Is Keir Starmer for you?

Sir Keir Starmer (SK) gave a 'zoom' speech to the British people on Thursday the 18th of February. The speech got the expected proclaim from the usual corners in the traditional parliamentary Labour party and, more recently, the new LP officials who are currently smashing up what remains of the left-Labour Constituency parties. SK taunted Tory Boris, repeating his sad commentary about the Prime Minister's failure in the first half of Covid. And he described for the 100th time that the Tories were more interested in money than in the 'new' contract that SK was now about to present - his combined efforts uniting business, the workers and a 'good' (SK) type government. SK does not want people to get poorer. He is very sad about the poor. So, SK is going to hold on to peoples own money, make sure there are many homes to buy, and offer government bonds so that the investors are ok and the poor can keep all their money in government savings! Would you credit it?

He went further. Harold Wilson had taught SK that Labour was all about 'the soul.' And Clement Attlee had been successful because he had worked together with society (just like SK wants) at a really difficult moment. And so it went on - the repetitive drivel, offered by yet another Labour politician who's dad worked on the shop floor and who made it clear that you had to come together with labour and business and work with a good government. What a novelty. The minor change away from the 'bus-driver dads' that seem to litter the references of would-be Labour MPs, did not provide any relief. SK managed his public babble about his family - particularly embarrassing.

Clement Attlee won a Labour government because millions had beaten Hitler and because he would use that potential momentum to build the NHS. The NHS was mentioned by SK. But not mentioned were the removals of the great private moguls of the day (who offered no future investment - just personal profits) and which were replaced instead by nationalised transport, coal, steel etc; covering the heart of British industry. Amazingly SK seemed somehow to have forgotten the two previous, popular Labour Manifesto's in 2017 and 19, which were prominently proposing social ownership in various industries - for the same reasons that were prevalent in 1945 - that concentrated wealth is not being distributed and production is not progressing 

Harold Wilson's main 'achievement' was to try and fight the unions but slyly - because British capital was then on a decade-long investment strike and because the Tories had been beaten when they attacked the miners and failed to win the election. Sadly, Wilson did not resolve the crisis by challenging capital. Like the Tory Heath, Wilson failed as well (and he also appeared to have no soul whatsoever.) As for SK's dad, you might have thought that he could expect his son, with the name that he had been given, to offer something beyond government bonds and private homes - for the poor!  

Since his 18 Feb., speech, SK has gone on to support Tory Boris recommending that there should be no increase in Corporation tax after Covid (although some Tories and a few more Labour MPs, in shame, have forced a certain step back.) And, most recently, SK has sworn that Labour would press the nuclear button with full gusto. With the unspoken denial of Attlee's main economic policy, with a Wilson type (non) soul, and his dad's supposed desire for getting it all together on the shop-floor, SK has got nowhere. He has even managed to drop the public's devastated memory of the Tories first stage of Covid.

The UK is now in the third stage of Covid. This new stage has to be the beginnings of the new economy and politics, required to deal with one of the most catastrophic crises across the world, and particularly as a large country in the West, with one of the largest proportional death roles. So far SK offers a poor version of an already declining Labour Party. What is needed is the greatest, most bold measures - requiring a change of politics based on a new democracy; regular and prepared referenda; national and local independence; and with economics; based on the distribution of wealth and social production. KS is nowhere near any of this. His world is firmly locked in the dwindling past. Normally Labour would just meander on. Today, KS and the bulk of his MPs have got absolutely nothing to offer anybody about the avalanche just ahead. It is the lowest ebb of the remains of British social democracy. It will not participate in the UK's politics and economics in next decade.

The real future post Covid.

The turning world has got faster as a result of the pandemic. One thousand and one suggestions have been offered as to what is coming next. The vast majority, at least in the West, have been accelerations of previously considered developments. For example, shops will have to be quirky and city centres generally full of costly, fashionable leisure. More significantly (and much less exposed) are the decisions that have already deciding the future for us. The Bloomberg Business Week proclaims that, 'California's vote to classify Uber and Lyft drivers as contractors has emboldened other employers to eliminate salaried positions-and has become a cornerstone of bigger plans to "Uberize" the US workforce.' Perhaps this is what the new 'futurists' mean by robotic production?

Most of these visions of the post Covid future are the normal clap-trap already in the here and now; or a view entirely based on a one-sided perspective that finds a point already made and elaborates it. But clear futures, which are mainly social and political contests yet to be fought, are now better understood, despite the fascinating, speculative, mist and mirrors about shops and working at home.

For instance, youth unemployment in the West has shot up during Covid. The House of Commons Library (26 January 2021) tells us that nearly 6 million of 16-24 young people are now unemployed. That does not include Fairloughed youth, who lose their Government's help, along with the older adults, in April. Nearly 10 million of those. 

