Intervention in Syria comes not too soon, but too late

Blog for Politics.co.uk 
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Intervention in Syria comes not too soon, but too late

It's hard not to feel dizzied and bewildered by almost every aspect of the Syrian crisis – including the debate on intervention which has now engulfed the UK. Following it in recent days, I've seen a great many furrowed brows over the possible strengthening of Al-Qaida, frets over the risk of escalation and exhortations to 'Stop the War' and keep 'Hands off Syria'.

All good stuff, you understand. Except oddly, they all seem to be taking place now - in August 2013 – rather than in 2011 or 2012, when they were most sorely needed, as the original democratic revolution was being brutally put down by the Assad regime. Since then, 100,000 people have died, half of whom are civilians. Al-Qaida-linked elements within the opposition have been significantly strengthened. Things have escalated.

This has occurred at least in part because of Western failure in the face of human catastrophe to provide the necessary solidarity and support for moderate secularist factions in the Syrian opposition (all the while, funding for their more extremist counter-parts flooded in from Qatar and elsewhere). Or to take active steps, as in Libya, to protect the Syrian population from systematic slaughter. This was something neither left nor the right in either Washington or London were willing to countenance, stuck variously under their 'realist' or 'anti-imperialist' shades of isolationism.

The result is what we see before us today: a cramped and partial debate, confined to punitive strikes over a single chemical weapons attack. Should such strikes come, they are better than nothing, whatever their flaws. Hopeful cries for a 'political settlement' or to 'get round the negotiating table' tidily side-step the fact that the Syrian regime currently has little incentive to do so. It's a grim reality that it often takes the credible threat of force to even get tin-pot thugs like Assad to the table, as experience with Slobodan Milosevic twice showed in the 1990s.

But this narrow focus on chemical weapons has made the government's political wrangles yesterday evening rather predictable. When a mandate is sought on the back of one specific event, it is quite logical that more evidence will be first sought on that event. More importantly, though, this limited focus won't help protect the civilian population from murder by other means. The foreign secretary has been advancing a humanitarian case (publicly stating the aim to avoid further "humanitarian distress"). But what is being proposed militarily – precision strikes on chemical weapons facilities - will not achieve that on its own. He is setting himself up to fail.

The truth is the red line should have been set far short of chemical warfare, because intervention in Syria is horribly belated. As ghastly as footage from last week is – so much so I'm not even going to attempt the words to do it justice – from a humanitarian point of view it's not obvious why it's so much worse than any of the number of other civilian massacres Assad's militias have gleefully carried out since late 2011. Take Houla in 2012, for example, where they went door-to-door with guns and knives, executing children one-by-one along the way. These are at least analogues to the atrocities which triggered war in Kosovo.

Needless to say, piecemeal approaches to such butchery will not suffice. Assuming that Western powers are now serious about halting it, intervention must come in the form of wide-ranging efforts to both protect civilians and tip the balance of power in favour of moderate rebels against both Assad and Al-Qaida. The former should constitute humanitarian safe-zones properly patrolled by the Free Syrian Army and a No-Fly Zone. As well as air strikes on weapons facilities and army airports, the latter - possible under such protective cover – should see every effort taken to actively train, arm and build up the moderate FSA, as Michael Weiss forcefully argues.

None of which is to pretend this would be easy. Even if it went well, it would still be hideously imperfect, ugly and complex. To put it mildly, Nato power and influence is a less than ideal instrument through which to achieve progressive ends. But it's simply not true, as those on the far left contend, that its every move is always and only reducible to an act of imperialism. As Ian Dunt argues, few can explain through this prism why the West are acting now. The reality is states' interests are not fixed or neatly explained, but constructed and constantly in flux; a mesh of time, place, systems and personalities.

