinhua (government news agency) article is very confusing: "A rethinking of China's human rights merits out of a forum in Beijing is based on the country's adherence to the principal of peaceful development."
What does that mean? As a topic sentence, what is it introducing?
The rest of the article clarifies the confusion, but what happened in that first sentence?
Translation, translation. That sentence was probably first written in Chinese and might have gone through several translators before it ended up at the beginning of this
Xinhua report.
Did you ever play "telephone?" A message is given to one person, who repeats it to a second person, who repeats it to a third person… and so on down a line of people. And what happens at the end? You can probably guess if you have not played the game. The message heard by the last person is vastly different from the message that started the game.
If a simple introductory sentence can be mangled by translation(s), imagine how difficult cross-cultural communications can be, especially when the original message is one of self-congratulations.
Rights forum underscores China's commitment to peace
A rethinking of China's human rights merits out of a forum in Beijing is based on the country's adherence to the principal of peaceful development.
The 2015 Beijing Forum on Human Rights, which concluded on Thursday, highlighted China's role in defending the right to peace and development…
One unnoticed aspect, some say, is China's contribution to the right to peace.
Participants in the forum believed peace is the basic premise for enjoying other basic rights.
The right to peace is an important connotation on human rights and should be prioritized among all affairs, said Bem Angwe from the Nigerian state human rights committee…
Li Junru, vice president of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, said that world leaders must discard the cold-war mentality and zero-sum game thinking. "We need to adopt the wisdom of a 'community of common destiny' to address our threats."
China held a parade earlier this month to commemorate the war dead and celebrate peace.
"No matter how much stronger it may become, China will never seek hegemony or expansion. It will never inflict its past suffering on any other nation," [President] Xi said in his V-Day speech…
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Labels: China, communication, human rights
Another Khomeini?
If the grandson of the first supreme leader enters politics, will it matter?
Assembly election heats up as Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandson indicates he will stand
Hassan Khomeini, the 43-year-old grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has signalled he will run for the Assembly of Experts election in February. Despite a generally low political profile, Hassan Khomeini has expressed opposition to extremism and supported the nuclear agreement with world powers.
 |
| Khomeini and the president |
He has previously rebuffed suggestions he might stand for the Assembly, an 88-seat clerical body that chooses and supervises Iran’s supreme leader… Khomeini’s candidature now could help boost a loose alliance of candidates supporting President Hassan Rouhani…
Khomeini teaches as a cleric in Qom, where he also heads the Institute for the Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, which preserves the late leader’s writings…
Khomeini has repeatedly praised the nuclear agreement with world powers reached in July. “Society is happy with the government’s achievement on the nuclear issue, this success is due to the prudence of the government,” he said on 19 July.
He has also spoken out against any branch of the military taking a political role…
Nevertheless, Khomeini has maintained good relations with different political groups and is widely respected. This would make him a formidable candidate in an Experts Assembly election that is shaping up as broad battle between, on one side, candidates including Rafsanjani and Rouhani, and on the other side fundamentalists including Mesbah-Yazdi, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council and Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the current chairman of the assembly…
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Labels: elections, Iran, leadership, politics
Liberal democracy
Karl Marx argued that class struggle would result in a classless society. Similarly, liberals have argued that capitalism and liberal democracy would eventually be so successful and popular that everyone would want to live in a liberal, capitalistic society.
In 1992,
Francis Fukuyama published a book,
The End of History and the Last Man asserting that "the West" was the culmination of human cultural evolution.
What happened to that idea? Will everyone end up in a liberal, capitalistic society?
Are Western Values Losing Their Sway?
THE West is suddenly suffused with self-doubt.
Centuries of superiority and global influence appeared to reach a new summit with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the countries, values and civilization of the West appeared to have won the dark, difficult battle with Communism.
