The British Tory Cabinet's windy Brexit letter will not go down as one of the greatest pieces of political writing in the modern era. It is another example of the grandiose but illogical babble that modern senior British politicians imagine will prove their stature and demonstrate their grasp of history. They are fiddling around for glory in the decayed residues of Empire - with only a middle sized, deeply divided, increasingly impoverished country, with uncertain prospects, available for them to rule. The paradox is that despite the new generation of Public School champions, who want to 'beef up' Britain's lame duck Commonwealth and call it 'Empire.2'; despite the fatuous parallels that Tory wiz-kids make between PM May and Elizabeth 1st.; Britain's large, youthful and active left wing, both inside and outside Corbyn's Labour Party, now have to push like fury for Brexit to be a starting point for a new sort of Britain.
This call to action does not rest on the premises that, somehow, Brexit is innately progressive, or some sort of working class breakthrough. If that were so then the fascist Le Pen, who is the only French Presidential candidate who demands Frexit, would be worthy of support! The British working class split on Brexit; Glasgow and London going one way and Sunderland and Newport going another.
Why do we face these conundrums over the EU? Because neither Brexit (nor Frexit) alone are real choices about the political and economic direction of a country or society. Neither 'yes' or 'no' to the EU can be taken as some supreme working class principle. The actual content of such votes is everything. The British referendum was the means by which the right of the Tory Party filled the political vacuum created by Britain's political crisis. It was (and still is) associated with a big rise in racism. That was the main reason to vote 'remain' at the time of the referendum. But now the context of Brexit, this diaphanous, hard to grasp, will of the wisp, has changed once again. Now we still have the unreality of Britain's Brexit vote as a society changer - in and of itself, but from the other direction. This is demonstrated by the new, ghastly conglomeration of political plenipotentiaries now regrouping to 'defend' Britain against Brexit. War criminals, major Financiers and Liberal Democrats are not a savoury selection at the best of times. On the march, seeking the support of 48% of the population, these 'giants' of globalisation - albeit of the Silicon Valley kind - are no more attractive than Britain's future as a tax haven.
Unsurprisingly, the left have yet to make their mark in the sound and fury over Brexit, which beats like an empty big base drum over Britain's mainstream politics. But a new reality is now emerging after Brexit and it has to be caught and fought. Britain's Tory government is entering years of negotiations with the EU on what sort of country Britain should be. The government is not negotiating with the people that it rules. It is working things out with another cabal of politicians who think they run things across the European Continent. Not only are they consulting the wrong people; they are leaving out the key issues. And that is where the left, if they wish to be part of the mainstream argument, need to stand. If the British people want to change their country for the better then first, it is the British people who need to be consulted and second, nothing is taken off the table in advance.
Let us use the useful instrument of the referendum now Britain 'controls its own country' to deal with some very basic problems. The left might mobilise to lead the call for debate and a vote on key concerns. Meanwhile the negotiations in Brussels about Britain's future need to be televised and open to all. If Britain is to 'win its freedom' from EU sovereignty then the working class across Europe need to able to see and hear what is talked about and what the real issues are that have priority for their leaders. Will EU 'free' mean austerity 'free' for Britain? Will 'free' trade mean fair trade, and fair, shared, wage totals?
The left in Britain needs now actively and urgently to shift the Brexit debate - in Britain.
Thursday 30 March 2017
Friday 24 March 2017
Terror and British values
Late middle-aged Adrian Russell Ajao, who murdered and injured people on 22 March in London, apparently on behalf of his god, turns out to be someone with a dismal life that decided to make the world notice his existence, his glory, and his suicide. Decades ago he would have killed John Lennon. Unlike the Serb Nationalist Princip who shot Europe into WW1, Russell had neither animus against his victims nor purpose in his actions. Isis was his banner, but he sought only a spectacular end to his own, muddled life.
The young fools who followed the direction of old men with a death wish when they bombed London's transport system or machine-gunned young people in Paris, were full of enthusiasm and purpose, however grotesque that was. Now they go to die in Mosul or Aleppo. The political psychology of Isis-style slaughter expands to fill the 'needs' of a large range of 'lost' and 'left behind' citizens in the West - especially the young - but not only them, as the number of religious murderers that turn out to have served prison sentences for petty crime would show. 'I'm going to be a gangster! - Oh no. I'll be a warrior for my people instead.'
The sad and horrific choices of 'jihadists' as the BBC has taken to calling them, are echoed by the empty and cynical political responses of Western mainstream leaders. 'British values' and the general need to uphold them are presented as the alternative and the answer to terrorism (leaving aside the draconian laws and ever expanding 'security, services.) Prime Minister May had her moments of glory as she made elegiac, onerous speeches outside her house, in Parliament and to the media, indeed wherever she could, about British values, about not being afraid and about the wonderful character of Britain's multi-cultural and multi-racial Britain.
Two basics in the modern, tragic story of Islamic radicalisation were not mentioned in May's sombre, stomach-churning elegies. Bush and Blair, the children of those in the West who set up Sadam Hussain in Iraq, the real jihadists in Afghanistan and created 'modern' Saudi Arabia and Israel, opened up a new continental war which killed hundreds of thousands and which has turned the Middle East into a cauldron of both official and unofficial terror. Bush and Blair are the co-authors of the 21st Century's worst act of barbarism so far - and it is not over. Barbarism of course gives birth to its own children.
Second, the breath taking hypocrisy of Parliamentary grandees lauding 'their' democracy, its 'rule of law' and its preparedness to argue things through rather than fight them out, not only now but 'for generations before us and generations to come' is risible if it were not so painful to hear. What minuscule bit of democratic control is left to Parliament in face of the City of London and the multinationals, was won in long, often deadly struggles and sacrifices by the common people. This is a fight that will need to be renewed as the remnants of current democracy shrivel and die. What steps has the modern British Parliament taken to enable the youth - all youth in Britain - to find security, equality, a good standard of life and mutual respect - except steps backwards? Young people in Britain know about its foreign wars and their results, they know about privilege and unfulfilled lives, they know about drugs and gangs and porn and Facebook bullying, they know about the real day-to-day racism in their lives. How dare these people elevate grotesque versions of British values that have no connection to real life. How dare they.
It is no wonder they are unknown among so many young people, and if they are known at all then they are despised as self-serving liars. No wonder some young people are attracted to what appears a cleaner, clearer vision of life and are thrilled by its simple global perspective and its underdog violence. No wonder they do not see that the old men who want them to fight and die are just another distorted mirror image of the life they have already given up on. In a shitty world they want to do something noble and right and dramatic, so they take the poison, and all their youth and energy and enthusiasm and imagination is uselessly drowned in their's and other innocent's blood.
The big 'answer' to 'radicalisation' among young, would-be 'jihadists', is the creation of a real and active resistance, which does not offer a path to heaven (and death) but which takes on the the great horrors and wrongs of the world, with the thought that the most moral actions in life are to change it all, to end oppression and brutalisation, to serve humanity.
The young fools who followed the direction of old men with a death wish when they bombed London's transport system or machine-gunned young people in Paris, were full of enthusiasm and purpose, however grotesque that was. Now they go to die in Mosul or Aleppo. The political psychology of Isis-style slaughter expands to fill the 'needs' of a large range of 'lost' and 'left behind' citizens in the West - especially the young - but not only them, as the number of religious murderers that turn out to have served prison sentences for petty crime would show. 'I'm going to be a gangster! - Oh no. I'll be a warrior for my people instead.'
The sad and horrific choices of 'jihadists' as the BBC has taken to calling them, are echoed by the empty and cynical political responses of Western mainstream leaders. 'British values' and the general need to uphold them are presented as the alternative and the answer to terrorism (leaving aside the draconian laws and ever expanding 'security, services.) Prime Minister May had her moments of glory as she made elegiac, onerous speeches outside her house, in Parliament and to the media, indeed wherever she could, about British values, about not being afraid and about the wonderful character of Britain's multi-cultural and multi-racial Britain.
Two basics in the modern, tragic story of Islamic radicalisation were not mentioned in May's sombre, stomach-churning elegies. Bush and Blair, the children of those in the West who set up Sadam Hussain in Iraq, the real jihadists in Afghanistan and created 'modern' Saudi Arabia and Israel, opened up a new continental war which killed hundreds of thousands and which has turned the Middle East into a cauldron of both official and unofficial terror. Bush and Blair are the co-authors of the 21st Century's worst act of barbarism so far - and it is not over. Barbarism of course gives birth to its own children.
Second, the breath taking hypocrisy of Parliamentary grandees lauding 'their' democracy, its 'rule of law' and its preparedness to argue things through rather than fight them out, not only now but 'for generations before us and generations to come' is risible if it were not so painful to hear. What minuscule bit of democratic control is left to Parliament in face of the City of London and the multinationals, was won in long, often deadly struggles and sacrifices by the common people. This is a fight that will need to be renewed as the remnants of current democracy shrivel and die. What steps has the modern British Parliament taken to enable the youth - all youth in Britain - to find security, equality, a good standard of life and mutual respect - except steps backwards? Young people in Britain know about its foreign wars and their results, they know about privilege and unfulfilled lives, they know about drugs and gangs and porn and Facebook bullying, they know about the real day-to-day racism in their lives. How dare these people elevate grotesque versions of British values that have no connection to real life. How dare they.