The West have appalling histories regarding youth employment. Spain's youth now has a 40.2% unemployment figure. France, 21.2%. The US 19%. (The Guardian.) Gutram Wolff, Director of the think tank Bruegal, has studied the trends. In 2008 the US youth were only 10% unemployed. The EU on average moved on from 16% of youth unemployment to 26% now. This is a growing and speeding-up disaster. The UK cost of youth unemployment before Covid (see 'Youth Employment UK') is costed as £28 Billion. Youth unemployment in the UK is estimated by the New Statesman to be the highest since the last 40 years.

Young people in the UK were made redundant at a speed of five times faster that last year.   

Just this one thing tells us what is likely to emerge in the West. The future for young people, Continental wide, is getting worse, and more quickly, and much more obvious to see. 

Another major 'future' that Covid enhances; fullfact.org points out that average wages fell and are lower now than 10 years ago. (Interestingly, London and the South East suffered the steepest falls but starting from a higher position in the country.) Average earners in London dropped from £700 a week in 2009 to £655 a week now. Northern Ireland fell from £522 a week to £504. Public sector workers and men in Britain felt the worst decline - and the real role of 'self employment', the great boon offered by Thatcher, exposed its purpose, in that the self employed dropped their incomes from an average of £21,000 down to £15,000 in their last 10 year period of 'freedom'.        

What does this second fact suggest for the Covid future, at least from the West? 

The UK is typical here and leads a growing trend in the West in relation to types of work. Since the end of the 1980s the UK has led a process of shifting production and productivity and investment away from traditional work. Today, small businesses run by the self-employed, represent 93% of the UK's six million businesses. These businesses employ 13.3 million people, and provided a turn-over of £1.6 trillion in 2020  (The Independent.) Meanwhile the immense assets in private housing have, up to now, built the UK's wealth. The world's potential productive investment is in the hands of global communication corporations, China's industry and secret castles of wealth in borrowed nation's banks and tax-havens.   

The implications could not be clearer - and we are already being prepared politically across the West. In the UK, small businesses are being destroyed. The middle classes in the big cities are fearful that their housing assets will start to decline and the self-employed are already against the wall. The Thatcher goal of winning the blue collar workers through housing is well over. We already see how the great corporations of the West are willing and organised to prevent any sort of wealth distribution. This, directly, demands a much more ferocious regime to deal with labour. A second wave of capitalism (see California) is emerging. And this, in turn, will require our leaders to carry out some serious adaptions of what remains of any democratic politics. To whit, remove virtually any remaining parts of genuine democratic decisions.

If social democracy had any chance today of shifting wealth towards support for unions, the extension of public ownership and social welfare - let alone the use of expensive measures to reduce climate change - it would need to completely reorganise democratic politics and economics. It would need to prepare for the battle of a life-time. In 2021 ruling classes in the West cannot offer reform, even if they wanted to. 

But what is stoking up, particularly in the West, is an immense population that is unable to maintain security, improve their lives or even promise their children that they will do better. We have see the first wave of anger, fury and direct action, from US women, then for an expanded black rebellion again slavery and the police, then from 74 million voters who backed Trump out of poisonous despair. That 74 million was brought together by Trump because he understood that today's capitalism has to divide, to focus on others and not the system. However, the argument post Covid has barely begun. The next stage is to understand that we need a new society, a different type of civilisation, and a new economics and politics to start the move on.  

Attacks on Scottish independence.

A second referendum for Scottish independence is looming. It could start in a practical shape on Thursday 6 May. The May elections in Scotland will determine whether or not the SNP wins a majority in the Scottish Parliament. The SNP's leader, Nicola Sturgeon, has insisted that she would set up a new referendum for Scottish Independence immediately should the SNP succeed in achieving a majority. 

This blog, and previous activists across the whole UK, that went on to associate with this blog, have argued for the right of independence for Scotland since the Thatcher years onwards. At the most basic UK level, Scottish independence would mean the start of the break-up of the UK. It would finally dump 'Great Britain's' historical, imperial-based ambitions and instead create the opening of new set of radical countries close to Scandinavia. It would deliver a gift, led by Scotland's working class and its youth, into a new direction for these currently benighted islands at the edge of Europe.

The complexities, including Boris's' intentions if the SNP do win their majority in May, are serious and manifold. But before that stage starts, two serious obstacles are already emerging rapidly over the horizon. The first, and by far the most immediate danger for the May elections, is the role that Alex Salmond has chosen. 

Salmond, as all know, was the SNP's leader before Sturgeon who broke the lock of the Scottish Labour Party over the West of Scotland and won the main part of Scotland's working class voters. Salmond resigned when the first Scottish independence referendum produced a majority against independence in 2014. He was subsequently acquitted from rape and other related charges after a trial in 2020. 

