Chuka Umunna's amendment to the Tory's Queen's Speech (the minority Tory government's programme over the next two years) is the first tentative step towards a new party in the Westminster Parliament. 50 Labour MPs followed him and rejected Labour's call for abstention on the vote, which was backing a call for the UK to stay in the single market after Brexit. In reality Umunna's act had little to do with this or that aspect of the EU (although he and his followers are deeply committed to rejoining). Umunna, a sophisticated Blairite, stood and then withdrew from the Labour leadership in 2015. But he has retained his public contempt for the Corbyn leadership of the party and is an ideal leader for a new parliamentary formation to resurrect 'liberal globalisation' or, as the Economist magazine would have it, 'the centre ground of politics.'
51 Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs joined their Labour associates behind Umunna. These 101 MPs are beginning the process of getting the mainstream parties, Parliament and the British people comfortable with the idea that future alliances and and allegiances can emerge 'beyond' the battle between Corbyn's Labour and a fragile Tory government. Indeed an early initiative in the new Parliament was essential to establish the new ground.
The political battle lines in British society are clearer today than at any time since the 1970s. The creation of a new centrist party is undoubtedly desired by a significant section of the British establishment - and wider - but ruling class intervention into Britain's political crisis is not designed to clarify Britain's condition. Rather the opposite. Nevertheless, this pantomime in Parliament will continue. The strength won by the Corbyn Labour Party in the recent General Election is a huge and unexpected obstacle to the 'centrists.' But the process of levering a split in the Party has started.
This is another reason why political leadership in British society now depends on the action, organisation and mobilisation of the British people - to remove the Tories now and win a great victory for the Corbyn Labour Party as soon as possible.
Friday 30 June 2017
Tuesday 27 June 2017
UK - the weakest link in Europe
Britain's political crisis is obvious across the world. The world's assumption that British political stability was the norm was more than a quaint anachronism. For instance the attraction of London as an international finance centre was rooted, first in Empire and latterly in the famous 'stability' of Britain's main state institutions. An impeccable civil service, a parliamentary system organised to produce one party government (but beyond the reach of any really big financial decisions since the 1950s) and an incorruptible financial network, all combined to provide safety and profit to large (rich) parts of a very uncertain world.
But the City of London and Britain's 'super banks' - the Royal Bank of Scotland was the world's biggest bank in 2007 - turned out to be at the leading edge of international financial corruption and wild practise, despite their noble titles. Britain's civil service no longer attracted the ruling classes' intelligentsia. Poor and insecure salaries are no competition compared with the possibilities of the property market, or international stock market operations. Now the parliamentary system has also gone decidedly wrong. The electorate are not taking their proper turn. Offered referendums and General Elections they vote, desperate to find anything that looks like a better life, but unable to gather what they want and need, in the choices being offered. The House of Lords has reduced itself to an international laughing stock and since 2010, successive governments in the House of Commons, that only win by finger-nail margins, are rapidly using up their political leaderships in a series of failures.
The overblown structure of Britain's economy in a medium sized country, with one of the largest service sectors among all OECD countries, which comes fifth on productivity among the G7 countries (behind Italy) which has at its centre an epic, global, finance centre, is shaking to bits.
One example demonstrates how dangerously lopsided British economics are. In September 2015, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that non-British owners of shares in companies registered on the British Stock Exchange amounted to 54% of the £935 billion total. (The value of all shares on the British Stock exchange on September 4 in 2015 was £1.76 trillion, owned by individuals, companies, hedge funds, banks etc.) UK share owners held 10.7% of the £935 billion that was owned by individuals. (In 1963 it had been 54%.) US owners held nearly 50%, Europeans outside the UK, 26%, and Asian owners, 10.6%. Outside the individual owner sector, UK based organisations owned even less of the overall £1.76 trillion worth of company shares in the UK market. The UK public sector (the government) owned 2.5%. British Pension funds and Insurance (which owned 50% of total UK shares in 1992) now own below 10% - the lowest proportion ever.
Slick-talkers and would-be financial wiz kids tell us that all this just represents the globalisation of investment. It could be London; it could be New York; it could be Tokyo. Not so. London's pattern of international ownership, like its constantly rising proportion of service industry versus manufacture, like its poor and declining productivity, is a unique combination. The US stock exchange has only 16% of its shares owned outside the US and Japan only 32%. Britain is a low wage, service driven, internationally owned economy, crowned by a tottering, out of control, now deserting, finance sector. These economic realities are the submerged nine tenths of the iceberg - where all that can be seen above the waves is the melting tip - as the UK's traditional, mainstream politics dissolves its traditional shape. Meanwhile the vast forces underneath heave and crack.
Share ownership is only one example of the catastrophic mess that is evolving in the heart of British capitalism. Fake elections, between right wing Blairites and liberal Tories up to 2010, a half-baked referendum in 2016 on whether Britain's future is best served inside or outside the EU, did not answer the questions which are increasingly agitating and enervating the mass of ordinary people. Aware that something is going very wrong in British society, people reach for bolder and bolder possibilities, only to find that up to the last General Election, the responses offered by their political leaderships turned out not to be answers at all. In the EU referendum many were caught in the right's racist explanation of low wages and the sinking of the welfare state. But others sought for sovereignty in their vote, only to find that Brexit by itself solves nothing regarding who owns and controls the country.
But now an alternative, a real alternative to the various offerings made by the fraying political status quo, is taking shape. A new and youthful enthusiasm has created its own direction against the traditional media, against both the liberal and increasingly illiberal Tories, against Blarite Labour, in favour of a previously marginal, longstanding, radical-left politician, who begins at last to face up to the real questions of who holds the wealth and power in Britain. And the people, led by the youth, some major unions, by the Britons of colour, by the ordinary people who will not accept injustice anymore, have at last the sense that they are beginning to tackle the real roots of the real wrongs in their society.
But the City of London and Britain's 'super banks' - the Royal Bank of Scotland was the world's biggest bank in 2007 - turned out to be at the leading edge of international financial corruption and wild practise, despite their noble titles. Britain's civil service no longer attracted the ruling classes' intelligentsia. Poor and insecure salaries are no competition compared with the possibilities of the property market, or international stock market operations. Now the parliamentary system has also gone decidedly wrong. The electorate are not taking their proper turn. Offered referendums and General Elections they vote, desperate to find anything that looks like a better life, but unable to gather what they want and need, in the choices being offered. The House of Lords has reduced itself to an international laughing stock and since 2010, successive governments in the House of Commons, that only win by finger-nail margins, are rapidly using up their political leaderships in a series of failures.
The overblown structure of Britain's economy in a medium sized country, with one of the largest service sectors among all OECD countries, which comes fifth on productivity among the G7 countries (behind Italy) which has at its centre an epic, global, finance centre, is shaking to bits.
