THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS.......

I can't help smiling at the headlines pointing out that Gordon Brown has spent much of the past 24 hours defending his decision ( and it was HIS decision) to nationalise Northern Rock.
It must really have hurt this "evangelist for globalisation" to have to take control of a busted private sector flush back into public ownership - to protect taxpayers and the shareholders.
To a New Labour generation for whom the very idea of nationalisation is probably as abhorrent as necrophilia, this will be terrible news.
For the left, I believe this is a golden opportunity for us to show that the free market cannot protect people from the iniquities of capitalism - and that sometimes the state must - and should - intervene. "Nationalisation" does not have to mean state-run shibboleths - it can actually mean , er , the public good. And there are many forms of public ownership...... just waiting to happen.
Ex Marxism Today guru Martin Jaques, one of those basically responsible for New Labour, certainly thinks this could be a seminal moment. His was the brain which coined the phrase "The Project" to describe what eventually turned out to be the end of the social democratic consensus. In latter years, he has recanted his enthusiasm for the Third Way.
Casting round the internet, I was interested to note that by 1998 Jaques and his erstwhile comrades were already begininng to realise that in discarding their leftism and embracing Blairism they might have made a tiny wincy, er, mistake.
As journalist Decca Aitkenhead reported : "It seems more likely that they are feeling a little guilty. Like a teenager, Marxism Today neglected the basics of the left, imagining that things like equality would survive just fine. As all teenagers discover to their cost, they're a little sorry when it's too late."
Ten years down the New Labour line, Jaques is clearly hopeful that the tide is about to turn back towards the left. Let's hope so.....

NORTHERN ROCK NATIONALISED!

Comrades, come rally. Can scarcely believe this but Telegraph is reporting that Northern Rock has been taken into public ownership after the high-profile Virgin bid was judged to be "out of the ballpark" in terms of value to the taxpayer.
Apparently, in an "acrimonious "conversation this afternoon with Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, broke the news that the entrepreneur's demands were impossible for the Government to accept.
As late as Saturday, Mr Darling and the Prime Minister had hoped a private-sector deal to rescue the troubled bank could still be achieved without compromising public funds. But by Sunday morning, it came apparent that Sir Richard's offer, and a second bid from the Rock's board, the only deals still on the table, involved far too great a public subsidy, with limited returns to the taxpayer.The announcement that Northern Rock would, despite Gordon Brown's increasingly desperate efforts to secure a private sector deal, be nationalised after all came after a weekend of hurried phone calls, cancelled holidays and rushed meetings. About, er , bloody time.......The bad news ,of course, is that the nationalisation is only "temporary."

NATIONALISATION IS NOT A FOUR-LETTER WORD

So. Gordon Brown is so scared of the N-word that he is opting for a deal which is likely to seriously annoy taxpayers. Well done. Apparently, he's cooked up some deal with his China travelling companion Richard Branson which will mean US having to subsidise the Bearded One's plans for ( you guessed it) Virgin Bank.
According to today's Telegraph Brown has sanctioned the deal, which will see the taxpayers' debt "parcelled up" and sold to institutional investors, repayable over a number of years, in an attempt to avoid the "political stigma "of having to nationalise a bank.The Government will underwrite the debts and Virgin is the front-runner
Branson says he has a "winnable" bid and that he will rebrand the lender Virgin Bank.
It is ludicrous and a disgrace that Brown's Thatcherite faith in free markets is allowing him to play silly buggers with billions of pounds of taxpayers' money. Even the extremely moderate Steve Richards, of the Independent, agrees with me!
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article3356208.eceney. And Branson can't lose...

WELL SAID SEUMAS .....

Newsnight was claiming the other day that Chancellor Alistair Darling was getting seriously hacked off with Gordon Brown's dithering over the nationalisation of Northern Rock. Darling, as befits an alleged former member of the Militant tendency, had no such qualms. Now it looks as though the Govt will finally have to concede public ownership is the only answer. Which drew my attention to an excellent piece by Seumas Milne in today's Guardian > Here's an extract but I recommend reading the whole thing on CiF.....

"The Northern Rock implosion has highlighted the real nature of what's called the free market in modern capitalist economies - neither free nor transparent, and utterly dependent on state support. As the fallout from what shows every sign of becoming a wider economic crisis becomes clearer, demands for alternatives are certain to grow. Bemoaning what he calls "the rise of state capitalism", the Yale professor of trade and finance Jeffrey Garten this week declared that "the era of free markets unleashed by Margaret Thatcher and reinforced by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s is fading away". He's right, but politicians and the media have yet to catch up."

BRING BACK BRITISH RAIL!

About to book a rail ticket to London - let's just say I won't be travelling West Coast line. The utter chaos which passengers have been experiencing post-Christmas is completely unacceptable but an inevitable result of the fragmentation of our railways. As if that weren't bad enough, fares are going up by 15 per cent. As I blog, Gwymneth Dunwoody is railing on World At One against the situation we are now in which, as she rightly concludes, is a result of the demise of British Rail,.

" Literally billions of pounds are going into the industry but this is far from benefitting passengers because of the way it's been handled ." Time, I say, to start campaigning again on the issue of re-nationalisign the railways....

NATIONALISE NORTHERN ROCK NOW!

Like a virgin who won't go "all the way", this Government is playing silly buggers when it comes to Northern Rock. Just days before Christmas the Treasury has taken things one step further by extending financial guarantees, offering to cover any loss by financial institutions so the bank can operate normal banking services.
The move, according to the BBC, could be seen as taking the bank "a step closer" to nationalisation and will also lead to greater financial exposure for taxpayers ie US who have already lent Northern Rock an estimated £26bn.
According to Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, the additional guarantees amounts to 30% of the Northern Rock's balance sheet.
"This was a natural extension to help the company. What is important now is to find a new management to take the bank forward," he says. That management must be and should be - the public sector. And it's frankly astonishing that the Treasury will shell out billions of pounds of our money for this enterprise yet fail to rescue operations like Remploy.