The argument between the mainstream parties in the British Parliament about raising the social taxes of so called 'self employed' workers dominates the British media. In reality it is a minor sin in a staggering Tsunami of evil.
'The parliament from 2015-16 to 2020-21 is on course to be the worst on record (ed) for income growth in the bottom half of the working age income distribution. In contrast, incomes in the top half of ... household distribution are projected to grow by a modest 4 per cent, largely comprising unimpressive pay growth and a slight boost from income tax cuts. We project the biggest rise in inequality since the 1980s, with inequality after housing costs reaching record highs by 2020-21. Bottom-half incomes set to fall significantly. Median income set to stagnate.' Quotes from the Resolution Foundation Report. (A cross-party think-tank, February 2017.)
Together with the impact of the relentless decomposition of the 'social wage' (health, care, education, pensions, etc.,) the direct incomes of the British working class will not return to 2007 levels until 2025. And that particular prediction depends on Brexit not crashing, or a new slump not blowing through Europe, or if the million (14% of the workforce) who are now on zero hour contracts do not expand, or if productivity (read investment) does not continue to slump and so on. Nothing about 2025 can be guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that if May's government is not brought down then British working class families, who, in the last decade have just experienced their worst pay in 70 years, (Financial Times 24 November 2016) will be pushed down further and faster - based on the government's own figures and projections.
The coming 5 years are also going to be the worst for the the British health system. The NHS faces 'the biggest sustained fall in NHS spending since 1951. See Patients4NHS. Both national Headteachers Associations are preparing for a significant reduction in mainstream school spending, the first direct cuts since the 2008 crash, while new subsidies are launched for a new wave of selective Grammar schools. Welfare spending, delivered by Local Authorities, is facing new cuts as inflation increases and LA's are already struggling with the 27% worth of cuts made since 2010.
And yet an argument over unfairness blooms - in defence of the rich! The British wealthy have found more and more defenders. For a long time the idea has circulated that if you poke the rich too much they pay less or move away. Now it is their beneficence that ex Chancellor Osborne and others have praised. Since the financial collapse in 2008 the amount of income tax paid by the richest 1 per cent has risen from 24.4 per cent to 27.5 per cent, meaning, croaks the British Daily Telegraph 'that 300,000 people pay more than a quarter of the nation's income tax'. How good of them to bother.
However:-
the poorest tenth of the population now have, between them, 1.3% of the country's total income (not wealth or riches) and the second poorest tenth have 4%. In contrast, the richest tenth have 31% and the second richest tenth have 15% of the country's income. The income of the richest tenth is more than the income of all those on below-average incomes (i.e. the bottom five tenths) combined. It should be elementary, even for the worms who write for the rich in the Daily Telegraph, that the richest 20% in Britain should have been paying - not 24.4% or 27.5% - but rather 46% of income tax on the basis of the figures and the most elementary fairness and justice. (They can divide it equably between the top tenth and the second top tenth as they wish.) And income does not cover wealth.
The Office of National Statistics puts wealth in Britain this way;
'In July 2012 to June 2014 aggregate total household wealth (including private pension wealth) of all private households in Great Britain was £11.1 trillion.
The distribution of wealth is highly skewed towards the top - the wealth held by the richest 10% of households combined was just under £5 trillion and represented a 45% share of aggregate total wealth. Conversely the combined wealth of the bottom half of households in the distribution was less than £1.0 trillion; a value which accounted for just 9% of aggregate total wealth. The wealth of the least wealthy 10% of households accounted for less than half of 1% of aggregate total wealth.'
Besides the £10 trillion in wealth held by the top half of Britons (with the top 10% holding half of that) the ONS does not mention the British part of the £30+ trillion currently stashed away in Tax Havens.
Focus on the great campaigns launched to defend the NHS and to exclude Trump is the priority, but what should the opposition, inside and outside Parliament, say and do about this appalling May government?
During the Budget debate Labour leaders need to spell out that overcoming the imbalance of Britain's wealth means that income tax (among other measures) should be used - at least to return inequality to conditions of the 1960s and 1970s. They should thunder against a government that is determined to make the rich richer and working class people poorer and poorer. They should shout from the roof tops that this government is worse than Thatcher. That is has, uniquely in the West, supported Trump and international racism. That it is driving down the NHS and now state education. May's government is committed to a ruthless class war. And it has to be brought down.
