The UK's media have opened up a major discussion on terrorism following the bombing of a Manchester pop concert (22 May). On the fringes, one radio presenter from LBC tweeted in favour of a 'final solution.' There is nothing that needs to be said about this. She was sacked from her post. Another writer in the Daily Telegraph called for the return of internment, the non-legal process of imprisonment by decree, last used in Britain against the Irish nationalist population during the Northern Irish 'troubles.' This was one of the least successful policies of UK governments (among a long litany of appalling mistakes).
Leaving the moronic margins, the left-leaning Observer (27 May) had several 'comment' pieces. Among them were two, brief essays from journalists (Nick Cohen and Paul Mason) coming from very different backgrounds, but who shared a common understanding of the fundamental dynamic of terrorism in the West. (Both insisted that western military and political action against predominantly Muslim countries was not the only reason for terrorist action in the West, 'blowback' as Mason called it. Far from it.)
Both writers pointed out that the eruption of the death cults, like ISIS, has led to the mass murder of many more Muslims in North Africa, East Asia and the Middle East than Europeans or Americans in the West, including those killed in 9/11. Cohen uses this fact to explain that western-led wars and military excursions may have provoked some violent responses - but anti-western terrorism stemmed ultimately from a nihilistic and utterly sectarian platform that had already been built. He does not explain from what this original platform has been constructed; but perhaps his concluding argument - on the need for the West to strongly reinforce its own 'values' - suggests that the West is now facing an overall war of 'values' with the Jihadists, and that the extremism of the Jihadists evolves from a value system that was already in place, regardless of the West. The implications of this argument are, in the end, disturbing. This is the stuff of a 'war between two civilisations'.
Mason, implicates the failure of the West to follow up their military incursions with proper plans for social and political stability. Although he recognises that the Iraq war was a disaster, he focuses on Libya, where the western bombing, he claims, was legitimate at the request of anti-Qaddafi forces, but the planned follow up by the Western powers was never implemented. Mason's point is well taken. His support for Corbyn's demand for more police, desperately required with the pending collapse of ISIS centres in Mosul and Raqqa, is powerful. But although the vast and poisonous vacuum left by the Western military actions and the defeat of the Arab Spring has clearly created a maelstrom of war-lord led violence, which then opened the doors to the most violent and organised lords of war of them all, there is still something substantial missing in Mason's otherwise more sophisticated analysis.
At the heart of the matter is the exercise of the power and the implementation of the ruthless interests of the West. This is missing from both Cohen and Mason's essays. Its modern domination of the Middle East started to unravel with the Iranian revolution. Then it faltered in what seemed like an open goal in Afghanistan. The US created the Mujaheddin to smash the Soviet occupation and thereby created its own enemy - which paradoxically began the reactionary fight for a united Middle East promoting the fantasy of the second Caliphate. It is (and was) clear that a great weakness of the Arab Spring, the predominance of more middle class and secular layers in society in its leadership, turned out to be a barrier to the countryside, the slums and the enormous numbers attached to overbearing state apparatuses that were required in order to keep 'normal' political life frozen.
But that barrier did not stop unemployed youth and migrant workers from developing their own desire for their own Arab Spring. Except this new vision was shaped by sectarian and religious definitions of resistance and power, with the overthrow of the dominant West, and its pervasive influence in the region, as only one of its critical objectives. Another was to purge all western influence in the prevailing political and economic life of what was seen as dominated countries. This is the now the reactionary version of the endless struggle to break the hold of western power. And it is based both among middle class layers as well as linked to sectarian organisation of sections of the poorest parts of society.
The Arab Spring democratic revolution failed in part as a result of its inability to reach masses of people at the base of the societies that they were challenging, related to its ambiguity in respect of its relationship to the West. The same 'struggle' but with the face of violent and murderous religious zealotry, has taken up the battle with the West. It starts by 'purifying' its own base - before seeking the 'purification' of the world. Its technological means and its diaspora from oppressed regions of the Earth give it a reach and impact that prevents its localised destruction. Knocking over Mosul will not break ISIS or its progeny. Its full defeat will not, cannot, come from yet more military exercises of a yet more desperate West. More western led destruction can only extend the reactionary desperation of new generations.
In the West, yes, there has to be the defences ready against local bombers as Mason demands. But the critical measures to unravel the burgeoning radical hostility, underpinning murderous zealotry, are not in the security realm, they are in the sphere of political and social change. Any expert with experience in the field tells us that 'intelligence led' work with the various communities is the decisive 'weapon' in 'homeland security'. Consider the strength of movements among welcomed refugees, supported minorities, an emphasis on education, welfare, good jobs - for all. Consider the effect of a solemn statement by leading politicians that there is now an end to any and all military presence or support of any faction in the Middle East or North Africa. These are the conditions which will isolate those who have been groomed to slaughter as a principle. The West needs to get its own house in order and release its grip on parts of the world it dominates to end the 'terrorist threat' that it has largely created.
Monday 29 May 2017
Friday 26 May 2017
Terror at the end of May
The horrific deaths and injuries resulting from the bombing in a Manchester pop venue are ultimately the consequence of vile old men who are fearful and jealous of their marginality and who are thrilled by their power to groom the very youth that they send to their grisly deaths.
The West's (and now Russia's) incessant and utterly ineffective military interventions in the predominantly Muslim world provide the fuel, day after day, of the death cults erupting at the margins of Islam.
The West's 'war on terror' has failed and simply reproduces over and over, the very conditions that fertilise the reactionary madness that ends in mutual destruction and misery.
All these elements are in play in the Manchester bombings. At last, a major, mainstream, western political leader has said it.
Corbyn, Britain's Labour leader, made his cautious and careful speech (May 26) at a moment when Labour edged to just 5 points below the Tory Party in a YouGov poll. The poll scored 38% for Labour with 43% for the Tories. Labour started the snap election campaign 20 points below the Tories. The days of the Manchester bombing and endless media speculation about security coupled with endless solemn statements from 'the Prime Minister' (who is not even an MP after Parliament is dissolved at the time of an election) have not altered a trend that started after the launch of the Tory Manifesto. The Tory Manifesto put a new social welfare tax at the heart of its increasing austerity. Called a 'death tax' it defines old age welfare as a private and not a social right, and leaves millions of the young without any chance of their own housing.
Teresa May needs a big majority of Tory MPs to allow her carte blanche in the coming Brexit storm. Besides increased austerity including the death tax and cuts to state pensions, all designed to 'free up' government financial responsibilities, May needs to drive the politics of Brexit equally as unhampered by tricky objections creating new voting blocs in Parliament. That is why the Tory election has been dominated by the projection of the politically pirouetting May as her opposite, apparently being both 'strong and stable.'
This was the context in which most Tories assumed that May's invisible leadership qualities would shine as a result of the Manchester tragedy. But the polls seem to say that the voters are less beguiled. It is a different matter however, as to whether Corbyn's speech will consolidate an alternative view among millions in society, as the mainstream media and most of the establishment start their patriotic blitz. The memory of the Iraq war debacle remains deep. And that is a solid platform for a significant shift. The coming days will demonstrate whether the British establishment has still failed to rebuild its grip over popular reluctance to carry on 'the war against terror.'
