Friday 28 April 2017

Why Labour is losing and what could happen next.

The British Tory Party General Election campaign is truly witless - if it was not so grim. Sir Lynton Keith Crosby (Order of Australia) is running the Tory campaign. This, according to Wikipedia, is what Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said about him in the British right-wing Daily Telegraph.

'Boris Johnson noted that one of Crosby's tactics when losing an argument and having the facts against you was to do the equivalent of "throwing a dead cat on the table": bring up an issue you want to talk about that draws widespread attention from the populace, forcing opponents to also talk about your new issue instead of the previous issue.'

This particular tactic found its way into Johnson's own mouth in an interview on the BBC Radio 4's morning news program 'Today' ( 27 April.) He shut down the questions raised about Brexit costs and announced that Britain would take military action against Syria if asked by Trump, and no, he did not know whether Parliament would be able to make the decision.

A lot of similar sub-Trump crap has been unleashed by PM Teresa May and her ministers. Even the British, mainly right wing, media is sickening of the endless drivel about 'May's strong leadership' immediately contrasted by the 'coalition of chaos' apparently offered by Labour, and most of all by its 'weak' leader, Jeremy Corbyn. (This phrase was used 50 times in the final PM's Question Time in Parliament on April 26.) May, who had clearly endorsed Johnson's view as he publicly said she had, took the immediate opportunity to dump him. The 'strong leader' got scared that Johnson's "dead cat" might cause a stink.

On the whole, puffed up, juvenile, xenophobic Crosby type drivel is likely to narrow the 20 point lead between the Tories and Labour Party up to the June 8 General Election rather than extend it. May is the Tory leader that argued against Brexit last June, that stated she would 'never' go for a snap election, that the Scottish National Party could not have another referendum because it would get in the way of Brexit. Yet she has been elevated to a position somewhere between Churchill and Thatcher amongst Tory MPs and media because of 'her purpose', 'her will', 'her relentless principle' and 'wily ways'. May's assumption onto Mount Olympus will also probably lose Tories some points in the polls (and at the same time make half the British population ill.) However, it is not Tory tactics that will change Labour's prospects in the coming election - from either a positive or a negative direction.

A more consistent view of Labour's troubles laid out by some of the left are the effects of the Labour Party's relentless right wing onslaught, led by most of Labour's current MPs, over the last two years. It is true that split parties are unpopular with the electorate. Since the General Election was announced almost every Labour MP and many of their shadow ministers start their media interviews facing the question  - are the savage criticisms that you made against Corbyn last year, last month, last week, all still current? Mostly the interviews do not get past that point. But the LP internal split is not all of it.

More significant in the discussion about why Labour is losing comes from understanding the modern history of the Party. It is summed up by Blair's two-term breakaway from any of the old, remaining Labour moorings. The defence of those moorings at the time would have least oriented some Labour leaders and members in the direction of how to defend the new working class interest in the context of globalisation. Instead Labour became the absolute European epitome of the empty, neither right nor left, 'let's get the best from globalisation and open up the remains of the welfare state to business at the same time', that fell to pieces - the policy that current French Presidential hopeful Macron is still planning to deliver. The experience of Blair (and Brown's) Labour Party had the effect of breaking Labour's connection with a huge part of the working class constituency in Britain, a constituency that remains angry, that despises all politicians, that has no interest in playing a part in political business as usual.

And that is the key question here. Despite the Tory's windy waffle about leadership, despite the relentless, right wing Labour MP led barrage against Labour's emergent new left,  the new Labour left's main and historic task is to do everything it could to re-build a new link to Britain's working class interest: to seek in every detail to be the representatives of the new and changed working class.

