Summary: the increasing dissatisfaction with the direction of drift of the Labour Party is leading to some serious attempts at thinking what really could be done. Focusing on getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn is far too short-term. There needs to be a genuine focal point on which to rebuild a centre-left consensus with wide appeal. Starting a new party might seem attractive but given the time available before an election is completely impracticable. Unless some core centre of gravity of the Labour MPs, Labour Party members and Labour constituency parties can be identified there is little prospect of any real progress.

There are now hints of genuine attempts at finding ways around the impasse at the top of the Labour Party that is stopping any plausible progress towards electoral success. Last week Richard Dawkins wrote an article in The New Statesman arguing for a new party (http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/03/richard-dawkins-we-need-new-party-european-party ).

Richard Murphy in his Tax Research UK blog developed the ideas although not in a particularly supportive way (http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/04/03/time-for-a-new-political-party/comment-page-1/#comment-776724 ).

In a piece by Toby Helm (3 April 2017), the political editor of the Observer says that a group of more than 75 Labour MPs led by Clive Efford MP have re-launched the centre-left Tribune group (see:  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/01/labour-mps-revamp-centre-left-tribune-group-to-win-back-middle-class-voters / ). However it does look as if this group was actually relaunched about five months ago, at least going from the website which is wonderfully slick and remarkably content free for five months-worth of effort.

When things are going badly it is very tempting just to say “let’s start again”. The only point of a political party is to achieve influence, and that influence has to be great enough to ensure it succeeds in gaining a majority at the next election. Many of the sympathies of Richard Murphy’s piece and in the comments are clearly left of centre.

The Labour Party has on paper an extraordinary level of support. A new party has to be sure of generating a comparable degree of support in the time available. Giving any new party a label that turns of as many of the general public as it turns on is simply not going to work. There are lots of sensible left of centre people in the UK who really have problems with Europe.

To succeed it must have an appeal that is broad enough to bring in a wide range of support. Even the word “Labour” has enough negative connotations to make that name a disadvantage. Words like “Momentum” and “Tribune” are relatively free from this. Their reputations will be generated as a consequence of what they do or do not do.

I am convinced the only way forward is to find a political centre of gravity for the Labour MPs, the broadest Labour membership and the constituency Labour parties. In the UK political parties do indeed have sub-groupings that push more particular agendas. We urgently need a refocusing of what Labour is. It is widely agreed that a new leader will be needed but that must not be the focus of the party now. After 18 months of Corbyn’s leadership we still don’t have anything that might be called “Labour Party policy”. They have just sent around a policy consultation sheet in a simple multiple choice format. Surely there is enough evidence from public opinion polls what actually matters to the general public. Labour desperately need a list of things they will actually do rather than just cataloguing the aspirations of the left.

Momentum sounded promising when it was set up but, like so many political sub- groupings, it is subject to infighting and manoeuvring to the detriment of the principles of that movement and certainly to the traditional principles of the Labour Party. Perhaps Tribune can do better. The Guardian reports today that the new Labour Tribune MPs group has just been launched though the website suggests this actually happened five months ago. Unfortunately the name “Tribune” also suffers from historical baggage though most young people will not be aware of that.

Already that delay is worrying. I thought I was fairly in touch with what was going on with current centre-left thinking. A grouping like Labour Tribune and won’t work without some serious PR. In needs money and a website that is less slick but has more content. Above all it needs full-time people to push it properly. It might be able to make some genuine progress in establishing a foothold in the centre of the Labour Party but it looks at present as if it has some considerable way to go. Without it or something like it I cannot see any prospect of regenerating a centre-left political party in the finite future.

But I’m very clear that there aren’t any other parties around that have a chance, and setting up a new party with a name that starts by polarising the electorate is simply not going to get anywhere.

All I’ve managed to do is put together a blog called outsidethebubble.net, but it is so hard to find any way of moving these things forward otherwise. The next big challenge is to generate a plausible centre left-wing policy document which has clear goals and, above all, clear economic costings. Hard ideas are needed, not a series of aspirational documents with the intellectual texture of a slice of cheap white bread.