One example demonstrates how dangerously lopsided British economics are. In September 2015, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that non-British owners of shares in companies registered on the British Stock Exchange amounted to 54% of the £935 billion total. (The value of all shares on the British Stock exchange on September 4 in 2015 was £1.76 trillion, owned by individuals, companies, hedge funds, banks etc.) UK share owners held 10.7% of the £935 billion that was owned by individuals. (In 1963 it had been 54%.) US owners held nearly 50%, Europeans outside the UK, 26%, and Asian owners, 10.6%. Outside the individual owner sector, UK based organisations owned even less of the overall £1.76 trillion worth of company shares in the UK market. The UK public sector (the government) owned 2.5%. British Pension funds and Insurance (which owned 50% of total UK shares in 1992) now own below 10% - the lowest proportion ever.
Slick-talkers and would-be financial wiz kids tell us that all this just represents the globalisation of investment. It could be London; it could be New York; it could be Tokyo. Not so. London's pattern of international ownership, like its constantly rising proportion of service industry versus manufacture, like its poor and declining productivity, is a unique combination. The US stock exchange has only 16% of its shares owned outside the US and Japan only 32%. Britain is a low wage, service driven, internationally owned economy, crowned by a tottering, out of control, now deserting, finance sector. These economic realities are the submerged nine tenths of the iceberg - where all that can be seen above the waves is the melting tip - as the UK's traditional, mainstream politics dissolves its traditional shape. Meanwhile the vast forces underneath heave and crack.
Share ownership is only one example of the catastrophic mess that is evolving in the heart of British capitalism. Fake elections, between right wing Blairites and liberal Tories up to 2010, a half-baked referendum in 2016 on whether Britain's future is best served inside or outside the EU, did not answer the questions which are increasingly agitating and enervating the mass of ordinary people. Aware that something is going very wrong in British society, people reach for bolder and bolder possibilities, only to find that up to the last General Election, the responses offered by their political leaderships turned out not to be answers at all. In the EU referendum many were caught in the right's racist explanation of low wages and the sinking of the welfare state. But others sought for sovereignty in their vote, only to find that Brexit by itself solves nothing regarding who owns and controls the country.
But now an alternative, a real alternative to the various offerings made by the fraying political status quo, is taking shape. A new and youthful enthusiasm has created its own direction against the traditional media, against both the liberal and increasingly illiberal Tories, against Blarite Labour, in favour of a previously marginal, longstanding, radical-left politician, who begins at last to face up to the real questions of who holds the wealth and power in Britain. And the people, led by the youth, some major unions, by the Britons of colour, by the ordinary people who will not accept injustice anymore, have at last the sense that they are beginning to tackle the real roots of the real wrongs in their society.
Monday 26 June 2017
Monsieur Macron.
Welcome to the newest star in the EU firmament, M. Macron,
'Not yet 40' drooled the BBC's latest roving philosopher Jim McNaughty. 'Merkel and Macron will dominate the scene (in Europe) for years together.' McNaughty is not alone in his ringing admiration since Macron has won a substantial majority in the French parliament, which is now full of Macronite representatives who 'feel the excitement of the coming battles' and 'who are off on an adventure.' (All quotes from Today BBC news programme 26 June.)
On what is this adventure based? Why, Macron has cut France's Gordian knot. He has 'turned politics from the right and the left, upside down!' A slightly dubious sign of this Gallic triumph is Macron's association with one Alistair Campbell, a Blairite political fixer who tells us that he has often spoken to Macron and who clearly believes that Macron might be even better than Blair! Macron, according to Campbell,
'Really feels he is made for this (presidential) role.' Macron has more self-confidence than Blair it seems. And Macron, according to an increasingly awe-filled Campbell, 'is just this side of arrogance.' Well, that's alright then.
Many French commentators and news outlets are more thrilled. France it seems has a new identity and sense of purpose. We are told by French polls that 80% of the French now see Macron offering a new hope and direction for France.
The French Republic, created by the mighty French Revolution in the 1780s, has made 5 attempts so far to recreate itself, as its ruling classes have either successively failed to destroy its insurgent and radical foundations and thereby brought themselves to dictatorship, or equally failed to lead its defence against external reactionary efforts to bring it down and expunge its experience from European history. Or both - at the same time. (See 1870 and the Paris Commune.) France is still on its fifth Republic, founded by DeGaulle in 1958, but the argument in Le Ecole des Hautes Etudes (France's most prestigious social science research body) was that, before Macron, the fifth was already over.
But, however shiny, nothing, especially in a sinking social system, is ever genuinely new.
'First as tragedy, then as farce' was Karl Marx's comment about Napoleon III's seizure of power in 1848. Since the multi-faceted Napoleon 3, a quick march takes us through to 1936 and the Popular Front, led by Blum, whose main efforts were to still the French labour movement, producing Petain, who unleashed savagery, albeit French savagery, to a chauvinist, imperialist DeGaulle, to Mitterand's 14 years, creating a spurious 'common ground' between antagonistic social classes, pacifying working class leadership and thereby whittling away its initiative. Tragedy, farce, working class defeat, followed by savagery, paralytic chauvinism, concessions and now, M. Macron. Mitterand (and his hopeless political children including Hollande) give way to a new force. This new force proposes to return to defeat; defeat of the French working class. Indeed the whole of the EU's dominant classes believe that only through taming of European labour - at least down to the levels available in the EU's Eastern bloc - will they succeed.
Succeed in what? Succeed in mastering the key aim of the EU in the first place; to create a third pole of capitalism, between Asia and the US. The EU is organised to allow Europe to claim its place in the onward march of globalisation.
Macron's project in essence is simple; to defeat French labour, its benefits, its legal rights, its returns in wages for its labour. French political leadership had (after previous failures) to thoroughly reorganise its parties, its representatives and its political momentum to get to that purpose. And the 5th Republic is facing its last throw of the historical dice.
The 'great men' of the French Republics - and between them - (there have been no 'great women' yet) have all been created for the requirements of the period that they must master. Macron is not some Prometheus landing from the Gods, ready to save the 5th. He is a thoroughly trained bureaucrat and politician, with an impeccable background, with enormous (largely hidden) resources, who now seeks to renovate French capitalism. His emergence, and the manufactured excitement around his arrival (remember the 40/60% parliamentary vote off) is just another turn of the wheel in French history and spurred entirely by the need to 'adapt' to globalisation.
Underneath Macron's 'triumph' are the shadows. There are the abstainers, who did not vote, not because they were happy already with a regime which does not yet exist, but because they do not believe in Macron's goals. A large part of that abstention came from those who are preparing to defend themselves against Macron's intended 'battle.' Macron won no votes in in the banlieus, few in the factories or schools, very few among France's people of colour. And after the fight to come stands the only alternative remaining to to the French right (and the German and the Dutch and the Italian right.) If the traditional right in France has been swept away to open the door to Macron's offensive, and if Macron fails to win his battle with labour in France, the rulers of France will (nervously, hesitantly, dishonestly) 'help' the french people to turn to the neo-fascists - because their fear of an insurgent movement lead by labour is much greater than their distaste for Marine LePen.
'Not yet 40' drooled the BBC's latest roving philosopher Jim McNaughty. 'Merkel and Macron will dominate the scene (in Europe) for years together.' McNaughty is not alone in his ringing admiration since Macron has won a substantial majority in the French parliament, which is now full of Macronite representatives who 'feel the excitement of the coming battles' and 'who are off on an adventure.' (All quotes from Today BBC news programme 26 June.)