After WW 2, Labour's old cold-war warriors at least kept the link alive for decades, albeit formally, through trade union affiliation. After Blair, even that that has fallen away. Paradoxically today the trade union link to the working class is itself uneven and often tenuous. Unions do not lead the working class as a whole - even in the workplace context. On the other side, the remaining affiliated union connection to the Party is modelled more on the funding arrangements provided to the US Democrats by American unions than anything else. It has been like this since the Blair leadership. Blair and his enormous base in the new political class at the turn of the century, decided that Thatcher's anti-union architecture should stand. Yet the union head offices still kept paying and paying as their membership dwindled, no longer involved in any sort of mutual liaison with LP central, let alone with the interests of their own members. All this machinery ground on and on, but with some honourable exceptions, without any genuine direction and progressively more and more empty. Finally, after foreign wars and the crisis of 2008, the traditional Labour Party base and its machinery started to fall apart.

What has the new left in Labour under Corbyn been able to do? The fact is that it has survived against an immense and relentless attack - from within its own Party. That is something worth loud praise and genuine support. But in the main the left has faced a structure and tradition, essentially buoyed up by a layer of self-promoting office seekers, that has overwhelmed the left in terms of its ability to take any initiative. The Labour left has been unable to break through the barriers created by their own party. They have been unable to reach out to the new British working class interest, nor provide a convincing policy and program to deal with the new working class reality. Three recent examples;

When Corbyn was questioned in a TV interview on use of UK nuclear weapons (April 23) he dodged the answer that everybody already knows. Why? Because he is restricted by an old Labour Party policy and some nervousness in trade union support. He was trying to pretend that there was no split in Labour. (Another thing that everybody knows.) What should he have said? The truth.

'My party still thinks that Britain should have nukes. I know a lot of the public do too. But we are not the world's policeman. And we don't want to be the deputy to the world's new sheriff either. Here is a list of some of the generals who agree with that. We are a medium sized country with a huge amount to do for its people. We are desperate for housing, for health, for welfare for the old. It is crazy to spend upwards of £40 billion on something where we get to share some launch codes with Donald Trump. The British people should have a real debate about this. Let's have a referendum! That is what I shall fight for; something peaceful and useful, both inside my party and out!'

Corbyn made a speech in Scotland about how there was no need for another Scottish Independence Referendum. Labour had already stated there will be no anti-Tory coalition arrangements with the SNP after the General Election. He was talking to Scottish Labour activists and he had fire in his belly. The fire originated in his reading of the Labour Party as still the main party representing the working class. He turned the pages of Labour's history back to its rejection of Snowden and 4 other Labour MPs setting up the National Government in 1931. In the following election the National government won by a landslide and Labour slumped to 52 MPs. The lesson apparently learnt was the need to keep the Labour Party independent of all other parties. But Corbyn has read his history the wrong way round.

Why did Labour step away from its leader Snowden? Because Labour were forced to represent the independent interests of the working class of the day - in the face of the 1930s Depression. Do the majority of Labour MPs today want to represent the independent interests of the working class? Is there any sign that they are forced to do so? To ask the questions is to answer them. It turned out, when Labour rejected Snowden and the National Government and then fell back to its lowest number of MPs, that Labour was right. And its stand helped prepare the achievements of 1948.

What Corbyn should have said to build up independent working class politics in Scotland is this.

'While it is up to Scottish Labour to decide what to do in Scotland, I believe that Scotland should decide its own future. The right to decide your own future in Scotland was part of the earliest principles when the British Labour Party was formed - from Scotland. Today the SNP runs Scotland. They took the leadership away from Labour in Scotland because Labour was part of the problem. They could not defeat the Tories and when they were in power they acted like Tories. Well, I agree we need an genuine anti-Tory, a real anti Austerity and, yes, an unconditional anti Nuke Britain AND Scotland. Of course we should try for unity between us all on those issues; in Westminster and in Holyrood. It will give our key policies greater strength and more support. We are not facing an electorate that simply love our particular parties anymore and can't wait to vote for them! Then, with our alliance, we and the people themselves can test all of us for our promises. It's time we made politics work for the people and not the other way round!'

