So much for a new type of politics – looks like ‘same old’ to me

Interesting that the headline says something slightly different to the content of the post.

The headline implies this will happen whenever a business person wants access to a Conservative MP. However, the actual article states that it is only for one event on one day that will probably only last a few hours.

I think it would be good if the names of the businesses paying the money are revealed (for the purposes of transparency), but the names of the actual people attending isn’t as necessary.

Great idea and one which should be applied to the wider public sector.

Government Departments could be sponsored by private companies. Positions on official reviews could be auctioned to the highest bidder, companies could bid for the right to write legislation…

The deficit would go in no time and it chimes well with Conservative values.

Sevillista,

I guess you weren’t being serious, but why is that idea worse than letting career politicians compete to write laws? At least they would be written with an understanding of the issues involved.

Obviously though such processes would have to be fully transparent, unlike this (and we would have to have certain limits on what could be included in terms of monopolies or human rights). Mind you, I find it hard to think of a party that doesn’t send major figures to fund-raising dinners like this – the Greens perhaps, BNP maybe? So perhaps we already have this system in place.

http://www2.labour.org.uk/uploads/4d8d0ef8-48d5-0014-6923-056a363ebf5d.pdf

Great to see the usual tory trolls defending tory sleaze. After they made so much of the Labour expenses scandals.

Tory scum will not be happy until they have destroyed democracy and sold everything off to private interests. Selling England by the pound.

The right is the true threat to national sovereignty, not the EU. Always has been and always will be.

@Sally With a comment like that, how can you be expected to be taken seriously? If you don’t agree with what some of the commenters are saying, why don’t you use evidence, facts etc to back up what you’re saying?

Erm, lets put this in context shall we. Yes, its a shame that theres an event like this, however…

If you go to Labour Conference this year you’ll have to pay £12,500 for a “premium” table of 10 at their dinner. If budget is a problem, you can get a regular table for £5000.

So, are you all willing to condemn Labout for doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING?

sally,

Tory scum will not be happy until they have destroyed democracy and sold everything off to private interests. Selling England by the pound.

You have checked out the key concepts of the right haven’t you. Individual liberty. Lack of excessive state control. The opportunity to be yourself. Now explain how those things are more compatible with private interests than democracy, and I may be inclined to believe you. It’s not as if there is a natural alliance between big state and big business to the exclusion of the little people or anything…

The right is the true threat to national sovereignty, not the EU. Always has been and always will be.

How would selling England (and presumably Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, along with the crown dependencies) to private interests actually be a threat to national sovereignity? Presumably only if those interests also owned overseas territories and merged various governmental functions. Which is strikingly like the EU. I can’t say you’ve thought this through, unless you are confusing national sovereignity with democracy (which can vote against it).

Anyway, I don’t like paid access to ministers, but paid access to prominent members of parties in a party-political function is something that we can’t do anything about. If they happen to be ministers as well, what do you suggest we do about it? I can’t see a solution which doesn’t involve legislating and appointing some body to tell our elected representatives what to do.

Tory scum will not be happy until they have destroyed democracy and sold everything off to private interests. Selling England by the pound.

Tsk tsk. As well you know, that’s not been allowed since the decison in Thoburn v Sunderland. Attention to details please Sally.

Tories want almost everything run by the private sector. If they could get away with it they would openly privatise the NHS, and the education system, and lots more. The Roads the beaches, everything. They can/t , so they do it by stealth. But that is another debate. They want everything, except the military, (and many right wing nuts in America are even thinking that the military could be privatised. ) the police, and a few other odds and sods run by private enterprise. Part of that is because they believe in the private sector, but part of it is they want to destroy unions, and any political opposition.

Secondly, they then want to run what they call ‘deregulation.‘ What this actually means is these same corporations should be free from political interference. Well, once you have combined the two you have in effect destroyed democracy. Because whatever you think about politicians, and God knows they are not perfect. However, they are elected by the people. If the peoples representatives have no say in the way the these firms operate, and these same firms control everything we rely on, then democracy has been destroyed. Which is what the right wants to achieve.