Very occasionally, that can and should be pressed into engineering the least worst outcome in a humanitarian emergency. That is all we can hope for in Syria. But it is better than what most Syrians have lived through for the last two years, or what awaits them if nothing more is done. Achieving even this, however, won't be possible unless we face up to our own failures and omissions, and recognise that the time for action came a long way back on the road to Jobar.

Croatia and the EU: more questions than answers

Post for ShiftingGrounds
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As preparations gathered pace in Split for Sunday’s celebrations, marking Croatia’s membership of the EU, the city’s local radio stations provided a fitting soundtrack. ‘Go West’ by the Pet Shop Boys seemed to play almost on loop throughout the day, filtering out of nearly every restaurant or coffee shop you walked by.

The country’s newspapers had been counting down the days. Despite public scepticism, there is a sense at least that Croatia has taken up its rightful place. The journalist Jenine di Giovanni wrote in her 2004 book on the Balkans:

“…this colourful image [of the Balkans] was exactly the sort that the Croats did not want to promote. They were not really Balkan people; they often told you they were Southern Austrians. The Croat denial fostered a sense of mixed identity in Zagreb. The people dressed in Armani but lived in apartments without central heating. They carried the latest Nokia phones but had no money in their bank account…

Their biggest grievance was belonging to a Balkan group they did not want to be part of. They saw themselves as a Western democracy.”

Yet identity and pride aside, it’s hard not to wonder what question the country’s EU membership is the answer to – not least when considering the way its political class has prioritised it over the last ten years (hence much grievance from them, too, on the extensive vetting the European Commission subjected Croatia to).

True, it – or rather the prospect of it – has been good for the region’s fragile peace, helping to hold the Dayton settlement in place. The scale and horror of Serb atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina often obscure Croatia’s own crimes in the same country just two decades ago. It was the Zagreb government, after all, who connived with Bosnian-Croat forces to turn brutally on their Bosniak allies, aiming to tear off parts of Bosnia for their own, in pursuit of a lesser but still stark Croatian imitation of Milosovic’s expansionism.

Here Brussels has dangled EU membership effectively. It has used it to ensure Croatia properly complies with the International Criminal Court’s investigation into war crimes during the 90′s. The same incentive has also played a role in dissuading Zagreb from resuming support for still restless Bosnian-Croat secessionists.

But even still, in the long term it’s far from clear that the Bosnian question is totally settled. Leaders in Bosnia’s Republic Srpska – the Serb state within a state created at Daytan – have made obvious their own desire to secede. One of the main barriers to this at present is the lack of support they’re likely to enjoy from Belgrade, who are also on their best behaviour under promise of EU membership.

However, once this promise becomes a reality and the incentive disappears, that could easily change. In the ensuing melee, who knows how the Croats – now a member not a prospective one – would react. They may again see a opportunity to claim what isn’t theirs, especially given Bosnian-Croats have a (not insignificant) vote in Croatian elections. This is unlikely under the current SDP government, who don’t rely on those votes, but could be feasible if the centre-right HDZ returned. Certainly far right Croatian nationalism hasn’t totally gone away, as the uncomfortable amount of fascist graffiti scrawled across Split can attest to.

More immediately, however, there’s the prospects for the Croatian economy. Croatia’s bid for EU membership was kick started 12 years ago, when Western free-market capitalism – which post-Maastricht the EU has become the standard bearer for – was in its pomp. Entry to the EU represents in many ways the completion of long efforts by Croatia’s political elites to ‘harmonise’ the country’s economy with European orthodoxy.

Croatia’s economy today is thus completely deindustrialised (albeit this was aided by war damage); it is in large part a service sector economy, dependent on tourism and retail – which struggles to provide adequately for a lot of the country. Most of its growth in the early 2000′s was driven by consumer credit.

Sadly, between Croatia’s application and accession, the flaws of that model have been horribly exposed across Europe. Its economy is consequently stuck in our recession; at 20%, Croatian unemployment is worse only in Greece and Spain in EU terms (youth unemployment is over 50%). Its banks, largely foreign owned and piled high with European debt, are vulnerable. Household debt has shot up, as has government debt.