That victory seemed especially sweet after the turn of China toward capitalism, which many thought presaged a slow evolution to middle-class demands for individual rights and transparent justice — toward a form of democracy. But is the embrace of Western values inevitable? Are Western values, essentially Judeo-Christian ones, truly universal?
The history of the last decade is a bracing antidote to such easy thinking. The rise of authoritarian capitalism has been a blow to assumptions, made popular by Francis Fukuyama, that liberal democracy has proved to be the most reliable and lasting political system…
But couple the tightening of Chinese authoritarianism with Russia’s turn toward revanchism and dictatorship, and then add the rise of radical Islam, and the grand victory of Western liberalism can seem hollow, its values under threat even within its own societies…
“Nineteen-eighty-nine was perceived as the victory of universalism, the end of history, but for all the others in the world it wasn’t a post-Cold War world but a post-colonial one,” said Ivan Krastev, director of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria…
It seemed to many in Asia and Africa to be the end of Western ideological supremacy, given that liberalism and Communism are both Western creations with universal ambitions…
Even Russia argues both for exceptionalism (“the third Rome”) and for its own more perfect representation of Western civilization, claiming that the West is self-interested, decadent and hypocritical, defending universal values but freely ignoring them when it pleases…
In its rejection of Western liberal values of sexual equality and choice, conservative Russia finds common cause with many in Africa and with the religious teachings of Islam, the Vatican, fundamentalist Protestants and Orthodox Jews.
Extreme interpretations of religion, especially in areas of great instability and insecurity, can be a comforting or inspiring response to the confusions of modern life, and can soon become an enemy to religious freedom and tolerance for others, notes Robert Cooper [a British diplomat]…
There is much confusion about democracy in any case, argued Jacques Barzun, the cultural historian, in 1986. “A permanent feature of American opinion and action in foreign policy is the wish, the hope, that other nations might turn from the error of their ways and become democracies,” he wrote. But democracies differ, he said, and asked: “What is it exactly that we want others to copy?”
The essence of democracy, he said, is popular sovereignty, implying political and social equality. Easier said than done, given the tendency of governments and elites to presume they speak for the inarticulate masses.
That is a caution echoed recently by William J. Burns, head of the Carnegie Endowment and a former deputy secretary of state…
“Our own preachiness and lecturing tendencies sometimes get in the way, but there is a core to more open democratic systems that has an enduring appeal,” he said. That core is “the broad notion of human rights, that people have the right to participate in political and economic decisions that matter to them, and the rule of law to institutionalize those rights.”
The result “doesn’t have to look like Washington, which may be for the good,” Mr. Burns said. “But a respect for law and pluralism creates more flexible societies, because otherwise it’s hard to hold together multiethnic, multireligious societies.”
That’s what the Arab world will be wrestling with for a long time as old state systems crumble, he added…
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Labels: concepts, history, liberal democracy
New, old Labour
Tony Blair, back in the '90s, led the Labour Party to electoral victories some had thought impossible.
Margaret Thatcher, as prime minister, had broken the power of unions in ways nearly unimaginable and made privatization the flavor of the month. Blair, following the example of Bill Clinton in the USA, created "new Labour" by organizing support from moderates within Labour and outside the party.
That "third way" went down in flames in 2010, and the party has been thrashing around looking for the keys to success.
Labour has now elected a new leader, and there are warning flags in the wind proclaiming the death of the Labour Party. And there are cheers from those who suggest that newly active members will help push the party to future success.
Watch what happens.
What now for Jeremy Corbyn?
 |
| Jeremy Corbyn |
He, and they, did it. Now what? Jeremy Corbyn's victory was not the work of Labour MPs, power brokers, or the party's once powerful machine, but the flex of an old muscle - Labour's left-wing rump - once so weakened, now strong, emboldened by thousands upon thousands of new supporters…
But now installed, there are problems everywhere for Labour's new leader. He has always been an outsider, an insurgent in his own party.