It is no wonder they are unknown among so many young people, and if they are known at all then they are despised as self-serving liars. No wonder some young people are attracted to what appears a cleaner, clearer vision of life and are thrilled by its simple global perspective and its underdog violence. No wonder they do not see that the old men who want them to fight and die are just another distorted mirror image of the life they have already given up on. In a shitty world they want to do something noble and right and dramatic, so they take the poison, and all their youth and energy and enthusiasm and imagination is uselessly drowned in their's and other innocent's blood.
The big 'answer' to 'radicalisation' among young, would-be 'jihadists', is the creation of a real and active resistance, which does not offer a path to heaven (and death) but which takes on the the great horrors and wrongs of the world, with the thought that the most moral actions in life are to change it all, to end oppression and brutalisation, to serve humanity.
Wednesday 22 March 2017
Le Pen's real threat
Macron, the centrist pal of French big business and Marine Le Pen, recent defender of women and gay rights against the apparent threat of Islam - and an all-round nicer type of fascist than her dad, share the lead in France's Presidential elections' polls. Both are running at around 25 -26% after the first candidates' debate. Fillon, the Republican Party candidate, gets 18% and Hamon (Socialist Party) and Melanchon (Communist Party plus) are on 12%. (There are six other candidates polling under 5% each.)
All the mainstream, non-social media comfortably predict the defeat of Le Pen in the second round elections in May. The British Financial Times (March 21) averaged out all the main French polls results (historically the most accurate in the West) relating to second round voting. That gave the following results; if Le Pen faces Macron the vote will be - Le Pen 38%, Macron 62%; if Le Pen faces a resurrected Fillon the prediction is Le Pen 44%, Fillon 56%.
When all this is added up together with Wilders' 'defeat' in Holland's election on March 15 and the failure of Austrian fascist Norbert Hofer to win the 2nd Presidential election in December 2016, (Hofer denounced British UKIP leader Farage for his 'support' when Farage announced that Hofer would take Austria out of the EU) media optimists are wondering out loud if the 'populist' wave is breaking and could it now be in decline in Europe? Perhaps it can be corralled into the limits of the anti-cosmopolitan Anglophone region of the world?
This blog has already commented on the less than positive aspects of Wilders' vote in the Dutch elections. And the throwaway, feather-headed 'populist' definitions of the political process unfolding in the West all need a thorough overhaul. But it is still the French election that holds the key to Europe and also to the next stage of the extreme right's development. Waves break but that does not signal that the storm has ended.
Voting in the US election for Trump and in the EU referendum for Brexit in Britain was a markedly older activity. In the US among 18 - 29 year olds, 37% voted for Trump. 75% of 18 - 24 year olds in Britain voted against Brexit largely on an anti-racist, pro internationalist ticket according to a range of social attitude studies. (A false turn out total for younger voters of 36% put out by Sky News, based on projections from the 2015 General Election, was repudiated by a 2000 plus poll taken after voting by the London School of Economics and Opinium, which calculated that actually 64% of the age group voted.)
In Holland the youth vote, see age group voting, was distributed more generally across the main parties, including Wilders party the PVV. And it certainly did not favour either the traditional Labour Party, or the left Socialist Party. In France, 39% of voters aged 18 - 24 say they will vote Le Pen. This is much higher than the 26% that already makes Le Pen a leading candidate across all age groups. (The same age group were 'only' 18% in favour of Le Pen in the 2012 elections. And Macron supporters are now 18% below Le Pen's following, despite Macron's 26% in the polls in general.) The FT also reports that Le Pen's campaign has the biggest following of all the political campaigns in social media.
Youth unemployment across most of Europe is the most rooted and dramatic sign of the failure of globalisation across the Continent and in France youth unemployment has risen from 18% in 2008 to 25% (FT 18 March) in the dieing embers of Hollande's dismal regime. The younger generation in many European countries do not remember fascism, and their parents do not remember fascism. Their grand-parents were probably brought up in the shadow of the occupation - but anti fascist culture in Europe is waning. And the far right, in France, dominate the white and politically active youth. Fillon, France's sinful Republican, is vying with Le Pen over immigration controls - and the phenomena of a wrench to the right from mainstream conservatism is common between the Anglophone and the rest of the West - as seen in Prime Minister Rutte's approach in Holland. There is however, at least in Holland and in France, a considerable and deeply significant difference in respect of young people - in their distance from the left and where a large part of the youth in France are crystallising their political formation behind the far right's momentum.
And round one and round two of France's Presidential election? Perhaps the polling predictions are right. But the predictions do not reflect the social and political bases being built up over years in the country. Le Pen remains one serious economic crisis, one serious terrorist attack, away from future Presidential power. If Le Pen takes the Presidency when Macron collapses in face of the next stage of France's crisis, or even sooner, then a new type of struggle starts; the battle on the streets will begin.
All the mainstream, non-social media comfortably predict the defeat of Le Pen in the second round elections in May. The British Financial Times (March 21) averaged out all the main French polls results (historically the most accurate in the West) relating to second round voting. That gave the following results; if Le Pen faces Macron the vote will be - Le Pen 38%, Macron 62%; if Le Pen faces a resurrected Fillon the prediction is Le Pen 44%, Fillon 56%.
When all this is added up together with Wilders' 'defeat' in Holland's election on March 15 and the failure of Austrian fascist Norbert Hofer to win the 2nd Presidential election in December 2016, (Hofer denounced British UKIP leader Farage for his 'support' when Farage announced that Hofer would take Austria out of the EU) media optimists are wondering out loud if the 'populist' wave is breaking and could it now be in decline in Europe? Perhaps it can be corralled into the limits of the anti-cosmopolitan Anglophone region of the world?
This blog has already commented on the less than positive aspects of Wilders' vote in the Dutch elections. And the throwaway, feather-headed 'populist' definitions of the political process unfolding in the West all need a thorough overhaul. But it is still the French election that holds the key to Europe and also to the next stage of the extreme right's development. Waves break but that does not signal that the storm has ended.
Voting in the US election for Trump and in the EU referendum for Brexit in Britain was a markedly older activity. In the US among 18 - 29 year olds, 37% voted for Trump. 75% of 18 - 24 year olds in Britain voted against Brexit largely on an anti-racist, pro internationalist ticket according to a range of social attitude studies. (A false turn out total for younger voters of 36% put out by Sky News, based on projections from the 2015 General Election, was repudiated by a 2000 plus poll taken after voting by the London School of Economics and Opinium, which calculated that actually 64% of the age group voted.)
In Holland the youth vote, see age group voting, was distributed more generally across the main parties, including Wilders party the PVV. And it certainly did not favour either the traditional Labour Party, or the left Socialist Party. In France, 39% of voters aged 18 - 24 say they will vote Le Pen. This is much higher than the 26% that already makes Le Pen a leading candidate across all age groups. (The same age group were 'only' 18% in favour of Le Pen in the 2012 elections. And Macron supporters are now 18% below Le Pen's following, despite Macron's 26% in the polls in general.) The FT also reports that Le Pen's campaign has the biggest following of all the political campaigns in social media.
Youth unemployment across most of Europe is the most rooted and dramatic sign of the failure of globalisation across the Continent and in France youth unemployment has risen from 18% in 2008 to 25% (FT 18 March) in the dieing embers of Hollande's dismal regime. The younger generation in many European countries do not remember fascism, and their parents do not remember fascism. Their grand-parents were probably brought up in the shadow of the occupation - but anti fascist culture in Europe is waning. And the far right, in France, dominate the white and politically active youth. Fillon, France's sinful Republican, is vying with Le Pen over immigration controls - and the phenomena of a wrench to the right from mainstream conservatism is common between the Anglophone and the rest of the West - as seen in Prime Minister Rutte's approach in Holland. There is however, at least in Holland and in France, a considerable and deeply significant difference in respect of young people - in their distance from the left and where a large part of the youth in France are crystallising their political formation behind the far right's momentum.
And round one and round two of France's Presidential election? Perhaps the polling predictions are right. But the predictions do not reflect the social and political bases being built up over years in the country. Le Pen remains one serious economic crisis, one serious terrorist attack, away from future Presidential power. If Le Pen takes the Presidency when Macron collapses in face of the next stage of France's crisis, or even sooner, then a new type of struggle starts; the battle on the streets will begin.
Friday 17 March 2017
Britain and Holland - now France
65 million people compared with 17 million people. The most decrepit voting system compared with one of the world's most advanced. Breaking from the EU compared with broad commitment to the EU. Nevertheless, Britain's last election in 2015, together with its vote for Brexit, and the latest Dutch general election results, both demonstrate the same deep process of the rise of the right as it grips hold of the West's political crisis.
In essence, the mainstream and traditional right in these countries incorporated the extreme right's program. Rutte's smiling face bedecks the Dutch press as the victor over 'right wing populism.' The facts are more sober. Rutte's traditional conservative party, the VVD, lost 8 seats and is down to 33 in the Dutch Parliament. The PVV, Wilder's far right 'party', increased their number of seats from 13 to 20. The Dutch 'victory' over populism involved a high turn out of voters (as with the two votes in the UK), an increase in the proportion of younger people voting, yet the parties that call themselves left wing have only reached a combined 37 seats, which is an all-time low in Holland.