Momentum sounded promising when it was set up but, like so many political sub- groupings, it is subject to infighting and manoeuvring to the detriment of the principles of that movement and certainly to the traditional principles of the Labour Party. Perhaps Tribune can do better. The Guardian reports today that the new Labour Tribune MPs group has just been launched though the website suggests this actually happened five months ago.

Already that delay is worrying. I thought I was fairly in touch with what was going on with current centre-left thinking. A grouping like Labour Tribune and won’t work without some serious PR. In needs money and a website that is less slick but has more content. Above all it needs full-time people to push it properly. It might be able to make some genuine progress in establishing a foothold in the centre of the Labour Party but it looks at present as if it has some considerable way to go. Without it or something like it I cannot see any prospect of regenerating a centre-left political party in the finite future.

But I’m very clear that there aren’t any other parties around that have a chance, and setting up a new party with a name that starts by polarising the electorate is simply not going to get anywhere.

All I’ve managed to do is put together a blog called outsidethebubble.net, but it is so hard to find any way of moving these things forward otherwise. The next big challenge is to generate a plausible centre left-wing policy document which has clear goals and, above all, clear economic costings. Hard ideas are needed, not a series of aspirational documents with the intellectual texture of a slice of cheap white bread.

Summary: Fighting Brexit is something that must be encouraged and carried out with enthusiasm and energy. Focusing on loss aversion, whereby individuals are much more concerned with understanding what they might lose that they are about what they might gain should underpin our methods. Emphasising what they have already lost with the current right-wing government and what they will lose increasingly as Brexit gathers pace is key. The promises of the Brexiteers need to be challenged. Those opposing Brexit can point to all the losses that have already been created by the hard right governments we have had in recent years. The battle must be taken to the Brexiteers!

The only way that we can avoid leaving the EU with either no deal at all (hard Brexit) or a weak, unsatisfactory deal is to change the opinion of a significant fraction of the British population who voted to Leave. The vote was close, 52 to 48 and was substantially built on lies and propaganda on both sides intended to obscure the truth. The Government’s hardline approach to Brexit can only be reversed if public opinion turns significantly against Brexit.

There is every indication that this might well happen. Gradually we will find that there are things we have had yet now are losing. The drop in the exchange rate will provide a temporary lift but once the effect of that work through to consumer prices and inflation starts to increase substantially the pain will increase. Inflation tends to lead to rises in interest rates. With the recent growth in the economy fuelled substantially by increasing credit that will cause a significant pain to those least able to tolerate it.

We are also now seeing projections and analysis that make it clear just how much different regions of the country will be affected. A recent report from Demos makes it clear that some of the strongest supporting regions for Brexit, Wales and the North-East, will be particularly hard-hit. Wales exports 60% to the EU.  Much of that is agricultural which will be hit by particularly high tariffs. Wales is also one of the biggest recipients of EU funds which are unlikely to be provided as lavishly by the post-Brexit British government. The East of England will also be badly affected by the difficulty in recruiting agricultural labourers to gather a substantial part of British fruit and vegetable produce.

Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2002. One of his most important studies was to appreciate how individuals are much more concerned with avoiding the loss of something they have ready have than they are with the prospect of gaining something they don’t yet have. Loss aversion is extremely important at every level and every society. It is an idea that is now accepted as being key in underpinning human motivation. Understanding this can guide our approach to persuading Brexiteers to change their mind.

The key to helping people realise that Brexit might not be good for them after all is to make them understand just how much they will be losing. The Brexiteers promise that we will gain something. Those promises must be challenged and balanced by explaining what we are all likely to lose. The losses will be felt particularly by those who have already suffered badly.

Indeed we can understand partly Labour’s failure to make any political headway during the last two governments because they have not been prepared to point out just how much individuals have lost in recent years because of austerity. Austerity has not been seriously challenged by the left-wing political classes and the best way to do that is not simply to say it is unnecessary but to point out just how much everybody has lost.

There are millions of people in the UK who no longer can afford to take a holiday. There are many millions who are materially worse off than they were before the crash of 2008. These are people who will understand and feel what it is they have already lost. Targeting them and making it as clear as possible that they will lose again and again if Brexit goes ahead.