On what is this adventure based? Why, Macron has cut France's Gordian knot. He has 'turned politics from the right and the left, upside down!' A slightly dubious sign of this Gallic triumph is Macron's association with one Alistair Campbell, a Blairite political fixer who tells us that he has often spoken to Macron and who clearly believes that Macron might be even better than Blair! Macron, according to Campbell,
'Really feels he is made for this (presidential) role.' Macron has more self-confidence than Blair it seems. And Macron, according to an increasingly awe-filled Campbell, 'is just this side of arrogance.' Well, that's alright then.
Many French commentators and news outlets are more thrilled. France it seems has a new identity and sense of purpose. We are told by French polls that 80% of the French now see Macron offering a new hope and direction for France.
The French Republic, created by the mighty French Revolution in the 1780s, has made 5 attempts so far to recreate itself, as its ruling classes have either successively failed to destroy its insurgent and radical foundations and thereby brought themselves to dictatorship, or equally failed to lead its defence against external reactionary efforts to bring it down and expunge its experience from European history. Or both - at the same time. (See 1870 and the Paris Commune.) France is still on its fifth Republic, founded by DeGaulle in 1958, but the argument in Le Ecole des Hautes Etudes (France's most prestigious social science research body) was that, before Macron, the fifth was already over.
But, however shiny, nothing, especially in a sinking social system, is ever genuinely new.
'First as tragedy, then as farce' was Karl Marx's comment about Napoleon III's seizure of power in 1848. Since the multi-faceted Napoleon 3, a quick march takes us through to 1936 and the Popular Front, led by Blum, whose main efforts were to still the French labour movement, producing Petain, who unleashed savagery, albeit French savagery, to a chauvinist, imperialist DeGaulle, to Mitterand's 14 years, creating a spurious 'common ground' between antagonistic social classes, pacifying working class leadership and thereby whittling away its initiative. Tragedy, farce, working class defeat, followed by savagery, paralytic chauvinism, concessions and now, M. Macron. Mitterand (and his hopeless political children including Hollande) give way to a new force. This new force proposes to return to defeat; defeat of the French working class. Indeed the whole of the EU's dominant classes believe that only through taming of European labour - at least down to the levels available in the EU's Eastern bloc - will they succeed.
Succeed in what? Succeed in mastering the key aim of the EU in the first place; to create a third pole of capitalism, between Asia and the US. The EU is organised to allow Europe to claim its place in the onward march of globalisation.
Macron's project in essence is simple; to defeat French labour, its benefits, its legal rights, its returns in wages for its labour. French political leadership had (after previous failures) to thoroughly reorganise its parties, its representatives and its political momentum to get to that purpose. And the 5th Republic is facing its last throw of the historical dice.
The 'great men' of the French Republics - and between them - (there have been no 'great women' yet) have all been created for the requirements of the period that they must master. Macron is not some Prometheus landing from the Gods, ready to save the 5th. He is a thoroughly trained bureaucrat and politician, with an impeccable background, with enormous (largely hidden) resources, who now seeks to renovate French capitalism. His emergence, and the manufactured excitement around his arrival (remember the 40/60% parliamentary vote off) is just another turn of the wheel in French history and spurred entirely by the need to 'adapt' to globalisation.
Underneath Macron's 'triumph' are the shadows. There are the abstainers, who did not vote, not because they were happy already with a regime which does not yet exist, but because they do not believe in Macron's goals. A large part of that abstention came from those who are preparing to defend themselves against Macron's intended 'battle.' Macron won no votes in in the banlieus, few in the factories or schools, very few among France's people of colour. And after the fight to come stands the only alternative remaining to to the French right (and the German and the Dutch and the Italian right.) If the traditional right in France has been swept away to open the door to Macron's offensive, and if Macron fails to win his battle with labour in France, the rulers of France will (nervously, hesitantly, dishonestly) 'help' the french people to turn to the neo-fascists - because their fear of an insurgent movement lead by labour is much greater than their distaste for Marine LePen.
Tuesday 20 June 2017
After a British left breakthrough - what happened in Scotland?
The left in England and Wales have seized the political initiative in society for the first time since the early 1970's. There maybe constant reminders in the mainstream media that the Tories took most votes and that they have the largest number of MPs in the British Parliament - but the UK election result was a disaster for them. They have continued to stumble over the London Grenfell Tower fire and the endless 'about to be concluded' talks with Ireland's most reactionary party, the DUP, which are meant to guarantee majority votes for future Tory legislation. A national demonstration has been called for July 1st by the anti-austerity movement including the Peoples Assembly, many unions, most of the campaigning organisations with respect to health, education, housing and now those fighting for safety in the tower blocks. The main slogan of the demonstration is that the Tories must go. The potential size and spirit of this march is already haunting Tory spokespeople in the media.
In Scotland however 12 new Tory MPs produced more than half of the Tory 'gains' across Britain. Scottish Labour clawed back 6 seats in Scotland's traditionally most radical and working class areas in Glasgow and Fife. The Scottish National Party lost 13% of their vote and 30% of the MPs that they had won in the 2015 General Election.
Now the left throughout Britain are confused by the Scottish results. From being the most radical corner of Britain in 2015, with a leading party, the SNP, hostile to austerity and nuclear weapons, looking like an indispensable part of an answer to the Tories' continuing domination of Westminster, the 2017 election looks substantially different. The Scottish vote seems neither to link to the successful insurgence of Corbyn's Labour Party. Nor does it grasp the main means that the SNP offered - another referendum on Scottish independence - which seemed such an obvious solution to endless Tory rule. On the contrary, 60% of the Scottish vote went to unionist parties.
There are technical reasons advanced as explanations for Scotland's unexpected vote in Scottish newspapers and on-line. They include the fact that Scotland has had 7 polls in 3 years. Ex SNP leader and now ex MP Alex Salmond argues that the Scottish Labour Party's partial come-back was accounted for by the Corbyn upsurge and was not a sign of growing support for Scottish Labour as such. In the radical left, including in some of the unions, the traditional view that Scottish Independence would divide the British working class and their organisations has strongly re-emerged, particularly among supporters of the Socialist Party (ex-Militant) and the British Communist Party. Even Kezia Dugdale, leader of the Scottish LP (and supporter of Owen who challenged Corbyn in his second leadership contest) is now keeping quiet about her own plans for a Federal Britain. She also denies telling leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon that she would support a new referendum for Scotland following the Brexit result.
Is the Scottish result simply 'a return to normal'? Has the Scottish interest in the national question now begun to recede in favour of what some in the left call 'the class question'? Has the Corbyn led national Labour Party's undoubted progress overcome the attraction of a Scottish national answer to endless Tory governments?
A key to understanding the Scottish result, indeed where Britain as a whole is heading, is to recognise that the UK is in a process that has barely begun. The fundamental character of this process is the deep political crisis of the traditional ruling classes that has opened up in the West. Fluctuating, even wild (albeit short-term) solutions come and go, from Trump to Macron. All are temporary. All represent increasingly desperate efforts to use various different political instruments to stabilise a system that is dissolving. Getting out of the EU is one such initiative. Will it give the UK any sort of 'control' over its borders, its trade deals, its economy? No more than before. Maybe less. Looking at Britain's political context directly; will the Corbyn led Labour Party (as opposed to the big majority of right wing Labour MPs who are constantly plotting to reform their own Labour Party) come to government and carry out its manifesto if the Tories fall, as seems likely? Not unless the Corbyn Party out-builds the old Labour Party on the streets, in the housing schemes, in the workplaces and across the land. This means a Parliament in the hands of its people.