Friday, 10 March 2017
Wednesday, 8 March 2017
Britain's 'precious union.'
Teresa May, Britain's unelected Prime Minister, without a mandate even from her own party, made the comment in a recent speech in Scotland. Part of the decay of Britain's political establishment and the shuddering decline in its renowned stability is the unrest in its component nations. The election in Northern Ireland has delivered another shock.
'Apart from negative attitudes to nationalism and to the Irish identity and culture, there has been a shameful disrespect towards many other sections of our community,' McGuinnes (Sinn Fein leader and Deputy first Minister in the outgoing NI Parliament, Stormont) wrote this about the main (British) loyalist party, the DUP that held the first minister post. 'Women, the LGBT community and ethnic minorities have all felt this prejudice. And for those who wish to live their lives through the medium of Irish, elements in the DUP have exhibited the most crude and crass bigotry'.
The election in Northern Ireland, (4 March) with a high voter turn out of 65%, has just delivered a new message and a tremendous blow to Northern Irish loyalism which, up to now, has held a secure majority in Stormont. It has also disturbed their allies in the Westminster Cabinet. (The small Tory majority in the UK parliament is buttressed normally by the 'righter than right' DUP's 8 Westminster MPs.) Sinn Fein got only one less parliamentary seat than the DUP in Stormont. Overall the loyalist parties have now lost their majority in Northern Ireland,
Mainline British commentators did not expect this at all. Predicting a low turnout, they believed and wrote that the old dinosaurs of Protestant Loyalism and Catholic Irish Republicanism had worn out the NI voting population with their failure to get on with peace and economic progress. They did not understand that the socially reactionary character of Loyalism and its exultant support for Brexit created a serious divide with a large section of younger voters - who think a border with Ireland makes no sense and who loath traditional bigotry. They did not see (or decided not to see) the evolution of Sinn Fein in respect of its progressive economic and social programmes. They did not understand that the unresolved national question in Northern Ireland would emerge in new, unforeseen ways.
Accordingly, Since Fein are now able credibly to put a referendum for the unity of Ireland, in both parts of the country, on the political agenda in NI for the first time - recovering the idea from its dusty abstraction in the the original wording of the Good Friday Agreement.
May has already managed to put a second Scottish independence referendum back at the centre of Scottish politics. The results in the first referendum in 2014 were 44.70% yes for independence and 55.30% who voted no, with a voter turnout of 84.59%. But 'no' has rapidly become defensive as Westminster deepened austerity, disallowed key concessions to the Scottish Parliament - Holyrood, and finally with the impact of the staggering gulf between England and Scotland's vote on Brexit. Scotland voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% - with all 32 council areas backing Remain.
As with England and Wales, and the big cities and smaller towns, the working class vote split in Scotland over the EU referendum. But as the votes in Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen showed, a Scottish working class majority voted to remain in the EU. In the Northeast of England, parts of the Northwest and in South Wales, the working class voted in their majority to leave the EU. Many large trade unions split, whatever the lead offered by their executives. The racist card played incessantly by the Tory right and UKIP had a much smaller influence in the working class vote in Scotland - where declining living standards, the lack of social welfare and the rationing of health etc., were seen predominantly as the responsibility of the Westminster Tory government rather than the effects of immigration.
Nevertheless achieving a 5% shift for Scottish independence and a 5% decline in those against, on what was previously a large voter turn out and after such a prolonged and deep debate across society, seems a big call. The Scottish turnout for the EU referendum was only 67% while in Wales it was 72% and in England 73%. Another profound political and social shift would surely be required to lead Scottish society into success in a new independence referendum.
Such a shift is available, but cannot be realised by the current SNP - however astute Nicola Sturgeon appears to be. Relying on hostility to Brexit will not go deep enough. In fact the real danger in the current context is a regrowth of Scottish Toryism, with a coagulation of UK loyalists and Brexiteers building a new majority - against the 'failure' of the SNP's limp, conservative, social democratic programme.