The dichotomy that di Giovanni wrote about has seemingly continued – though new shopping complexes have continued popping up across Croatia’s cities, absolute poverty has almost doubled over the last decade.

Despite the vague hopes of Croatia’s President, Ivo Josipović, it is hard to see how formal acceptance into the European club helps all this. Indeed in at least one sense it’s made it worse: one of the ugliest components of Croatia’s EU ‘preparations’ was the sight of Brussels forcing the privatisation of the country’s shipyards, which still make up a sizeable chunk of Croatia’s exports. In Split alone – across town from the palm-treed, tourist friendly promenade that hosted Sunday’s celebrations – this has seen over 1,000 people lose their jobs. The jobs of the remaining 2,000 workers hang in the balance, but if the private company which now owns the yard do take them back on, many will be on a part time or temporary contracts.

All of which leaves you with the feeling that a great country has been rather led astray. Croatia stumbles into the EU mired in recession, with falling living standards, and in desperate need of a new model of economic growth. The Commission needn’t have worried; it will fit in all too well.

Why Is There No Daily Show In The UK?

Blog for Vada magazine 

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“Why is there no socialism in the United States?” was the question that occupied lofty European intellectuals in the early 20th century. As they gazed across the Atlantic they wondered where their American brethren had gone wrong. This week that grand tradition has been turned on its head, by the news that Britain’s very own John Oliver has stepped in for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. This poses a question that’s long bugged many of us who share a love for US TV, namely, why is there no Daily Show in the UK? Why have we never even come close to producing one?

If it’s worrying that a comedian as sharp as Oliver couldn’t find a home on these shores, it’s more obvious that he would fit right in on The Daily Show. As the recent fall out to Stewart’s brilliant send up of Mohammed Morsi – which sparked a diplomatic incident - highlights, the great thing about the show is that it does not only observe the news astutely, it very often helps shape it; such is its influence. For instance, it played a subtle but important role in discrediting the Romney campaign during its formative stages last summer.

The state of satire in the UK, by comparison, is painfully weak. The lamentable, self-serving narcissism of Mock The Week and the vacuity of the innumerable and interchangeable weekly panel shows of 8 out of 10 Cats’ ilk just do not compare. Then there’s 10 O’Clock Live, which returned for a second run recently. Styled as an answer toThe Daily Show, it has just never felt anywhere near as clever, usually coming off instead like every dickish common room clown you ever hated. Even the more grown up Have I Got News For You doesn’t have the bite of old.

Can anyone imagine any of these making it into the news broadcasts, or being feared by the powerful? Could they threaten to make or break a politician’s career?

In seeking an explanation for all this, it’s hard not to reach a rather obvious conclusion: how many mainstream comedians in the UK actually care about politics? I mean really care?

For them, the political class and politics exist mainly as something to have a dig at, to wring cheap points from. Few of our comedians understand politics, few want to understand it. They are divorced from the process they joke about. For them it is something easy to point at, a sitting target for a few more lithe one liners.

Looking back, this is probably best embodied by Jimmy Carr on 10 O’Clock Live as he cracked lame jokes about tax avoidance while practicing it himself. Or the airy uncertainty of Lauren Laverne, trying to look interested in the slightly stilted studio ‘debate’ she’s introducing off the autocue, before the show dissolves into another bout of pointing out how funny Ed Miliband looks. Or the silly stunts of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It is political satire made by people who couldn’t care less, made for those who feel roughly the same.

Ironically it’s the 10 O’Clock Show‘s other presenter, Charlie Brooker, who shows us where this style of comedy leads us, in an episode of his mini-series Black Mirror, ‘The Waldo Moment‘.

True, outside of weekly shows of this sort, we have The Thick Of It, which though cynical has generally been well researched and three dimensional, but even this in its final series tended to play to the gallery. It felt a little too easy as it went looking for the next cult one-liner, or sweary portmanteau, and proved less interested in exploring the bigger picture.

