The best future for the UK's people.

The best future for the UK in the next political and economic period is to accept the right of its various citizens to decide the separation of the UK's different countries. It would follow that the English, the Scots and the Welsh could seek a federation together with the other more social democratic countries of Northern Europe. The Northern Irish, happily, are already able to become part of Ireland, should they so wish.

What would this achieve? It would simultaneously dissolve the self-styled 'great power status', of UK/England and make it much easier thereby to focus the separate countries on the conditions and lives of their ordinary peoples. A second 'Hanseatic League' (originally a very successful 13th to 15th century trading arrangement across Northern Europe) could start again on the new basis of defending the social gains made so far in the West, as globalisation smashes up the post WW2 welfare states. It is the Northern European states who are still holding the social-democratic line - against their will in some cases. With a new approach promoting the sort of society that starts from the needs of the people, an England, a Scotland and a Wales could stand with Norway, Sweden and Denmark, holding back the wave of destruction of social support and care which destroyed Greece and is currently rolling its menace across France and Italy.

Utopia? Behind what might be described as a fantasy, are two hard facts. First is the economics of the next period in the West. Most large European countries spend the bulk of the taxes they receive on Health, Education and Welfare. Their governments have been forced to do that since 1945. The EU countries as a whole use 35.7% of their countries' Gross Domestic Product (the goods and services that the country produces) in government expenditure. France is in the middle of a battle to drastically slice government expenditure by cutting pensions, but the French state normally spends 47.9% of France's GDP.  Germany 44.5%. Then there is Scandinavia. There is a battle here too; an endless demand from the corporations, most of the media, the higher classes to cut government spending. But ...

Sweden uses 49.8% of its country's GDP. Denmark 50.8% and Norway 54.8%. And the UK government? It spends 34.4% of the country's GDP. The UK is at the bottom of all the large western countries, thanks to Thatcher and Blair.

The second 'hard fact' is the dissolution of Britain's traditional politics. Boris Johnson's victory at the polls in Britain's 2019 General Election, manoeuvred by the crushing of his EU remainers in Parliament; was created by the defeat of the left-led Labour Party. But Boris's maimed victory is not resolved, courtesy of Corbyn's defeat. It is Boris's 'utopia', as it will unfold under the pressure of his brutal Brexit, the downturn across the the capitalist world, the single economic leverage that he has chosen to use for the UK's future, that will turn the politics of the UK into another fast spin. In essence, Boris has to burn down the current proportion of the UK's education, health and welfare to shore up the tax-light wealth he needs to attract and sustain his contest with Singapore, etc.

How will the politics of Boris's project fall-out? The Borisian dream is utterly bent on the critical role of the British-based banks and finance companies (touched by computer super gaming - expanding as hard as possible - offering a tech substitute for the failure of AI.) This is to be underpinned by the US of course; together with all the other Anglo 'let's go world-wide wide open' countries - that want to hoard wealth and keep the immigrants out. This is not any sort of recipe for stable future, buttressed by well paid and interesting apprenticeships and jobs!

The smoke and mirrors in front of Boris's political success will clear very fast. Indubitably, our UK's mini-Trump will try to hold onto his equivalent of the British rust-bucket that Trump still savours. Hundreds of thousands are 'back to work' in some of the US States that crashed out of their traditional Democratic allegiance in the last Presidential contest. The new work is now some fracking, some metal work, but mainly folding boxes. In the UK, fracking is going nowhere, metal and engineering are escaping Britain almost as fast as cars. And most of the Midlands and the North East are already folding boxes or working in the collapsing social services. Boris has to make a giant leap beyond Trump's 'offer' in the US, in order to set his new rust-buckets screwed Tory tight. That's the real fantasy.

And then there is the nation. Scotland will demand the right to vote again on independence. Northern Ireland are allowed to do it when they want. Scotland is already on the march. This, and the deep dislike of Boris in Scotland, will force the issue after the Scottish elections in 2021. Additionally, the British Labour Party may well by then agree with the SNP's view on a new referendum - as Labour digs deeper when their 2020 leadership election proves nothing like enough to rebuild a victory in a UK election.

And then there are the direct movements that will erupt against Boris's government. The post Brexit times will cause all sorts of certainties to crash. The growing hatred of the current political system among a third of Britons will quickly re-grow. (The Royal family are providing further fuel.) The absolutely essential creation of a new Green deal, in jobs, technology and reorganisation of industries like farming, will become more and more acute. Recognition of the meaning of Britain's separate nations will be unavoidable. New political alliances will be essential. All this will seem to come very quickly. British politics (along with most western politics) is going very fast now. But the new Labour leadership will not solve, let alone lead, these great movements. That is the decisive result of the 2019 election.

What can Labour do?

Starting with 10 million who ignored and who even spat at the attacks on Corbyn that blossomed from both outside and in the Labour Party, a real, tough, practical vision is emerging in a future that will need much more than the standard 'our turn next' from the Labour Grandees.  

The ten million Labour voters and the hundreds of thousands of Labour members need to take stock of why the Labour Party failed and what the Labour Party should do now. Now is the time to ask the questions; what sort of Labour Party do we want to be? What sort of Labour Party can we be? The dangerous effect of Labour's defeat is the idea that now is the time for what will be a paralytic 'unity'. The truth is the exact opposite. The would be 'unifiers' have turned reality on its head. There are a potential five years before Boris can be overturned by votes in a General Election. The time for Labour's unity was before and during the election. It did not happen inside the Parliamentary Party - who ignored the members and opposed Corbyn. There was no unity in the Labour Party in the 2019 General Election. That was when there should have been unity. But now is the time to analyse, criticise, debate and consider. The call for 'unifying' now is simply a means by which it will be the wings of the Parliamentary Labour Party that will de facto answer the questions about Labour's future.

Fighting constituency by constituency over the next period for an MP that 'unifies' the Party - in their own terms - is a cul de sac. Boris will rapidly provide battlefields in the economy and in politics which will require the most intense direct action. Boris's inevitable attacks on the right to independence, on pensioners, the unemployed, on Welfare, Health and Education, on worker's rights and on US collaboration, will also decide if there is a future for the Labour Party. The membership and supporters of the Labour Party need to be front and centre in the movements, the marches, the direct actions that stop Boris and, as with PM Heath in the 1970s and Thatcher in the 1980s, bring him down. The other Labour Party - in Parliament - can go along with their membership, or carry on despising them and praying for a wealthy post, as in the past. In effect, two Labour Parties. It is breathtakingly obvious which of the two Labour Parties would win back the Midlands and the North East, open the door to a new, green economy and re-build respect in a separate Scotland and Ireland.

And that is why Labour's membership and Labour's supporters need now to discuss and debate, to consider what is right and what is wrong with Britain's Labour Party, to look around Europe and the world and to set a different course - to make new alliances for a new society and a new democracy.