The Labour Party is in a sorry state now and cannot be relied upon to be much help in this. However wanting the UK to remain in the EU is something that people in all walks of life support so fighting Brexit is something that transcends the usual political boundaries in the UK.

To the barricades!

Summary: The Labour Party is widely agreed to be in a pretty bad state. The manoeuvrings in the Momentum group are most concerning and indeed any attempt to gain exceptional influence over Labour Party policies from one narrow agenda group is most concerning. Now we hear of the disintegration of the office of Jeremy Corbyn with massive staff losses over the last year. Getting things back on track is an urgent matter and the people at the top of the Labour Party simply don’t seem to understand this. Without action the current death spiral of the Labour Party will end relatively soon. We need to identify leaders that will be supported by Labour Party grassroot members and give them every support to turn things round.

Labour supporters keep hoping that things will improve. Many feel that a change of leader is what is needed but this simply ignores the fact that Labour as a brand (in marketing parlance) is toxic and will be very hard to repair. It isn’t just because of Jeremy Corbyn. It is true that Corbyn has become a figure of ridicule and is misreported pretty widely. But if we think how any other leader might improve things it would still be very difficult to resurrect Labour in a positive way.

The rot was under way many years ago and Labour have failed to keep the brand fresh and interesting. It probably started with Tony Blair and the Iraq war, faltered during the Blair/Brown squabbles and particularly when Labour under Ed Miliband was too timid to resist the nonsense that the British economy was in a dreadful state because of Labour overspending when in fact the British recession simply followed the worldwide recession. Now it doesn’t matter what Labour says and when it says it. The presentation is mediocre and the media have Labour on the run. Labour are currently flogging a dead horse with an uninspiring rider.

When a brand becomes bad it’s very difficult to bring it back to life. Most companies would simply develop a different brand which may well be what they wanted the old brand to be, but it has to be new and fresh and interesting. The problem with reconstructing the Labour party is that there are large numbers of genuine left-wing supporters who want it to work. Many feel very unhappy at the current drift and lack of focus. They may be leaving in pretty large numbers at the moment but they still want a left-wing socialist party to represent their views and the views of the many who have lost out since the start of the Tory recession so very badly. Even now, with the membership under half a million, that is still a very large number that simply cannot be brushed to one side.

The Momentum group was set up to build on the energy and enthusiasm generated by the Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader campaign. It has over 150 local groups across the UK and a total membership of about 22,000 or about 5% of Labour Party members. This sort of organisation could be an excellent way for Labour to build strength but at present it appears to be moving ever leftwards in ways that the great majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party and general Party members believe will ultimately harm the prospects of success for Labour at a general election. And they are probably right.

The evidence of a leftward drift is very strong. A recent recording of Jon Lansman of Momentum made it clear of his desire to affiliate the Unite union (the biggest in the UK) with the group he founded and become fully integrated with it. At the same time there are moves to change Labour Party rules enabling future candidates to require only 5% of MPs to support them rather than the present 15%. That would make it easier for far left candidates to stand as a future Labour leader.

The significance of all this has been energetically denied by Len McCluskey, the President of Unite but it is pretty implausible that Jon Lansman could be as out of touch with the current reality as Len McCluskey would have you believe. Sadly the presence of Momentum as driven by its present leaders is not a particularly democratic organisation. The constitution of Momentum allows the ruling committees to make pretty well any decision they like without reference to its grassroots members. The way it is run now is certainly exacerbating the divisions within the Labour Party. You don’t even need to be a member of the Labour Party to be an effective presence in Momentum. The rules that require it will not be enforced according to Jon Lansman. Indeed there are senior members of the executive today that are not Labour Party members.

We now have reports from Jeremy Corbyn’s office that yet more aides are leaving the team. The list includes Jayne Fisher, Matt Zarb-Cousin, Nancy Platts, Simon Fletcher, Mike Hatchett, Neale Coleman and Anneliese Midgley. David Prescott, son of the former deputy PM John Prescott is leaving as Mr Corbyn speechwriter barely 3 months after taking up that job. It is clear that the office is in turmoil and is perhaps the strongest evidence of how seriously weak the Labour Party is at present. If the leader’s office is so chaotic, what chance of a credible and successful general election campaign?