Rutte's racist attacks on immigrant life styles and the too-good-to-be-true intervention of would-be Turkish Emperor Erdogan, which allowed Rutte the platform to attack Dutch Turks as well as Dutch Moroccans, stole a large part of Wilder's thunder. In the UK's EU referendum, Nigel Farage's UKIP offensive was stalled and then spectacularly reversed as a coterie of Tory 'big hitters' crawled out of their up-to-then pro EU woodwork, banging the gong for 'proper immigration controls', cutting UKIP off at the knees. By a hair's breath and the massive reactionary impact of a laughable voting system UKIP's 4 million votes translated to no MPs at all in the 2015 General Election. But key Tory Grandees knew from that moment that a dramatic turn was called for, if the Conservative Party's role as Britain's main political leadership - as well as the ludicrously undemocratic and antiquated voting system - were both to survive.
The election in France remains the key. France is a pivot of the EU. Its extreme right has a profound social base involving at least 2 million firmed up voters, then 12% of the French electorate, established when Marine's Nazi father got to the second round of the Presidential election. (Marine Le Pen now leads all contenders with 22% in the first round in the latest polls.) The left in France, particularly Socialist Party, has never frontally confronted racism. Indeed they have played with it in constitutional battles where white, older French norms and behaviour (and dress) have been been given hallowed (and legal) status.
But Macron (the 'independent' with his new Party called Forward!' - where have we heard that before? -) with his 21% support in the latest polls - and therefore the likely candidate to face Le Pen in the two person play off in the second round of voting, cannot do what Fallon (the right /centre Republican Party candidate) was meant to do; following what the British Tory and the Dutch VVD leader Rutte did. He cannot camp on Le Pen's lawn - which Fallon's initial religious right wing program looked like he was intending to do - because the Republican leader and his new Holy Family has been found with their fingers in the till. Fallon cannot pull off the Tory / VVD trick. He is hors de combat. And Macron has a following but no substantial social base which can connect him up to and thereby drain off the racists' support for Le Pen.
Le Pen suffers from a lack of novelty, but as the novelties since Berlusconi show (including recently in Italy) the political crisis in Europe is too profound now to stop novelties, who have no established social base, running out of time quite quickly. If Le Pen fails in round 2, but by margins of 10 or 15% only, she becomes the obvious, most powerful candidate in any emergency election where an economic crisis hooks up to the already existing political breakdown. And that is her aim. And a new stage of the rise of the right, second only to Trump's victory, will have happened.
There are some very hopeful obstacles to the right's progress. The level of participation in politics, generally and particularly by younger generations is undoubtedly rising where there have been contests with the right. The substantial advance of the Dutch Green Party which is now the third party in Parliament with an extra 10 seats is not only an overwhelmingly young Party but has played a significant role in the direct, anti-racist movement in Holland, contrary to the Dutch Labour Party (which collapsed) and the far left SP (which retained its seats but has taken completely 'economist' approach to Dutch racism.)
In the UK, social attitude polling indicates that the large support to remain in the EU during the EU referendum among 18 - 24 year olds (75%) and 24 - 49 year olds (66%) did have a strong, anti racist bias. And Europe's largest political Party, the British Labour Party, is flooded with younger people. Again, the young from the Banlieues round Paris mobilised a month ago to resist violent police action and challenge Hollande's Socialist Party government. These are powerful indicators of a growing radicalisation among youth, in opposition to racism and towards varieties of the left.
Also in the UK another spanner has been thrown into the right's political progress, with the reopening of a new Scottish Independence referendum. There is the potential danger that the SNP leadership of this campaign will reduce the argument to the benefits of the EU over Brexit - as though there was any value in dropping the previous largest bank in the world, the (corrupt and failed ) Royal Bank of Scotland, for its newest version, the (corrupt and failing) Deutche Bank. Such an approach will fail to mobilise Scotland,which mobilisation is essential to break up Westminster's drive to reorganise Britain. The Scottish question will become a struggle within a struggle but its initial impact on what remains of the British establishment is wholly to be applauded.
The political moves of the right, throughly rooted in racism, are opening up radical responses, especially from young people and also cracking open failing parts of the political systems and previous social 'settlements' of the West. Inequality is challenged everywhere. Austerity is deeply unpopular. Unresolved injustice, from the US cities to the Banlieues of France's cities have sparked resistance, even insurgency. The political gains of the right are so far not social gains. And we are only at the beginning, as the Dutch and French elections (and the resistance to Trump) show, of the unravelling of the political crisis in the West.
In essence, the mainstream and traditional right in these countries incorporated the extreme right's program. Rutte's smiling face bedecks the Dutch press as the victor over 'right wing populism.' The facts are more sober. Rutte's traditional conservative party, the VVD, lost 8 seats and is down to 33 in the Dutch Parliament. The PVV, Wilder's far right 'party', increased their number of seats from 13 to 20. The Dutch 'victory' over populism involved a high turn out of voters (as with the two votes in the UK), an increase in the proportion of younger people voting, yet the parties that call themselves left wing have only reached a combined 37 seats, which is an all-time low in Holland.
Rutte's racist attacks on immigrant life styles and the too-good-to-be-true intervention of would-be Turkish Emperor Erdogan, which allowed Rutte the platform to attack Dutch Turks as well as Dutch Moroccans, stole a large part of Wilder's thunder. In the UK's EU referendum, Nigel Farage's UKIP offensive was stalled and then spectacularly reversed as a coterie of Tory 'big hitters' crawled out of their up-to-then pro EU woodwork, banging the gong for 'proper immigration controls', cutting UKIP off at the knees. By a hair's breath and the massive reactionary impact of a laughable voting system UKIP's 4 million votes translated to no MPs at all in the 2015 General Election. But key Tory Grandees knew from that moment that a dramatic turn was called for, if the Conservative Party's role as Britain's main political leadership - as well as the ludicrously undemocratic and antiquated voting system - were both to survive.
The election in France remains the key. France is a pivot of the EU. Its extreme right has a profound social base involving at least 2 million firmed up voters, then 12% of the French electorate, established when Marine's Nazi father got to the second round of the Presidential election. (Marine Le Pen now leads all contenders with 22% in the first round in the latest polls.) The left in France, particularly Socialist Party, has never frontally confronted racism. Indeed they have played with it in constitutional battles where white, older French norms and behaviour (and dress) have been been given hallowed (and legal) status.
But Macron (the 'independent' with his new Party called Forward!' - where have we heard that before? -) with his 21% support in the latest polls - and therefore the likely candidate to face Le Pen in the two person play off in the second round of voting, cannot do what Fallon (the right /centre Republican Party candidate) was meant to do; following what the British Tory and the Dutch VVD leader Rutte did. He cannot camp on Le Pen's lawn - which Fallon's initial religious right wing program looked like he was intending to do - because the Republican leader and his new Holy Family has been found with their fingers in the till. Fallon cannot pull off the Tory / VVD trick. He is hors de combat. And Macron has a following but no substantial social base which can connect him up to and thereby drain off the racists' support for Le Pen.
Le Pen suffers from a lack of novelty, but as the novelties since Berlusconi show (including recently in Italy) the political crisis in Europe is too profound now to stop novelties, who have no established social base, running out of time quite quickly. If Le Pen fails in round 2, but by margins of 10 or 15% only, she becomes the obvious, most powerful candidate in any emergency election where an economic crisis hooks up to the already existing political breakdown. And that is her aim. And a new stage of the rise of the right, second only to Trump's victory, will have happened.
There are some very hopeful obstacles to the right's progress. The level of participation in politics, generally and particularly by younger generations is undoubtedly rising where there have been contests with the right. The substantial advance of the Dutch Green Party which is now the third party in Parliament with an extra 10 seats is not only an overwhelmingly young Party but has played a significant role in the direct, anti-racist movement in Holland, contrary to the Dutch Labour Party (which collapsed) and the far left SP (which retained its seats but has taken completely 'economist' approach to Dutch racism.)
In the UK, social attitude polling indicates that the large support to remain in the EU during the EU referendum among 18 - 24 year olds (75%) and 24 - 49 year olds (66%) did have a strong, anti racist bias. And Europe's largest political Party, the British Labour Party, is flooded with younger people. Again, the young from the Banlieues round Paris mobilised a month ago to resist violent police action and challenge Hollande's Socialist Party government. These are powerful indicators of a growing radicalisation among youth, in opposition to racism and towards varieties of the left.
Also in the UK another spanner has been thrown into the right's political progress, with the reopening of a new Scottish Independence referendum. There is the potential danger that the SNP leadership of this campaign will reduce the argument to the benefits of the EU over Brexit - as though there was any value in dropping the previous largest bank in the world, the (corrupt and failed ) Royal Bank of Scotland, for its newest version, the (corrupt and failing) Deutche Bank. Such an approach will fail to mobilise Scotland,which mobilisation is essential to break up Westminster's drive to reorganise Britain. The Scottish question will become a struggle within a struggle but its initial impact on what remains of the British establishment is wholly to be applauded.
The political moves of the right, throughly rooted in racism, are opening up radical responses, especially from young people and also cracking open failing parts of the political systems and previous social 'settlements' of the West. Inequality is challenged everywhere. Austerity is deeply unpopular. Unresolved injustice, from the US cities to the Banlieues of France's cities have sparked resistance, even insurgency. The political gains of the right are so far not social gains. And we are only at the beginning, as the Dutch and French elections (and the resistance to Trump) show, of the unravelling of the political crisis in the West.
Tuesday 14 March 2017
Break up of Britain?