And of course that has been the way for most of the time. It is less than a hundred years ago that half the population got the vote and 150 years ago most men got the vote. Before that, the landed aristocracy governed the country, and the rest were just serfs. The right wants to recreate that situation. Privatise and deregulate. The business leaders and the communist dictators have one thing in common they hate democracy. That is why so many business men love modern day communist China.

sally,

Tories want almost everything run by the private sector. If they could get away with it they would openly privatise the NHS, and the education system, and lots more. The Roads the beaches, everything. They can/t , so they do it by stealth. But that is another debate. They want everything, except the military, (and many right wing nuts in America are even thinking that the military could be privatised. ) the police, and a few other odds and sods run by private enterprise. Part of that is because they believe in the private sector, but part of it is they want to destroy unions, and any political opposition.

How do you privatise a beach? But anyway, whilst this might be a bit over the top inthe list of privatisable assets, up to the last sentance I think your characterisation is within the bounds of acceptable accuracy – most right-wingers ideologically believethat the private sector is the best way to run things (that wouldn’t mean abolishing the NHS, just delivering healthcare differently though for example). But there is a big difference between believing in the private sector and wanting to destroy unions and political opposition. I think you need specific evidence to make a claim like that – it is the equivalent of me saying that Labour want to destroy private industries and any political opposition. It suggests, without evidence, a desire to be tyrants.

Secondly, they then want to run what they call ‘deregulation.‘ What this actually means is these same corporations should be free from political interference. Well, once you have combined the two you have in effect destroyed democracy. Because whatever you think about politicians, and God knows they are not perfect. However, they are elected by the people. If the peoples representatives have no say in the way the these firms operate, and these same firms control everything we rely on, then democracy has been destroyed. Which is what the right wants to achieve.

I have yet to meet any right-winger, especially libertarians, who think that the idea of deregulation is to benefit corporations. Corporations do best against small competitors in regulated environments – bureaucracy costs money, and small operations find it more difficult to cope with those costs. Furthermore, right-wing thinking is generally anti-corporation – Atlas Shrugged might be a crap model for a political movement, but it does at least identify the corporations as the enemy in that they care for themselves rather than for people. Corporations do not sponsor libertarians or extreme free-marketeers; they prefer centerist or big-state parties who they can trust to keep regulation and the like in place. That should tell you something.

Also deregulation does not effect personal rights, which in right-wing thought are protected from either government or corporation. You seem to have an idea where there are only two models – corporate governance or state governance. Most right-wingers see individual governance – wherever possible the individual decides – as an alternative option. This is hardly anti-democratic – it allows for movements of peoples to come together to make large changes. It may however be anti-party-politics, in that like all vested interests political parties resist change and the formation of new alliances. But party politics is not democracy, merely the way it has been expressed for the last century and a half or more in this country.

And of course that has been the way for most of the time. It is less than a hundred years ago that half the population got the vote and 150 years ago most men got the vote. Before that, the landed aristocracy governed the country, and the rest were just serfs. The right wants to recreate that situation. Privatise and deregulate. The business leaders and the communist dictators have one thing in common they hate democracy. That is why so many business men love modern day communist China

A bit confused here I think – the landed aristocracy (the Lords) lost control of parliment to the commons (the burghers and the non-aristocrats) by the end of the eighteenth century, starting a long chain of democratic improvements (reform acts, enfrachisement, perhaps now voting reform, although I don’t see it myself). All of these were supported by predecessors of the current Conservative party (even if opposed by others in the same lines of ancestry). But characteristic of this pre-fully-democratic society, as you correctly identify, was an environment where the demands of business where prioritised over the individual, perhaps also the case in modern China (hardly a Communist society – the party is now a kind of private members club for advancement). In both nineteenth-century Britain and modern China, this society is maintained by the application of rules, tariffs and quotas, by arbitary decisions by unaccountable people. By state control in other words. How would nineteenth-century mill owners or modern Chinese sweatshop overseers have managed in a society where the focus was not on complying with rules from above, but on respecting the rights of workers as individuals? And this is what deregulation is about – not allowing government to be run for the few (apart from anything else, what’s in that for me – I’m not one of the few) but by ensuring that it cannot be used to exploit the many and exclude competition.