As yet neither the Tories nor and of the other main parties have spoken out about immigration for reasons of fear. Labour's new left have again tried to roll over internal LP differences about free movement, immigration and numbers of immigrants. But it will not work. Slashing immigration is still the public secret why millions voted for Brexit in the referendum and why the UKIP 4 million, and more, will now vote Tory in the General Election - because they believe May will deliver (shifting Britain to the right for years to come.) A new Labour Party that seeks to represent the new working class in Britain must challenge this fact front and centre. Not because it is a principle (although it is.) Not because its says so in some socialist program. It is because Britain's working class is split on this matter as the Brexit vote in part shows. And the building of working class political representation to lead society starts from unifying the working class politically. Again Corbyn and his followers have weeks to break out of the current Labour Party's scared straight jacket and speak to the population where now only the most right wing Labourites can be heard in their demands 'to go with the people' and 'cut back immigration.'

Corbyn needs to say now:-

'It is unacceptable that ordinary people from across the world can't come to stay in Britain to work or to stay safe. It's what any one of us would want and do for our families and our friends. Ok. So what are the problems? When new people come they change things. Sometimes for the better; sometimes for the worse. Let's get rid of all the bad changes. That is not racism.'

'First we don't want people crammed up, so every area in the country takes their fair share of new families, based on resources and wealth. Every area has a low rent housing target. Second, no cuts in living standards. On current trends, there will soon be more self-employed than public sector workers. These include nearly 1 million in the so-called gig economy. Their position is structurally insecure. Not only are they dependent on a contract for work being renewed, sometimes weekly or even daily, but around 80% earn less than £15,000 a year, two thirds of the median wage. Worse still, their pay has been falling, on average by an astonishing £100 a week between 2006/7 and 2013/14. The number struggling with debt has exploded. Immigrants do not cause this. Employers cause it -especially big employers. We will stop that dead with a new minimum wage and a new workers minimum secure contract. Third, we are going to build up our health services, housing and welfare to the best European levels starting in the most run down regions. If we honestly and fearlessly face up to these real problems and share them fairly, then we will see just how many people and from what sort of places - rich or poor - that really want to pick up the racist card.'

These three examples come out of a fundamental issue about today's politics that is known by most voters in Britain and denied or ignored or wished away by the main traditional British parties, both the Tory party and Labour. Another big, publicly known secret of this age in Britain is that both main  political parties, the parties that have dominated Britain's politics for 120 years, are in terminal decline. It is the end of Britain's precious political stability. Not surprisingly, Labour is first to face the fire and has already split into two different parties - except that only one part is acting on that basis, and the other, the left, is still trying to patch things up.

This is what everybody who was interested in Corbyn thought was to be addressed when he talked about a 'new politics.' They thought he would lead the drive to new types and forms of representation, a great new reform package of the ancient swamp that is Britain's political system, to honest and direct talking on real issues to ordinary people. Where are fair votes? Where is the demand to chase the Lords away? Where are the open hands to the rights of Britain's nations? Instead Labour's new left has so far expended its energy on keeping together the convulsive, decaying Labour Party instead of using their platform at the pinnacle of the party's leadership and its new membership, to begin the dialogue, over the heads of the MPs, in every part and corner of Britain, as necessary.

Speaking honestly and directly. Building united action and campaigns where possible. Tearing away at the reactionary political system and spelling out what really has to be done to save the country and all its people; not holding up the rotten parts of a collapsing party but preparing for the emergence of a new political formation with a real future. These are already lessons from France, across Europe, the US and deeply rooted in the evolution of Britain's own political and social structures.

What is clear in this election is that the old Labour Party is going down to traumatic defeat. What faces the Labour left is whether they can move on from that and start now to rebuild a different sort of political future for a mass-based, genuine, working-class left, and not go down, disappearing with the collapse.

Monday 24 April 2017

The French Election - some key considerations

41% of the French electorate who voted on April 23 went for the crystal-clear, hard - and then some -  right. No confusion. Leaving aside the incoherent and fragile 24% Macron vote, and strictly limiting the right wing vote to those who supported explicit, unmistakable, radical rightist policies, this is a major shift in European popular politics. Using the same criteria, the conscious, worked out French left scored only 28% of the popular vote.