The difference with The Daily Show is it does actually care. It is so funny and effective because it has politics – and often the rightness of its broader point is what makes it so potent. Stewart pokes fun at the stuffiness and absurdity of the system, but he evidently believes passionately in the possibility of politics itself. Much of The Daily Show’s comedy comes from a frustration and exasperation for a better world that you just don’t get from its British counterparts.

Much of this could be put down to Anglo-American cultural differences, but that doesn’t seem wholly satisfactory (the French, for instance, have the similarly fearsome Les Guignols). Maybe there is a simple lesson at the heart of The Daily Show’s endurance, while so many of our British pretenders have fallen by the wayside. To effectively laugh at politics, you have to learn to love it first.

François Hollande has achieved far more than his critics suggest

Piece for Shifting Grounds and New Statesman
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If you listen carefully, you can hear it coming. With next Monday marking one year since François Hollande was elected French President, a tidal wave of I told-you-so’s and smugness is about to be visited upon us by Westminster’s commentariat.

It’s fair to say that most of them have never much liked the French president. And we are sure to be gleefully informed that the first year of his Presidency has been a disaster. It will invariably be held up as a stark warning to Labour against carrying any challenge to the austerity consensus into the next election.

It won’t surprise you to learn that upon closer inspection, things turn out to be a bit more complicated than that.

Hollande has certainly had a difficult time of it, sliding recently to 25 per cent approval in the polls. Much of this can be laid at the door of his one unambiguous failure – his inability to overcome German opposition to redrawing the EU’s fiscal pact towards a greater focus on growth. As a result, unemployment is stuck at around 10%, and consumer confidence is low. The Eurozone remains largely frozen.

Some of it is also his own personal style. Hollande’s more low key, unfashioned image and patient approach – once a selling point – has bored a nation who became used to the glitz and hyperactivity of the Sarkozy years (in much the same way that ‘Not Flash, Just Gordon’ rebounded on Brown).

But if he has failed to offer much hope at a European level, the same cannot be said about his record at home. For starters, he has already made good on most of his key campaign promises, such as the hiring of 60,000 new teachers, raising the minimum wage and setting up a Public Investment Bank to lend where banks won’t (which given time could prove crucial to the country’s recovery).

But it is on budgetary matters – tax and spend – where Hollande has offered something most markedly different. Contrary to received wisdom in parts of the British press, the French President never campaigned against the principle of deficit reduction; simply against the notion that this is best achieved through deep spending cuts and huge tax hikes on ordinary people (this is after all what austerity has come to mean). And it is here that his actions in government bear far greater scrutiny than the widely held, lazy caricature that he has bowed to 'inevitable' cuts.

In 2013, only a third of Hollande’s deficit reduction measures comes from reducing spending. And all of this is coming from departmental spending freezes, not deep cuts.

The rest comes from increased taxes, largely on big businesses, banks and wealthy individuals. This includes increased wealth taxes, alongside hikes on taxes on assets and dividends. A new 45 per cent top rate has been brought in for incomes over €150,000, while companies will have to pay 75 per cent tax on any salaries over €1 million (replacing the 75 per cent income tax rate struck down by France’s constitutional court). Big banks and oil companies have also been hit with special levies. Tax exemptions have been scrapped.

While weak growth across Europe has made things harder than expected, these measures will still see France’s deficit fall to 3.7 per cent in 2013, from 4.8 per cent in 2012. Hollande has also shown admirable flexibility, resisting pressure to bring in any further deficit reduction measures to meet draconian EU targets while the economy is still weak (he has instead delayed them).

The ratio between taxes and spending reductions will level up a little in 2014, and some entitlements may be means tested. But freezes are likely to continue to take precedence to significant cuts on the spending side.