And if Tories are historically irredeemably evil and exploitive, answer me this. Which party pushed for the abolition of slavery?

“How do you privatise a beach? “

It is very easy to privatise a beach, and is increasingly done in the US. Beeches are mostly owned by the state, so it is not difficult to sell them off, just like gas and electric. In fact I believe that for many years Lands End has been run by private interests.

“that wouldn’t mean abolishing the NHS, “

There are many on the right who would love to abolish the NHS. After all, they fought tooth and nail to stop it being set up. Many of the Conservatives in America, where the tories are increasingly copying, want to abolish the education department.

“I have yet to meet any right-winger, especially libertarians, who think that the idea of deregulation is to benefit corporations”

That has to be a joke right?

“Corporations do best against small competitors in regulated environments – “

Tell that to Freddie Laker when Thatcher sold off BA

“Furthermore, right-wing thinking is generally anti-corporation “

In America that certainly was true in the late 19 th century. But is not the case now. The Republican party has been taken over by corporate money for many decades now.

“Corporations do not sponsor libertarians”

Large corporations are right now funding the tea party in America which claims to be libertarian.

“Also deregulation does not effect personal rights”

Plenty of firms drug test their staff. They are told what to wear. How they should behave. Henry Ford used to have a compliance dept that used to go round and inspect workers homes to make sure they were living in a way that the company liked.

“ But party politics is not democracy, merely the way it has been expressed for the last century and a half or more in this country.”

Well seeing as woman only got the vote in the late 1920’s, and most men 50 years before that, there was not much in the way of democracy, for most people.

@Watchman

Which party pushed for the abolition of slavery?

The Whigs. And they were – originally – blocked by the aristoc**ts in the Lords. Some Tories got on board when they had their consciences pricked. William Grenville (Whig) and William Wilberforce (technically an independant) were the driving force behind the abolitionist movement. Charles Fox – otherwise quite conservative (small c) in his views – was also a Whig minister who opposed the slave trade.

[nb. not only were consciences pricked but pragmatism came into play when the Haitians kicked off in 1804-ish]

OH and another nb. – You’ll claim the modern Conservative party grew out of the Whigs but it was a very factionalised (is that a word?) party at the time and the point is the Whigs were more radical and socially aware – just, as they were both ruling class toffs – than the Tory Party of the day. The Conservative Party are not the intellectual heirs to any socially reforming party at all, hence why Cameron’s gang blocked the minimum wage, want the poor to suffer more than the rich with the new budget, have a cabinet stuffed with privately educated multi-millionaires, are cutting benefits (pensions, disability, unemployment, housing), etc etc etc.

Sally,

Since when were the Republicans the representatives of ‘right-wing’. I know they tend to be more right-wing than their immediate Democratic opponents (not invariably though), but there are ‘conservative’ Democrats and ‘liberal’ Republicans. There are also a worrying number of Republicans and Democrats who belong to groups who believe the Bible is a key text in modern politics, but this does not mean anything. American political parties are broad alliances (hardly even coalitions) and it is not really possible to assume Republican behaviour equals British right-wing aspirations any more than it is possible to assume Democrat behaviour equals British left-wing aspirations. I do agree about the Republican party and corporate money though, although I think that is changing again. And the tea party is no truly liberatrian – activist conservative and localist perhaps, but I doubt they are natural Ron Paul supporters.

A couple of other points. BA do not exist, and certainly in the 1980s did not exist, in a deregulated market. Have you seen a free auction for slots at airports without government intervention for example? The market has limited direct involvement, and this is only after years of struggle (EU regulations here are one of the things that can be held up as a good thing).

As to firms drug-testing staff, that is contractually agreed. If you want to take drugs, don’t take a job involving drug-testing (as I would legalise drugs, that might be an interesting moral dilema involving unemployment benefits…). But any firm interfering in its employee’s private lives other than in their compotence to do their job should immediately face extreme fines – only individuals and in odd cases the state (as protector of other individuals) have that right. What you keep missing is the fact that the right-wing don’t disbelieve in all state functions, just the minimum to protect us (the individuals) and our rights.