The 30% abstention among French voters is roughly the same as in the 2012 Elections, but 2017 is a year of acute French political crisis, which did not stir the abstentioners. The 30% therefore look unlikely to participate in round 2 of France's Presidential race in a way that would change any crucial voting ratios for Le Pen. In fact even Le Pen expects Le Pen to lose to Macron in May. She knows that the 5th Republic's political system will prevent the 41% of the right fighting the 28% of the left - as indeed it always has - contrary to all the commentators now explaining how France's political history was based 'since 1790' on such an idea. In reality the hidden principle of the Presidential second round, established by De Gaul's Fifth Republic, was to guarantee that one of the two principle establishment parties would end up in control of the President's office - after the French let off steam in the first round. And that is now what has been destroyed, partly by the divisions on the right but most substantially by the collapse of traditional French Social Democracy and the emergence of a new left movement.

Returning to Le Pen, she would undoubtedly have preferred to take pole position in the first round of voting and thereby be able to denounce the system as deeply undemocratic, in that it would take her from being the most preferred Presidential candidate straight into a large loss in the second round. But she always knew she would lose the second round in 2017 and she has been planning for it. For Le Pen two facts are decisive now. First, the hard, well-organised right (whether congealed in its current religious or nationalist modes) decisively dominates the political future in France with her in the lead (despite Fillon's empty post-last-minute plea for anti-fascism); and second, Macron and his political project, is a fantasy that will fail and fail quickly.

IMF chief Christine Laguarde's charming efforts to persuade France and Europe that the economic good times are starting to role again (the British Financial Times gurgled with joy over the news, pointing out what could now be missed through Brexit. See 'Spring breaks through the storm', FT 22/23 April) and IMF confidence was a winner for Macron. Like the Clintons and Blair - but post 2008 - Macron will go whole heartedly with globalisation while (with a few adjustments to labour rights) defending France's social safety net. Simples. But sadly the French leadership of the IMF have opened this particular window many times before, only for the structural crisis of late capitalism in its most conflicted and brutal form to rush back into the room and spoil the political consensus. Even Macron must threaten Brussels with EU reforms. (In particular more respect from the Germans.) Macron derives his support from the swirling population of self-determined de-classed, would-be optimists that will shatter (or simply be taken over by political old-handers) at the first sign that the economic Disneyland is a mirage.

In contrast, there is now, in France a socially widespread bloc (with the majority of politicised youth, also expanding in both the north and the south of the country), who are deeply suspicious of the global rainbow, even in its EU form, and who now have an anti-establishment, substantial political centre to cohere with. This current is a thousand times more steeled than Macron's wishful thinkers and could easily incorporate religious reactionaries in a crisis. And that is what Le Pen is working towards.

And the left? It is a significant political minority now in France which is not to say that it failed to provide any answer to the historic crisis of French social democracy. In fact if Social Democrat Hamon's 6% of voters had gone to Melenchon, he would be facing Macron now, in poll position for the second round and 'President Le Pen' would be history. The SDs were not the only sectarians. If 'Anti-Capitalist Party' Presidential candidate Poutou (1.1%) and 'Workers' Struggle' candidate Arthaud (0.65%) had got their supporters to vote Melenchon they would have only been 0.2% off Le Pen's vote. In other words, there is as an alternative to Le Pen's perspective. It is solidly and widely based in French society but left-confusion and sectarianism in this first stage of what will be a long and difficult battle meant that it is now more likely to have to be fought out in society and on the streets of France against what is becoming the advancing political leadership of the country.

Wednesday 19 April 2017

Britain needs a French lesson.

In Britain, Prime Minister May has called a General Election because she wants a second vote on Brexit.

In France, one of the most likely Presidential candidates who could get into the second round, Macron, has broken from his traditional party to lead a charge back to Blair and Clinton; reversing at full speed to a fuzzy version of state social-support and a sharp appeal for unregulated capitalism. The right wing Republican, Fillon, wants to destroy labour rights, going further back to Reagan and Thatcher - but he looks stuffed as a result of his corruption. Two other possible candidates for the second round, out of the four whose polling could place them in the Presidential runoff after 23 April, Melenchon and Le Pen, both claim that France needs a fight with globalisation and oppose the role of the EU. They propose a very different sort of fight, opposite in their approach. But all these candidates for the French Presidency at least stand for something. Le Pen's sights are on a failing Macron and the Presidential election of 2022. But even now none of the leading candidates simply wish to rehearse the previous election to make sure that this time it is done properly. Which underlines PM May's worthless exercise in Britain.