There are minor issues, posed as major problems, that have already surfaced as arguments against a new Scottish referendum on independence. The sudden discovery that Scotland has 4 times the amount of trade with the rest of the UK as it has with the EU is an example of one of those 'ha-ha' moments which boils down to smoke and mirrors. Leave aside the problems for England if it put up a tariff border with Scotland, the issue has already been dealt with. Albeit in a panic, the May government in Westminster has, in advance, smoothed away any possible problems with Northern Ireland's trade (NI is now part of Britain's Brexit) across their borders with Southern Ireland - which remains in the EU. It is called a 'soft border' in the new Brexit parlance.
It was Labour leader Corbyn that first coined the phrase (at least in public) that while a Tory type Brexit might mean some threats to Scottish living standards, independence would 'turbo charge' austerity. Corbyn initially accepted that Scotland should have a referendum whenever its Parliament, Holyrood, called for it, but went on to oppose the real thing. Another example of the 'new politics'? North Sea oil is going down the financial plug. (If it was not, then its sudden apparent delegation to the Scots would not have been so beneficent.) Labour's leader began his contribution to the debate by joining what was generally called the 'fear campaign' which played such a powerful, last minute role promoting 'no' in the 2014 referendum. Corbyn did not therefore choose the potential breakup of the British working class as his starting point. And if the idea does emerge anytime soon it will be tied exclusively to the requirement for the rebirth of the currently comatose Scottish Labour Party, so that Scots can play their real role in shoving the Tories out - of Westminster.
But the British Labour Party cannot and will not be able in the foreseeable future to deliver. On that Nicola Sturgeon, SNP leader and first minister in Holyrood, is absolutely right. The only way the Scots can achieve their and Corbyn's goal, at least in part, is the very possible removal of Tory power - at least from Scotland. And should Corbyn finally remember the argument about the unity of the British working class (and mean more than the need for the Scots to recognise and support the authority of London based union headquarters and their officers) he might consider the impact in England and Wales of a government that already (albeit quietly) states its opposition to austerity, nukes and racist immigration policies, but with a gathering movement mobilised through the referendum and energised to genuinely carry out those goals. Unity of a class is not a flaccid, administrative, bureaucratic endeavour. It is the rising of a people who see a genuine light through the darkness and join together to get through the obstacles, including the weaknesses and limits of the SNP, to get there. This is a job that Scottish Labour in its current condition will never achieve let alone lead. Corbyn on the other hand, should he shake off his belief that working class unity has anything to do with flattering right wing Labour MPs, might play a key role uniting all those parts of society that really did want to end austerity, finish with the nukes and work for open immigration - starting with Scotland.
We will experience a mountain of chatter (about the unpopular Euro, about nobody being able to guess where Brexit is going until the last minute, about Scotland's GCSE results etc., etc.,) part of the great wave of drivel and dross that will pump across Britain in the absence of fundamentals. The lengthy period for discussion that the SNP have now been forced to open up among the Scottish people before any vote will at least be a counter to some of that.
In substance a new Scottish referendum in the current context challenges the British political crisis, not with versions of Trump, Boris, Farage or Le Pen - but from the left. Even were Scottish independence not tied to an anti-austerity perspective etc, breaking up the centralised British state, turning 'Great Britain' into a series of small to medium sized countries, removing the UK from its throne in the Security Council at the UN, its Commonwealth fantasies, its global status for banks and financial crooks, would be an immense blessing not just for British people but for the world. When that trajectory is mixed with progressive ambitions, with the active political participation seen so far only in the building of a new right across the West, then it is possible to glimpse the immense potential in Scotland's referendum mark 2.
Of course there are dangers. If the SNP leadership try to tie the new Scottish referendum to the wails and moans of those who now present the EU as some sort of Nirvana, following the deep melancholy of the English middle classes and their media, then they will fail. If Sturgeon believes she can now win Scottish middle class 'EU remainers' to vote for independence without losing the third of Scots who voted for Brexit she is wrong. If the debate in Scotland simply re-runs the half baked EU referendum, the great possibilities now unleashed will be blocked. The same multi-nationals and global financiers are alive and well and just as powerful across the globe - and on both sides of Brexit. There has to be a new framework offered that damns the Tories, their self-serving politics, the Bankers and the Global corporations. The argument is the looming, danger of a political eternity of a Tory Britain, just having entered a vicious, right wing turn; more racist, more bellicose, more hostile to working class organisation, from unions to legal rights at work, more unequal, more driven to sell services - to anyone in the world who offers a 'deal'.
The paradox is that with a progressive perspective for a small country on the edge of England, that aims at a more equal society, a more social economy, more supportive services and which bases itself on the democracy of daily life and its people, then the greatest possible unity across the countries and working class people of Britain would quickly emerge. It is about seeing and hearing a concrete alternative and a definitely new and different political centre. Simply relying on the rerun of an argument about which dead duck is is more alive, either the failing EU or the coming British Brexit tax haven, will never achieve such a goal, most of all in Scotland.
In substance a new Scottish referendum in the current context challenges the British political crisis, not with versions of Trump, Boris, Farage or Le Pen - but from the left. Even were Scottish independence not tied to an anti-austerity perspective etc, breaking up the centralised British state, turning 'Great Britain' into a series of small to medium sized countries, removing the UK from its throne in the Security Council at the UN, its Commonwealth fantasies, its global status for banks and financial crooks, would be an immense blessing not just for British people but for the world. When that trajectory is mixed with progressive ambitions, with the active political participation seen so far only in the building of a new right across the West, then it is possible to glimpse the immense potential in Scotland's referendum mark 2.
Of course there are dangers. If the SNP leadership try to tie the new Scottish referendum to the wails and moans of those who now present the EU as some sort of Nirvana, following the deep melancholy of the English middle classes and their media, then they will fail. If Sturgeon believes she can now win Scottish middle class 'EU remainers' to vote for independence without losing the third of Scots who voted for Brexit she is wrong. If the debate in Scotland simply re-runs the half baked EU referendum, the great possibilities now unleashed will be blocked. The same multi-nationals and global financiers are alive and well and just as powerful across the globe - and on both sides of Brexit. There has to be a new framework offered that damns the Tories, their self-serving politics, the Bankers and the Global corporations. The argument is the looming, danger of a political eternity of a Tory Britain, just having entered a vicious, right wing turn; more racist, more bellicose, more hostile to working class organisation, from unions to legal rights at work, more unequal, more driven to sell services - to anyone in the world who offers a 'deal'.
The paradox is that with a progressive perspective for a small country on the edge of England, that aims at a more equal society, a more social economy, more supportive services and which bases itself on the democracy of daily life and its people, then the greatest possible unity across the countries and working class people of Britain would quickly emerge. It is about seeing and hearing a concrete alternative and a definitely new and different political centre. Simply relying on the rerun of an argument about which dead duck is is more alive, either the failing EU or the coming British Brexit tax haven, will never achieve such a goal, most of all in Scotland.
Monday 13 March 2017
The SNP (and Britain) goes for broke.
1.
The Scottish National Party leadership of Scotland's devolved government have launched a big gamble, setting in motion a new referendum on Scottish independence - with clear time limits in the next two years for its implementation. This dominates all of Scottish politics now and a lot of the UK's political life too. The risks for the SNP are considerable. The SNP have made the Westminster government's hard-faced approach to Brexit the launching pad of their new initiative for independence. Yet over a third of SNP voters in Scotland voted to leave the EU. The polls in Scotland currently give the UK loyalist vote a small majority - should there be a new referendum - and that is despite current Tory rule at Westminster, which is deeply unpopular. And a sizable majority of Scots have, since the 1st referendum in 2014, maintained the view that there should not be another vote on independence any time soon.
This morning (13 March) Labour leader Corbyn clarified his comments last night when he said that the Scottish Parliament had the right to call a new referendum if they wanted, by explaining that this morning that did not stop him or his party opposing one! The Tory leader and Britain's Prime Minister May hoped that any new referendum would only take place after the Brexit deal (or non-deal) and that the Scots would then be voting, if they voted at all, on the prospects of being out of the EU and out of the UK - an apparently lonely and impoverishing future! The SNP could see that coming. They are placing their bets on disrupting Brexit before it finishes, with a new opening to the EU allowing access to the market etc., being driven by the changed political weight of a divided United Kingdom. The SNP are aware of the pressures now in Northern Ireland, where the popular vote has just broken the Loyalist majority and put unity with an EU based Southern Ireland on the medium term agenda.
Against all this is the implications of the terror of the Spanish, Italian and even Belgian EU governments of the idea that the EU provides any succour or support to small nations in Europe carving out their own sovereignty.
The battle over Scottish Independence will produce a series of crises but, in the first stage, none greater than the damage coming to the already half-dead Scottish Labour Party.
2.
Scotland's one remaining Labour MP, Ian Murray, managed to denounce Corbyn's leadership of his party only an hour or two before the SNP made its dramatic move. Now Scottish Labour has to choose between a defence of the Tory Brexit on the one hand and the SNP's call to retain trading and other positive links to the EU, on the other. It will denounce the SNP for its 'diversion' (along with the now more credible Scottish Tories) and simultaneously claim that it can force a milder, more pro worker Brexit out of the Tory government in Westminster with its one Scottish MP in the British Parliament and its minority in the Scottish Parliament - better than the SNP, with its 56 MPs in Parliament, its control of the Scottish government at Holyrood - and its threat of independence!