In this context Scottish voters have lived with the SNP for a decade. Nothing very spectacular there. And what did an SNP version of Scottish independence look like? A bit more of the same. In the Scottish election, where SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon put a second referendum as the main issue in 2017 as a means of dealing with Brexit, Scottish voters were unimpressed. An extension of the same did not catch it. For or against Brexit was not the point. Meanwhile, the real and only dramatic alternative to daily life offered in the General Election was stifled out of the contest by Scottish Labour's traditional Scottish messages and its fear and hatred of Corbyn. Scottish voters split up. They could not get access to the change they saw in the first referendum campaign where they had been building towards a very different sort of country - led by the youth and Scotland's most radical areas. Instead the next referendum turned out to be a means of getting back into the EU. Even if you voted to remain, you would not want a country based on it.
So the Scottish election was about the SNP's Scottish government - at best all right. Better than the Tories and old Labour. At worst - just as bad as the rest of them. Certainly no radical image of a new type of country. The significance and potential of Scotland's national question remains to be newly identified and rediscovered. It has not gone away because the SNP has started to go away. Creating a new nation, based on meeting the needs of its working classes, in the shadow of the best of the Scandinavian past, implementing its free movement of people, eschewing the nuclear dead weight is still essential. Indeed it is essential for the reconstruction of all and every part of a profoundly reactionary Britain. But new forces and new alliances in Scotland will be needed to bring it back to the centre of things again.
None of the current political parties have yet caught up in Britain with the depth and significance of the political crises they have to face. Corbyn's Labour (as opposed to the other Labour Party) has come the furthest - certainly head and shoulders above the Macrons of this new Western world (as noted by the 60% abstention in France's recent Parliamentary elections.) All sorts of slides and shifts are on the cards in British politics. Corbyn's Labour is one key marker around which new movements and formations might be built. It is the beginning of something. Already it has shaken traditional British politics to the core. And there is the lesson about how the new politics has to be built - with the mass movement and parties or bits of them tied irrevocably into the movements of the people - sometimes against their own traditions and worn-out symbols. And this will need to be the new politics of Scotland's next move toward independence.
In Scotland however 12 new Tory MPs produced more than half of the Tory 'gains' across Britain. Scottish Labour clawed back 6 seats in Scotland's traditionally most radical and working class areas in Glasgow and Fife. The Scottish National Party lost 13% of their vote and 30% of the MPs that they had won in the 2015 General Election.
Now the left throughout Britain are confused by the Scottish results. From being the most radical corner of Britain in 2015, with a leading party, the SNP, hostile to austerity and nuclear weapons, looking like an indispensable part of an answer to the Tories' continuing domination of Westminster, the 2017 election looks substantially different. The Scottish vote seems neither to link to the successful insurgence of Corbyn's Labour Party. Nor does it grasp the main means that the SNP offered - another referendum on Scottish independence - which seemed such an obvious solution to endless Tory rule. On the contrary, 60% of the Scottish vote went to unionist parties.
There are technical reasons advanced as explanations for Scotland's unexpected vote in Scottish newspapers and on-line. They include the fact that Scotland has had 7 polls in 3 years. Ex SNP leader and now ex MP Alex Salmond argues that the Scottish Labour Party's partial come-back was accounted for by the Corbyn upsurge and was not a sign of growing support for Scottish Labour as such. In the radical left, including in some of the unions, the traditional view that Scottish Independence would divide the British working class and their organisations has strongly re-emerged, particularly among supporters of the Socialist Party (ex-Militant) and the British Communist Party. Even Kezia Dugdale, leader of the Scottish LP (and supporter of Owen who challenged Corbyn in his second leadership contest) is now keeping quiet about her own plans for a Federal Britain. She also denies telling leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon that she would support a new referendum for Scotland following the Brexit result.
Is the Scottish result simply 'a return to normal'? Has the Scottish interest in the national question now begun to recede in favour of what some in the left call 'the class question'? Has the Corbyn led national Labour Party's undoubted progress overcome the attraction of a Scottish national answer to endless Tory governments?
A key to understanding the Scottish result, indeed where Britain as a whole is heading, is to recognise that the UK is in a process that has barely begun. The fundamental character of this process is the deep political crisis of the traditional ruling classes that has opened up in the West. Fluctuating, even wild (albeit short-term) solutions come and go, from Trump to Macron. All are temporary. All represent increasingly desperate efforts to use various different political instruments to stabilise a system that is dissolving. Getting out of the EU is one such initiative. Will it give the UK any sort of 'control' over its borders, its trade deals, its economy? No more than before. Maybe less. Looking at Britain's political context directly; will the Corbyn led Labour Party (as opposed to the big majority of right wing Labour MPs who are constantly plotting to reform their own Labour Party) come to government and carry out its manifesto if the Tories fall, as seems likely? Not unless the Corbyn Party out-builds the old Labour Party on the streets, in the housing schemes, in the workplaces and across the land. This means a Parliament in the hands of its people.
In this context Scottish voters have lived with the SNP for a decade. Nothing very spectacular there. And what did an SNP version of Scottish independence look like? A bit more of the same. In the Scottish election, where SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon put a second referendum as the main issue in 2017 as a means of dealing with Brexit, Scottish voters were unimpressed. An extension of the same did not catch it. For or against Brexit was not the point. Meanwhile, the real and only dramatic alternative to daily life offered in the General Election was stifled out of the contest by Scottish Labour's traditional Scottish messages and its fear and hatred of Corbyn. Scottish voters split up. They could not get access to the change they saw in the first referendum campaign where they had been building towards a very different sort of country - led by the youth and Scotland's most radical areas. Instead the next referendum turned out to be a means of getting back into the EU. Even if you voted to remain, you would not want a country based on it.
So the Scottish election was about the SNP's Scottish government - at best all right. Better than the Tories and old Labour. At worst - just as bad as the rest of them. Certainly no radical image of a new type of country. The significance and potential of Scotland's national question remains to be newly identified and rediscovered. It has not gone away because the SNP has started to go away. Creating a new nation, based on meeting the needs of its working classes, in the shadow of the best of the Scandinavian past, implementing its free movement of people, eschewing the nuclear dead weight is still essential. Indeed it is essential for the reconstruction of all and every part of a profoundly reactionary Britain. But new forces and new alliances in Scotland will be needed to bring it back to the centre of things again.
None of the current political parties have yet caught up in Britain with the depth and significance of the political crises they have to face. Corbyn's Labour (as opposed to the other Labour Party) has come the furthest - certainly head and shoulders above the Macrons of this new Western world (as noted by the 60% abstention in France's recent Parliamentary elections.) All sorts of slides and shifts are on the cards in British politics. Corbyn's Labour is one key marker around which new movements and formations might be built. It is the beginning of something. Already it has shaken traditional British politics to the core. And there is the lesson about how the new politics has to be built - with the mass movement and parties or bits of them tied irrevocably into the movements of the people - sometimes against their own traditions and worn-out symbols. And this will need to be the new politics of Scotland's next move toward independence.