May says (at the moment) she will not do TV debates. Nothing really to debate. Her aim is to get the Election done, quick and nasty. Get the Brexit vote out - again. Gather up the 4 million UKIP voters that are currently watching UKIP collapse. Ride the 'leadership' horse as she hides her own mediocre and self serving political persona in the general media and right wing Labour howl against Labour leader Corbyn. Break up Labour in parts of the north (hopefully) and win a couple of seats more than Labour in Scotland and Wales (hopefully) then its all done and dusted. And the British electorate? They get to choose a bigger and better Brexit than the first time round when they voted in the Referendum and the prospect of a 90 plus Tory majority running the government for the next 5 years.

Corbyn has already started to 'go French.' He says the election is not about Brexit, its about the sort of country that Britain should be. He has hit the central weakness of May's campaign. Whatever damage right wing Labour MPs have done to their leadership, 7 weeks is long enough to clarify that while Briton's do not need another vote for Brexit, they do need working hospitals, support for the expanding education system (and not the 11+!) They need a decisive end to May's extension of Cameron's austerity.

But Corbyn must also 'go more British'; internationalist British, just as Melenchon goes internationalist French.  No more equivocation on immigration. Say it loud and proud. Every worker and refugee welcome here, and every employer will pay all their workers the new minimum wage. No more hesitation on the right of Scotland to decide its own future whenever it wants. And yes, time for British politicians to support the discussion for a united Ireland in the context of the vote of the Northern Irish people over EU membership.

And Corbyn needs to be 'more political'. Rebuilding a new Labour Party after the assault to smash it up in May's Brexit election will need new alliances and coalitions with others who agree on basic principles (rather than endless concessions to MPs who would rather have the Tories win than see a genuinely radical Labour Party.) May's blows against Labour (enhanced sadly by many Labour MPs) will require a lot of reconstruction, work among the people and building a movement on common ground. That's ok. So long as Labour's left do not go back to sleep they can tear a hole through May's election goals, before and after June 8, building something fresh that can take on the waves of crises that are certainly coming in what remains Europe's weakest link.  

Tuesday 18 April 2017

May fights for the right

The next British General Election is 7 weeks away. Prime minister May has dropped her constant insistence that there will be no British Election until 2020. The political commentator with the Sun newspaper (a Tory paper but with biggest circulation in England and Wales) has stated that he was surprised, that Teresa May had promised no election, and that he thought it was a bad idea for May to change her mind. But many others, including the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party (and this blog) thought an early election was likely.

The obvious reason for May's volte face was that Labour are 20 points in the polls behind the Tories. If May can make it a Presidential election against Corbyn then her victory is apparently sealed. But that has been true for some months. May says the election is necessary because although 'the country is coming together (over Brexit), Westminster is not.' In May's announcement she denounced the carping role of the Labour Party, the Liberals, the SNP and the House of Lords. Yet when the decisive push came to the critical shove - and article 50 which initiates Brexit was put to the vote - there was no problem and Westminster MPs gave her a huge majority vote. A cynical, party-based move to build up the Tory majority and smash Labour? A problem getting Brexit through Parliament? Both of these reasons to go for an early election have been around since the EU referendum. And political insiders tell us that less than a month ago May was adamant that there would be no early election.

What has tipped the balance for May and made her eat her words are the first encounter with the EU after article 50 and Scotland.

Over the weekend serious indications of the EU's approach to Brexit emerged where it seemed very unlikely that any discussion about trade deals or anything else would take place before the UK agreed its payment for the 'divorce' (those previously agreed liabilities stemming from 40 years of membership and support already given to future plans.) Additionally key EU ministries would be removed from the UK and redistributed to remaining EU members immediately. Whatever the British negotiators would like, this probably meant that May's government would be going into a 2020 General Election having agreed to pay some enormous sum to the EU and without anything substantial to show for their efforts. Indeed, the country would still be subject to many EU rules.  That would look like a defeat in anyone's terms.