The Scottish government eventually admitted it had botched its own investigation and after the trial it had to pay Salmond's legal fees of £520,000 when it admitted it had acted unlawfully. Earlier, before the trial, Salmond had complained that Sturgeon asked for new government policies on sexual harassment to be put in place in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Salmond believed the policy was aimed at him. Salmond and his supporters also claimed that Sturgeon has misled parliament over the government inquiry into the allegations. They have accused officials close to her of conspiring against Salmond. The government inquiry, majority SNP, is now generally described as a farce.

The most recent poll, undertaken by Savanta ComRes by the newspaper 'The Scotsman', interviewed 1,002 adults aged 16 or over online between February 4 and 9. Support for independence has dropped below 50 per cent when 'don’t knows' are included for the first time since December, with 47 per cent of Scots intending to vote Yes, 42 per cent voting No, and 10 per cent undecided.  This is the first serious shift against the vote for independence for months.

Salmond and his coteries have put their factional campaign against Sturgeon above the momentous fight to come, the requirement to win an SNP majority in May; a sign, if nothing else, that the Scots want to go for a second referendum. The SNP is by no means a radical left party. It will, in due course fall away or be defeated in the context of a serious change in society, economy and politics. But in the next few months it is the one and only mass platform for working class people, the youth and their allies to take the first step towards radical change. Salmond supporters suggest that Salmond is tougher than Surgeon. But we can only see who really does what - if and only if - there is a May SNP majority. Salmon, with his £ half a million, is only poison in the here and now. 

Much less immediately disturbing, but a longer-term mistake, printed on the 1st of February, is an article written in the 'The Nation', a new and fascinating newspaper supporting independence in Scotland. A columnist, George Kerevan, writes an article with the title 'Here is a primary reason we need independence - and need is now.'

The article starts with the question 'Is Scotland a colony?' Tom Arthur, an SNP MSP took exception to protesters that dubbed a Scottish Office called Queen Elizabeth's House a colonial outpost. He argued that Scotland was not a colony. Social media called him a 'quisling.' Kerevan objected to the term but turned to the 'vexed issue of whether or not Scotland is a colony.' 

He starts with the 1707 union with England and adds that the union was 'only at the behest of its ruling aristocratic elite and not the general populace..' Kerevan knows that the formation of nations in general was a process in that period associated with the rise of mercantile capitalism and that it was inevitably and entirely in the hands of the ruling classes - everywhere where it happened. Nobody in the world created a new nation at that time which arose via 'the populace.' 1707 was not a colonial trick; it was the mutual rise of capitalism. 

Kerevan shares the colonial activity by the English and Scots. But he goes on to say that there were 'elements' of Scottish colonial experiences under the English such as the 'ethnic cleansing' of the Scottish Highlands; the fake history of Scotland based on the English 'civilising mission', the colonial minded approach in Scottish universities etc. He sums up 'Can one really maintain that the power relationship between Scotland and England is one of equals?' 

After some to-ing and fro-ing Kerevan decides 'colonialism is about economic exploitation.' He states that during the industrial period in Scotland 'Scottish capitalists did their own exploiting.' But after that, from the 1950s money flooded south and Thatcher de-industrialised Scotland, to the extent that Thatcher carried out 'ethnically cleans(ing) a non compliant Scottish working class.' 

But virtually all of the drastic, savage and violent thoughts and actions, led by the ruling classes, that Kerevan mentions can be mirrored across many parts of Britain at different stages after 1707. From the enclosures across England to Wellington's comments about his 'savage and criminal' working class army, to Waterloo, to indentures, to Thatcher's destruction of Miners and the North of England, Kerevan's comments about Scotland are not describing colonialism but rather they share the extremity of class war across many parts of Britain.

But again Kerevan swings back. 'That is not to say that Scotland is suffering under the yolk of the genuine colonialism...We are still an exploiter nation.' But wait, Kerevan has another 'however...'. 'However, two developments are clear in modern Scotland. First the relentless opposition of London to Scottish self-determination has reached the stage where we can be considered an oppressed nation.' ...'Secondly, there is no doubt that domestic control of the Scottish economy has declined precipitously over the past two or three decades of globalisation. Whatever you want to call that process - colonialism or no - it has to be reversed.' 

But most socialists across the world would not call that Kerevan's description as colonialism. And neither would Scotland be called an 'oppressed nation' by any people who were actually battling to overthrow colonial domination. The failure of globalisation applies in every square-inch of the vast majority of England and Wales and in large parts of the West including the US, Italy, etc etc. (Northern Ireland is a different issue. See below.) Globalisation and its effects was the main mechanism for international Capital. 

And turning to the definition of oppressed nations, initially formulated by Lenin, they are fighting to overthrow their specific under-development, economically, politically and in their societies.  (Northern Ireland is different because it is, genuinely, a part of a real 'oppressed nation' in that British colonialism ran Ireland and then split Ireland still preventing the political and economic national formation of a single country.)