How can he expect loyalty from his colleagues, unite the party, when he has rarely displayed it himself? MPs have been discussing ousting him for weeks. There will likely be initial faint support from most…
It won't be easy for him to build a team robust enough to function in Westminster's brutal world. And wise Labour heads worry it's inevitable the party will return to a fight it's had before - moderates battling to squeeze out the left.
His opponents outside the party won't let him forget his past associations - reaching out to Irish Republicans and vocal opponents of Israel - peacemaking in his view, unacceptable to others. That, combined with his economic views, out of step with the mainstream, means for most Conservatives his success is a political gift. They believe his election is a chance, not just to poke fun week after week, at an accidental leader, but to maim Labour for a generation…
But the biggest gamble is this: Corbyn won against all the odds by stitching together old voices, new activists and union support. That was enough to win the party's own election. Could that powerful niche ever expand to become a true national movement capable of winning a general election?
That really would be breaking the rules.
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
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Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is available NOW!. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools, the original version and v2.0 are available to help curriculum planning.
Labels: leadership, parties, politics, UK
Politics within the opaque complexity of Iran
Susan Ikenberry, who teaches in Washington, DC, suggested that this analysis from The Pulitzer Center offers some good insights into Iranian politics. I agree. And I think it's a good compliment to an article from
The Guardian that I linked to back in July (
"Soft Power Within Iran")
US Congress is Warming to the Nuclear Agreement — But What About Iran's Politicians?
Mohammad Reza Akbari… [is a] 29-year-old barista [who] chats with customers about all kinds of topics, but these days the nuclear agreement comes up often. Most of the patrons in this north Tehran coffee shop, he says, support the July accord signed in Vienna that will lift economic sanctions in return for strict inspections of Iran's nuclear power program…
Many residents of north Tehran are affluent, and tend to favor liberalization of government dress codes, expansion of internet access, and freedom of expression. So it's no surprise that Akbari's customers hope implementation of the accords will strengthen the moderate elements within Iran's leadership and lead to further reforms…
 |
| Hassan Rouhani |
The Vienna agreement signaled a victory for reformist forces aligned with President Hassan Rouhani, experts say. But reformists face strong resistance from entrenched hardliners. The ultimate winner in this battle will help determine if Iran actually implements the nuclear accord and ultimately pursues more friendly relations with the West.
So far the reformists are winning, according to Javad Etaat, an associate professor of political science at Tehran's Beheshti University… "The extremists think there should be no cooperation with the US."
Those "extremists" are known here as principalists. Both principalists and reformists have held presidential power in Iran since the 1990s. They all support the country's Islamic constitution, which gives ultimate religious and political authority to the Supreme Leader…
Iranians vote for president and parliament, but choices are severely limited by a body of clerics that must approve candidates. All important political and economic decisions are made by [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei.
Within those boundaries, reformists and conservatives wage fierce battles…
[N]egotiations with the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany were tough. Iranian negotiators agreed to stringent inspection of the entire nuclear chain — from uranium mining and processing through enrichment and disposal. Iran agreed to allow international inspection of military and research facilities, even those that Iran says have no nuclear connection.
Those provisions angered principalists who came out strongly against the agreement.
So far Supreme Leader Khamenei has not taken an official position, likely waiting to see if the US Congress votes acceptance, which is looking more and more likely. If both sides agree to implement the accords, it will certainly impact Iran's domestic politics…
Sanctions may be lifted by early next year, around the time of the February parliamentary elections. With even partial sanctions relief, Rouhani and his reformist supporters could score victories in the elections. If the deal falls through, however, the principalists will benefit.
Under Iran's constitution, a group of clerics can disqualify candidates deemed "un-Islamic," a tactic used in the past to bar reformists from running. In addition, the conservatives will keep their power base in the judiciary, military and police, which can be used to undercut reformist support…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
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Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is available NOW!. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools, the original version and v2.0 are available to help curriculum planning.
Labels: cleavages, Iran, politics, regime
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
