The hypocrisy of both of the main players in the current clash between the British and the Russian governments, over the attempted murder of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in a provincial town in England, stinks to high heaven.
The British mainstream media has, naturally, rallied to the flag and universally damned Labour leader Corbyn for his reluctance to denounce Russia and all its underhand ways.
Prime Minster May has ramped up the Churchillian rhetoric. The poison from Russia is 'weapon-grade' and the attempted murder (which May sincerely hopes will remain for as long as possible 'attempted' rather than completed ) is 'an illegal act of war against a sovereign country.'
But wait a minute. In 2006 the Russian secret service apparently killed Alexander Livinenko. This was what Scotland Yard said at the trial in 2014/15.
'The evidence suggests that the only credible explanation is in one way or another the Russian state is involved in Litvinenko's murder.' Livineneko was killed with nuclear polonium. And the trial wrapped up with the stunning conclusion that Putin himself 'probably approved' the murder. But Prime Minster Blair, nor Prime Minister Brown, nor Prime Minister Cameron thought it necessary to suggest that the lump of polonium was 'weapons grade' (presumably because it was obvious that it was a weapon, given that someone had just been deliberately killed with it.) And neither did this unpatriotic trio characterise the use of a nuclear weapon against a British citizen as 'an act of war.'
Blair, Brown and Cameron were all well aware of Britain's own record here, organising murder squads in Afghanistan, in Libya, Tunisia and in the pre Good Friday days in Northern Ireland. And while the Russian regime was deeply irritating, in the long run, bumping off their own ex-citizens was not a number one priority, especially given the fertiliser provided for the City of London's garden.
But if Britain's previous PMs were hesitant, why is May now so bold?
Because of March 2019.
The issues here are not whether Putin's corrupt regime tries to murder its exiles, especially in Britain. The regime and its allies in the Russian media openly and proudly claim they do. They know that the City of London provides a unique and enriching nest for Russian exiles. They know that a stack of London's top rank buildings are for sale. So they try to make examples of those that have sought the good life in the increasingly dangerous West. The gathering, military and economic 'Cordon Sanitaire' that the West has built around Russia, post the fall of the USSR, drives an historically developed and understandable paranoia across Russia's population regarding a coming war and occupation - that paradoxically fuels Putin's otherwise waining support.
Neither is the issue one of Britain's plucky resistance to the Russian threat. May has not acted like her predecessors. No doubt May and friends are deeply nervous of uncoiling the City of London's golden knots. She will try her hardest not to go there and restrict play to increasingly fatuous tit for tat arrangements with Moscow. But she will sustain her little war as long as possible. (And when it has passed it will be periodically reheated.)
May is looking at March 2019. When she looks carefully at the 'final' deal that the EU will offer on trade AND the commitment she has made for a vote in Parliament before any deal is agreed, AND the legal right of any MPs to propose dropping the famous article 50 altogether, she will do the count and face the reality that she will probably have no majority among MPs in Parliament. So May will need to call a General Election before Parliament's decision (unless the EU were to bail her out and thereby wreck their own fragile unity.) So May has therefore started her own Falklands War. (The war that brought Thatcher back with a vast majority. The war that was backed by the then Labour leader, Michael Foot.)
The best and most direct expression about Putin's latest very public murder and possible responses was made by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell on the BBC news programme 'Today' when he simply said, 'follow the money!' Which, of course, includes investigating vast Russian handovers to the Tory party.
Labour leader Corbyn has raised that point in his Parliamentary statements, but he has added to that argument a series of perfectly correct views on the need for extreme caution (after Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, etc, etc) when the British Intelligence establishment plays 'name that villain!' But in this case there is an underestimation of the degree that the Russian population feels that the country is under siege and the effect of this being used by a current, cynical regime to reinforce its own power. Much the same as May is trying to organise in Britain. In this case it is surely an emphasis on the role of Russian oligarchs in the City of London's economics and in the evolution of Tory politics that needs to be front and centre and fully exposed to prick the 'war' balloon that May and her cronies are blowing as hard as they can.
Sunday 18 March 2018
Thursday 1 March 2018
Brexit and change.
Brexit (phase 2) is already creating a lot of agony, most of all for Britain's political institutions. Prime Minister May rails against the EU's latest document which, she claims, could undermine the sovereignty of Britain! Indeed, how to 'solve' Britain's poisoned part of Northern Ireland has been a century long saw. But May's Churchillian hyperbole only results in underlining the real point. The dilemma here is that the Brexit sound and fury currently vented by the Tory Party, Blair etc., just serves to mask the most critical questions for the rest of the British people. And that is the problem that has arisen since Britain's EU referendum. It has stood in as a proxy for the deep changes that are actually required to deal with the UK's failing society.
Following the February 26 speech that Labour leader Corbyn made (which focused on the need for a Customs Union with the EU) the mainstream British media interpreted Labour leader Corbyn's remarks about the EU's role in Britain's future as a political manoeuvre to break up the Tories. (See, for example, 'BBC Reality Check, Labour's Position'.) It may contribute to that end. But Corbyn's comments had a much wider and more refreshing purpose. He said;
'The EU is not the root of all our problems and leaving it will not solve all our problems. Likewise, the EU is not the source of all enlightenment and leaving it does not inevitably spell doom.'
Corbyn is not suggesting abstention from the EU argument. He has now begun to raise the issue in Parliament. And his specific recommendation in favour of a Customs Union with the EU makes no concessions to actual or potential EU regulation which might hinder or prevent key nationalisations or UK government led investments. In other words Corbyn is trying to deal with the EU from the point of view of the needs of a projected British economy; one which serves the people as a whole. Meanwhile Tory Britain rots on every front.