Scottish Labour's crisis, in this case not aided by the left leadership of the British party, is that it has turned decisively from its own roots, where Scottish Labour once stood in favour of independence - as a means to better challenge the dominant controls emanating from Britain's imperial centre. Most recently, initially spearheaded by some union leaders and by Corbyn himself, a secret move was made to win the remains of the Scottish LP leadership at least to a federal view of Britain with an independent Scottish LP. This was decisively turned down by Scottish Labour's Blairite leader Kezia Dugdale, and her supporters. And now, while the SNP are risking all in a frontal confrontation with May's austerity government, Scottish Labour do not know which side they can be on and will inevitably appear to come out supporting Westminster over Scotland. Scottish Labour is about to become a history lesson.
3.
Like Scottish Labour, many British Trade Union leaders and Labour MPs are deeply hostile to Scottish independence. They start from what they see as the basic and practical in their thinking, so beloved of the hard-headed approach they believe stands above theories and speculation. Scotland's independence means the end of any majority for Labour at Westminster. Beyond that is a view that national consciousness splits the cause of the unity of the British working class. Perhaps some might take a moment to consider how the assertion of British identity aids the unity of the European working class? Rightly, in the case of a certain type of Brexit, they would argue that such a unity might be enhanced. (Not, sadly, the one that is being delivered.) But this thought does not apply to Britain's 'unity' or the right of independence for Britain's 'nations'.
In hard-headed reality, Scottish Labour has already crashed - at least from the point of view of leading Labour's charge to government at Westminster. But how can the unity of the working classes of Britain (and extended into Europe) still be served? By the fight (including the fight with the SNP) for a genuine anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-racism based independent government in Scotland. That of course is the basic and practical battle that the Scottish Labour Party should now be leading.
4.
Already Sturgeon has begun to set out the terms of the independence battle that she wishes to lead. She has understood than Scottish independence cannot be won just on the rejection of Westminster's little Englander jingoism. Already she has commented on the fact that not all of the Scots who voted against Brexit also voted to have an independent Scotland in 2014 - and talked of a new and fairer society to widen the terms of the debate that will now begin. The Brexit debate, at least in England and Wales, was dominated by the right wing of the Tory Party and by UKIP. And it is the former that have reaped the political benefits so far. In the debate to come over Scotland there must be a genuine left voice about the society, the economy and the politics we live in and that ones we want. The SNP is not that voice, and, at the moment, both Westminster Labour and Dugdale's Scottish Labour are shouting in the wrong direction. It is time for the Labour membership and the movements against austerity and racism to make themselves heard. Britain's political crisis rolls on. It is unstoppable. All of the main political forces now in movement across the country have less and less of a safety net.
The Scottish National Party leadership of Scotland's devolved government have launched a big gamble, setting in motion a new referendum on Scottish independence - with clear time limits in the next two years for its implementation. This dominates all of Scottish politics now and a lot of the UK's political life too. The risks for the SNP are considerable. The SNP have made the Westminster government's hard-faced approach to Brexit the launching pad of their new initiative for independence. Yet over a third of SNP voters in Scotland voted to leave the EU. The polls in Scotland currently give the UK loyalist vote a small majority - should there be a new referendum - and that is despite current Tory rule at Westminster, which is deeply unpopular. And a sizable majority of Scots have, since the 1st referendum in 2014, maintained the view that there should not be another vote on independence any time soon.
This morning (13 March) Labour leader Corbyn clarified his comments last night when he said that the Scottish Parliament had the right to call a new referendum if they wanted, by explaining that this morning that did not stop him or his party opposing one! The Tory leader and Britain's Prime Minister May hoped that any new referendum would only take place after the Brexit deal (or non-deal) and that the Scots would then be voting, if they voted at all, on the prospects of being out of the EU and out of the UK - an apparently lonely and impoverishing future! The SNP could see that coming. They are placing their bets on disrupting Brexit before it finishes, with a new opening to the EU allowing access to the market etc., being driven by the changed political weight of a divided United Kingdom. The SNP are aware of the pressures now in Northern Ireland, where the popular vote has just broken the Loyalist majority and put unity with an EU based Southern Ireland on the medium term agenda.
Against all this is the implications of the terror of the Spanish, Italian and even Belgian EU governments of the idea that the EU provides any succour or support to small nations in Europe carving out their own sovereignty.
The battle over Scottish Independence will produce a series of crises but, in the first stage, none greater than the damage coming to the already half-dead Scottish Labour Party.
2.
Scotland's one remaining Labour MP, Ian Murray, managed to denounce Corbyn's leadership of his party only an hour or two before the SNP made its dramatic move. Now Scottish Labour has to choose between a defence of the Tory Brexit on the one hand and the SNP's call to retain trading and other positive links to the EU, on the other. It will denounce the SNP for its 'diversion' (along with the now more credible Scottish Tories) and simultaneously claim that it can force a milder, more pro worker Brexit out of the Tory government in Westminster with its one Scottish MP in the British Parliament and its minority in the Scottish Parliament - better than the SNP, with its 56 MPs in Parliament, its control of the Scottish government at Holyrood - and its threat of independence!
Scottish Labour's crisis, in this case not aided by the left leadership of the British party, is that it has turned decisively from its own roots, where Scottish Labour once stood in favour of independence - as a means to better challenge the dominant controls emanating from Britain's imperial centre. Most recently, initially spearheaded by some union leaders and by Corbyn himself, a secret move was made to win the remains of the Scottish LP leadership at least to a federal view of Britain with an independent Scottish LP. This was decisively turned down by Scottish Labour's Blairite leader Kezia Dugdale, and her supporters. And now, while the SNP are risking all in a frontal confrontation with May's austerity government, Scottish Labour do not know which side they can be on and will inevitably appear to come out supporting Westminster over Scotland. Scottish Labour is about to become a history lesson.
3.
Like Scottish Labour, many British Trade Union leaders and Labour MPs are deeply hostile to Scottish independence. They start from what they see as the basic and practical in their thinking, so beloved of the hard-headed approach they believe stands above theories and speculation. Scotland's independence means the end of any majority for Labour at Westminster. Beyond that is a view that national consciousness splits the cause of the unity of the British working class. Perhaps some might take a moment to consider how the assertion of British identity aids the unity of the European working class? Rightly, in the case of a certain type of Brexit, they would argue that such a unity might be enhanced. (Not, sadly, the one that is being delivered.) But this thought does not apply to Britain's 'unity' or the right of independence for Britain's 'nations'.
In hard-headed reality, Scottish Labour has already crashed - at least from the point of view of leading Labour's charge to government at Westminster. But how can the unity of the working classes of Britain (and extended into Europe) still be served? By the fight (including the fight with the SNP) for a genuine anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-racism based independent government in Scotland. That of course is the basic and practical battle that the Scottish Labour Party should now be leading.
4.
Already Sturgeon has begun to set out the terms of the independence battle that she wishes to lead. She has understood than Scottish independence cannot be won just on the rejection of Westminster's little Englander jingoism. Already she has commented on the fact that not all of the Scots who voted against Brexit also voted to have an independent Scotland in 2014 - and talked of a new and fairer society to widen the terms of the debate that will now begin. The Brexit debate, at least in England and Wales, was dominated by the right wing of the Tory Party and by UKIP. And it is the former that have reaped the political benefits so far. In the debate to come over Scotland there must be a genuine left voice about the society, the economy and the politics we live in and that ones we want. The SNP is not that voice, and, at the moment, both Westminster Labour and Dugdale's Scottish Labour are shouting in the wrong direction. It is time for the Labour membership and the movements against austerity and racism to make themselves heard. Britain's political crisis rolls on. It is unstoppable. All of the main political forces now in movement across the country have less and less of a safety net.
Friday 10 March 2017
British government is a pariah.
The argument between the mainstream parties in the British Parliament about raising the social taxes of so called 'self employed' workers dominates the British media. In reality it is a minor sin in a staggering Tsunami of evil.
'The parliament from 2015-16 to 2020-21 is on course to be the worst on record (ed) for income growth in the bottom half of the working age income distribution. In contrast, incomes in the top half of ... household distribution are projected to grow by a modest 4 per cent, largely comprising unimpressive pay growth and a slight boost from income tax cuts. We project the biggest rise in inequality since the 1980s, with inequality after housing costs reaching record highs by 2020-21. Bottom-half incomes set to fall significantly. Median income set to stagnate.' Quotes from the Resolution Foundation Report. (A cross-party think-tank, February 2017.)
Together with the impact of the relentless decomposition of the 'social wage' (health, care, education, pensions, etc.,) the direct incomes of the British working class will not return to 2007 levels until 2025. And that particular prediction depends on Brexit not crashing, or a new slump not blowing through Europe, or if the million (14% of the workforce) who are now on zero hour contracts do not expand, or if productivity (read investment) does not continue to slump and so on. Nothing about 2025 can be guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that if May's government is not brought down then British working class families, who, in the last decade have just experienced their worst pay in 70 years, (Financial Times 24 November 2016) will be pushed down further and faster - based on the government's own figures and projections.
The coming 5 years are also going to be the worst for the the British health system. The NHS faces 'the biggest sustained fall in NHS spending since 1951. See Patients4NHS. Both national Headteachers Associations are preparing for a significant reduction in mainstream school spending, the first direct cuts since the 2008 crash, while new subsidies are launched for a new wave of selective Grammar schools. Welfare spending, delivered by Local Authorities, is facing new cuts as inflation increases and LA's are already struggling with the 27% worth of cuts made since 2010.
