In this issue:

EU elections Part 1: Working Class abandons New Labour - In Part 1 of Challenge’s coverage of the European Parliament Elections James Rodie looks at the wider implications of the results in Britain.
Part 2: What Trend? - The mainstream press has sought to fit all European voters into a single paradigm, already treating Europe as a super state. However, as Ben Stevenson shows electoral results were not as simple as the BBC makes out.

Putting the 'Party' back into Communism - Revolution doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. Charlie May looks to the Communist Festivals on the continent to see just how fun Communism can be

Green China? - China is often demonised for its rapid industrialisation and the resulting use of its natural resources. However, China is actually leading the world in green policies, as Ben Chacko explains

COVER STORY:  Light bulbs, Branston and 'second-homes' - YCL General Secretary Joanne Stevenson explains what the expenses crisis & the unscrupulous actions of bourgeois politicians shows about Britain’s political culture

+ In the news;  Poetry Corner; Right to Strike;  Countering the fascist threat; Religion & Revolution; Commie Q&A; Testing Times - exams in education; Socialism - society of the future; Cartoon Corner; Indian elections - The sky will once again be cleft with red banners; Who's afraid of the Charter for Change?; Book @ Bedtime; Back 2 Basics

Lightbulbs, Branston and 'second-homes'

YCL General Secretary Joanne Stevenson explains what the expenses crisis and the unscrupulous actions of bourgeois politicians shows about the political culture in Britain.

Never before have mainstream politicians seemed so distant from the lives of ordinary working people whom they supposedly represent. It is not surprising that Tory, New Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs have been lining their pockets, nor is it particularly surprising that none of the left Labour MPs, i.e. the only ones with any real principles, have been caught claiming for duck houses, pink MacBooks, or exorbitant second-homes allowances despite living half an hour away from the centre of London.

The claims of some of our “elected representatives” border on the bizarre. Labour MP Austin Mitchell sought back 67p for some Ginger Crinkle Crunch biscuits and tried to claw back 68p for Branston Pickle. Conservative MP David Willetts felt the need to spend over £100 to get 25 light bulbs fitted, while Keith Simpson managed to spend £200 in four years lighting his flat. In fairness though, the job of an MP must be a stressful one and it’s only fair that every minor detail is paid for – the taxpayer provided £160 for life coaching classes for Andrew Turner and Minister Ed Balls found the need to by Mark Steel’s Reasons to be Cheerful, poor things. Another shocker is the apparently extortionate price of stationary around Westminster: Bob Blizzard was seemingly charged 39p for a single paperclip (a box of a hundred plain paper clips should only set you back around 19p).

Claims weren’t just small of course – the literal penny pinching of Jeremy Hunt claiming 1p back for 12 seconds on his mobile – the real scandal is the hundreds of thousands extorted from second home allowances. Our former beloved leader Tony Blair was found to get £7000 for roofing on his second home a mere two days before he stepped down as Prime Minister. Furthermore, the practice of ‘flipping’ second homes whereby MPs changed their official second residence willy-nilly to claim money back for repairs and renovations at the public’s expense – often going on to pocket a tidy profit. Aside from the total lack of scruples this evidences, it also says a lot about the class of politician we have. How many people do you know who has more than one home, let alone the ability to switch between many for financial gain? What these expenses show is not just the attitude that MPs have towards the public (many justified their exorbitant expenses claims on the basis that it seemed acceptable at the time), but just how little they have to do with the public – how totally divorced they are from ordinary people.

These revelations have understandably justifiably provoked anger and frustration, however the level of this scandal is nothing in comparison to the level of dosh sloshing around for MEP’s expenses. The attack by parties such as UKIP is remarkably hypocritical considering their compliance and exploitation of the EU expenses gravy train. UKIP leader Nigel Farage boasted that he’s claimed more than £2 million in expenses as a member of the European Parliament on top of his salary - part of which was employing his wife to run his office.