And in her own way May will begin to feel her own fright at the increasing possibility of her presiding over the weak and unstable politics to come.
The West's (and now Russia's) incessant and utterly ineffective military interventions in the predominantly Muslim world provide the fuel, day after day, of the death cults erupting at the margins of Islam.
The West's 'war on terror' has failed and simply reproduces over and over, the very conditions that fertilise the reactionary madness that ends in mutual destruction and misery.
All these elements are in play in the Manchester bombings. At last, a major, mainstream, western political leader has said it.
Corbyn, Britain's Labour leader, made his cautious and careful speech (May 26) at a moment when Labour edged to just 5 points below the Tory Party in a YouGov poll. The poll scored 38% for Labour with 43% for the Tories. Labour started the snap election campaign 20 points below the Tories. The days of the Manchester bombing and endless media speculation about security coupled with endless solemn statements from 'the Prime Minister' (who is not even an MP after Parliament is dissolved at the time of an election) have not altered a trend that started after the launch of the Tory Manifesto. The Tory Manifesto put a new social welfare tax at the heart of its increasing austerity. Called a 'death tax' it defines old age welfare as a private and not a social right, and leaves millions of the young without any chance of their own housing.
Teresa May needs a big majority of Tory MPs to allow her carte blanche in the coming Brexit storm. Besides increased austerity including the death tax and cuts to state pensions, all designed to 'free up' government financial responsibilities, May needs to drive the politics of Brexit equally as unhampered by tricky objections creating new voting blocs in Parliament. That is why the Tory election has been dominated by the projection of the politically pirouetting May as her opposite, apparently being both 'strong and stable.'
This was the context in which most Tories assumed that May's invisible leadership qualities would shine as a result of the Manchester tragedy. But the polls seem to say that the voters are less beguiled. It is a different matter however, as to whether Corbyn's speech will consolidate an alternative view among millions in society, as the mainstream media and most of the establishment start their patriotic blitz. The memory of the Iraq war debacle remains deep. And that is a solid platform for a significant shift. The coming days will demonstrate whether the British establishment has still failed to rebuild its grip over popular reluctance to carry on 'the war against terror.'
And in her own way May will begin to feel her own fright at the increasing possibility of her presiding over the weak and unstable politics to come.
Thursday 25 May 2017
UK Brexit blues
UK Prime Minister, Teresa May, claims that the last 5 years of the Tory lead Coalition government followed by 2 years of full Tory government have been a success in reducing British government debt, increasing employment and recovering from the 2008 crash (for which the Tories have always blamed the previous Labour Government). The illusion of UK economic success (as against the EU for example) has been based on 2 rapidly expanding features of the British economy since 2008, the 'success' of austerity while achieving growth - as shown by the expansion of employment. But the reality is that the key elements of economic life in the UK are in drastic decline.
Employed household incomes have reduced since 2008. The economic downturn had a larger effect on non-retired households, with median income in 2015/16 still 1.2% lower than pre-downturn levels in 2007/08. House prices have continued to inflate - especially in the South East - blocking the younger generation's access to their own homes - and rents have also inflated dramatically. Meanwhile investment is weak and getting weaker, as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) noted in 2014 :
'...the proportion of total expenditure accounted for by spending on investment has fallen (in the UK) from an average of 13.5% in 2007, to an average of 10.9% during 2012 and to 10.4% in quarter 2 of 2013: the lowest level recorded since the 1950s. This compares with 14.1% in France, 16.7% in the United States and 17.9% in Canada. Across the G7, investment accounts for an average of 14.6% of Gross Final Expenditure.'
Poor investment levels are related to under-invested work. The UK's expansion of zero-hour jobs, of 'self-employment' contracts, service work without a technological or industrial base, is one of the two reasons for Britain's already catastrophic and worsening productivity. In April 2016 the Independent newspaper stated;
'The latest decline in the UK’s levels of output produced per hour worked means that Britain’s national productivity is now a remarkable 15 per cent below where it would have been if the pre-crisis trend growth of productivity had carried on. That shockingly poor performance compounds the UK’s status as an international productivity laggard. Britain already has the weakest levels of output per hour of any nation in the G7, with the single exception of Japan.
And there will be more productivity disappointment to come according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Treasury’s official independent forecaster made a major downward revision to its productivity growth forecasts in last month’s Budget. The OBR now assumes that the UK’s trend productivity rate over the next five years will rise to just 2 per cent, down from its previous forecast of 2.2 per cent forecast.'
The other reason for Britain's falling investment and falling productivity is a massive rise in share dividends. The (right-wing) Daily Telegraph 25 May 2017 reports;
'The payout ratio for the UK stock market, a measure that reflects the proportion of earnings that are paid out as dividends to shareholders, as a percentage, has been steadily rising over the past three years.
The ratio is now above 60pc, higher than pre-crisis levels ... a figure that income investors have described as “scary” and “far too high”. '
Two of Britain's top firms (AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline) are paying more this year than their profit in dividend payouts. All of the top 14 are paying more than half of their profits to shareholders. UK firms in general pay more of their profits to shareholders than any of the top firms represented in rest of the world's different stock markets.
Household incomes have reduced back to 2008 levels and beyond; housing is is desperately short, much shorter than before 2008; investment is declining to lower levels than 2008; most of the fresh labour is in 'uberised' jobs; productivity is nose-diving to lower levels than 2008. Only the relentless payout to the rich grows and grows.
So what is it that is fuelling May and the establishment's bizarre claims about the strength of the UK economy?
Household debt.
In January 2017 the Guardian newspaper reported,
'Households have £66.7bn of credit card debt outstanding, up £600m on the previous month, while the total level of outstanding consumer credit reached £192.2bn, up £1.9bn on October. The article also pointed out that;
'The latest figures from the Bank of England show unsecured consumer credit, which includes credit cards, car loans and second mortgages, grew by 10.8% in the year to November to £192.2bn, picking up pace on the previous month to grow at its fastest rate in more than 11 years.'
In September 2008, the month that Lehman Brothers collapsed and the banking crash triggered a worldwide recession, the level of UK consumer credit debt hit a peak of £208bn.
Consumer debt is buying the UK economy out of recession. Interest rates on loans still look anchored at the lowest levels but, look out, here comes Brexit's first blow - inflation - as the currency dives. And the wealth accumulated in property looks next in line for a hit, as housing looks less of a payola for landlords and in danger as an asset as May decides to use it pay for old people's care.
The West in general, the EU in particular, and rackety Britain have all been been modelling their financial and more broadly their economic structures on 'managing' globalisation. We have already seen once, in 2008, how that doesn't work. But the West have simply looked the other way since 2008 and built it all up again. Britain (either inside or out of the EU) has been busy re-setting up its own version after 2008, with its over-blown financial structures and its 'free labour' laws. Now, outside the EU, it finds itself among the most vulnerable to the globalised winds. Now, only after Greece, the UK is the weakest link, economically speaking, in the whole Western chain.