And yet an argument over unfairness blooms - in defence of the rich! The British wealthy have found more and more defenders. For a long time the idea has circulated that if you poke the rich too much they pay less or move away. Now it is their beneficence that ex Chancellor Osborne and others have praised. Since the financial collapse in 2008 the amount of income tax paid by the richest 1 per cent has risen from 24.4 per cent to 27.5 per cent, meaning, croaks the British Daily Telegraph 'that 300,000 people pay more than a quarter of the nation's income tax'. How good of them to bother.
However:-
the poorest tenth of the population now have, between them, 1.3% of the country's total income (not wealth or riches) and the second poorest tenth have 4%. In contrast, the richest tenth have 31% and the second richest tenth have 15% of the country's income. The income of the richest tenth is more than the income of all those on below-average incomes (i.e. the bottom five tenths) combined. It should be elementary, even for the worms who write for the rich in the Daily Telegraph, that the richest 20% in Britain should have been paying - not 24.4% or 27.5% - but rather 46% of income tax on the basis of the figures and the most elementary fairness and justice. (They can divide it equably between the top tenth and the second top tenth as they wish.) And income does not cover wealth.
The Office of National Statistics puts wealth in Britain this way;
'In July 2012 to June 2014 aggregate total household wealth (including private pension wealth) of all private households in Great Britain was £11.1 trillion.
The distribution of wealth is highly skewed towards the top - the wealth held by the richest 10% of households combined was just under £5 trillion and represented a 45% share of aggregate total wealth. Conversely the combined wealth of the bottom half of households in the distribution was less than £1.0 trillion; a value which accounted for just 9% of aggregate total wealth. The wealth of the least wealthy 10% of households accounted for less than half of 1% of aggregate total wealth.'
Besides the £10 trillion in wealth held by the top half of Britons (with the top 10% holding half of that) the ONS does not mention the British part of the £30+ trillion currently stashed away in Tax Havens.
Focus on the great campaigns launched to defend the NHS and to exclude Trump is the priority, but what should the opposition, inside and outside Parliament, say and do about this appalling May government?
During the Budget debate Labour leaders need to spell out that overcoming the imbalance of Britain's wealth means that income tax (among other measures) should be used - at least to return inequality to conditions of the 1960s and 1970s. They should thunder against a government that is determined to make the rich richer and working class people poorer and poorer. They should shout from the roof tops that this government is worse than Thatcher. That is has, uniquely in the West, supported Trump and international racism. That it is driving down the NHS and now state education. May's government is committed to a ruthless class war. And it has to be brought down.
'The parliament from 2015-16 to 2020-21 is on course to be the worst on record (ed) for income growth in the bottom half of the working age income distribution. In contrast, incomes in the top half of ... household distribution are projected to grow by a modest 4 per cent, largely comprising unimpressive pay growth and a slight boost from income tax cuts. We project the biggest rise in inequality since the 1980s, with inequality after housing costs reaching record highs by 2020-21. Bottom-half incomes set to fall significantly. Median income set to stagnate.' Quotes from the Resolution Foundation Report. (A cross-party think-tank, February 2017.)
Together with the impact of the relentless decomposition of the 'social wage' (health, care, education, pensions, etc.,) the direct incomes of the British working class will not return to 2007 levels until 2025. And that particular prediction depends on Brexit not crashing, or a new slump not blowing through Europe, or if the million (14% of the workforce) who are now on zero hour contracts do not expand, or if productivity (read investment) does not continue to slump and so on. Nothing about 2025 can be guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that if May's government is not brought down then British working class families, who, in the last decade have just experienced their worst pay in 70 years, (Financial Times 24 November 2016) will be pushed down further and faster - based on the government's own figures and projections.
The coming 5 years are also going to be the worst for the the British health system. The NHS faces 'the biggest sustained fall in NHS spending since 1951. See Patients4NHS. Both national Headteachers Associations are preparing for a significant reduction in mainstream school spending, the first direct cuts since the 2008 crash, while new subsidies are launched for a new wave of selective Grammar schools. Welfare spending, delivered by Local Authorities, is facing new cuts as inflation increases and LA's are already struggling with the 27% worth of cuts made since 2010.
And yet an argument over unfairness blooms - in defence of the rich! The British wealthy have found more and more defenders. For a long time the idea has circulated that if you poke the rich too much they pay less or move away. Now it is their beneficence that ex Chancellor Osborne and others have praised. Since the financial collapse in 2008 the amount of income tax paid by the richest 1 per cent has risen from 24.4 per cent to 27.5 per cent, meaning, croaks the British Daily Telegraph 'that 300,000 people pay more than a quarter of the nation's income tax'. How good of them to bother.
However:-
the poorest tenth of the population now have, between them, 1.3% of the country's total income (not wealth or riches) and the second poorest tenth have 4%. In contrast, the richest tenth have 31% and the second richest tenth have 15% of the country's income. The income of the richest tenth is more than the income of all those on below-average incomes (i.e. the bottom five tenths) combined. It should be elementary, even for the worms who write for the rich in the Daily Telegraph, that the richest 20% in Britain should have been paying - not 24.4% or 27.5% - but rather 46% of income tax on the basis of the figures and the most elementary fairness and justice. (They can divide it equably between the top tenth and the second top tenth as they wish.) And income does not cover wealth.
The Office of National Statistics puts wealth in Britain this way;
'In July 2012 to June 2014 aggregate total household wealth (including private pension wealth) of all private households in Great Britain was £11.1 trillion.
The distribution of wealth is highly skewed towards the top - the wealth held by the richest 10% of households combined was just under £5 trillion and represented a 45% share of aggregate total wealth. Conversely the combined wealth of the bottom half of households in the distribution was less than £1.0 trillion; a value which accounted for just 9% of aggregate total wealth. The wealth of the least wealthy 10% of households accounted for less than half of 1% of aggregate total wealth.'
Besides the £10 trillion in wealth held by the top half of Britons (with the top 10% holding half of that) the ONS does not mention the British part of the £30+ trillion currently stashed away in Tax Havens.
Focus on the great campaigns launched to defend the NHS and to exclude Trump is the priority, but what should the opposition, inside and outside Parliament, say and do about this appalling May government?
During the Budget debate Labour leaders need to spell out that overcoming the imbalance of Britain's wealth means that income tax (among other measures) should be used - at least to return inequality to conditions of the 1960s and 1970s. They should thunder against a government that is determined to make the rich richer and working class people poorer and poorer. They should shout from the roof tops that this government is worse than Thatcher. That is has, uniquely in the West, supported Trump and international racism. That it is driving down the NHS and now state education. May's government is committed to a ruthless class war. And it has to be brought down.
Wednesday 8 March 2017
Britain's 'precious union.'
Teresa May, Britain's unelected Prime Minister, without a mandate even from her own party, made the comment in a recent speech in Scotland. Part of the decay of Britain's political establishment and the shuddering decline in its renowned stability is the unrest in its component nations. The election in Northern Ireland has delivered another shock.
'Apart from negative attitudes to nationalism and to the Irish identity and culture, there has been a shameful disrespect towards many other sections of our community,' McGuinnes (Sinn Fein leader and Deputy first Minister in the outgoing NI Parliament, Stormont) wrote this about the main (British) loyalist party, the DUP that held the first minister post. 'Women, the LGBT community and ethnic minorities have all felt this prejudice. And for those who wish to live their lives through the medium of Irish, elements in the DUP have exhibited the most crude and crass bigotry'.
The election in Northern Ireland, (4 March) with a high voter turn out of 65%, has just delivered a new message and a tremendous blow to Northern Irish loyalism which, up to now, has held a secure majority in Stormont. It has also disturbed their allies in the Westminster Cabinet. (The small Tory majority in the UK parliament is buttressed normally by the 'righter than right' DUP's 8 Westminster MPs.) Sinn Fein got only one less parliamentary seat than the DUP in Stormont. Overall the loyalist parties have now lost their majority in Northern Ireland,
Mainline British commentators did not expect this at all. Predicting a low turnout, they believed and wrote that the old dinosaurs of Protestant Loyalism and Catholic Irish Republicanism had worn out the NI voting population with their failure to get on with peace and economic progress. They did not understand that the socially reactionary character of Loyalism and its exultant support for Brexit created a serious divide with a large section of younger voters - who think a border with Ireland makes no sense and who loath traditional bigotry. They did not see (or decided not to see) the evolution of Sinn Fein in respect of its progressive economic and social programmes. They did not understand that the unresolved national question in Northern Ireland would emerge in new, unforeseen ways.
Accordingly, Since Fein are now able credibly to put a referendum for the unity of Ireland, in both parts of the country, on the political agenda in NI for the first time - recovering the idea from its dusty abstraction in the the original wording of the Good Friday Agreement.
May has already managed to put a second Scottish independence referendum back at the centre of Scottish politics. The results in the first referendum in 2014 were 44.70% yes for independence and 55.30% who voted no, with a voter turnout of 84.59%. But 'no' has rapidly become defensive as Westminster deepened austerity, disallowed key concessions to the Scottish Parliament - Holyrood, and finally with the impact of the staggering gulf between England and Scotland's vote on Brexit. Scotland voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% - with all 32 council areas backing Remain.