That is why May is now seriously considering an ultra-hard Brexit split with the EU.  This would have the inevitable result of a further run on the currency, the evacuation of big Pharma and large parts of the City of London, coupled with trading within World Trade Organisation rules - the only answer to which would have to be the creation of the World's largest Tax Haven and Europe's most bruising immigration laws. All of this would make a 2020 election nothing short of a car crash!

Both considerations make 2022 a much more pleasant option for a future election.

The Tories and May are also terrified of the prospect of Scottish independence.

SNP leader Sturgeon has already commented on May's decision for an General Election, which she sees as a means to drive the whole country to the right. And that is certainly true for the future - but it has not yet fully flowered in the UK (although the trends, with new huge cuts in spending in Education, Pensions and Health deepening, are emerging fast.) Additionally, both May and Sturgeon believe that Labour has lost its traditional Scottish base. However, there is still no majority for Scottish independence and even the call for another referendum is challenged, a referendum that the Scottish Parliament has already voted for. May believes that the Tories in Scotland now have the opportunity to regroup those who do not want a referendum on independence and / or oppose independence. That can only come about while the Westminster Tories do not appear to have already committed kamikaze in Europe while they drive hard towards a different sort of society in Britain. A big Tory advance in Scotland now, while their UK project is not yet fully unveiled, would at least hold back the momentum for independence.  

And Labour?

They are still pulling themselves out from the European morass that all the main Social Democratic Parties experienced at the turn of the century. As the large majority of hostile Labour MPs have been partly subdued by Corbyn's two party leadership victories, so there are signs that his radical policy proposals are gaining a hearing and some support among the electorate. Nevertheless, the traditional Labour electorate know full well that there are two Labour Parties - and an uneasy truce in the Parliamentary Labour Party going into the June election will persuade very few voters that the truce will hold in the event of a new Labour government.

Nevertheless, there is still a great deal to be done, and won, in resistance to this latest rightward swing of the Tory Party. A radical Labour Programme would be a real platform for an alternative view of what a reformed Britain could be. If Labour then maintain a solid bloc in Parliament, the prospect of a progressive alliance in Westminster opens up, and that is very good territory for the expansion of the Labour Left and the beginnings of a genuine political reform programme, including Fair Votes, the Scottish right to Independence and Irish rights to unity of the Island of Ireland.  It is this argument, the argument about what sort of Britain do its people want, that will set the proper frame for opposition to globalisation - of an EU or of non EU variety - while defending the living standards and the support needed for all of its people and for all of their chosen futures.

Saturday 15 April 2017

The Korean crisis - courtesy of the US political/military class.

The Korean crisis is being stirred up by the US. China has already stated its willingness to organise talks between Washington and Kim Jong-un and has set out the basis of such talks. The US would curtail its enormous military exercises in South Korea and around the Korean peninsular and North Korea would freeze its nuclear program. The US Congress has already ruled out any such talks.

The MOAB bomb and the the Tomahawk missiles were not just a US 'message' to ISIS and Assad, but also to Kim Jong-un and China. If Kim Jong-un goes ahead with his much vaunted sixth nuclear test, its site and any others, would be immediately vulnerable to 'conventional' weapons. And China would face US military action on its border.

The US are using their military belligerence to squeeze the Chinese government. This comes out in most of the Western media as a plaintive wail for China 'to do something.' China's real role including its proposed talks barely register in the mainstream news. Ideally, for Trump, China would be forced to organise regime change in North Korea. He believes that Kim Jong-un is as much China's puppet (perhaps a little out of control) as Assad is when he (mostly) marches to Russia's tune. Time to curb Les Enfants Terribles, the sheriff is back in town.

The world needs to turn the screw on Trump, back the Chinese proposal for talks and stop this deadly game.