The perks for MEPs are simply eye-watering. On top of a basic salary of £83, 282 a year (representing a huge pay rise for UK MEPs from June onwards), £41,573 in "transition payments" when they leave office, and pension rights of up to £30,000 for a single five-year term, MEPs can claim an enormous £363,000 a year in expenses – not a penny of which required a receipt (though changes to the expenses system are being belatedly brought in – complete with a massive pay rise for MEPs). One damning report that MEPs voted to keep secret revealed that an MEP had paid his entire staff allowance — £183,776 a year — to a relative. Other MEPs sign in early in the morning to claim their £259 daily allowance, only to dash straight off for a long weekend.

In 2005, for instance, several British MEPs voted against key proposals to make the expenses system more transparent, including requirements to produce receipts to back up travel expenses. And as late as April this year, a majority of British MEPs (60%) voted to keep details about their own expenses and information about misuse of EU funds secret. Only 24% of all British members voted to make expenses public. Gordon Brown has announced that he would force Labour MEPs to publish receipts for all their expenses in future. Whilst this is a welcome move, which goes further than any other political party, it still only applies to office expenses, which account for only €50,000 of the €400,000 total available expenses pot.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan stated that British colleagues make up to £1,000 a month tax free profit legitimately from the ‘mileage system’ alone.  This system allows an MEP a 1st class return to Brussels/Strasbourg every week.  However most go standard class but get the 1st class reimbursement skimming another 20% off the top.

The sheer amount of exploitation of the system and the ridiculously unjustifiable benefits that are received in both Westminster and Brussels serves to highlight how disconnected and divorced both MPs and MEPs from the reality of life that the majority of the population face.

Neither MEPs nor MPs seem to grasp that an annual wage half that they currently ‘earn’ would seem a decent wage to the overwhelming majority of ordinary working people. So a basic wage of £80- 90 grand per year plus secondary incomes (which in many cases dwarf their salary as an MP) from writing newspaper columns, speaking tours, fees for chat shows, salaries from being consultants and on sitting on boards as company directors etc. plus exorbitant expenses and perks which go into absurdity only seek to alienate working people from electoral politics further and further and pushes far right parties such as BNP and UKIP into popularity and 'respectability’. Part of the BNP’s core message is that they are not politicians, as such they have disassociated themselves from the sleaze and corruption in the public mind, placing them in a prime position to pick up the current ‘anti-politics’ vote bred by this crisis of bourgeois liberal democracy.

This scandal further illuminates the character of the political climate in Britain that has been created by the policies of New Labour and the Tories, that the political leadership of the country, its institutions and mouthpieces are completely divorced from the population. The New Labour government which is supposedly democratic has not only consistently attacked what few democratic rights we have – the exclusion zone which stops demonstrations in and around parliament, the re-introduction of aggressive stop & search powers, banning the photographing of the police, the abolition of the right to trial by a jury, the list goes on – but it has repeatedly flown in the face of popular opinion in pursuing policies of de-regulation, privatisation and war.

The lack of any coherent opposition within parliament to this neo-liberal agenda has further ossified the current political culture. It is not merely a question of their own lack of individual scruples but this scandal has re-enforced just how cut off they are from the reality of life faced by ordinary working people in the 21st Century. The fact that so many MPs living in London & the South East claim a second home allowance whilst millions of people have to spend on average more than an hour a day (the highest in Europe) simply getting to and from work is a small indication of how insulated they are from the real world. It’s no wonder that they’re able to make ludicrous claims like Transport Minister Lord Adonis’ assertion that the railways are now more efficient and better value than they were under British Rail.

Gordon Brown’s response to the crisis has been actually been to further erode democratic accountability. More than 1/5 of the cabinet are unelected Lords the highest number since the Tory governments of the early 60’s. More to the point, in every election we can immediately discount more than half of the working class who are too disillusioned and disgusted with the current political situation to even turn up and register a protest vote. Whilst we may very well be tempted to wring our hands at this crisis of bourgeois liberal democracy (which even at the best of times is wholly inadequate), there is a very real danger as it has been in the main the fascists who have benefited from this disillusionment of the working class rather than the left or the labour movement in general.