With its economic cold weather comes a continuation, a deepening, of the UK's political crisis. The old stability has already deserted and its desertion has already shaken the political system into a Coalition government and two referendums. May will likely win the election on June 8, but this will not buy the 'stability' that Tory grandees crave. If the left hangs on to and deepens its alternative manifesto and its left leadership in the Labour Party, if it helps expand the mass movements against austerity, for the NHS and against war and racism, then it will surely face new opportunities to challenge May - long before 2022.
Employed household incomes have reduced since 2008. The economic downturn had a larger effect on non-retired households, with median income in 2015/16 still 1.2% lower than pre-downturn levels in 2007/08. House prices have continued to inflate - especially in the South East - blocking the younger generation's access to their own homes - and rents have also inflated dramatically. Meanwhile investment is weak and getting weaker, as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) noted in 2014 :
'...the proportion of total expenditure accounted for by spending on investment has fallen (in the UK) from an average of 13.5% in 2007, to an average of 10.9% during 2012 and to 10.4% in quarter 2 of 2013: the lowest level recorded since the 1950s. This compares with 14.1% in France, 16.7% in the United States and 17.9% in Canada. Across the G7, investment accounts for an average of 14.6% of Gross Final Expenditure.'
Poor investment levels are related to under-invested work. The UK's expansion of zero-hour jobs, of 'self-employment' contracts, service work without a technological or industrial base, is one of the two reasons for Britain's already catastrophic and worsening productivity. In April 2016 the Independent newspaper stated;
'The latest decline in the UK’s levels of output produced per hour worked means that Britain’s national productivity is now a remarkable 15 per cent below where it would have been if the pre-crisis trend growth of productivity had carried on. That shockingly poor performance compounds the UK’s status as an international productivity laggard. Britain already has the weakest levels of output per hour of any nation in the G7, with the single exception of Japan.
And there will be more productivity disappointment to come according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Treasury’s official independent forecaster made a major downward revision to its productivity growth forecasts in last month’s Budget. The OBR now assumes that the UK’s trend productivity rate over the next five years will rise to just 2 per cent, down from its previous forecast of 2.2 per cent forecast.'
The other reason for Britain's falling investment and falling productivity is a massive rise in share dividends. The (right-wing) Daily Telegraph 25 May 2017 reports;
'The payout ratio for the UK stock market, a measure that reflects the proportion of earnings that are paid out as dividends to shareholders, as a percentage, has been steadily rising over the past three years.
The ratio is now above 60pc, higher than pre-crisis levels ... a figure that income investors have described as “scary” and “far too high”. '
Two of Britain's top firms (AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline) are paying more this year than their profit in dividend payouts. All of the top 14 are paying more than half of their profits to shareholders. UK firms in general pay more of their profits to shareholders than any of the top firms represented in rest of the world's different stock markets.
Household incomes have reduced back to 2008 levels and beyond; housing is is desperately short, much shorter than before 2008; investment is declining to lower levels than 2008; most of the fresh labour is in 'uberised' jobs; productivity is nose-diving to lower levels than 2008. Only the relentless payout to the rich grows and grows.
So what is it that is fuelling May and the establishment's bizarre claims about the strength of the UK economy?
Household debt.
In January 2017 the Guardian newspaper reported,
'Households have £66.7bn of credit card debt outstanding, up £600m on the previous month, while the total level of outstanding consumer credit reached £192.2bn, up £1.9bn on October. The article also pointed out that;
'The latest figures from the Bank of England show unsecured consumer credit, which includes credit cards, car loans and second mortgages, grew by 10.8% in the year to November to £192.2bn, picking up pace on the previous month to grow at its fastest rate in more than 11 years.'
In September 2008, the month that Lehman Brothers collapsed and the banking crash triggered a worldwide recession, the level of UK consumer credit debt hit a peak of £208bn.
Consumer debt is buying the UK economy out of recession. Interest rates on loans still look anchored at the lowest levels but, look out, here comes Brexit's first blow - inflation - as the currency dives. And the wealth accumulated in property looks next in line for a hit, as housing looks less of a payola for landlords and in danger as an asset as May decides to use it pay for old people's care.
The West in general, the EU in particular, and rackety Britain have all been been modelling their financial and more broadly their economic structures on 'managing' globalisation. We have already seen once, in 2008, how that doesn't work. But the West have simply looked the other way since 2008 and built it all up again. Britain (either inside or out of the EU) has been busy re-setting up its own version after 2008, with its over-blown financial structures and its 'free labour' laws. Now, outside the EU, it finds itself among the most vulnerable to the globalised winds. Now, only after Greece, the UK is the weakest link, economically speaking, in the whole Western chain.
With its economic cold weather comes a continuation, a deepening, of the UK's political crisis. The old stability has already deserted and its desertion has already shaken the political system into a Coalition government and two referendums. May will likely win the election on June 8, but this will not buy the 'stability' that Tory grandees crave. If the left hangs on to and deepens its alternative manifesto and its left leadership in the Labour Party, if it helps expand the mass movements against austerity, for the NHS and against war and racism, then it will surely face new opportunities to challenge May - long before 2022.
Tuesday 16 May 2017
Can Labour's Manifesto work?
Labour shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, stated that the new Labour Manifesto is a mainstream expression of the type of approach taken by the European Social Democratic parties and governments, especially in the Scandinavian countries.
Leaving aside the 21st century troubled history of the Scandinavian SD parties, McDonnell is joining a well worn tradition in his declaration. The ANC in South Africa claimed to seek exactly that course when apartheid (and the USSR) fell. Many of the early leaders of the collapsing Eastern European Soviet bloc wore the same mantle. In the mid 1970s the Common Market's interventions into Portugal and Spain were directed to the recreation of large-scale Social Democratic parties 'in the Scandinavian mode' (designed to marginalise the traditional proto-fascist right and also to temper the appetite for revolution in those countries.) In all the cases mentioned, Scandinavian Social Democracy was presented as the model that would guarantee social progress without the overthrow of the state. In each case, the state remained intact but the Nirvana of Scandinavian progress has yet to be established.
There is a discussion to be had about the high points, within the capitalist system, that Scandinavian Social Democracy actually achieved - and now the meaning of its attenuated decline. Whatever the result of that particular argument, Labour's Manifesto is certainly still worth support in many of its proposals. It is, as mainstream commentators are shouting, completely different from the Tory program. There is now a choice in Britain's General Election for the first time since the 1980s. The demand for a 'centre' in British politics, consolidated around a LibLab pact over the EU, supported by the Blaires and Paddy Ashdowns, have been ignored and rejected. These characters are waiting in the sidelines for the destruction of Labour's left leader Corbyn, to make their next move. And it will come as Britain's political system judders and creaks. Meanwhile they need to count the number of Blairite MPs that get in to the post election Parliament under the Labour banner to see if they have a potential platform of their own.