Thursday 15 June 2017
London on fire
If you want to know the factual details about the fire and its terrible effects for those who lived in Grenfell Tower, part of a social housing project in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, then find the BBC site. This piece is about the anger the fire is causing.
So far the ex-residents know that many in the building had campaigned about their view that the safety arrangements in the tower were inadequate - including the safety plan for any fires. This campaign was heightened after a 'refit' of the tower, which the outsourced management body, then outsourced to contractors, in 2016. After the refit, complaints about 'open' gas pipes, about alarms, and worries among some residents about the effect of the top to bottom cladding, installed on the surface of the building, all arose. Among the horrors that hundreds of people had to deal with when awoken by the smoke in Grenfell Tower were the signs and safety instructions that told them, in the event of fire, to remain in their flats, while the fire roared up the building in minutes.
They also know that their Tory Council paid a 'management' company to deal with their local social housing. This is a 'normal' procedure now in the UK. There are different political outlooks on why this happens. Tories and Blairites are wedded (sometimes personally) to the 'efficiency', to the lower costs and to the 'dynamic enterprise' of private sector sharks sniffing the blood of the public sector. But all Councils, and Local Authorities in general, are long past having the resources needed to cover even the basic legal activities they are required to carry out via their own resources. Instead they pretend to 'deliver' close monitoring of these once-removed activities to ensure that their legal responsibilities are covered.
Both previous Labour and Tory Governments help them in this generally thankless task. For example, there was a law, now gone, that the Fire Brigade used to have to check all new larger buildings, before they were opened to the public and whenever major renovation was carried out. That was before austerity. The trouble with the Fire Brigade assessments were that they were most pernickety, very thorough and sooo expensive in their recommendations. (Perhaps something to do with often working to stop fire in buildings and save lives? Who knows.) Now 'independent' (private) assessors assess buildings and they draw up a Fire Risk Assessment. The Fire Brigade gets to look over the plan - after the fire. As the assessor is being paid by the management company - and there are many in the market - its probably best not to stir up your Management Company too much.
This trail of moneymaking shit is all perfectly legal, all within 'proper specifications' and the Grenfell Tower Management Company are already saying it. Some of the residents are talking about being victims of a conspiracy to minimise their essential requirements for their own safety. That the fire 'could have been prevented.' If it is true and the regulations were followed (and there are a multitude of recent examples in modern Britain where even the piss-poor regulations were not carried out starting with catastrophe brought about by 2000 top bankers in 2008) then what we have is still a conspiracy. It is a conspiracy of the system.
These are some items from 'Inside Housing' the main journal dealing with Social Housing, in its April 13 edition
A stark warning: the Shepherd's Bush tower block fire
Last year, a fire broke out in a Shepherd’s Bush tower block and spread quickly up the outside of the building...
Flames tore across five floors of the Shepherd’s Court building in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) last August in scenes reminiscent of the Lakanal House tragedy, after a faulty tumble dryer caught fire on the seventh floor...
Documents released to Inside Housing under the Freedom of Information Act this week revealed that an investigation showed panels attached to the outside of the building came apart when burnt, exposing flammable insulation material and plywood to the blaze.
It concluded this “is likely to have assisted the fire in spreading up the outside of the building”, with the London Fire Brigade (LFB) warning H&F and all other London boroughs about use of the panels. No details surrounding the spread of the fire had previously been released.
A spokesperson for the LFB said: “We have written to Hammersmith and Fulham Council and all other London boroughs to inform them of the results and have advised that they review the use of these panels in their buildings and take appropriate action to mitigate the fire risk.”
This is an item from the Independent, 14 June
A report from 2011 warned that almost three-quarters of UK social housing blocks were potentially unsafe in a fire....Carried out when (Tory Minister) Grant Shapps was Housing and Local Government Minister, the 2011 survey revealed that 75 per cent of managers responsible for maintaining social housing buildings were not certain their blocks had undergone a proper fire risk assessment.
Now Teresa May is setting up an Public Enquiry. This is the normal step taken by the authorities when social and political pressure is rising, when all the warnings have all been ignored, a large number have people been killed and a wall of procedure needs to be erected in order to prevent the world from seeing the obvious and acting on it in the here and now.
Many of the residents of Grenfell have said in interviews they are sure that the high buildings that surround them in Kensington and other rich London Boroughs in Central / West London would have all the possible safety features installed to prevent fire from slaughtering their residents.
There is another fire in London. It is the mounting fury for a system decked with self-serving politicians providing legal fortunes to expensive spivs as they wreck the last precious foundations of social services in health, education, housing. People are dieing from this system in hospitals, in care centres and in their own houses. While the mainstream political certainties are failing, the new reality is that alternatives are rising. Nobody needs an Enquiry to tell us the consequences that the people suffer as a result of the years spent defending the rich. And now this wretched parody of a government can be brought down. The anger has somewhere to go and something to build - out of the flames and onto the streets.
So far the ex-residents know that many in the building had campaigned about their view that the safety arrangements in the tower were inadequate - including the safety plan for any fires. This campaign was heightened after a 'refit' of the tower, which the outsourced management body, then outsourced to contractors, in 2016. After the refit, complaints about 'open' gas pipes, about alarms, and worries among some residents about the effect of the top to bottom cladding, installed on the surface of the building, all arose. Among the horrors that hundreds of people had to deal with when awoken by the smoke in Grenfell Tower were the signs and safety instructions that told them, in the event of fire, to remain in their flats, while the fire roared up the building in minutes.
They also know that their Tory Council paid a 'management' company to deal with their local social housing. This is a 'normal' procedure now in the UK. There are different political outlooks on why this happens. Tories and Blairites are wedded (sometimes personally) to the 'efficiency', to the lower costs and to the 'dynamic enterprise' of private sector sharks sniffing the blood of the public sector. But all Councils, and Local Authorities in general, are long past having the resources needed to cover even the basic legal activities they are required to carry out via their own resources. Instead they pretend to 'deliver' close monitoring of these once-removed activities to ensure that their legal responsibilities are covered.
Both previous Labour and Tory Governments help them in this generally thankless task. For example, there was a law, now gone, that the Fire Brigade used to have to check all new larger buildings, before they were opened to the public and whenever major renovation was carried out. That was before austerity. The trouble with the Fire Brigade assessments were that they were most pernickety, very thorough and sooo expensive in their recommendations. (Perhaps something to do with often working to stop fire in buildings and save lives? Who knows.) Now 'independent' (private) assessors assess buildings and they draw up a Fire Risk Assessment. The Fire Brigade gets to look over the plan - after the fire. As the assessor is being paid by the management company - and there are many in the market - its probably best not to stir up your Management Company too much.
This trail of moneymaking shit is all perfectly legal, all within 'proper specifications' and the Grenfell Tower Management Company are already saying it. Some of the residents are talking about being victims of a conspiracy to minimise their essential requirements for their own safety. That the fire 'could have been prevented.' If it is true and the regulations were followed (and there are a multitude of recent examples in modern Britain where even the piss-poor regulations were not carried out starting with catastrophe brought about by 2000 top bankers in 2008) then what we have is still a conspiracy. It is a conspiracy of the system.