As with England and Wales, and the big cities and smaller towns, the working class vote split in Scotland over the EU referendum. But as the votes in Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen showed, a Scottish working class majority voted to remain in the EU. In the Northeast of England, parts of the Northwest and in South Wales, the working class voted in their majority to leave the EU. Many large trade unions split, whatever the lead offered by their executives. The racist card played incessantly by the Tory right and UKIP had a much smaller influence in the working class vote in Scotland - where declining living standards, the lack of social welfare and the rationing of health etc., were seen predominantly as the responsibility of the Westminster Tory government rather than the effects of immigration.
Nevertheless achieving a 5% shift for Scottish independence and a 5% decline in those against, on what was previously a large voter turn out and after such a prolonged and deep debate across society, seems a big call. The Scottish turnout for the EU referendum was only 67% while in Wales it was 72% and in England 73%. Another profound political and social shift would surely be required to lead Scottish society into success in a new independence referendum.
Such a shift is available, but cannot be realised by the current SNP - however astute Nicola Sturgeon appears to be. Relying on hostility to Brexit will not go deep enough. In fact the real danger in the current context is a regrowth of Scottish Toryism, with a coagulation of UK loyalists and Brexiteers building a new majority - against the 'failure' of the SNP's limp, conservative, social democratic programme.
The Scottish population is as aware of the critical political processes in Holland and France (with Germany to come), where the EU appears as incapable of resisting the surge of the new right across the West, as is the 'independent' population of the US, or of the rest of Britain. Serious economic difficulties in most EU countries will run in parallel to Britain's own problems, as neither Brexit nor EU membership is able to 'reform' globalisation. Something else - of decisive weight - has to be added to the Scottish picture, after its previous rich debate, after its experience of a long-lived, competent but non-radical SNP government.
It is time for the ideas from the left that began to surface latterly in the Scottish referendum debate to crystallise and become a mainstream part of the Scottish independence picture. Scotland can become a new type of country, based on its young people, their internationalism, their rejection of bigotry and racism. This new country would need to be built from the construction of a new economy and political constitution that put people first and last. Its international relationships would be directly with the people of Britain, of Europe and the world, and not with their creaking and reactionary structures. The great hole in Scottish politics - that might turn the independence debate away from the fear of Brexit and towards a new type of country - is the one left by Scottish Labour, who have not yet even taken the minimal federal step away from their Westminster domination.
The narrow, corporate and traditional SNP and its clever leaders will not be able to win the majority of Scottish society away from crisis Britain. A new vision of a new nation will need to be built - or things will move backwards in the most radical part of the UK.
In Wales, as of the Spring of 2016, and in all subsequent polls, immigration was seen as the main issue facing Britain. - and remains so. It leads all other questions, including the economy or health by a large margin. This is despite the actual level of immigration to Wales. According to Stats Wales, net international migration into Wales ran at an average of +3,800 per year for the period 2003-2013, equivalent to around 0.1% increase in the population.
The result, latterly, shown graphically in the reasons given by many Welsh people in their high Brexit vote, is a certain political paralysis in political and in economic campaigns for progressive progress. And it illustrates how the radical developments in NI or Scotland are not automatic in the face of Britain's crisis. The advance by UKIP in Wales and the impact of the racist account of economic and welfare decline has deadened Wales's dynamic potential and frozen one of the most solid foundations of what was the British labour movement. Again, the disastrous hole left for so long in Welsh society by a self-serving, bureaucratic gang of Labour Party place-men and women takes its toll.
Nothing, in Britain's nations, is frozen in aspic. As the western crisis grows, first in politics and then, once more, in economics, so everything will be tested for its future durability and humanity. This review is designed to offer pointers to the current situation - no more. Nothing decisive has yet been lost - or yet achieved. That comes next.
'Apart from negative attitudes to nationalism and to the Irish identity and culture, there has been a shameful disrespect towards many other sections of our community,' McGuinnes (Sinn Fein leader and Deputy first Minister in the outgoing NI Parliament, Stormont) wrote this about the main (British) loyalist party, the DUP that held the first minister post. 'Women, the LGBT community and ethnic minorities have all felt this prejudice. And for those who wish to live their lives through the medium of Irish, elements in the DUP have exhibited the most crude and crass bigotry'.
The election in Northern Ireland, (4 March) with a high voter turn out of 65%, has just delivered a new message and a tremendous blow to Northern Irish loyalism which, up to now, has held a secure majority in Stormont. It has also disturbed their allies in the Westminster Cabinet. (The small Tory majority in the UK parliament is buttressed normally by the 'righter than right' DUP's 8 Westminster MPs.) Sinn Fein got only one less parliamentary seat than the DUP in Stormont. Overall the loyalist parties have now lost their majority in Northern Ireland,
Mainline British commentators did not expect this at all. Predicting a low turnout, they believed and wrote that the old dinosaurs of Protestant Loyalism and Catholic Irish Republicanism had worn out the NI voting population with their failure to get on with peace and economic progress. They did not understand that the socially reactionary character of Loyalism and its exultant support for Brexit created a serious divide with a large section of younger voters - who think a border with Ireland makes no sense and who loath traditional bigotry. They did not see (or decided not to see) the evolution of Sinn Fein in respect of its progressive economic and social programmes. They did not understand that the unresolved national question in Northern Ireland would emerge in new, unforeseen ways.
Accordingly, Since Fein are now able credibly to put a referendum for the unity of Ireland, in both parts of the country, on the political agenda in NI for the first time - recovering the idea from its dusty abstraction in the the original wording of the Good Friday Agreement.
May has already managed to put a second Scottish independence referendum back at the centre of Scottish politics. The results in the first referendum in 2014 were 44.70% yes for independence and 55.30% who voted no, with a voter turnout of 84.59%. But 'no' has rapidly become defensive as Westminster deepened austerity, disallowed key concessions to the Scottish Parliament - Holyrood, and finally with the impact of the staggering gulf between England and Scotland's vote on Brexit. Scotland voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% - with all 32 council areas backing Remain.
As with England and Wales, and the big cities and smaller towns, the working class vote split in Scotland over the EU referendum. But as the votes in Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen showed, a Scottish working class majority voted to remain in the EU. In the Northeast of England, parts of the Northwest and in South Wales, the working class voted in their majority to leave the EU. Many large trade unions split, whatever the lead offered by their executives. The racist card played incessantly by the Tory right and UKIP had a much smaller influence in the working class vote in Scotland - where declining living standards, the lack of social welfare and the rationing of health etc., were seen predominantly as the responsibility of the Westminster Tory government rather than the effects of immigration.
Nevertheless achieving a 5% shift for Scottish independence and a 5% decline in those against, on what was previously a large voter turn out and after such a prolonged and deep debate across society, seems a big call. The Scottish turnout for the EU referendum was only 67% while in Wales it was 72% and in England 73%. Another profound political and social shift would surely be required to lead Scottish society into success in a new independence referendum.
Such a shift is available, but cannot be realised by the current SNP - however astute Nicola Sturgeon appears to be. Relying on hostility to Brexit will not go deep enough. In fact the real danger in the current context is a regrowth of Scottish Toryism, with a coagulation of UK loyalists and Brexiteers building a new majority - against the 'failure' of the SNP's limp, conservative, social democratic programme.
The Scottish population is as aware of the critical political processes in Holland and France (with Germany to come), where the EU appears as incapable of resisting the surge of the new right across the West, as is the 'independent' population of the US, or of the rest of Britain. Serious economic difficulties in most EU countries will run in parallel to Britain's own problems, as neither Brexit nor EU membership is able to 'reform' globalisation. Something else - of decisive weight - has to be added to the Scottish picture, after its previous rich debate, after its experience of a long-lived, competent but non-radical SNP government.
It is time for the ideas from the left that began to surface latterly in the Scottish referendum debate to crystallise and become a mainstream part of the Scottish independence picture. Scotland can become a new type of country, based on its young people, their internationalism, their rejection of bigotry and racism. This new country would need to be built from the construction of a new economy and political constitution that put people first and last. Its international relationships would be directly with the people of Britain, of Europe and the world, and not with their creaking and reactionary structures. The great hole in Scottish politics - that might turn the independence debate away from the fear of Brexit and towards a new type of country - is the one left by Scottish Labour, who have not yet even taken the minimal federal step away from their Westminster domination.
The narrow, corporate and traditional SNP and its clever leaders will not be able to win the majority of Scottish society away from crisis Britain. A new vision of a new nation will need to be built - or things will move backwards in the most radical part of the UK.
In Wales, as of the Spring of 2016, and in all subsequent polls, immigration was seen as the main issue facing Britain. - and remains so. It leads all other questions, including the economy or health by a large margin. This is despite the actual level of immigration to Wales. According to Stats Wales, net international migration into Wales ran at an average of +3,800 per year for the period 2003-2013, equivalent to around 0.1% increase in the population.
The result, latterly, shown graphically in the reasons given by many Welsh people in their high Brexit vote, is a certain political paralysis in political and in economic campaigns for progressive progress. And it illustrates how the radical developments in NI or Scotland are not automatic in the face of Britain's crisis. The advance by UKIP in Wales and the impact of the racist account of economic and welfare decline has deadened Wales's dynamic potential and frozen one of the most solid foundations of what was the British labour movement. Again, the disastrous hole left for so long in Welsh society by a self-serving, bureaucratic gang of Labour Party place-men and women takes its toll.