The Scottish population is as aware of the critical political processes in Holland and France (with Germany to come), where the EU appears as incapable of resisting the surge of the new right across the West, as is the 'independent' population of the US, or of the rest of Britain. Serious economic difficulties in most EU countries will run in parallel to Britain's own problems, as neither Brexit nor EU membership is able to 'reform' globalisation. Something else - of decisive weight - has to be added to the Scottish picture, after its previous rich debate, after its experience of a long-lived, competent but non-radical SNP government.
It is time for the ideas from the left that began to surface latterly in the Scottish referendum debate to crystallise and become a mainstream part of the Scottish independence picture. Scotland can become a new type of country, based on its young people, their internationalism, their rejection of bigotry and racism. This new country would need to be built from the construction of a new economy and political constitution that put people first and last. Its international relationships would be directly with the people of Britain, of Europe and the world, and not with their creaking and reactionary structures. The great hole in Scottish politics - that might turn the independence debate away from the fear of Brexit and towards a new type of country - is the one left by Scottish Labour, who have not yet even taken the minimal federal step away from their Westminster domination.
The narrow, corporate and traditional SNP and its clever leaders will not be able to win the majority of Scottish society away from crisis Britain. A new vision of a new nation will need to be built - or things will move backwards in the most radical part of the UK.
In Wales, as of the Spring of 2016, and in all subsequent polls, immigration was seen as the main issue facing Britain. - and remains so. It leads all other questions, including the economy or health by a large margin. This is despite the actual level of immigration to Wales. According to Stats Wales, net international migration into Wales ran at an average of +3,800 per year for the period 2003-2013, equivalent to around 0.1% increase in the population.
The result, latterly, shown graphically in the reasons given by many Welsh people in their high Brexit vote, is a certain political paralysis in political and in economic campaigns for progressive progress. And it illustrates how the radical developments in NI or Scotland are not automatic in the face of Britain's crisis. The advance by UKIP in Wales and the impact of the racist account of economic and welfare decline has deadened Wales's dynamic potential and frozen one of the most solid foundations of what was the British labour movement. Again, the disastrous hole left for so long in Welsh society by a self-serving, bureaucratic gang of Labour Party place-men and women takes its toll.
Nothing, in Britain's nations, is frozen in aspic. As the western crisis grows, first in politics and then, once more, in economics, so everything will be tested for its future durability and humanity. This review is designed to offer pointers to the current situation - no more. Nothing decisive has yet been lost - or yet achieved. That comes next.
'Apart from negative attitudes to nationalism and to the Irish identity and culture, there has been a shameful disrespect towards many other sections of our community,' McGuinnes (Sinn Fein leader and Deputy first Minister in the outgoing NI Parliament, Stormont) wrote this about the main (British) loyalist party, the DUP that held the first minister post. 'Women, the LGBT community and ethnic minorities have all felt this prejudice. And for those who wish to live their lives through the medium of Irish, elements in the DUP have exhibited the most crude and crass bigotry'.
The election in Northern Ireland, (4 March) with a high voter turn out of 65%, has just delivered a new message and a tremendous blow to Northern Irish loyalism which, up to now, has held a secure majority in Stormont. It has also disturbed their allies in the Westminster Cabinet. (The small Tory majority in the UK parliament is buttressed normally by the 'righter than right' DUP's 8 Westminster MPs.) Sinn Fein got only one less parliamentary seat than the DUP in Stormont. Overall the loyalist parties have now lost their majority in Northern Ireland,
Mainline British commentators did not expect this at all. Predicting a low turnout, they believed and wrote that the old dinosaurs of Protestant Loyalism and Catholic Irish Republicanism had worn out the NI voting population with their failure to get on with peace and economic progress. They did not understand that the socially reactionary character of Loyalism and its exultant support for Brexit created a serious divide with a large section of younger voters - who think a border with Ireland makes no sense and who loath traditional bigotry. They did not see (or decided not to see) the evolution of Sinn Fein in respect of its progressive economic and social programmes. They did not understand that the unresolved national question in Northern Ireland would emerge in new, unforeseen ways.
Accordingly, Since Fein are now able credibly to put a referendum for the unity of Ireland, in both parts of the country, on the political agenda in NI for the first time - recovering the idea from its dusty abstraction in the the original wording of the Good Friday Agreement.