These are some items from 'Inside Housing' the main journal dealing with Social Housing, in its April 13 edition
A stark warning: the Shepherd's Bush tower block fire
Last year, a fire broke out in a Shepherd’s Bush tower block and spread quickly up the outside of the building...
Flames tore across five floors of the Shepherd’s Court building in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) last August in scenes reminiscent of the Lakanal House tragedy, after a faulty tumble dryer caught fire on the seventh floor...
Documents released to Inside Housing under the Freedom of Information Act this week revealed that an investigation showed panels attached to the outside of the building came apart when burnt, exposing flammable insulation material and plywood to the blaze.
It concluded this “is likely to have assisted the fire in spreading up the outside of the building”, with the London Fire Brigade (LFB) warning H&F and all other London boroughs about use of the panels. No details surrounding the spread of the fire had previously been released.
A spokesperson for the LFB said: “We have written to Hammersmith and Fulham Council and all other London boroughs to inform them of the results and have advised that they review the use of these panels in their buildings and take appropriate action to mitigate the fire risk.”
This is an item from the Independent, 14 June
A report from 2011 warned that almost three-quarters of UK social housing blocks were potentially unsafe in a fire....Carried out when (Tory Minister) Grant Shapps was Housing and Local Government Minister, the 2011 survey revealed that 75 per cent of managers responsible for maintaining social housing buildings were not certain their blocks had undergone a proper fire risk assessment.
Now Teresa May is setting up an Public Enquiry. This is the normal step taken by the authorities when social and political pressure is rising, when all the warnings have all been ignored, a large number have people been killed and a wall of procedure needs to be erected in order to prevent the world from seeing the obvious and acting on it in the here and now.
Many of the residents of Grenfell have said in interviews they are sure that the high buildings that surround them in Kensington and other rich London Boroughs in Central / West London would have all the possible safety features installed to prevent fire from slaughtering their residents.
There is another fire in London. It is the mounting fury for a system decked with self-serving politicians providing legal fortunes to expensive spivs as they wreck the last precious foundations of social services in health, education, housing. People are dieing from this system in hospitals, in care centres and in their own houses. While the mainstream political certainties are failing, the new reality is that alternatives are rising. Nobody needs an Enquiry to tell us the consequences that the people suffer as a result of the years spent defending the rich. And now this wretched parody of a government can be brought down. The anger has somewhere to go and something to build - out of the flames and onto the streets.
Monday 12 June 2017
What comes after the UK General Election?
Looking at the facts of the voting in the UK's June 8, 2017 UK General Election is enough to crush some skewed arguments about the meaning of the results. For instance, Chris Leslie, a shadow Chancellor for Labour in 2015, said
'We shouldn’t pretend that this is a famous victory. It is good, as far as it’s gone, but it’s not going to be good enough. Five years of Conservative government: I just can’t, I’m afraid, be a cheerleader for that particular outcome because this was an open goal for all of us. We should have been getting in there.'
Prime Minister Teresa May's campaign was poor but her voting turn out for the Tory Party of 13.6 million votes, some 42.45% of the voting population, was higher than two of the three Thatcher victories in the 1980s. May's Tories did not offer an 'open goal'. She thought that would do much better because she thought she would roll up UKIP's votes, she believed Corbyn was failing, and that most of Corbyn's MPs were against him. But even though May was wrong on one of those three points she did still not crash the Tory vote. May picked up the bulk of UKIP voters. She scored much higher than Cameron, the previous Tory Prime Minister in both of his elections.
Meanwhile Corbyn's parliamentary opponents in Labour managed to fall silent for a few weeks (only because they thought Corbyn would more easily removed if they did.) But Corbyn's Labour still did much better than expected. In other words, starting from a 20 point gap, Labour leader Corbyn's 12.8 million votes, with some 40% of the voting population, a 9.5% higher proportion than previous Labour leader - Ed Milliband's - efforts, was an astonishing triumph in its own right.
This is the reason why Labour's parliamentary right wing now stands defeated on both fronts. They hoped that Corbyn would crash and burn. But Corbyn's leadership and his left Manifesto won over millions, not because of May's undoubted weaknesses as her own vote showed, but because Corbyn's Labour Party with a new left policy is on the ascendant in new sectors of the population despite all the obstacles that have been placed in its path. Labour's right wing can no longer claim that Corbyn is a 'looser' or that Blair's liberal capitalism is the only way that Labour might succeed.
Some other significant pointers show a remarkable trend - particularly in Southern England and London most especially. Kensington is an affluent London Borough and not all of Labour's success can be put down to the majority of EU 'retainers' there. There were other much more direct options for such a voting intention. Labour's manifesto was popular on many Kensington doorsteps. Less well publicised is the astonishing success of Louise Irvine, the convener of the successful 'Defend Lewisham Hospital' in her campaign in Surrey South West Constituency, the 'seat' of Tory Health Minister James Hunt and a Tory certainty. Irvine came second with 20% of the votes (12,093) and an increase since the 2015 election of 11.5% against Hunt, who lost 4.1% of his vote compared with 2015. Events like these begin to give a shape about the real meaning of the election.
The June 8 UK General Election should not go down as Prime Minister May's mistake, or the result of 'open goals'. The substance of the matter is that a new political force has now moved centre stage. The results of the election in Scotland and in Norther Ireland are sufficiently different to require separate consideration, but in England and to a lesser extent Wales, millions of young people have started to move leftward.
It was already the case that following the student rebellion of 2010 - 12 and the major, youth-dominated march of at least 100 000, which took place, days after the Tory success against Ed Milliband's Labour in 2015, that tens of thousands had become active in the anti-austerity movement led by the Peoples Assembly. With Corbyn's challenge for the leadership inside the Labour Party came a movement led by young people into Labour to support Corbyn. What the June 8 election shows that now millions simultaneously believe that a left policy is necessary for the country, that austerity is wrong and that Corbyn best expresses their outlook on the economy, on austerity and social services and on war.
The reason why Britain (including establishment pillars like the 'Economist') feel that Corbyn's Labour has won and May has lost is not just because May will obviously fall, but because the initiative, the direction of the country has changed. The 'Economist' wanted the election to open out the prospects of a new party, one which can draw together 'liberal capitalism', defend globalisation, that can produce a British Macron in a 'radical centre' party, from the dispossessed Labour Blairites and the disappointed Tories. Instead they have witnessed the birth of quite a different 'new party'; a genuinely new Corbyn led Labour Party, that is both radical and which potentially holds the political leadership of society - not based on disaffected MPs - but led by millions of young people.
And that is the core of the coming weeks and months. This new force in all its facets must go into action. Out on the streets, in the workplaces, schools, colleges and universities, the job now is to bring down the rotten remnants of May's dying Tories. A huge social movement can now topple the Tories - with a real alternative to win. Bring down the government is the watchword. Take action on the streets, in the parks, across the cities and through the country is the means. Taking the leadership of society is the goal.