Friday 14 April 2017

The US plays with a Korean War

With a United States Navy strike group led by the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson within lethal striking distance of all North Korea's military and political assets, Western commentators are still babbling about whether Trump has now been won over by Washington's traditional military and political leadership and dumped his rabid pre-election councillors - or not. And, even more grotesque, they are speculating about the possible 'value' of Trump's 'go-get'um' approach. Maybe his unpredictability is going to move things forward? Only in the last hours of April 14 are there some different and more sombre items in some Western countries media; see the New York Post for example.

This fatuous media drivel would be funny if it was not so shatteringly naive.

A US carrier strike group (CSG) is an operational formation of the United States Navy. It is generally composed of approximately 7.5 thousand  personnel, an aircraft carrier, at least one cruiser, a destroyer squadron of at least two destroyers and/or frigates, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft. The U.S. Pacific Command said it ordered the USS Carl Vinson group, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying ships, including guided missile destroyers and aircraft squadrons, to sail towards the Korean Peninsula as a “prudent measure,” citing Pyongyang's “reckless, irresponsible, and destabilizing” nuclear and ballistic missile provocations.

Among the various 'messages' that the Trump regime has been dropping in the last few days, in Syria and Afghanistan, is the most serious 'message' of them all, the 'message' to China that it has to stop North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Trump, and his strike force, accompanied by the Japanese, are not just meant to be observers. Meanwhile the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is determined to set off his sixth nuclear test. It is what happens next that will count for everything.

Why is the US suddenly ramping up its military 'messages' most immediately dangerously over Korea (read China)? In 2000 China's Gross Domestic Product - the value in billions of dollars of all the goods and commodities produced by a country - was $3,616 billion. In the US it was $10,285 billion. In 2016 it was $16,158 billion in China and $16,663 billion in the US. (See OECD Library.) The U.S. debt to China is $1.051 trillion, as of January 2017. China is the key problem for the continuing US leadership of the world and the US is already losing the economic race. Welcome to the US's overwhelming, global, military reach.

Is Korea genuinely a threat to the US? Not at all. The US military arsenal could extinguish North Korean military power in 10 minutes with a relatively limited attack and without a single ally responding in force. But the US is deeply concerned about China's growing influence in the Western Pacific and East Asia and most immediately, about who dominates the South China Seas. The US strike group is aimed at China. Trump wants population-starving embargoes over North Korea from China as the price of no military engagement. This is the first episode of the critical international challenge of the Trump age. And millions could lose their lives over it.

Wednesday 12 April 2017

France in political crisis

Macron is the EU leadership's favourite for the French Presidency. His non-Party, En Marche! (so reminiscent of Berlusconi's slogan, 'Forza Italia!') has the vacuous quality of standing neither to the left or right, promoting Europe's big corporations while 'defending' France's welfare safety net. Something for everyone. Nothing for anyone. His new party is as empty as his programme. It exists to shout 'hurrah' for the new President. Once again History conjures up a spirit from the mists, providing first this shape and then its opposite, like a Wizard of Oz, behind which big capital can continue to grind out its profits, hoping, against hope; against the trend of the times, and against any economic literacy; to arrive at a more socially pliant time to come.

But this plan is faltering. It was supposed to answer what the French media call the 'decomposition of the left', by which they meant the collapse of Francoise Hollande's Social Democratic Party, and turn traditional socialist voters towards the Macron miracle. At the same time Macron's multi-faceted politics would suck up enough of France's traditional right to fight off Le Pen (who remains the main issue in French politics today.) What is happening since the two Presidential TV debates is a political recomposition that no media pundits predicted. Mélenchon is rising in the polls. He has reached 20% on average - just 6 points below Macron and ahead of a failing Fillon, the candidate from France's traditional right.

Mélenchon too has formed his own movement, 'France does not submit!' But unlike Macron, Mélenchon' clearly states he is not against parties as he is in one himself. He is a member of the 'Left Party, a split from the Social Democrats, and his political program is clear to all French voters and the wider world. The French Communist Party (most often mentioned in the international media alongside 'France does not submit!'), does provide some of its organisational strength but as part of a much wider left umbrella. And it is a French CP now shorn of its historic strategy which was to unite in a common front with France's Socialist Party. Mélenchon presents his candidacy as completely distinct from the Socialist Party. His program (and his increasing support in the polls) reaffirms this approach. (See Program.)