Right at the heart of Tory decay is PM May's alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party. The privileges and money now showered by Britain's government on one of the most backward, self-seeking, corrupt and unforgiving political formations in Europe is nothing at all to do with Brexit. It has everything to do with Tory (and ruling class) desperation to prevent an early General Election and a victory for a Corbyn-led Labour government.
Equally the Tory failures to maintain the NHS, to provide housing, to shore up welfare, to raise wages have nothing to do with Brexit as such. They are long term political/economic decisions about who should bear the burden of modern social welfare and whose living standards need to be defended and promoted, in the context of globalisation.
These simple truths are constantly covered up and muddled up by the public discussion of Brexit.
What then is the argument about Brexit?
In the 2016 referendum it was picked up in mainstream politics by the right in British society. It started from the impact of the UKIP platform, which argued that Britain lost a lot of money which could be spent on social needs because of the British payments to the EU and that hundreds of thousands of EU workers poured into Britain using services, taking jobs and cutting wages of the British residents. These ideas were predominant in the referendum campaign. Additionally they were initially reinforced by a deep sense of the failure of Britain's long-standing political leadership.
The argument about Brexit today still contains some of its previous racism and jingoism. Certainly the British far right have expanded and racist attacks remain much higher than prior to the referendum. But UKIP has collapsed. The Tory right have failed to shackle the momentum of UKIP and its 4 million voters. Their perspective for the creation of the largest tax haven on earth is currently a damp squib and their enthusiasm for a future under the tutelage of the US has been squelched by Trump. Indeed it is Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party that has created an alternative vision of an anti-establishment mainstream political force already predominant among younger voters. The more the Corbyn leadership identifies Britain's relationship to the EU in terms of the new model economy required in Britain - as he has begun in his identification of the parasitic role of the City of London - so the real meaning of the EU emerges.
Although an undertow of racist strains remain in the population and the far right use it when they can, the major arguments about Brexit in Britain are now moving towards the negative impact of capitalist globalisation and how to resist it. In that context the EU finds its natural place as a European instrument designed to promote globalisation and the interests of European based corporations and centres of wealth, in a contest with the US and Asia. And the Tories find themselves, like Blair, part of a worn out, backward looking and unsavoury British political establishment.
Following the February 26 speech that Labour leader Corbyn made (which focused on the need for a Customs Union with the EU) the mainstream British media interpreted Labour leader Corbyn's remarks about the EU's role in Britain's future as a political manoeuvre to break up the Tories. (See, for example, 'BBC Reality Check, Labour's Position'.) It may contribute to that end. But Corbyn's comments had a much wider and more refreshing purpose. He said;
'The EU is not the root of all our problems and leaving it will not solve all our problems. Likewise, the EU is not the source of all enlightenment and leaving it does not inevitably spell doom.'
Corbyn is not suggesting abstention from the EU argument. He has now begun to raise the issue in Parliament. And his specific recommendation in favour of a Customs Union with the EU makes no concessions to actual or potential EU regulation which might hinder or prevent key nationalisations or UK government led investments. In other words Corbyn is trying to deal with the EU from the point of view of the needs of a projected British economy; one which serves the people as a whole. Meanwhile Tory Britain rots on every front.
Right at the heart of Tory decay is PM May's alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party. The privileges and money now showered by Britain's government on one of the most backward, self-seeking, corrupt and unforgiving political formations in Europe is nothing at all to do with Brexit. It has everything to do with Tory (and ruling class) desperation to prevent an early General Election and a victory for a Corbyn-led Labour government.
Equally the Tory failures to maintain the NHS, to provide housing, to shore up welfare, to raise wages have nothing to do with Brexit as such. They are long term political/economic decisions about who should bear the burden of modern social welfare and whose living standards need to be defended and promoted, in the context of globalisation.
These simple truths are constantly covered up and muddled up by the public discussion of Brexit.
What then is the argument about Brexit?
In the 2016 referendum it was picked up in mainstream politics by the right in British society. It started from the impact of the UKIP platform, which argued that Britain lost a lot of money which could be spent on social needs because of the British payments to the EU and that hundreds of thousands of EU workers poured into Britain using services, taking jobs and cutting wages of the British residents. These ideas were predominant in the referendum campaign. Additionally they were initially reinforced by a deep sense of the failure of Britain's long-standing political leadership.
The argument about Brexit today still contains some of its previous racism and jingoism. Certainly the British far right have expanded and racist attacks remain much higher than prior to the referendum. But UKIP has collapsed. The Tory right have failed to shackle the momentum of UKIP and its 4 million voters. Their perspective for the creation of the largest tax haven on earth is currently a damp squib and their enthusiasm for a future under the tutelage of the US has been squelched by Trump. Indeed it is Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party that has created an alternative vision of an anti-establishment mainstream political force already predominant among younger voters. The more the Corbyn leadership identifies Britain's relationship to the EU in terms of the new model economy required in Britain - as he has begun in his identification of the parasitic role of the City of London - so the real meaning of the EU emerges.
Although an undertow of racist strains remain in the population and the far right use it when they can, the major arguments about Brexit in Britain are now moving towards the negative impact of capitalist globalisation and how to resist it. In that context the EU finds its natural place as a European instrument designed to promote globalisation and the interests of European based corporations and centres of wealth, in a contest with the US and Asia. And the Tories find themselves, like Blair, part of a worn out, backward looking and unsavoury British political establishment.
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