But the plans in Labour's manifesto are substantial and represent real 'inroads' into the power and the economic dominance of Capital - in the first case mainly through their tax proposals. They may be presented as a 'restoration' of previous tax regimes in different countries in times gone by, but they go in entirely the opposite direction to the destination that globalisation wants in the West. Equally, the break-up of the relentless privatisation of services is of particular outrage to the British component of the globalist carnival as Britain lives on services. The UK's economy is more reliant on the service sector than any other G7 country. 79% of UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) came from the service sector in 2013. The percentage of workers in the service sector rose from 33% in 1841 to 80% in 2011.
Commentators and political pundits often write or say that many of the individual policies of Corbyn's Labour are popular with a large part of the electorate. But Tory leader May dominates in the polls nevertheless. Why is this? A lot of froth is spouted about the key role in the modern period of personality. May (who voted against Brexit, who vehemently denied that she would have a snap election, who reversed the main policy of her Chancellor a day after his budget) is projected as some sort of steadfast hero - but in the dwindling traditional media. Likewise, Corbyn is presented as an evil moron, without substance, because he has always stuck to his principles, but again, only in the traditional media.
The real trouble is that there is more substance to the problem of the popularity of Corbyn's Labour Party than the impact of Britain's wretched and dominant millionaire press or TV's cynical side-swipes. The credibility of political leaders is at a very low ebb - among almost all of the population with the partial exception of some of (the almost totally enamoured of Corbyn) youth.
In the first place many ordinary working class people do not believe that Corbyn's Labour could achieve the promises that the Manifesto makes. Why? For two reasons. They think three quarters of his own MPs won't let him. His party is split. Second, they know that the economic and political forces ranged against Corbyn's plans would be enormous - even while Corbyn and McDonnell are claiming the opposite in their references to a Wilson style government from the 1960s and to Scandinavian SD!
This reality was challenged when the Corbyn leadership used to speak of Labour's transformative moment under post WW2 Labour leader Attlee and when initial steps were taken to give some substantive content to his 'new kind of politics.' Without over-blowing the parallel, when Trump took on Hilary Clinton, took on his own Party, spoke over the heads of the establishment and promised to 'drain the swamp' in Washington, whatever else it was, it at least sounded as though Trump was genuinely mobilising to break the political and economic mould. For people to believe that Corbyn will genuinely be able to break the mould in Britain, then that is what the Labour leadership should say. If the Labour leadership thinks it needs a new type of politics for the majority in society to win against the super rich, then it needs to spell it out. No more Lords. No more unfair votes and bought elections. An end to the lobbyists and to ex senior MPs rolling over for their super-pension paymasters.
In that broad context, telling the hard truth about the weakness of one section of the Labour Party, will build the strength and commitment of those who want truthful politics and transformative change. The Corbyn leadership needs to tell the people that they want to vote for such change that yes, alongside a hard battle with the rich, the fight will also happen inside Parliament - and that what we now need is for working class people to make their voices heard, where they work, where they live and loud enough for Parliament to be deafened. What was the only way that Obama could have won his fully fledged plan for health care or for gun control? By activating and mobilising his support. (They were ready, but he was not.)
Of course Labour's Manifesto can happen - and much more. But neither the Scandinavian Social Democrats nor the memories of Harold Wilson can do it. Today we need a root and branch movement in society, which the Corbyn leadership should concentrate on and help to build, inside and outside Parliament, even to achieve some social democracy!
Leaving aside the 21st century troubled history of the Scandinavian SD parties, McDonnell is joining a well worn tradition in his declaration. The ANC in South Africa claimed to seek exactly that course when apartheid (and the USSR) fell. Many of the early leaders of the collapsing Eastern European Soviet bloc wore the same mantle. In the mid 1970s the Common Market's interventions into Portugal and Spain were directed to the recreation of large-scale Social Democratic parties 'in the Scandinavian mode' (designed to marginalise the traditional proto-fascist right and also to temper the appetite for revolution in those countries.) In all the cases mentioned, Scandinavian Social Democracy was presented as the model that would guarantee social progress without the overthrow of the state. In each case, the state remained intact but the Nirvana of Scandinavian progress has yet to be established.
There is a discussion to be had about the high points, within the capitalist system, that Scandinavian Social Democracy actually achieved - and now the meaning of its attenuated decline. Whatever the result of that particular argument, Labour's Manifesto is certainly still worth support in many of its proposals. It is, as mainstream commentators are shouting, completely different from the Tory program. There is now a choice in Britain's General Election for the first time since the 1980s. The demand for a 'centre' in British politics, consolidated around a LibLab pact over the EU, supported by the Blaires and Paddy Ashdowns, have been ignored and rejected. These characters are waiting in the sidelines for the destruction of Labour's left leader Corbyn, to make their next move. And it will come as Britain's political system judders and creaks. Meanwhile they need to count the number of Blairite MPs that get in to the post election Parliament under the Labour banner to see if they have a potential platform of their own.
But the plans in Labour's manifesto are substantial and represent real 'inroads' into the power and the economic dominance of Capital - in the first case mainly through their tax proposals. They may be presented as a 'restoration' of previous tax regimes in different countries in times gone by, but they go in entirely the opposite direction to the destination that globalisation wants in the West. Equally, the break-up of the relentless privatisation of services is of particular outrage to the British component of the globalist carnival as Britain lives on services. The UK's economy is more reliant on the service sector than any other G7 country. 79% of UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) came from the service sector in 2013. The percentage of workers in the service sector rose from 33% in 1841 to 80% in 2011.
Commentators and political pundits often write or say that many of the individual policies of Corbyn's Labour are popular with a large part of the electorate. But Tory leader May dominates in the polls nevertheless. Why is this? A lot of froth is spouted about the key role in the modern period of personality. May (who voted against Brexit, who vehemently denied that she would have a snap election, who reversed the main policy of her Chancellor a day after his budget) is projected as some sort of steadfast hero - but in the dwindling traditional media. Likewise, Corbyn is presented as an evil moron, without substance, because he has always stuck to his principles, but again, only in the traditional media.
The real trouble is that there is more substance to the problem of the popularity of Corbyn's Labour Party than the impact of Britain's wretched and dominant millionaire press or TV's cynical side-swipes. The credibility of political leaders is at a very low ebb - among almost all of the population with the partial exception of some of (the almost totally enamoured of Corbyn) youth.
In the first place many ordinary working class people do not believe that Corbyn's Labour could achieve the promises that the Manifesto makes. Why? For two reasons. They think three quarters of his own MPs won't let him. His party is split. Second, they know that the economic and political forces ranged against Corbyn's plans would be enormous - even while Corbyn and McDonnell are claiming the opposite in their references to a Wilson style government from the 1960s and to Scandinavian SD!
This reality was challenged when the Corbyn leadership used to speak of Labour's transformative moment under post WW2 Labour leader Attlee and when initial steps were taken to give some substantive content to his 'new kind of politics.' Without over-blowing the parallel, when Trump took on Hilary Clinton, took on his own Party, spoke over the heads of the establishment and promised to 'drain the swamp' in Washington, whatever else it was, it at least sounded as though Trump was genuinely mobilising to break the political and economic mould. For people to believe that Corbyn will genuinely be able to break the mould in Britain, then that is what the Labour leadership should say. If the Labour leadership thinks it needs a new type of politics for the majority in society to win against the super rich, then it needs to spell it out. No more Lords. No more unfair votes and bought elections. An end to the lobbyists and to ex senior MPs rolling over for their super-pension paymasters.