May has already managed to put a second Scottish independence referendum back at the centre of Scottish politics. The results in the first referendum in 2014 were 44.70% yes for independence and 55.30% who voted no, with a voter turnout of 84.59%. But 'no' has rapidly become defensive as Westminster deepened austerity, disallowed key concessions to the Scottish Parliament - Holyrood, and finally with the impact of the staggering gulf between England and Scotland's vote on Brexit. Scotland voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% - with all 32 council areas backing Remain.
As with England and Wales, and the big cities and smaller towns, the working class vote split in Scotland over the EU referendum. But as the votes in Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen showed, a Scottish working class majority voted to remain in the EU. In the Northeast of England, parts of the Northwest and in South Wales, the working class voted in their majority to leave the EU. Many large trade unions split, whatever the lead offered by their executives. The racist card played incessantly by the Tory right and UKIP had a much smaller influence in the working class vote in Scotland - where declining living standards, the lack of social welfare and the rationing of health etc., were seen predominantly as the responsibility of the Westminster Tory government rather than the effects of immigration.
Nevertheless achieving a 5% shift for Scottish independence and a 5% decline in those against, on what was previously a large voter turn out and after such a prolonged and deep debate across society, seems a big call. The Scottish turnout for the EU referendum was only 67% while in Wales it was 72% and in England 73%. Another profound political and social shift would surely be required to lead Scottish society into success in a new independence referendum.
Such a shift is available, but cannot be realised by the current SNP - however astute Nicola Sturgeon appears to be. Relying on hostility to Brexit will not go deep enough. In fact the real danger in the current context is a regrowth of Scottish Toryism, with a coagulation of UK loyalists and Brexiteers building a new majority - against the 'failure' of the SNP's limp, conservative, social democratic programme.
The Scottish population is as aware of the critical political processes in Holland and France (with Germany to come), where the EU appears as incapable of resisting the surge of the new right across the West, as is the 'independent' population of the US, or of the rest of Britain. Serious economic difficulties in most EU countries will run in parallel to Britain's own problems, as neither Brexit nor EU membership is able to 'reform' globalisation. Something else - of decisive weight - has to be added to the Scottish picture, after its previous rich debate, after its experience of a long-lived, competent but non-radical SNP government.
It is time for the ideas from the left that began to surface latterly in the Scottish referendum debate to crystallise and become a mainstream part of the Scottish independence picture. Scotland can become a new type of country, based on its young people, their internationalism, their rejection of bigotry and racism. This new country would need to be built from the construction of a new economy and political constitution that put people first and last. Its international relationships would be directly with the people of Britain, of Europe and the world, and not with their creaking and reactionary structures. The great hole in Scottish politics - that might turn the independence debate away from the fear of Brexit and towards a new type of country - is the one left by Scottish Labour, who have not yet even taken the minimal federal step away from their Westminster domination.
The narrow, corporate and traditional SNP and its clever leaders will not be able to win the majority of Scottish society away from crisis Britain. A new vision of a new nation will need to be built - or things will move backwards in the most radical part of the UK.
In Wales, as of the Spring of 2016, and in all subsequent polls, immigration was seen as the main issue facing Britain. - and remains so. It leads all other questions, including the economy or health by a large margin. This is despite the actual level of immigration to Wales. According to Stats Wales, net international migration into Wales ran at an average of +3,800 per year for the period 2003-2013, equivalent to around 0.1% increase in the population.
The result, latterly, shown graphically in the reasons given by many Welsh people in their high Brexit vote, is a certain political paralysis in political and in economic campaigns for progressive progress. And it illustrates how the radical developments in NI or Scotland are not automatic in the face of Britain's crisis. The advance by UKIP in Wales and the impact of the racist account of economic and welfare decline has deadened Wales's dynamic potential and frozen one of the most solid foundations of what was the British labour movement. Again, the disastrous hole left for so long in Welsh society by a self-serving, bureaucratic gang of Labour Party place-men and women takes its toll.
Nothing, in Britain's nations, is frozen in aspic. As the western crisis grows, first in politics and then, once more, in economics, so everything will be tested for its future durability and humanity. This review is designed to offer pointers to the current situation - no more. Nothing decisive has yet been lost - or yet achieved. That comes next.