Nothing, in Britain's nations, is frozen in aspic. As the western crisis grows, first in politics and then, once more, in economics, so everything will be tested for its future durability and humanity. This review is designed to offer pointers to the current situation - no more. Nothing decisive has yet been lost - or yet achieved. That comes next.
Wednesday 1 March 2017
Can Corbyn ever win?
'One Labour leaflet shouted: "Babies will die." Even that shroud waving could not win the seat (in the recent bi-election in Copeland). Grim wags in the (Labour) party ranks are now darkly remarking that folk in Copeland would rather let new-borns die than endorse Corbyn Labour' (sic). This (unedited?) comment appeared in the British Observer 26 February. It was part of a veritable storm in both the mainstream and the digital media denouncing Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. It followed anti-Corbyn speeches by Blair, by his lapdog Peter Mandelson, by Gerard Coyne, the right wing Labour candidate for General Secretary in the UK's biggest Union, Unite, and Dave Prentice the head of Unison, Britain's second largest union, who added his view that Labour was sliding into irrelevance.
Consider the European and US shift to the right among a large section (but not yet a majority) of the electorate. Note the poisonous legacy in Britain of Blair's opening of the NHS to private business, his government's sickening involvement in the US's oil-lust wars and the crusading policy of 'regime change'. Leave aside the catastrophe for Labour in Scotland. Corbyn played no role (except criticism) in any of these howling errors. The British Labour Party was dieing in front of the world well before its members decided on a new course and voted for Corbyn. Corbyn was the membership's answer to the collapse of traditional Labour. (Just as the massive swing to the right with its emphasis on immigration controls has temporarily 'saved' the British Tory Party.)
Has this trend to political polarisation in the West run its course now? Can Labour trade union officials turn back to the good old days when getting in a Labour Government, any old sort of Labour Government, even a Labour Government indistinguishable to the Tories which upheld Thatcher's anti-union laws, was the sole political goal for the working class? The reality is that the political crisis now raging away in the West, has only just begun. As the 2017 dates fall for the elections in Europe (and the Constitutional referendum in Turkey) so the the political establishment's failure will become more and more apparent and the desperate calls from pundits and politicians for a return to the past, less and less heard.
Another leading title in the same Observer stated 'Vast losses at RBS (the world's erstwhile leading Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland) are a legacy of a failed system.' Will Hutton, a social democratic economist in the UK argued that 'We need a new capitalism that will stop firms thinking in the short term.' RBS had added £58 billion to its losses since the collapse in 2008. Hutton asked us 'What system could permit a business horror story with such near calamitous results,' He went on to point out that British big business seemed to be particularly venal. But the answer does not lie with a 'Corbyn type philosophy,' for socialist transformation, which apparently few share. No. Instead we must put our trust in Big Innovation's Purposeful Company Task Force - and its new report. (Co-chair W. Hutton.) It says it all in there! The report proves that companies which put their purpose before profit out perform companies that do not! 'Simples.'
Alas for Hutton, in the first place corporate corruption is more global and less simply British than he might understand. Amongst others the good old City of London ensures that it is so. Second, the underlying motor of capitalism is profit, to which end it has thoroughly reorganised the world and humanity in a succession of convulsions. Hutton and his followers made more sense when huge organisations of the working class in the West still existed and could still fight the relentless drive of big Capital. It is simply absurd to imagine that a Report, (however well chaired) will do better than the efforts of millions in direct and indirect struggle and self sacrifice for their rights and a half decent way of life.
So now we have the bleats for the self reform of capitalism (Hutton praises British PM May for doing some publishing of her own on corporate governance and industrial strategy) combined with the roars that Corbyn must go in order that the Labour Party can collapse into more suitable hands. The left on the other hand is shaking itself out of the argument about what to do with the EU referendum results and at last trying to create some new facts in the political maelstrom.
The first of these is the march to defend the National Health Service, currently being run down by the government (no doubt trying to prepare the British public for the private onslaught on health in Trump's coming free trade deal.) On Saturday 4 March at 12, led by the Peoples Assembly and Unite, a huge demonstration will assemble in Tavistock Square, near Euston Station, to defend and support the NHS. (Note that the successful Save Lewisham Hospital campaigners will be meeting at nearby Russell Square.) The NHS dominates even immigration as the main concern of British people and it is becoming, exclusively, the lefts's territory and will remain so should the left's campaign move this initial action into a great, active, continuing, movement.
The second is the wide-ranging front, again with the Peoples assembly at its head, to bloc Trump's visit to Britain. After Bush junior, Trump is widely loathed in Britain, and opposition to his arrival brings together Muslim organisations and Unions, LGBT activists with churches, North and South, Scotland, England and Wales. It potentially builds a new political 'common sense' between the big cities and rural towns.
If these two developments become big new facts in British political life, especially if they are underpinned with the gathering emergence of a new social contract that dumps their Lordships and adopts fair votes, sets a constant percentage of GDP for Health and welfare spending, de-escalates war and nukes, then Corbyn has something practical to stand on (rather than the fantasy of the good will of most Labour MPs.) The old Labour Party may be in its deathrows, but new movements that pinpoint the key aspects of Britain's crisis, at home and abroad, can, as the experience in this political period shows, build something new from the ashes. Transformation does not emerge from a rescue of the old, but rather the coming to grips with the new.
Consider the European and US shift to the right among a large section (but not yet a majority) of the electorate. Note the poisonous legacy in Britain of Blair's opening of the NHS to private business, his government's sickening involvement in the US's oil-lust wars and the crusading policy of 'regime change'. Leave aside the catastrophe for Labour in Scotland. Corbyn played no role (except criticism) in any of these howling errors. The British Labour Party was dieing in front of the world well before its members decided on a new course and voted for Corbyn. Corbyn was the membership's answer to the collapse of traditional Labour. (Just as the massive swing to the right with its emphasis on immigration controls has temporarily 'saved' the British Tory Party.)
Has this trend to political polarisation in the West run its course now? Can Labour trade union officials turn back to the good old days when getting in a Labour Government, any old sort of Labour Government, even a Labour Government indistinguishable to the Tories which upheld Thatcher's anti-union laws, was the sole political goal for the working class? The reality is that the political crisis now raging away in the West, has only just begun. As the 2017 dates fall for the elections in Europe (and the Constitutional referendum in Turkey) so the the political establishment's failure will become more and more apparent and the desperate calls from pundits and politicians for a return to the past, less and less heard.
Another leading title in the same Observer stated 'Vast losses at RBS (the world's erstwhile leading Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland) are a legacy of a failed system.' Will Hutton, a social democratic economist in the UK argued that 'We need a new capitalism that will stop firms thinking in the short term.' RBS had added £58 billion to its losses since the collapse in 2008. Hutton asked us 'What system could permit a business horror story with such near calamitous results,' He went on to point out that British big business seemed to be particularly venal. But the answer does not lie with a 'Corbyn type philosophy,' for socialist transformation, which apparently few share. No. Instead we must put our trust in Big Innovation's Purposeful Company Task Force - and its new report. (Co-chair W. Hutton.) It says it all in there! The report proves that companies which put their purpose before profit out perform companies that do not! 'Simples.'
Alas for Hutton, in the first place corporate corruption is more global and less simply British than he might understand. Amongst others the good old City of London ensures that it is so. Second, the underlying motor of capitalism is profit, to which end it has thoroughly reorganised the world and humanity in a succession of convulsions. Hutton and his followers made more sense when huge organisations of the working class in the West still existed and could still fight the relentless drive of big Capital. It is simply absurd to imagine that a Report, (however well chaired) will do better than the efforts of millions in direct and indirect struggle and self sacrifice for their rights and a half decent way of life.
So now we have the bleats for the self reform of capitalism (Hutton praises British PM May for doing some publishing of her own on corporate governance and industrial strategy) combined with the roars that Corbyn must go in order that the Labour Party can collapse into more suitable hands. The left on the other hand is shaking itself out of the argument about what to do with the EU referendum results and at last trying to create some new facts in the political maelstrom.
The first of these is the march to defend the National Health Service, currently being run down by the government (no doubt trying to prepare the British public for the private onslaught on health in Trump's coming free trade deal.) On Saturday 4 March at 12, led by the Peoples Assembly and Unite, a huge demonstration will assemble in Tavistock Square, near Euston Station, to defend and support the NHS. (Note that the successful Save Lewisham Hospital campaigners will be meeting at nearby Russell Square.) The NHS dominates even immigration as the main concern of British people and it is becoming, exclusively, the lefts's territory and will remain so should the left's campaign move this initial action into a great, active, continuing, movement.
The second is the wide-ranging front, again with the Peoples assembly at its head, to bloc Trump's visit to Britain. After Bush junior, Trump is widely loathed in Britain, and opposition to his arrival brings together Muslim organisations and Unions, LGBT activists with churches, North and South, Scotland, England and Wales. It potentially builds a new political 'common sense' between the big cities and rural towns.
If these two developments become big new facts in British political life, especially if they are underpinned with the gathering emergence of a new social contract that dumps their Lordships and adopts fair votes, sets a constant percentage of GDP for Health and welfare spending, de-escalates war and nukes, then Corbyn has something practical to stand on (rather than the fantasy of the good will of most Labour MPs.) The old Labour Party may be in its deathrows, but new movements that pinpoint the key aspects of Britain's crisis, at home and abroad, can, as the experience in this political period shows, build something new from the ashes. Transformation does not emerge from a rescue of the old, but rather the coming to grips with the new.
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