In that broad context, telling the hard truth about the weakness of one section of the Labour Party, will build the strength and commitment of those who want truthful politics and transformative change. The Corbyn leadership needs to tell the people that they want to vote for such change that yes, alongside a hard battle with the rich, the fight will also happen inside Parliament - and that what we now need is for working class people to make their voices heard, where they work, where they live and loud enough for Parliament to be deafened. What was the only way that Obama could have won his fully fledged plan for health care or for gun control? By activating and mobilising his support. (They were ready, but he was not.)
Of course Labour's Manifesto can happen - and much more. But neither the Scandinavian Social Democrats nor the memories of Harold Wilson can do it. Today we need a root and branch movement in society, which the Corbyn leadership should concentrate on and help to build, inside and outside Parliament, even to achieve some social democracy!
Friday 12 May 2017
Corbyn's charisma
The greatest Labour leader in the history of the British Labour Party was Clement Attlee. He carried through a transformative program immediately after WW2 - in the face of huge war debts - the worst housing crisis in the biggest cities until now - the need to reconstruct most of UK industry into peacetime production - the threat of vast unemployment because of the returning military forces - and the overthrow of large parts of what had been Britain's lucrative Empire, as the international anti-colonial movement rose in revolt.
When an advisor told him that Attlee had a modest quality which voters liked, Churchill, the British war leader, busting out with charisma in 1945, said this about Attlee -:
'He has much to be modest about!' Churchill went on to score a deep and dramatic loss in the post war election.
Attlee was modest because millions of returning soldiers and sailors and millions who had fought the war at home were modest, ordinary people, people who had suffered through the 1930's economic crises, but they had just helped to win the greatest war in history. In a modest way, as Tory grandee Boothby said.
'If we do not give them reform then they will give us revolution!'
The modest, ordinary people had lived their dramatic lives with Churchill for 4 years, just getting on with their difficult lives. They understood ruling class charisma. They were sick of it.
The modern British mainstream and much of the digital media screams that Corbyn has no charisma. The self-styled 'bloody woman' Tory leader Teresa May claims the legacy of Thatcher, Elizabeth 1st and Boudica. Why? Because she wants to turn the coming June 8 General Election into a patriotic movement against the EU. It is as ludicrous as that. For the last 7 years Tory governments have driven Britain through austerity. As a result the health service, the NHS, is on its knees, the long term destruction of labour rights has meant a decline in wages and general living standards to pre-2008 levels, even the police are in trouble and serious crime, declining in the West for decades, has risen sharply. Only the very rich are better off. May is already adding cuts to pensions and education. And that is before the full Tory Election Manifesto is published
Corbyn is a modest politician after a political lifetime on the margins of the Labour Party. He proposes that Labour should reverse austerity, the NHS and education should be refunded, including reviving student grants, that public energy companies be set up, that pensions remain protected, that taxes on big companies and the incomes of the rich go up to 2005, and general European, levels. It is a modest plan. But will Corbyn have the charisma to fight the war with the EU? That is what the Tories, a huge swathe of the all parts of the media, and a lot of Labour's MPs are reducing the 2017 general election to.
Behind this fatuous posturing over the 'Brexit war', is the alarming prospect of a 'fire-sale' of Britain's social infrastructure, the uberisation of most employment, and the emergence of a new (very old) vision of how the West should 'adapt' to the unstoppable forces of globalisation.
When an advisor told him that Attlee had a modest quality which voters liked, Churchill, the British war leader, busting out with charisma in 1945, said this about Attlee -:
'He has much to be modest about!' Churchill went on to score a deep and dramatic loss in the post war election.
Attlee was modest because millions of returning soldiers and sailors and millions who had fought the war at home were modest, ordinary people, people who had suffered through the 1930's economic crises, but they had just helped to win the greatest war in history. In a modest way, as Tory grandee Boothby said.
'If we do not give them reform then they will give us revolution!'
The modest, ordinary people had lived their dramatic lives with Churchill for 4 years, just getting on with their difficult lives. They understood ruling class charisma. They were sick of it.
The modern British mainstream and much of the digital media screams that Corbyn has no charisma. The self-styled 'bloody woman' Tory leader Teresa May claims the legacy of Thatcher, Elizabeth 1st and Boudica. Why? Because she wants to turn the coming June 8 General Election into a patriotic movement against the EU. It is as ludicrous as that. For the last 7 years Tory governments have driven Britain through austerity. As a result the health service, the NHS, is on its knees, the long term destruction of labour rights has meant a decline in wages and general living standards to pre-2008 levels, even the police are in trouble and serious crime, declining in the West for decades, has risen sharply. Only the very rich are better off. May is already adding cuts to pensions and education. And that is before the full Tory Election Manifesto is published
Corbyn is a modest politician after a political lifetime on the margins of the Labour Party. He proposes that Labour should reverse austerity, the NHS and education should be refunded, including reviving student grants, that public energy companies be set up, that pensions remain protected, that taxes on big companies and the incomes of the rich go up to 2005, and general European, levels. It is a modest plan. But will Corbyn have the charisma to fight the war with the EU? That is what the Tories, a huge swathe of the all parts of the media, and a lot of Labour's MPs are reducing the 2017 general election to.
Behind this fatuous posturing over the 'Brexit war', is the alarming prospect of a 'fire-sale' of Britain's social infrastructure, the uberisation of most employment, and the emergence of a new (very old) vision of how the West should 'adapt' to the unstoppable forces of globalisation.
Tuesday 9 May 2017
Has Macron turned the tide?
First the Austrian Presidency ripped away from one of Austria's modern Nazis. Then the Dutch elections that sidelined Wilders. Now France's Macron drowns Le Pen's Presidential bid, 66% to 34%.
The end? Or the end of the beginning?
The big majority are certainly breathing easier in France, albeit for quite different reasons than the current EU leaders that face elections, or those traditional party leaders that have been playing brinkmanship, as in Portugal or Spain.
There are already many new projections about the EU's future in the traditional media. The Trump phenomena and Britain's right wing Brexit (that appears now to all mainstream commentators to be inevitable) seem for the time being to have been corralled into an Anglo-Saxon enclave in the West.
The French elections, and there are still vital Parliamentary elections to come, were always going to be the political cockpit of Europe. And Macron's substantial victory will increase confidence in the EU that they can defeat what they have come to call populism - from both the right - and the left. But the victory of the establishment deserves closer inspection.