It is widely agreed that the fragmentation of Labour continues, and its prospects of electoral success are diminishing by the day. John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, thinks it will take as long as two years to turn things round. He and Jeremy Corbyn have been in charge of the Labour Party now for over 18 months and nothing much seems to have happened. A search online for what might be current Labour Party policy reveals nothing. There just isn’t anything to look at, nothing to get behind and act a rallying cry at a time when the country desperately needs an effective opposition of any sort.

Most of the criticism of the present state of the Labour Party focuses on the leader. However if you think about what Labour would be like with a leader of your choice you will realise that changing the leader will make little difference in the short-term and the weakness of the Labour brand would make regeneration of the Party very hard indeed. Given that there is a possibility of a general election before too long it is clear that even a new leader might be too little and too late.

Unfortunately it’s not enough to catalogue what’s going wrong. We have to work out what must be done to move things forward. The question is therefore: how do we reinvent Labour? For a start nobody really seems to know what Labour’s policies actually are at present. Only three weeks ago Jeremy Corbyn produced a form asking people to say what mattered most to them, 18 months after he was first elected. We have to accept that any policies that Labour might have are, at present, vapourware. Such a policy needs to be articulated then modified and refined to get rid of its rough edges and miscalculations. A satisfactory policy has to include a serious attempt to cost each of the items within it, something that is essential if we are to gain any kind of economic credibility. That has been the great weak point of Labour since 2008 as it was not prepared since to resist Tory accusations that it was the Labour economic incompetence that led to the British recession.

Once there is something that is approximating to an agreed policy we need to find charismatic individuals who can bring the party together. There is an assumption amongst many that the current Labour Party membership is very skewed towards the left and does not represent the views of those who might reasonably vote for Labour. This is difficult to sustain because the Labour Party is the Labour Party we’ve got, not one that we might like to redefine. There is no doubt that the mood in the party is markedly more to the left than the manifesto used by Labour in the 2015 general election. Yet poll after poll makes it clear that left-wing policies continue to be popular amongst Labour Party members and with the general public.

Relatively few Labour MPs are well known. Sadiq Khan is popular but as Mayor of London he is not an MP (though there are ways of fixing that). Others that have been reasonably successful in Parliament or at the Labour Party conference include Keir Starmer (shadow Brexit secretary), Clive Lewis (while shadow defence secretary made probably the best speech of the last party conference) and Chuka Umunna (articulate, charismatic but perceived as too new Labour, too right-wing for many). Rumour has it that Jeremy Corbyn’s office are keen to groom a younger very left-wing replacement for Jeremy. However until they can manipulate the nominating percentage for leadership from 15% to 5% there is little chance that Jeremy will be permitted to resign by those currently pulling the strings.

Then the trouble starts. Can we wait till Jeremy resigns? Will there be enough time to turn things round and reinvent Labour? Will the Parliamentary Labour Party start doing some serious arm-twisting for the good of the party? Or is the whole thing in a hopeless and irredeemable death spiral. Thoughts please, on a postcard!

Summary: The British defence programme is in an extraordinarily bad state. All current procurement programs are running very late and very overbudget. Many of them appear not to fit well with other programs, past or current. Systems that have been specified and over specified thoughtlessly are proving unreliable and inappropriate for defence in the 21st-century. This piece tries to look at the state British defence is in. A serious strategic defence review needs to be carried out since the most recent one published at the end of 2015 seem so impossibly out of touch with reality.