Wednesday, 1 March 2017
Can Corbyn ever win?
'One Labour leaflet shouted: "Babies will die." Even that shroud waving could not win the seat (in the recent bi-election in Copeland). Grim wags in the (Labour) party ranks are now darkly remarking that folk in Copeland would rather let new-borns die than endorse Corbyn Labour' (sic). This (unedited?) comment appeared in the British Observer 26 February. It was part of a veritable storm in both the mainstream and the digital media denouncing Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. It followed anti-Corbyn speeches by Blair, by his lapdog Peter Mandelson, by Gerard Coyne, the right wing Labour candidate for General Secretary in the UK's biggest Union, Unite, and Dave Prentice the head of Unison, Britain's second largest union, who added his view that Labour was sliding into irrelevance.
Consider the European and US shift to the right among a large section (but not yet a majority) of the electorate. Note the poisonous legacy in Britain of Blair's opening of the NHS to private business, his government's sickening involvement in the US's oil-lust wars and the crusading policy of 'regime change'. Leave aside the catastrophe for Labour in Scotland. Corbyn played no role (except criticism) in any of these howling errors. The British Labour Party was dieing in front of the world well before its members decided on a new course and voted for Corbyn. Corbyn was the membership's answer to the collapse of traditional Labour. (Just as the massive swing to the right with its emphasis on immigration controls has temporarily 'saved' the British Tory Party.)
Has this trend to political polarisation in the West run its course now? Can Labour trade union officials turn back to the good old days when getting in a Labour Government, any old sort of Labour Government, even a Labour Government indistinguishable to the Tories which upheld Thatcher's anti-union laws, was the sole political goal for the working class? The reality is that the political crisis now raging away in the West, has only just begun. As the 2017 dates fall for the elections in Europe (and the Constitutional referendum in Turkey) so the the political establishment's failure will become more and more apparent and the desperate calls from pundits and politicians for a return to the past, less and less heard.
Another leading title in the same Observer stated 'Vast losses at RBS (the world's erstwhile leading Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland) are a legacy of a failed system.' Will Hutton, a social democratic economist in the UK argued that 'We need a new capitalism that will stop firms thinking in the short term.' RBS had added £58 billion to its losses since the collapse in 2008. Hutton asked us 'What system could permit a business horror story with such near calamitous results,' He went on to point out that British big business seemed to be particularly venal. But the answer does not lie with a 'Corbyn type philosophy,' for socialist transformation, which apparently few share. No. Instead we must put our trust in Big Innovation's Purposeful Company Task Force - and its new report. (Co-chair W. Hutton.) It says it all in there! The report proves that companies which put their purpose before profit out perform companies that do not! 'Simples.'
Alas for Hutton, in the first place corporate corruption is more global and less simply British than he might understand. Amongst others the good old City of London ensures that it is so. Second, the underlying motor of capitalism is profit, to which end it has thoroughly reorganised the world and humanity in a succession of convulsions. Hutton and his followers made more sense when huge organisations of the working class in the West still existed and could still fight the relentless drive of big Capital. It is simply absurd to imagine that a Report, (however well chaired) will do better than the efforts of millions in direct and indirect struggle and self sacrifice for their rights and a half decent way of life.
So now we have the bleats for the self reform of capitalism (Hutton praises British PM May for doing some publishing of her own on corporate governance and industrial strategy) combined with the roars that Corbyn must go in order that the Labour Party can collapse into more suitable hands. The left on the other hand is shaking itself out of the argument about what to do with the EU referendum results and at last trying to create some new facts in the political maelstrom.
The first of these is the march to defend the National Health Service, currently being run down by the government (no doubt trying to prepare the British public for the private onslaught on health in Trump's coming free trade deal.) On Saturday 4 March at 12, led by the Peoples Assembly and Unite, a huge demonstration will assemble in Tavistock Square, near Euston Station, to defend and support the NHS. (Note that the successful Save Lewisham Hospital campaigners will be meeting at nearby Russell Square.) The NHS dominates even immigration as the main concern of British people and it is becoming, exclusively, the lefts's territory and will remain so should the left's campaign move this initial action into a great, active, continuing, movement.