Whatever one’s view of Hollande, to equate this with the medicine meted out by other Governments in Europe is fatuous. Compare it, for instance, to George Osborne’s approach, whose ratio of cuts to taxes is 80:20, with that 20 per cent borne by people on average incomes while millionaires pay less. It’s also a world away from the broad-based slash and burn policies being implemented in Italy or Greece. Low and middle income households in France have been protected, as have public services.

Here Labour can still draw positive lessons, as beyond the need for short-term stimulus now, they face up to longer-term decisions over whether to accept the enormous cuts currently pencilled in by the Tories for 2015 and beyond. The deficit faced by any incoming Labour government is likely to be of a similar order to that faced by the French President.

Drawing inspiration from Hollande, but outside the fiscal straight jack imposed on Eurozone countries, Labour could set a longer more flexible timetable for elimination of the deficit. Assuming they inherit low growth, they could then pledge a freeze on overall departmental spending. This would be tough but would cancel planned Tory cuts and shut down accusations of profligacy or ‘turning the taps back on’ in a relatively painless way, providing them space to talk more about growth and living standards. Beyond that, levies on the well off and big businesses (e.g Financial Transactions Tax, Land Value Tax, restoring the main rate of corporation tax etc) should go towards paying for the rest of deficit reduction.

Within this overall spending envelope, further tax rises on the top (a 50p rate, mansion tax etc) could pay for tax cuts for those on low and middle incomes, aiding demand. Growth measures requiring capital spend would then be funded by taking money from budgets with the least impact on domestic demand (cuts in defence and international development to pay for a large house building programme, for instance).

There are many areas, of course, where Miliband will want and need to do the exact opposite of Hollande. He will have to be careful to not be seen to over-promise, given the public’s already brittle faith in politics. But a closer reading of François Hollande than we will be afforded in our newspapers reveals an important truth; one that can be rescued from the carnage of an otherwise difficult first year for the Socialist President. When it comes to how, when and on whose backs the national books are balanced, there are still choices.

Piece for ShiftingGrounds on Ken Loach's new film

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Can we revive the spirit of 45?

Of the twentieth century it’s often remarked that “the left won the culture war, the right won the economic war”. If nothing else, Ken Loach’s Spirit of 45, out in cinemas last week, is a useful reminder that this did not always seem like being a foregone conclusion.

A great deal has changed since then, of course, as the film expends little subtlety in telling us. And indeed many have wasted no time in dismissing Loach as nostalgic or simplistic, something he probably leaves himself open to with his use of sepia tone and eventual descent into agitprop (Ms Thatcher emerges from nowhere to shatter the reverie, encouraging the audience in my showing to audibly hiss!).

But past its casual bursts of pantomime, The Spirit of 45 is a beautiful and inspiring movie. It leaves you, as I suppose it intends to, with the question of what we can revive of that time – of, as the late Tony Judt might put it, “what is living and what is dead?” What can be resuscitated and how?

The first – and the most striking thing about that era – was the sheer scale of ambition of the Labour government. They faced circumstance which make today’s problems seem meagre by comparison: a country decimated by war, fiscal deficits of 21.5%, national debt at nearly 250% of GDP. And yet they embarked on a programme of wholesale transformation of the British economy and society – not because it was romantic, but because it was the right way to solve those problems.

In many ways an experiment, this boldness is a salutary reminder to those of us on the left who at times have had our horizons narrowed by the last thirty years of free-market triumphalism, or even the austerity of the past few. Too often we content ourselves to talk big but fiddle at the edges; a tweak and a nudge here, a tax incentive there. Ownership and control matter, as do institutions; public and private interest are not synonymous – the former should always be a buffer to the latter, not a mere facilitator.

Simple truths but ones too often forgotten. And relevant when we look at our country today. What really is the case, for example, for continuing with the absurd public subsidy to train companies to run our railways, instead of just taking what is a natural monopoly back into public ownership? In energy and banking industries, we should at least be looking at national or regional ‘public options’ which could undercut profiteering from the cartels that dominate those industries.