The UK trumpets the fact that it spends around 2% of GDP on defence. That apparently makes everyone in NATO happy. Unfortunately nobody in the UK should be mildly content with that. There is a massive problem with the British military and its approach to procurement. Military chiefs approach procurement like Arab princes going into a supercar showroom. They ask for the best with all the extras you could imagine. If in doubt, a bit more goldplating would be splendid! Like the military through the ages they are keen to arm themselves to fight the last war and have remarkably little idea what the next one might actually be like. Many of the major procurement programs of the British military are remarkably misguided. They clearly have very little idea of what the next war might look like. They are buying capital ships such as aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines which seem pointless in a 21st-century war. Vast numbers of aircraft are being bought that perform poorly and are eye-wateringly expensive. I will quickly run through the list of the main procurement programs already underway by the Ministry of Defence. At the end of the piece I recommend a book that tries hard to imagine what the next world war might well look like. It is rather scary but strongly to be recommended.

• Let’s start with the aircraft carriers. When the Tories came to power their obsession with cuts forced the only British aircraft carrier (the Ark Royal) to be scrapped and the Harrier aircraft on it got rid of. Now they are building two more carriers which are well over budget and well behind schedule. They don’t have the capacity to catapult launch a fighter aircraft because the catapult hardware came out to be far too expensive. The programme cost is currently estimated to be £14.3 billion including the aircraft but unfortunately there are not actually enough engineers to get the carriers running properly and anyway they will barely have enough pilots to fly the aircraft before 2026. Each carrier has 24 of the F-35B aircraft. The big problem with aircraft carriers and indeed with many capital ships is that they are now desperately vulnerable to high-performance cruise and ballistic missiles. For example, China is developing the DF-21, a carrier killing ballistic missile with a range of 1100 miles and a top speed 10 times that the sound (2 miles per second). None of our ships have any serious protection against such a weapon. One single hit gets rid of the whole carrier and its aircraft and its crew.

• Fighter aircraft for the carriers are being purchased from the US. These are the F-35B lightning aircraft capable of near vertical takeoff and landing. They need this because the carriers have no other way of launching aircraft. Although the aircraft carriers only need 48 aircraft we are ordering 138 in total all of which are the short takeoff variant. The remainder are for conventional operations. This variant is unfortunately more expensive, heavier, can carry less load and has a smaller range than the basic F35 aircraft. It is far from clear why all are being purchased in that -B variant. Each aircraft costs about £100 million including engine and avionics. Unfortunately the performance of the F-35 is rather poor. One was recently outperformed in a mock dogfight over the Pacific by a 40-year-old F-16 aircraft. The test pilot described the F-35 is being too slow to hit an enemy plane or dodge gunfire. Not such great value for money after all! Last year major problems were found with the avionics systems with 5 out of 6 of the jets unable to take off during testing because of “immature systems and software”.

• The next area of concern are the six Type 45 destroyers. In a remarkable oversight it turns out the engines cannot manage being in a warm sea and they breakdown in waters such as the Persian Gulf. All the engines need to be refitted. Another serious problem is that these destroyers are extraordinarily noisy. Any Russian submarine can detect one of the destroyers at a range of over 100 miles. Even the crew of a Type 45 think they are noisy. The former director of operational capability at the MoD claimed that these ships sound like a box of spanners underwater. Very reassuring for those serving on such boats. Even 40 years ago destroyers were made to be as quiet as possible. It is not clear yet whether the new engines will improve things but their replacement will take a very substantial amount of time not to mention being very expensive. It also means these destroyers will be out of service for a long time.

• A good example of the way that the military top brass likes to gold plate their pet projects is the Type 26 global combat ship. This pretentious name disguises the fact that it is basically a submarine hunter/killer. Navy chiefs insist that it must hold 4 of 39 foot boats, drones or 11 shipping containers and have a deck capable of landing an Apache helicopter for SAS type missions. The basic weight was originally 5400 tons but now, fully loaded, the vessel is expected to weigh more than 8000 tons. The initial cost estimate of £350 million is believed to have been exceeded substantially already. These prices don’t include any significant weapon system for the ships, and that is an expense which does not appear to have been budgeted for.

• The Royal Navy insists we have a “world-class fleet” of submarines that “continues to meet all of its operational tasking”. This is despite the fact that all seven are currently out of action. Some are apparently on their last legs having been built as recently as 1986. Three built more recently cost nearly £4 billion with construction delayed by more than four years and costs 50% over budget. They are also in dock and likely to remain there for some time.