The second is the wide-ranging front, again with the Peoples assembly at its head, to bloc Trump's visit to Britain. After Bush junior, Trump is widely loathed in Britain, and opposition to his arrival brings together Muslim organisations and Unions, LGBT activists with churches, North and South, Scotland, England and Wales. It potentially builds a new political 'common sense' between the big cities and rural towns.
If these two developments become big new facts in British political life, especially if they are underpinned with the gathering emergence of a new social contract that dumps their Lordships and adopts fair votes, sets a constant percentage of GDP for Health and welfare spending, de-escalates war and nukes, then Corbyn has something practical to stand on (rather than the fantasy of the good will of most Labour MPs.) The old Labour Party may be in its deathrows, but new movements that pinpoint the key aspects of Britain's crisis, at home and abroad, can, as the experience in this political period shows, build something new from the ashes. Transformation does not emerge from a rescue of the old, but rather the coming to grips with the new.
Consider the European and US shift to the right among a large section (but not yet a majority) of the electorate. Note the poisonous legacy in Britain of Blair's opening of the NHS to private business, his government's sickening involvement in the US's oil-lust wars and the crusading policy of 'regime change'. Leave aside the catastrophe for Labour in Scotland. Corbyn played no role (except criticism) in any of these howling errors. The British Labour Party was dieing in front of the world well before its members decided on a new course and voted for Corbyn. Corbyn was the membership's answer to the collapse of traditional Labour. (Just as the massive swing to the right with its emphasis on immigration controls has temporarily 'saved' the British Tory Party.)
Has this trend to political polarisation in the West run its course now? Can Labour trade union officials turn back to the good old days when getting in a Labour Government, any old sort of Labour Government, even a Labour Government indistinguishable to the Tories which upheld Thatcher's anti-union laws, was the sole political goal for the working class? The reality is that the political crisis now raging away in the West, has only just begun. As the 2017 dates fall for the elections in Europe (and the Constitutional referendum in Turkey) so the the political establishment's failure will become more and more apparent and the desperate calls from pundits and politicians for a return to the past, less and less heard.
Another leading title in the same Observer stated 'Vast losses at RBS (the world's erstwhile leading Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland) are a legacy of a failed system.' Will Hutton, a social democratic economist in the UK argued that 'We need a new capitalism that will stop firms thinking in the short term.' RBS had added £58 billion to its losses since the collapse in 2008. Hutton asked us 'What system could permit a business horror story with such near calamitous results,' He went on to point out that British big business seemed to be particularly venal. But the answer does not lie with a 'Corbyn type philosophy,' for socialist transformation, which apparently few share. No. Instead we must put our trust in Big Innovation's Purposeful Company Task Force - and its new report. (Co-chair W. Hutton.) It says it all in there! The report proves that companies which put their purpose before profit out perform companies that do not! 'Simples.'
Alas for Hutton, in the first place corporate corruption is more global and less simply British than he might understand. Amongst others the good old City of London ensures that it is so. Second, the underlying motor of capitalism is profit, to which end it has thoroughly reorganised the world and humanity in a succession of convulsions. Hutton and his followers made more sense when huge organisations of the working class in the West still existed and could still fight the relentless drive of big Capital. It is simply absurd to imagine that a Report, (however well chaired) will do better than the efforts of millions in direct and indirect struggle and self sacrifice for their rights and a half decent way of life.
So now we have the bleats for the self reform of capitalism (Hutton praises British PM May for doing some publishing of her own on corporate governance and industrial strategy) combined with the roars that Corbyn must go in order that the Labour Party can collapse into more suitable hands. The left on the other hand is shaking itself out of the argument about what to do with the EU referendum results and at last trying to create some new facts in the political maelstrom.
The first of these is the march to defend the National Health Service, currently being run down by the government (no doubt trying to prepare the British public for the private onslaught on health in Trump's coming free trade deal.) On Saturday 4 March at 12, led by the Peoples Assembly and Unite, a huge demonstration will assemble in Tavistock Square, near Euston Station, to defend and support the NHS. (Note that the successful Save Lewisham Hospital campaigners will be meeting at nearby Russell Square.) The NHS dominates even immigration as the main concern of British people and it is becoming, exclusively, the lefts's territory and will remain so should the left's campaign move this initial action into a great, active, continuing, movement.