The point of all this is not to make comments about Kerevan's confusions. The point of criticising Kerevan's article is to prevent a serious error about Scotland's independence. 

Scotland is completely right to decide what sort of country and society it should be. But of course, there will be very different versions of such independence and that needs to be clear. So far the momentum for Scottish independence is (as 'The National' newspaper and Kerevan hope will be) the means of creating a more social society with much more democratic politics and shared wealth, and which is open to all. That is why Scots need to be independent. These ambitions are the opposite to 'separation' as such. Scottish independence would fail should the goal of independence become mainly 'my flag and my country above all.' Such ideas have been emerging in many parts of the West. And this is where the definitions of 'colonial domination' and of 'oppressed nations' comes in. Scotland does not need independence in order to overthrow English colonialism. Scotland is not as such an oppressed nation, despite all of its difficulties. Scotland needs to be independent to be able, in the current conditions, to overthrow the politics and economics that are failing Scottish people and their future. 

UK crash ahead.

After Covid, two huge facts for Britain-

Number one:

The top 10 countries that have done the most to spread corporate tax avoidance, breaking down what there is of the 'global corporate tax systems':

1. British Virgin Islands (British territory)

2. Bermuda (British territory)

3. Cayman Islands (British territory)

4. Netherlands

5. Switzerland

6. Luxembourg

7. Jersey (British dependency)

8. Singapore

9. Bahamas

10. Hong Kong

These 10 jurisdictions alone are responsible for 52 per cent of the world’s corporate tax avoidance, as measured by the Corporate Tax Haven Index. Over two fifths of global foreign direct investment, reported by the International Monetary Fund, is booked in these 10 countries, where the lowest available corporate tax rates averaged 0.54 per cent. The top three ranked jurisdictions are part of the British-controlled network of satellite jurisdictions. (See Tax Justice Network.) 

Number two:

The 25th November 2020 the UK's Office for Budget Responsibility revealed that government expenditure, from April 2020 to April 2021, will be nearly £400bn. This amounts to 20% of the Gross Domestic Product - the total money created by the whole of the UK in a year. (Normal government costs are generally around £50bn.) 

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has published the expectation that taxes will need to rise by 40% or equivalent expenditure cuts, over 4 or 5 years. (See Financial Times.)

The UK has the lowest corporation tax rate in the whole G20. It has the lowest income tax than most developed countries. Additionally, in 2016/17, tax gaps from UK based corporations were estimated as £33bn. (See New Statesman.)   

Some obvious results from one and two. 

The terrible death toll in the UK (estimated by many highly considered medical experts as more than 120,000 rather than the 20,000 set up by government 'experts') is a dark crisis across the British society and it is far from finished yet. Nevertheless, the 'results' of Covid for Britain's future are potentially far worse. 

Already Covid in the UK exposes the lies and hidden realities of Britain's real conditions, for the two thirds that live in the country now. The carving up of what remains of the acceptable, let alone the positive, requirements of society, is inevitable and will create raw destruction. 

Some would-be Churchills and many would-be Attlees suggest that post WW2 shows how well managed society was organised after the devastation and the huge financial losses. The highest rate of income tax peaked in the Second World War at 99.25%. It was then slightly reduced and was around 90% through the 1950s and 60s. Following World War II, tax increases, top marginal individual tax rates, stayed near or above 90%, and the effective tax rate at 70% for the highest incomes, until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. Inheritance tax was raised to 80% for years after WW2. A purchase tax of 33% was placed on all luxurious purchases from 1940 up to 1973. In other words, the UK governments from 1945 to the 1960s redistributed wealth to prevent bankruptcy from the cost of the war. 

Is there the slightest possibility that the decisions post WW2, under the immense pressure of millions who fought the war and defeated fascism, could be replicated in any sense today? 

The meaning of the UK's main wealth today is locked in tax-havens, in the assets led by housing and organised globally, going from Amazon to Boots the Chemist. It is an utter fallacy to imagine that the Tories are going to destruct and reconstruct the wealth of Britain as it stands today. Their only plan, if it amounts to anything, is 'tax free docks' in the north and employment through 'fire then re-hire' wage cuts. It is even more pathetic to imagine Sir Keir overwhelming anything at all. 

The middle and working classes in Britain today are sadly not led by the 1.5 million fighters that poured back into 1945 Britain. But anger and action are growing. The only step away from rapid deterioration  now is to take our own health and welfare services, our schools, our transport, our assets, including housing, and our energy -  away from the control and ownership of the rich. We have to support the reunification of Ireland and the separation of the Scots, and the Welsh if they want to. England could be a smaller, more gentle country, more attached to the importance of its citizens and less stuck in its Disney land history. We won't take the tax havens, but we can change the currency. We have, no less, to turn the countries in what is now the UK's bit of the world completely upside down. The alternative is unacceptable.