'We shouldn’t pretend that this is a famous victory. It is good, as far as it’s gone, but it’s not going to be good enough. Five years of Conservative government: I just can’t, I’m afraid, be a cheerleader for that particular outcome because this was an open goal for all of us. We should have been getting in there.'
Prime Minister Teresa May's campaign was poor but her voting turn out for the Tory Party of 13.6 million votes, some 42.45% of the voting population, was higher than two of the three Thatcher victories in the 1980s. May's Tories did not offer an 'open goal'. She thought that would do much better because she thought she would roll up UKIP's votes, she believed Corbyn was failing, and that most of Corbyn's MPs were against him. But even though May was wrong on one of those three points she did still not crash the Tory vote. May picked up the bulk of UKIP voters. She scored much higher than Cameron, the previous Tory Prime Minister in both of his elections.
Meanwhile Corbyn's parliamentary opponents in Labour managed to fall silent for a few weeks (only because they thought Corbyn would more easily removed if they did.) But Corbyn's Labour still did much better than expected. In other words, starting from a 20 point gap, Labour leader Corbyn's 12.8 million votes, with some 40% of the voting population, a 9.5% higher proportion than previous Labour leader - Ed Milliband's - efforts, was an astonishing triumph in its own right.
This is the reason why Labour's parliamentary right wing now stands defeated on both fronts. They hoped that Corbyn would crash and burn. But Corbyn's leadership and his left Manifesto won over millions, not because of May's undoubted weaknesses as her own vote showed, but because Corbyn's Labour Party with a new left policy is on the ascendant in new sectors of the population despite all the obstacles that have been placed in its path. Labour's right wing can no longer claim that Corbyn is a 'looser' or that Blair's liberal capitalism is the only way that Labour might succeed.
Some other significant pointers show a remarkable trend - particularly in Southern England and London most especially. Kensington is an affluent London Borough and not all of Labour's success can be put down to the majority of EU 'retainers' there. There were other much more direct options for such a voting intention. Labour's manifesto was popular on many Kensington doorsteps. Less well publicised is the astonishing success of Louise Irvine, the convener of the successful 'Defend Lewisham Hospital' in her campaign in Surrey South West Constituency, the 'seat' of Tory Health Minister James Hunt and a Tory certainty. Irvine came second with 20% of the votes (12,093) and an increase since the 2015 election of 11.5% against Hunt, who lost 4.1% of his vote compared with 2015. Events like these begin to give a shape about the real meaning of the election.
The June 8 UK General Election should not go down as Prime Minister May's mistake, or the result of 'open goals'. The substance of the matter is that a new political force has now moved centre stage. The results of the election in Scotland and in Norther Ireland are sufficiently different to require separate consideration, but in England and to a lesser extent Wales, millions of young people have started to move leftward.
It was already the case that following the student rebellion of 2010 - 12 and the major, youth-dominated march of at least 100 000, which took place, days after the Tory success against Ed Milliband's Labour in 2015, that tens of thousands had become active in the anti-austerity movement led by the Peoples Assembly. With Corbyn's challenge for the leadership inside the Labour Party came a movement led by young people into Labour to support Corbyn. What the June 8 election shows that now millions simultaneously believe that a left policy is necessary for the country, that austerity is wrong and that Corbyn best expresses their outlook on the economy, on austerity and social services and on war.
The reason why Britain (including establishment pillars like the 'Economist') feel that Corbyn's Labour has won and May has lost is not just because May will obviously fall, but because the initiative, the direction of the country has changed. The 'Economist' wanted the election to open out the prospects of a new party, one which can draw together 'liberal capitalism', defend globalisation, that can produce a British Macron in a 'radical centre' party, from the dispossessed Labour Blairites and the disappointed Tories. Instead they have witnessed the birth of quite a different 'new party'; a genuinely new Corbyn led Labour Party, that is both radical and which potentially holds the political leadership of society - not based on disaffected MPs - but led by millions of young people.
And that is the core of the coming weeks and months. This new force in all its facets must go into action. Out on the streets, in the workplaces, schools, colleges and universities, the job now is to bring down the rotten remnants of May's dying Tories. A huge social movement can now topple the Tories - with a real alternative to win. Bring down the government is the watchword. Take action on the streets, in the parks, across the cities and through the country is the means. Taking the leadership of society is the goal.
Thursday 1 June 2017
Deep and dramatic shifts in UK politics.
The polling in UK's coming General Election (8 June) is a mixed bag. Whereas previous UK elections saw opinion polls grouping behind a single message, this election has spread them out. For example on May 31 some polls kept (UK Prime Minister) Teresa May ahead of Labour's Jeremy Corbyn by 10 points, others narrowed the gap to 3 points. Outside observers suggest the pollsters are running shy of previous errors. But whatever the scale of differences between the polls, the trend of increased support for Labour and a small decline in support for the Tories is common to all of them.
This should not have happened. It was not in the mainstream media's script. There was to be a snap election that provided a Tory 'landslide.'
After all Corbyn has been an insignificant, rabid socialist all his life! Most Labour MPs supported a vote of no confidence in him! On the other hand, May had united her Tory Party after the Cameron, Brexit catastrophe; swallowed UKIP's 3.9 million 2015 votes whole, and become both 'strong and stable' as she savagely attacked the EU membership that she had voted for last year.
The shift in the polls between Labour and the Tories has come about, not so much because May has revealed herself to be weak under pressure from her own party and her party's voter base (although her self-styled 'strong and stable' mantra has all-but disappeared). The Tory decline seems to amount to about to a couple of nervous polling points against her. The significant shift in all the polling has been the rise of potential votes for Labour. Why? Most people's best guess is that Labour's increasing support is a result of the Corbyn team's manifesto - although the pro Labour shift started earlier and many commentators believe Corbyn gets more popular when he, rather than the caricature, is seen. Corbyn's Labour manifesto is a dramatic assault on austerity, both in relation to social services and the NHS, and in relation to the decline in wages and the continued rise in the wealth of the top 5%.
Several polls now put Labour's support higher than ex Labour leader, Ed Miliband's vote in the 2015 election. One poll put's Labour's vote as higher, by nearly 4%, than Labour's last General Election Victory under Blair in 2005.
There are two other types of polls which are telling a new story about Corbyn's Labour. The first nationally published polls have started to appear on the likely distribution of seats in Parliament. Sinister figures like Lord Ashcroft used to cook up these sorts of polls in the past for Tory party purposes - but his methods were unclear and information was scanty. YouGov have produced a poll, based on the average of all polls to date, and linked to other elements of analysis, involving 50k potential voters, which shows that May will be 16 MPs short of an overall majority in Parliament, despite winning many more seats than Labour. May's 'strong and stable' snap election and Tory landslide is potentially collapsing over her head.
A London newspaper, the Metro, published a YouGov poll on the 26 April which showed that the 18 - 24 age group were 19% more in favour of Corbyn than May (when Labour were supposedly 40 points behind the Tories.) 18 - 40 year old women backed Corbyn 42% to May's 27%. Men in the same bracket favoured Corbyn over May by 32 - 31%. It is worth noting that Thatcher was supported by 42% of 18 - 24 year olds in 1979.