Meanwhile France's Social Democratic Candidate Benoît Hamon, despite his break from Hollande and his leftist approach, has an average of 11% in the polls and is declining. Popular understanding of this state of affairs across the left and the right in France is that Hamon's popularity is waining because he is the SP candidate.

The first stage of the struggle for France (and for the political future of Europe including Britain) is becoming clearer. Unlike Macron, who is without any social base, with no substantial resources in either ideas or social support to hold out for any substantial time against the extreme right's political momentum, Mélenchon on the other hand would be force that could resist and repel Le Pen - especially among the youth. Both of France's traditional mass parties are unable to play any such role and the danger is growing.

Next; Corbyn's fate

Friday 7 April 2017

God's will for Syria

  • Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the air field in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched
  • No child of god should ever suffer such horror 
  • End terrorism of all kinds and all types 
  • We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and the souls of those who have passed. America stands for justice. 
  • God bless America and the entire world.
These comments are all from He-Man Trump when he sent 59 Tomahawk missiles to blow up a bit of Syria. Trump referred to the almighty throughout his speech. He certainly knew where God stood as his US film unit captured the fireworks when their country's rockets flashed and roared their way through the Mediterranean night sky on the way to distribute US justice. Godly shock and awe? Justice from God, via America (and Donald)  - to a dozen Syrian technicians, drafted soldiers and maintenance workers.

It is completely understandable when the Western World's media focusses on the terrible deaths of children in war that people want 'something done'. More queasy is the use of this horror by, among others, British Labour MPs like Alison McGovern. She said she now regrets 'every day' voting against taking military action in Syria, in the 2013 Parliamentary vote. Every day! Poor thing. If only she had voted for British missiles as well as American ones, then she too would be sitting at the right hand of .. well, maybe Trump. Politicians making hay from war and death on the basis of their staunch voting record - or lack of one - is not the natural reaction to the insult to humanity of a massacre. It is just another self-important, hand wringing gesture, designed to inflate one's own moral (read political) stature. And is contemptible.

Leaving aside the healthy doubt that Western media, now 'embedded' inside Western and other allied military machines, is able anymore to rinse out the truth from the torrent of tricks and lies that now stand in for 'news'. Accepting that Assad's military did use poison gas (again) to destroy its opposition, what should people in the West do?

In the first instance insist and make clear that Western military action in Syria will only make things worse. Russia, Assad's main military ally, has been bombing and financing on behalf of Assad's war since September 2015. Their goal was to accelerate the peace process they knew will have to come, with Russia as the broker. They were going to 'control' Assad. Now they are further away from both of those objectives than ever. When the West moved in militarily in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in Syria, they increased the power of the reactionary Jihadis, they left civil wars behind them and turned the Middle East into a cauldron of war.

Second, do not accept that the US will limit its 'intervention' to singeing the King of Syria's beard - or even more ridiculous, that Trump's intention is to look after Syrian children. The £40 million that Trump spent on the night of 6 April, is a tiny percentage of the US kit and 'manpower' already 'involved' in the Syrian war. And the 6 April will embolden its military apparatus as they 'discover' more and more of Assad's hideous behaviour that entitles them to send more deadly 'messages'. That £40 million Trump spent on missiles could have built a new UN children's hospital in Khan Sheikhun, something that really would help Syrians. Anti-war political and mass action across the globe could have forced a neutral zone around it.

Third, join the anti-war movements. Stopping wars; opposing wars; especially those that have their roots in Western avarice, are the greatest means by which children and their parents can survive and even prosper today in the Middle east, or in Northern Africa. The horrible fate of the victims of Khan Sheikhun will not vanish from Syrian history as a result of a US global power play. Trump did 'something' right enough. He ratcheted up US military power as a factor in the Syrian disaster. He pushed back the chances of early peace talks. He set a precedent for remote, unchallenged warfare. Together with his anti-Syrian refugee policy, he made Syrian's lives harder and more dangerous.