What these institutions might look like brings us to what Loach pinpoints as the failure of the left in the late twentieth century. While the collectivism of the post-war years expressed itself through politics, that spirit largely stopped at the ballot box. Nationalised institutions eventually became sclerotic and bureaucratic; run in the interests of people but with little of their input.

The only way by which the left of today can take up the spirit of 1945, while not repeating its failures, is through a relentless focus on economic democracy.  Where institutions are state backed, they should be run equally by management and employees, ideally with third party input too. The plans for a ‘Peoples Port of Dover’ – controlled equally by employees, local residents and businesses – provides a good model.

This ethic also needs to be extended right across the economy, including to businesses. For example, Peter Tatchell and others have long argued for medium and large companies to be required to be run in this way, with shareholders and employees represented equally on boards, alongside an agreed (smaller) third group. This reflects the recommendations of the 1977 Bullock Report, never enacted in time before the tide of Thatcherism swept all such considerations away.

The dream of abolishing the profit motive has evaporated, and it is very unlikely to come back. Over a century social democracy (and even democratic socialism) has indeed sadly gone, as Dylan Riley puts it,“from a strategy for achieving socialism to a policy package for managing capitalism”. But if that’s to be the case, lets at least do it comprehensively.

Undoubtedly though, there are a some elements of the era Loach venerates which are dead – and to which it is less easy to reconcile. The working class still exists, but it is far more fractured, far less homogeneous than it was; the very nature of our cities have also changed. This all creates significant barriers to the important work of political and trade union organisation, particularly in the private sector.

As does the most pressing change of all: the way globalisation has transformed capital, making it more fluid and global, and far harder to regulate or tax. These problems are not insurmountable. But as Paul Mason has said, they do pose a dilemma for the left. Namely, this is whether we pursue a   programme of ‘deglobalisation’ (capital controls, anti-outsourcing measures etc.) or enter the far more untested and ambitious terrain of global governance. This debate has yet to even really get under way in mainstream left circles, nevermind reach a conclusion.

Nevertheless, we have enough to be getting on with. As Eric Hobsbawm told Juncture shortly before his death:

“Politics is the only aspect of the 21^st century world which globalisation [has] weakened but not transformed. It remains the only effective mechanism for social redistribution…It has its problems and abuses, but it remains the last bastion against the free market. And it needs politics – politics by collective action to move it.”

It is this which we can take forward as the true essence of the spirit 1945, linking that which can be rescued from that time to what we can bring to new challenges; the centrality of politics and collective action. This has never been more urgent than now, as we look back at the unquestioned inequity, inequality and unsustainability of the pre-crash years. Just as those post-war generations did, we too should vow never to go back to “that sort of peace”.

Obama must make poverty reduction a priority for his second term

Piece for New Statesman website
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As Barack Obama prepares for his second inauguration in front of the Capitol building on Monday, most politicos are by now familiar with the demographics which helped put him there. Election night saw 96 per cent of African-Americans vote for the President; 70 per cent of Hispanics and 73 per cent of Asian Americans. Less dependent on traditional independent voters, the Democrats 'expanded the electorate' by boosting turnout in these communities. 

That this causes a problem for the Republicans has quickly become conventional wisdom. It's been little noted, though, how the demographics of 6 November create a challenge for the Democrats too. An important component of the Obama campaign's "get-out-the-vote" (GOTV) effort was the President's personal appeal. There was a pronounced sense of a personal connection between many non-white voters and Obama, and of protectiveness (of which race was one but not the only factor).

The question for 2016 is, how do the Democrats maintain that level of support without Obama on the ticket? They are unlikely to find a candidate with the charisma, backstory and platform to match Obama, whose breakthrough was a truly once-in-a-generation event. 