The British polls and polling are a fragile thing, although the trend in growing support for the Labour Party and the reaction of younger voters is a stable feature of longer term assessments. However it is still useful to draw out some larger implications of the provisional figures that have emerged.
First, the Blairite and right wing Labour insistence that only a liberal, globalist approach could establish a solid base for the modern Labour Party is in splinters. Which is not to say that this central set of beliefs and political orientation is dead in the future of British politics. What it does mean is that it will be much harder, after the support that Corbyn has won for the Labour Party, to simply revert Labour back to its Blairite history. On the contrary, it is even clear in the few politician's debates that have been publicised on TV that there is a roaring anger against austerity and its effects on the NHS etc., that are not about to go away whether May wins handsomely or not.
Second, Le Pen's 34% of the French voters in the final round of the French Presidential election contained a big majority of younger voters, especially beyond France's larger cities. If (when) Macron fails, it will be the French youth that will be seen and heard first. In Britain, it is of tremendous significance that in the battles to come, the youth are overwhelmingly identified with the Corbyn left, where they have begun to embrace politics. The tremendous efforts of the Peoples Assembly and other anti austerity, anti-War and Racism movements have been and continue to be decisive in this utterly critical issue. Consider if UKIP or the English Defence League had built a sizeable youth movement under the racist pressures extolled by May, UKIP and their versions of Brexit.
Third and finally Britain's political crisis is shifting again and shaping new developments - following the election.
If there is any reality to the YouGov polling on the distribution of Parliamentary seats following the June 8 Election, then the coalition of right wing Tory May and UKIP (absence made of any UKIP MP) will have to face an anti-austerity coalition in order to be defeated. This anti-austerity coalition would be the new premise for the Labour Party. Together with the SNP's projected 50 seats, Plaid Cymru's 3 and the Greens 1, Labour would hold the majority over the Tories. How could it not take such a step in the name of the British people against a grotesque, anti-working class government? The next steps in British politics will be need to big ones.
Equally Britain's traditional ruling class is also preparing. According to the Economist, see We don't like this Election! the stage is set for a Macron type move, to rebuild a new Blair/Cameron political 'force' in Parliament, following May's coming disasters and Corbyn's 'red menace.' Welcome to a role for the Liberal Democrats - once more! They are to be the magnet for disaffected Tories and rebellious Labourites in Parliament - dressed up as the new politics and given the Macron shine! (And an epic wedge of loot.) The next stage of Britain's political crisis is being set.
This should not have happened. It was not in the mainstream media's script. There was to be a snap election that provided a Tory 'landslide.'
After all Corbyn has been an insignificant, rabid socialist all his life! Most Labour MPs supported a vote of no confidence in him! On the other hand, May had united her Tory Party after the Cameron, Brexit catastrophe; swallowed UKIP's 3.9 million 2015 votes whole, and become both 'strong and stable' as she savagely attacked the EU membership that she had voted for last year.
The shift in the polls between Labour and the Tories has come about, not so much because May has revealed herself to be weak under pressure from her own party and her party's voter base (although her self-styled 'strong and stable' mantra has all-but disappeared). The Tory decline seems to amount to about to a couple of nervous polling points against her. The significant shift in all the polling has been the rise of potential votes for Labour. Why? Most people's best guess is that Labour's increasing support is a result of the Corbyn team's manifesto - although the pro Labour shift started earlier and many commentators believe Corbyn gets more popular when he, rather than the caricature, is seen. Corbyn's Labour manifesto is a dramatic assault on austerity, both in relation to social services and the NHS, and in relation to the decline in wages and the continued rise in the wealth of the top 5%.
Several polls now put Labour's support higher than ex Labour leader, Ed Miliband's vote in the 2015 election. One poll put's Labour's vote as higher, by nearly 4%, than Labour's last General Election Victory under Blair in 2005.
There are two other types of polls which are telling a new story about Corbyn's Labour. The first nationally published polls have started to appear on the likely distribution of seats in Parliament. Sinister figures like Lord Ashcroft used to cook up these sorts of polls in the past for Tory party purposes - but his methods were unclear and information was scanty. YouGov have produced a poll, based on the average of all polls to date, and linked to other elements of analysis, involving 50k potential voters, which shows that May will be 16 MPs short of an overall majority in Parliament, despite winning many more seats than Labour. May's 'strong and stable' snap election and Tory landslide is potentially collapsing over her head.
A London newspaper, the Metro, published a YouGov poll on the 26 April which showed that the 18 - 24 age group were 19% more in favour of Corbyn than May (when Labour were supposedly 40 points behind the Tories.) 18 - 40 year old women backed Corbyn 42% to May's 27%. Men in the same bracket favoured Corbyn over May by 32 - 31%. It is worth noting that Thatcher was supported by 42% of 18 - 24 year olds in 1979.
The British polls and polling are a fragile thing, although the trend in growing support for the Labour Party and the reaction of younger voters is a stable feature of longer term assessments. However it is still useful to draw out some larger implications of the provisional figures that have emerged.
First, the Blairite and right wing Labour insistence that only a liberal, globalist approach could establish a solid base for the modern Labour Party is in splinters. Which is not to say that this central set of beliefs and political orientation is dead in the future of British politics. What it does mean is that it will be much harder, after the support that Corbyn has won for the Labour Party, to simply revert Labour back to its Blairite history. On the contrary, it is even clear in the few politician's debates that have been publicised on TV that there is a roaring anger against austerity and its effects on the NHS etc., that are not about to go away whether May wins handsomely or not.
Second, Le Pen's 34% of the French voters in the final round of the French Presidential election contained a big majority of younger voters, especially beyond France's larger cities. If (when) Macron fails, it will be the French youth that will be seen and heard first. In Britain, it is of tremendous significance that in the battles to come, the youth are overwhelmingly identified with the Corbyn left, where they have begun to embrace politics. The tremendous efforts of the Peoples Assembly and other anti austerity, anti-War and Racism movements have been and continue to be decisive in this utterly critical issue. Consider if UKIP or the English Defence League had built a sizeable youth movement under the racist pressures extolled by May, UKIP and their versions of Brexit.
Third and finally Britain's political crisis is shifting again and shaping new developments - following the election.
If there is any reality to the YouGov polling on the distribution of Parliamentary seats following the June 8 Election, then the coalition of right wing Tory May and UKIP (absence made of any UKIP MP) will have to face an anti-austerity coalition in order to be defeated. This anti-austerity coalition would be the new premise for the Labour Party. Together with the SNP's projected 50 seats, Plaid Cymru's 3 and the Greens 1, Labour would hold the majority over the Tories. How could it not take such a step in the name of the British people against a grotesque, anti-working class government? The next steps in British politics will be need to big ones.
Equally Britain's traditional ruling class is also preparing. According to the Economist, see We don't like this Election! the stage is set for a Macron type move, to rebuild a new Blair/Cameron political 'force' in Parliament, following May's coming disasters and Corbyn's 'red menace.' Welcome to a role for the Liberal Democrats - once more! They are to be the magnet for disaffected Tories and rebellious Labourites in Parliament - dressed up as the new politics and given the Macron shine! (And an epic wedge of loot.) The next stage of Britain's political crisis is being set.
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