Starting with Macron himself; Europe has seen this type of messiah before. In Italy, Matteo Renzi became Prime Minster from the new Social Democrat Party (established in 2007, a year before Berlusconi's Forza Italia dissolved - for the first time.) At the age of 39 Renzi announced the end of the 'right' and of the traditional 'left' in Italian politics when his new party swept to power in 2013. He was swept out again by a referendum three years later, apparently on an undemocratic constitutional issue, actually because his anti-working class Jobs Act, which abolished article 13 of the workers statute the year before. Renzi saw himself as a 'middle-way' type of politician (following Clinton and Blair.)
Rolling Europe's years back to the 1920s and 1930s, 'National Governments' of various sorts were established, led by the establishment, under the threat of economic collapse and revolution. They were all gatherings of the 'great and good', the experts that would apply themselves to the nation's needs rather than petty squabbles between parties. They were all 'neither left nor right' except in their relentless battle with working class organisation. All immensely popular in their first elections, they all failed and all were broken by Fascist victories or by military destruction.
In the new millennium and in a new crisis of capitalist economics and politics, 'populism' has re-emerged by becoming its opposite. Macron, an absolutely typical ruling class populist, with all the relevant trappings (his own 'party'; his 'neither left nor rightism', his fear of and antagonism to the strength of organised workers - especially in the public sector) is the saviour - of the establishment - not just in France but across the EU! T'was ever thus.
Le Pen's vote also merits more attention.
The highest point for France's electoral experience of Fascism before Le Pen junior was Le Pen senior's bid in the Presidential elections of 2002. He scored 17.8% in the first round vote and 16.9% in the second. (5.5 million votes.) LP junior scored 21.3% in round one and 33.9% in round two. (10.6 million votes.) Note both the rise in % and in numbers of voters - and the 12.6% increase in votes from round one to round 2. Unlike the populist Macron who gathered his second vote from anti-fascists across the political spectrum, LP junior gathered more National Front support in her second round.
In anybody's book this is a potentially frightening and immense social and political base in a major western country that was occupied by the last successful fascists 74 years ago. Should Macron join the long list of establishment populist failures then (with every other traditional party despised) the battle for political leadership in France will be bitter and hard. But at least there will be a battle and not a pre-emptive collapse.
Why will Macron fail? Because modern capitalism is not oriented to raise the working class. Last time it took world war and revolutions in Russia and China for capitalism to discover the merits of the New Deal, Keynes, Welfare States, full employment and Marshal Plans in the West. Today its main purpose in the West is to drive through the new contract with labour that started in the 1980s. One example; the UK government has commissioned a Study on 'a Review of Work' by Mathew Taylor (to be published after the June election.) This is one contribution to that Review which repudiates the idea that the remnants of industrial work are with us but their effect creating social decline will pass as the past fades.
'The growth of self-employment in Britain is one of the great economic and social realities of our time. 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.
The impact on poverty is masked because so many people, especially women, are second earners in households where the principal earner enjoys full-time employment rights (holiday, sickness and pension entitlements) and some continuity and stability in both work and pay. A sixth of the self-employed are also pensioners, perhaps trying to supplement their pension income. These are plainly people who are just about managing, but whose capacity will weaken the more self-employment and poor personal pensions become the norm. What they are not is a new wave of entrepreneurs about to relaunch the British economy.' And the management consultancy McKinsey states that;
'More than 160 million westerners now work in the so-called gig economy ... and that is rising fast.'
This single element of modern western capitalism is enough to show that Macron has either to live with 25%+ youth unemployment in France, or bust the Labour Laws and let the gig economy rip (and pretend as British politicians do, that this is the new enterprise marvel.)
Austrian Nazis, Wilder and various generations of Le Pens may have hit the wall for the time being. But the crisis that created them is growing and not fading away with the older generation. And in the case of Le Pen junior, although she did not close the gap with Macron, she is still the political leader in France with the most significant and growing base in society. The end of the beginning then.
The end? Or the end of the beginning?
The big majority are certainly breathing easier in France, albeit for quite different reasons than the current EU leaders that face elections, or those traditional party leaders that have been playing brinkmanship, as in Portugal or Spain.
There are already many new projections about the EU's future in the traditional media. The Trump phenomena and Britain's right wing Brexit (that appears now to all mainstream commentators to be inevitable) seem for the time being to have been corralled into an Anglo-Saxon enclave in the West.
The French elections, and there are still vital Parliamentary elections to come, were always going to be the political cockpit of Europe. And Macron's substantial victory will increase confidence in the EU that they can defeat what they have come to call populism - from both the right - and the left. But the victory of the establishment deserves closer inspection.
Starting with Macron himself; Europe has seen this type of messiah before. In Italy, Matteo Renzi became Prime Minster from the new Social Democrat Party (established in 2007, a year before Berlusconi's Forza Italia dissolved - for the first time.) At the age of 39 Renzi announced the end of the 'right' and of the traditional 'left' in Italian politics when his new party swept to power in 2013. He was swept out again by a referendum three years later, apparently on an undemocratic constitutional issue, actually because his anti-working class Jobs Act, which abolished article 13 of the workers statute the year before. Renzi saw himself as a 'middle-way' type of politician (following Clinton and Blair.)
Rolling Europe's years back to the 1920s and 1930s, 'National Governments' of various sorts were established, led by the establishment, under the threat of economic collapse and revolution. They were all gatherings of the 'great and good', the experts that would apply themselves to the nation's needs rather than petty squabbles between parties. They were all 'neither left nor right' except in their relentless battle with working class organisation. All immensely popular in their first elections, they all failed and all were broken by Fascist victories or by military destruction.
In the new millennium and in a new crisis of capitalist economics and politics, 'populism' has re-emerged by becoming its opposite. Macron, an absolutely typical ruling class populist, with all the relevant trappings (his own 'party'; his 'neither left nor rightism', his fear of and antagonism to the strength of organised workers - especially in the public sector) is the saviour - of the establishment - not just in France but across the EU! T'was ever thus.
Le Pen's vote also merits more attention.
The highest point for France's electoral experience of Fascism before Le Pen junior was Le Pen senior's bid in the Presidential elections of 2002. He scored 17.8% in the first round vote and 16.9% in the second. (5.5 million votes.) LP junior scored 21.3% in round one and 33.9% in round two. (10.6 million votes.) Note both the rise in % and in numbers of voters - and the 12.6% increase in votes from round one to round 2. Unlike the populist Macron who gathered his second vote from anti-fascists across the political spectrum, LP junior gathered more National Front support in her second round.
In anybody's book this is a potentially frightening and immense social and political base in a major western country that was occupied by the last successful fascists 74 years ago. Should Macron join the long list of establishment populist failures then (with every other traditional party despised) the battle for political leadership in France will be bitter and hard. But at least there will be a battle and not a pre-emptive collapse.
Why will Macron fail? Because modern capitalism is not oriented to raise the working class. Last time it took world war and revolutions in Russia and China for capitalism to discover the merits of the New Deal, Keynes, Welfare States, full employment and Marshal Plans in the West. Today its main purpose in the West is to drive through the new contract with labour that started in the 1980s. One example; the UK government has commissioned a Study on 'a Review of Work' by Mathew Taylor (to be published after the June election.) This is one contribution to that Review which repudiates the idea that the remnants of industrial work are with us but their effect creating social decline will pass as the past fades.