The answer can only be that, from the White House to the Senate, Democrats need to go further in the next four years to deliver on substance for these communities. Here, immigration reform is often mentioned. But just as pressing is the indelible link between race and poverty in America, particularly in urban areas.

Far too many of the majority black neighbourhoods that helped deliver Obama's re-election in states like Virginia or Ohio continue to be blighted by hardship. A litany of grim statistics bears this out. More than 1 in 4 African-Americans and Hispanics grow up in extreme poverty - with millions struggling just above this threshold. Forty per cent of children in African-American communities grow up below the poverty line (the US is ranked 34 out of 35 of industrialised countries when it comes to child poverty). Poverty is not of course simply an ethnic minority issue – but they are clearly disproportionately affected.

None of this is new. The statistics are familiar, and wash over many American heads by now. But as Michael Harrington once wrote in his seminal book on the subject, The Other America, "you can rationalise statistics...but you cannot rationalise an indignity". Nearly fifty years after Martin Luther-King said that "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture of their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits", a significant chunk of the US is still held down by hunger, violence, illness, poor education and precariousness. And sadly, that number has increased since 2007.

Anyone going door-to-door in the election in some of the poorer parts of places like Franklin County in Ohio would have found many who benefited in some small way from the President's first term. Particularly so on healthcare. Stimulus spending and his general stewardship of the economy have also stopped a total collapse in living standards. It could have been a lot worse.

But, as the likes of Paul Tough have argued brilliantly, this is not the prospectus on poverty that Obama the candidate first emerged on. Then, he gave speeches – like the one in Anacostia which Tough details – arguing for a wide-ranging approach to poverty in America. Higher minimum wages and better union representation featured, but also specialised parenting, nutrition and early education programmes. 

If the campaign was anything to go by, the prospect of returning to this seems weak. In the parks and multi-purpose arenas in which Obama delivered his campaign stump speech, the mention of poverty was noticeably scant for a candidate largely relying on GOTV among poor neighbourhoods. If it was name checked it was in a more conventionally liberal way, usually about the need for more teachers – rather than at the heart of his moral vision as once before; his words had lost their transformative edge. As some observed, at times it was like listening to a John Kerry speech.

Prior to that, in office, Obama put up none of the fight for an increase in the minimum wage that he had pledged. He gave not one single speech on poverty itself. Many of the programs he once envisioned exist but remain under-funded and minuscule compared to his initial vision. The basis of union organisation remains weak, as legislation aimed at strengthening it fizzled out early on.

Little of this is Obama's fault alone, of course, but it speaks to a nation's priorities. It's part of a wider cultural blind spot in the US. As Harrington wrote all those years ago, a key dimension of poverty in America is its invisibility to many people. There are certain neighbourhoods most folks don't go into, certain parts of town many go their whole lives without seeing, especially in places like Washington. There's little space in the 'American dream' narrative for those who don't pull themselves up to greatness, or the middle class, but who quietly struggle for their whole lives. It's time the President carved one.

As in the UK, the problem is one not just of unemployment but perilously low wages and economic insecurity. The percentage of those working but still in poverty is at its highest in nearly two decades; average wages are in a thirty year slump. And more and more Americans are falling closer to the threshold. 

For this reason, it's particularly welcome that Obama prioritised, fought for and won protection of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit in the recent fiscal cliff negotiations, which the Republicans had earmarked for abolition. Beyond that, though, he urgently needs to rediscover the spirit and ideas that animated his early words and interventions on poverty, like the one in Anacostia. African-American community leaders are gathering this week to pressure the President into making urban poverty a priority for his second term. 

There's no doubt that Obama remains a deeply intelligent and thoughtful man, of authentic social compassion. But his record on poverty is a case study in his journey from transformational candidate to good, solid but unspectacular liberal incumbent. He is said to worry about his place in history in this respect, and has asked historians how he can match up to likes of Lincoln. Bringing poverty out from the political fringes offers him this opportunity. For the Democrats, too, it can no longer be dismissed as a 'core vote' concern which turns off swing voters – if they are to replicate 2012's voting coalition in 2016, turnout among minority voters is the swing vote. They will need to act and deliver on a malaise still ubiquitous in far too many of those voters' lives. An electoral imperative has been given to an issue which should long ago have been a moral one.