• The current Trident submarines continue to plod along perfectly well, although recent missile tests that misfired suggest all may not be well with the Trident missiles themselves. New submarines are to be built at a total cost of about £40 billion. This must surely be a good case for “making do and mending” to cut back on expenditure until everything else is running properly. More on this at: http://outsidethebubble.net/2016/09/16/trident-the-third-way-make-do-and-mend/.

• Watchkeeper drones were intended to enter service six years ago. The costs have gone up from £700 million to £1.2 billion.

• Plans to buy a fleet of 50 Apache attack helicopters for the British Army are being delayed because of the collapse of the pound relative to the US dollar by 21% since the EU referendum. The software in these helicopters can only be upgraded by the US because of “military sensitivity”. The UK is increasingly reliant on the US defence industry.

• The Ajax scout vehicle program will cost about £3.5 billion to deliver 589 of these armoured vehicles which are essentially mini tanks with a Caterpillar tread. Unfortunately they are too heavy to fit into the RAF’s A400M transport planes and have to be taken to bits first before shipping. What on earth 589 of these immovable objects might be needed for is almost impossible to imagine. I suppose they can buzz around on Salisbury Plane blasting clumps of heather to kingdom come.

The overall British defence programme is extraordinarily expensive but above all of little help in defending us. Russian Tu-95 “Bear” bombers approaching UK airspace can fire missiles at London while circling over Moscow. Modern weapons systems are completely different from anything that the UK is really thinking about. We really should be thinking much more creatively about the way that modern lightweight compact weapon systems are likely to completely dominate in the future. Very fast unmanned fighter aircraft will shortly massively outperform any manned aircraft. Already the highest performance drones (unmanned aircraft) cost between $6 and $15 million. They don’t have the capacity in combat of an F-35 but they could have. They would have many advantages over a manned aircraft, be able to tolerate much higher G-forces and be able to fly in zones where increasing risks of being shot down would make the use of a manned aircraft unacceptable. Sophisticated software on board weapon systems will be what makes or breaks a systems effectiveness. Increasingly wars will become a battle between software systems and not between heavy pieces of equipment that are vulnerable so easily to modern attack weapons. This is not something that the Ministry of Defence appear to have thought about at all.

And then there is the whole business of cyber warfare which is beginning to be taken seriously but needs to have very substantial investment. The individuals who are able to take part in this need a very considerable amount of training and are not people that can be simply turned on like a tap. Getting this right is extremely important and a long-term strategy is absolutely essential.

We desperately need to completely rethink what is happening in our military. Most of the systems we are buying and have bought are remarkably inappropriate. There are not really able to fill any useful future military role. We may be using 2% of our GDP to keep our NATO allies happy but we are totally dependent on the defensive shield of the US. US sales us our equipment, give us permission to use it, takes responsibility for upgrading it (at our cost) and trains our people to use it. It is far from clear how much innovative development is going on in the much vaunted British defence industry but it is clear that without the US and the British capacity to manufacture some of these American goods under licence it would be pretty dead.

What is needed now is a Strategic Defence and Security review that actually looks at a realistic concept of what future defence capacity might actually include. The latest one, published at the end of 2015 reads well, sounds plausible and might be satisfactory if we were still fighting the Cold War. But we are not, we are facing rapid technological change across the world and we are simply not keeping up with it. Defence is important and value for money is critical. However we must ask for weapon systems of all sorts that are economic, appropriate for use over the next 20 or 30 years and above all actually work and keep working.

Finally, it may be rather strange to recommend a novel in support of a highly technical factual piece but if you want to get some idea of what the next world war might actually be then the book “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War”, by PW Singer and August Cole is well worth a read. What it tries to do is to think through the sort of scenarios that the British MoD are completely unaware of. This was written three years ago before any of the current problems in the South China Seas had developed. Nevertheless it imagines that that might indeed become the flashpoint for a future battle. It only talks about weapon systems and technology that either are in existence or are very close to being completed. The book is full of detailed references to each of the weapon systems discussed. It is very, very scary! But definitely something you should read if you are concerned about our defence in the 21st-century. You can find it here: http://www.ghostfleetbook.com/