'The growth of self-employment in Britain is one of the great economic and social realities of our time. 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.
The impact on poverty is masked because so many people, especially women, are second earners in households where the principal earner enjoys full-time employment rights (holiday, sickness and pension entitlements) and some continuity and stability in both work and pay. A sixth of the self-employed are also pensioners, perhaps trying to supplement their pension income. These are plainly people who are just about managing, but whose capacity will weaken the more self-employment and poor personal pensions become the norm. What they are not is a new wave of entrepreneurs about to relaunch the British economy.' And the management consultancy McKinsey states that;
'More than 160 million westerners now work in the so-called gig economy ... and that is rising fast.'
This single element of modern western capitalism is enough to show that Macron has either to live with 25%+ youth unemployment in France, or bust the Labour Laws and let the gig economy rip (and pretend as British politicians do, that this is the new enterprise marvel.)
Austrian Nazis, Wilder and various generations of Le Pens may have hit the wall for the time being. But the crisis that created them is growing and not fading away with the older generation. And in the case of Le Pen junior, although she did not close the gap with Macron, she is still the political leader in France with the most significant and growing base in society. The end of the beginning then.
Sunday 7 May 2017
France and Britain's political future.
It is plain as day in Britain that Tory leader Teresa May is fighting the General Election on support for Brexit mark 2. In France, Macron uses the EU to win against Le Pen in his Presidential battle. Macron's victory and May's very likely victory in June rely on opposite premises in relation to the EU - yet in both cases the political right will win!
May's election campaign is a miserable affair. She has blocked any TV debate. There are no face to face discussions. Public meetings, walkabouts and visits are packed with supporters and exclude any media questioning. Her sole message is that she will be that 'bloody woman' in the Brexit talks to come. There is not even any pointers offered to the public about what sort of Brexit May might want, except that she is willing, she says, to cut prolonged negotiations and build a new UK economy from scratch.
All of the mainstream news mediums so far simply echo her rows with EU top negotiator, ex Luxembourg Prime Minister Junker, and with ex French President Hollande, as though her adolescent provocations were the basis to elect a UK government for 5 years. But May's stony offer to the British people has been more than enough to grab the UK Independence Party vote of nearly 4 million in the 2015 General Election (as seen dramatically in the latest local election results, where UKIP lost all of its council positions - bar one). A million and more of those UKIP votes came from ex Labour voters in 2015 so that will work for May too.
As a result there is no obvious excitement, commitment or mobilisation of the British electorate going on. A small turn-out is expected. May is predicted to win handsomely from the ashes of genuine democratic engagement. The Liberals who hope to represent anti Brexiteers and become the 'real opposition' in the next Parliament are so far limping to continued irrelevance and Labour is forecasted to crash.
There were two 'Mayday' marches in Paris this year. The largest, supported by the French union federation the CGT and Melenchon's 'France Resists' movement, broke with the CFDT union federation that traditionally has supported the French Social Democratic Party. The much smaller CFDT rally called for a vote for Macron - against Le Pen in the final round of the French Presidential campaign. 'France Resists' and the CGT opposed Le Pen but are crystal clear that they do not support Macron either. They realistically thought that Le Pen would be defeated of course, but Mayday is a celebration of the working class movement, and they felt that at least that movement should warn France's population as a whole of the battle to come that they will be need to lead in order to fight Macron.
The critical success of Melenchon's independent movement in the first round of France's Presidential election opens political space to start a mainstream challenge to Macron's defence of globalisation and his proposed labour and welfare 'reforms', let alone allow the preparation of a different sort of centre of 'resistance' should Macron fail and Le Pen re-emerge. This has meant that the collapse of the French Social Democratic Party does not equal the break up of working class political organisation but is at least partly by-passed by Melenchon's initiative (which started in 2008.) The left leadership of the Labour Party in Britain is sadly in quite a different position.
While an enormous and mainly young membership has led to inner party victories for a left leadership of Labour since 2015, May's Brexit mark 2 election has decided its chosen target as Labour leader Corbyn. The Tories, the Liberals (who have decided that they are the 'real' opposition), the SNP (who have retained their marginalisation of Labour in Scotland) and also the bulk of Labour's MPs and Mayors - are all opposing Labour's leadership as the UK decides who governs for the next 5 years.
A possible Labour retreat to its core support, and 200 or less MPs in Parliament on June 9, has not emerged because of Corbyn of course. (See numerous previous blogs.) Although the number of supposedly pro-Labour commentators, reporters, analysts, let alone the army of Labour politicians and traditional 'leading' supporters who are now wailing that it's all Corbyn's fault is frankly one of the greatest fantasies since Goebbels speeches. The Labour crisis goes very deep and has been maturing for a decade and more.
Nevertheless their remains one distinct failing of Labour's left leadership which is not that it could cure Labour's ailments, rather that it thought that it could. Everything from Melenchon's initiative to Trump's election campaign - against the Republicans - tells Corbyn that prioritising the good old status quo in one of the most traditional parties is a short step to undermining the credibility of any radical proposal you make. There are precious few really radical Labour leadership messages so far. And the few that have surfaced have credibility problems. How can people believe that Corbyn's leadership will do anything about the 'rigged system' he describes when he appears to be desperately holding up part of the rigging!
Looking for critical lessons in what are evolving and contradictory developments across two countries is bound to be a precarious occupation. However, it is worth registering some more obvious points the have surfaced so far.
The argument among the British left about whether Brexit was a principle because the fundamental character of the EU is a capitalist club, will not do. Experience certainly confirms that the EU is the European wide ruling class initiative designed to manage globalisation in a way that benefits them, but its removal does not necessarily mean a blow to globalisation. In some contexts, like those of Britain and France, Brexit or Frexit can become a signal for the political regroupment of the right. And globalisation will continue, or be bent in certain ways a la Trump, to suit the survival of the capitalist system whether the EU survives or not. Opposition to the EU can therefore (must therefore) take different forms in different contexts, including possible exits, and/or making critical demands that expose and crib the EU's force (e.g. Greece's Syriza government could have repudiated its EU led debt mountain and moved to its own currency when its population voted 'no' to any more austerity deals), and/or mobilising to overthrow one or other of its institutions, e.g. the ECB and debt burdens, etc. These actions can only be a consequence of the concrete analysis of the concrete situation.
Britain's Labour left leadership are already mounting an heroic but defensive stand. And there is still time to break out of the constraints created by the death agonies of Britain's enfeebled Social Democratic Party. The overall social relation of forces in Britain deny the early possibility of conquering a majority in Britain's population, or rather a sufficient minority that can, at this stage, lead society. The June 8 General Election result was written during the Iraq war, during the Scottish referendum, following the 2008 crash and the 2016 Brexit referendum. But it is still possible for Labour's left leaders to speak directly to their radical members, and to the fucked up, pissed off, de-motivated and increasingly impoverished Britons. The first step in ending Corbyn's 'rigged system' is measures that could really bring it down, whether official Labour likes them or not. And, to guarantee the voters who might listen, that the fight for these measures will go on inside and if necessary outside the Labour Party in a national movement and organisation from June 8 onwards.