Smarter HIV prevention in the UK

Piece for World AIDS Day 2012. Originally appeared here 
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Smarter HIV prevention in the UK

World AIDS Day. For many it will conjure image of young men in the 1980s dying helpless, horrible deaths in hospital wards. Many old enough to have been there will still be able to recall the raw panic that enveloped the early years of the epidemic.

In truth, though, while such imagery unquestionably helps us remember, and to raise money, they are not terribly useful for understanding the reality of HIV in 2012 – or for informing HIV prevention policy. Which is not to say HIV is longer an issue – last year saw the highest number of new HIV diagnoses among gay men in the UK on record. But rather that the epidemic here has moved on. And we desperately need to take heed of this if you’re going to bring down rates of HIV infection.

For one thing, thanks to treatment, if diagnosed early someone with HIV can expect to enjoy a near-normal life expectancy. Second, and most importantly, that treatment can reduce infectiousness by up to 96 per cent – making it extremely unlikely they will pass it on to others.

Quite obviously, though, this is only the case if the individual is diagnosed early. And it’s this which is the great challenge of HIV today. Late diagnosis explains the vast majority of people who die or develop AIDS. What’s more, crucially, it’s the undiagnosed who are now driving our epidemic. Fifty per cent of people with HIV in the UK are diagnosed late (CD4 count of under 350), 20 per cent very late (under 200). Twenty-five per cent of the 100,000 people with HIV don’t know they have it.

Earlier diagnosis through more regular testing thus becomes not only beneficial for personal health, but vital for public health and stopping the spread of the epidemic.

Clearly, conventional HIV prevention such as condom promotion and sex education remain crucial. But they must be coupled with a range of interventions aimed at increasing testing. Just throwing more money at community groups alone will not solve the problem. In short, we need a smarter approach to HIV prevention.

So what are the building blocks of this? Well-funded HIV services and a universal public healthcare system are pivotal. Sadly, both are being undermined by this government.

Beyond that, there are a range of steps the government need to take if they are serious about doing more to reduce rates of HIV. These include:

• Political commitment. The UK has no HIV strategy. The last one, introduced by Labour, expired in 2010, and has not been replaced by this government. This leaves us as one of the few countries in the world without a national HIV strategy.

• More proactive testing by health services. At the moment, testing is conducted on an ‘opt-in’ basis – it requires voluntary commitment by the patient. We need to move towards an ‘opt-out’ system – where your consent to be tested is implied unless you explicitly withdraw it. In high-prevalence areas, all GP surgeries should routinely test all new patients for HIV, while hospitals should do the same for every patient who walks through their doors. The last government commissioned a report which found that this was was feasible, cost-effective and highly successful in reducing rates of undiagnosed HIV. This government has made no real effort to back or implement this.

• In general, testing needs to move outside of just the GUM clinic into GP surgeries, hospitals, communities, saunas and clubs.

• Better HIV partner notification. Telling your recent hook-up when you’ve been diagnosed with HIV is a surefire way of getting them to go for a test. It’s really effective as a means of diagnosing people earlier. But it’s difficult. Services within GUM to support it are patchy at best, and need to be improved.

• An ‘annual testing’ message for Africans living in Britain. It exists for gay men – why shouldn’t it for Africans too? After all, they make up nearly half of the UK’s new HIV diagnoses.

Such steps are not as sexy as high-profile national prevention campaigns. But they would be as effective, if not more so, in stopping the spread of HIV in this country today. So let’s use this World AIDS Day to give money and remember those lost, but also to renew and update our public conversation about HIV and the steps we take to stop what is still, after all this time, a profoundly preventable condition.