Finally, does anybody really believe that Macron is going to succeed to reanimate French capitalism where every politician in France for the past two decades have promised and failed to do exactly that? Does anybody believe that May's Brexit will make the rich poorer and the poor richer in Britain? These politicians are walking failures. And what's next? When the political system genuinely fails, particularly when masses of people have already changed their allegiances and political habits of a lifetime to get answers, then fundamental shifts in thinking begin to supplant traditional understanding and direct action fills the vacuum left by failed representation. A new political arena emerges in society, and within that arena new forces are suddenly more relevant. The danger and complexity in society creates fear and scapegoating, but self-organised success and insurgency can build revolution.
May's election campaign is a miserable affair. She has blocked any TV debate. There are no face to face discussions. Public meetings, walkabouts and visits are packed with supporters and exclude any media questioning. Her sole message is that she will be that 'bloody woman' in the Brexit talks to come. There is not even any pointers offered to the public about what sort of Brexit May might want, except that she is willing, she says, to cut prolonged negotiations and build a new UK economy from scratch.
All of the mainstream news mediums so far simply echo her rows with EU top negotiator, ex Luxembourg Prime Minister Junker, and with ex French President Hollande, as though her adolescent provocations were the basis to elect a UK government for 5 years. But May's stony offer to the British people has been more than enough to grab the UK Independence Party vote of nearly 4 million in the 2015 General Election (as seen dramatically in the latest local election results, where UKIP lost all of its council positions - bar one). A million and more of those UKIP votes came from ex Labour voters in 2015 so that will work for May too.
As a result there is no obvious excitement, commitment or mobilisation of the British electorate going on. A small turn-out is expected. May is predicted to win handsomely from the ashes of genuine democratic engagement. The Liberals who hope to represent anti Brexiteers and become the 'real opposition' in the next Parliament are so far limping to continued irrelevance and Labour is forecasted to crash.
There were two 'Mayday' marches in Paris this year. The largest, supported by the French union federation the CGT and Melenchon's 'France Resists' movement, broke with the CFDT union federation that traditionally has supported the French Social Democratic Party. The much smaller CFDT rally called for a vote for Macron - against Le Pen in the final round of the French Presidential campaign. 'France Resists' and the CGT opposed Le Pen but are crystal clear that they do not support Macron either. They realistically thought that Le Pen would be defeated of course, but Mayday is a celebration of the working class movement, and they felt that at least that movement should warn France's population as a whole of the battle to come that they will be need to lead in order to fight Macron.
The critical success of Melenchon's independent movement in the first round of France's Presidential election opens political space to start a mainstream challenge to Macron's defence of globalisation and his proposed labour and welfare 'reforms', let alone allow the preparation of a different sort of centre of 'resistance' should Macron fail and Le Pen re-emerge. This has meant that the collapse of the French Social Democratic Party does not equal the break up of working class political organisation but is at least partly by-passed by Melenchon's initiative (which started in 2008.) The left leadership of the Labour Party in Britain is sadly in quite a different position.
While an enormous and mainly young membership has led to inner party victories for a left leadership of Labour since 2015, May's Brexit mark 2 election has decided its chosen target as Labour leader Corbyn. The Tories, the Liberals (who have decided that they are the 'real' opposition), the SNP (who have retained their marginalisation of Labour in Scotland) and also the bulk of Labour's MPs and Mayors - are all opposing Labour's leadership as the UK decides who governs for the next 5 years.
A possible Labour retreat to its core support, and 200 or less MPs in Parliament on June 9, has not emerged because of Corbyn of course. (See numerous previous blogs.) Although the number of supposedly pro-Labour commentators, reporters, analysts, let alone the army of Labour politicians and traditional 'leading' supporters who are now wailing that it's all Corbyn's fault is frankly one of the greatest fantasies since Goebbels speeches. The Labour crisis goes very deep and has been maturing for a decade and more.
Nevertheless their remains one distinct failing of Labour's left leadership which is not that it could cure Labour's ailments, rather that it thought that it could. Everything from Melenchon's initiative to Trump's election campaign - against the Republicans - tells Corbyn that prioritising the good old status quo in one of the most traditional parties is a short step to undermining the credibility of any radical proposal you make. There are precious few really radical Labour leadership messages so far. And the few that have surfaced have credibility problems. How can people believe that Corbyn's leadership will do anything about the 'rigged system' he describes when he appears to be desperately holding up part of the rigging!
Looking for critical lessons in what are evolving and contradictory developments across two countries is bound to be a precarious occupation. However, it is worth registering some more obvious points the have surfaced so far.
The argument among the British left about whether Brexit was a principle because the fundamental character of the EU is a capitalist club, will not do. Experience certainly confirms that the EU is the European wide ruling class initiative designed to manage globalisation in a way that benefits them, but its removal does not necessarily mean a blow to globalisation. In some contexts, like those of Britain and France, Brexit or Frexit can become a signal for the political regroupment of the right. And globalisation will continue, or be bent in certain ways a la Trump, to suit the survival of the capitalist system whether the EU survives or not. Opposition to the EU can therefore (must therefore) take different forms in different contexts, including possible exits, and/or making critical demands that expose and crib the EU's force (e.g. Greece's Syriza government could have repudiated its EU led debt mountain and moved to its own currency when its population voted 'no' to any more austerity deals), and/or mobilising to overthrow one or other of its institutions, e.g. the ECB and debt burdens, etc. These actions can only be a consequence of the concrete analysis of the concrete situation.
Britain's Labour left leadership are already mounting an heroic but defensive stand. And there is still time to break out of the constraints created by the death agonies of Britain's enfeebled Social Democratic Party. The overall social relation of forces in Britain deny the early possibility of conquering a majority in Britain's population, or rather a sufficient minority that can, at this stage, lead society. The June 8 General Election result was written during the Iraq war, during the Scottish referendum, following the 2008 crash and the 2016 Brexit referendum. But it is still possible for Labour's left leaders to speak directly to their radical members, and to the fucked up, pissed off, de-motivated and increasingly impoverished Britons. The first step in ending Corbyn's 'rigged system' is measures that could really bring it down, whether official Labour likes them or not. And, to guarantee the voters who might listen, that the fight for these measures will go on inside and if necessary outside the Labour Party in a national movement and organisation from June 8 onwards.
Finally, does anybody really believe that Macron is going to succeed to reanimate French capitalism where every politician in France for the past two decades have promised and failed to do exactly that? Does anybody believe that May's Brexit will make the rich poorer and the poor richer in Britain? These politicians are walking failures. And what's next? When the political system genuinely fails, particularly when masses of people have already changed their allegiances and political habits of a lifetime to get answers, then fundamental shifts in thinking begin to supplant traditional understanding and direct action fills the vacuum left by failed representation. A new political arena emerges in society, and within that arena new forces are suddenly more relevant. The danger and complexity in society creates fear and scapegoating, but self-organised success and insurgency can build revolution.
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