The second is the wide-ranging front, again with the Peoples assembly at its head, to bloc Trump's visit to Britain. After Bush junior, Trump is widely loathed in Britain, and opposition to his arrival brings together Muslim organisations and Unions, LGBT activists with churches, North and South, Scotland, England and Wales. It potentially builds a new political 'common sense' between the big cities and rural towns.
If these two developments become big new facts in British political life, especially if they are underpinned with the gathering emergence of a new social contract that dumps their Lordships and adopts fair votes, sets a constant percentage of GDP for Health and welfare spending, de-escalates war and nukes, then Corbyn has something practical to stand on (rather than the fantasy of the good will of most Labour MPs.) The old Labour Party may be in its deathrows, but new movements that pinpoint the key aspects of Britain's crisis, at home and abroad, can, as the experience in this political period shows, build something new from the ashes. Transformation does not emerge from a rescue of the old, but rather the coming to grips with the new.
Friday, 24 February 2017
Labour verses UKIP. Both lose.
The British Labour Party has been tortured by the results of bi-elections (23 February) in the Copeland constituency in England's North West and in Stoke, a city in the north of the English Midlands. The British media has been spinning analyses over these two elections, all of which lead to the result that the Labour Party is experiencing 'meltdown' mainly, it would seem, as a result of its current far left leader Corbyn.
UKIP's leader, Nuttall also failed personally in Stoke and his party generally failed across both bi-elections in its explicit aim to replace Labour in both constituencies. In fact the newspapers and TV and Radio commentariat, albeit hesitantly although in some cases trembling with excitement, are suggesting that it is May's Tory party, now in government, that has persuaded many traditional working class voters that it is they who now best represent the interests of Britain's working class!
It is certainly true that in the Copeland constituency the Tory Party absorbed UKIP's vote. And although Stoke was 'held' by Labour, the most pro-Brexit constituency in Britain, the Tories came close to beating UKIP into second place. But this does not tell us that Prime Minster May's Tories are now winning the working class. UKIP wanted to win Labour, working class seats in the North of England using the racist card - but it never did. It is important not to confuse an aim with a reality. What the Tories have done is to 'win', partly in Stoke and in a major way in Copeland, what was, potentially, the UKIP vote. Some commentators revelled in May's brilliant tactics. Others said that UKIP have no longer got their main reason to exist anymore as Britain is now on its way out of the EU. But May's 'brilliant' tactics amount to adopting the main policies that UKIP stood on. The Tories have not begun to win the working class interest. They have adopted UKIP's racism and won a large part of their vote.
Despite claims to have workers on company boards and to look out for those only just getting by, May's Tories have cut welfare (again), are reducing living standards (again) and ruining the NHS and public services in general. They are increasing anti-union laws way above Thatcher's limits. And now they demand that Britain should celebrate Trump. They are, in practise, the most right wing government seen in Britain since WW2. Worse than Thatcher.
Traditionally voting in bi-elections is less than in general elections. Voting for a single MP is not as significant as voting for a government. In Copeland 51% of potential voters voted. In Stoke it was 37%. These are significantly low voting totals, low even for bi-elections. Which raises the first fundamental point about the real meaning of the Copeland and Stokes' elections.
Who are the half of Copeland's voters and the 63% of Stokes' voters who did not vote? Overwhelmingly, they are working class voters. The main thing that the working class of Copeland and of Stoke did is abstain or, in a minority of cases, vote Labour. (Copeland had become far more marginal between Labour and the Tories than most British media admitted.) The meaning of that, which will be of interest to the pundits and commentators but which is a life and death question for the Labour Party, is that a large part of the working class of Britain has disconnected from the traditional political routine, via the continued failure of the Labour Party, over decades, to do anything different.
But this is not just about the Labour Party. In reality millions in Britain find it hard to see any connection between their lives and Parliament - or any of the other melange of institutions by which, apparently, they are ruled. So it is not enough for John McDonnel (Labour's shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer) to say on the BBC's Today program (24 February) that Labour's reputation is still being spoilt by ex - Labour PM Blair and Mandelsons's speeches a few days before voting. He is right, but not really right enough. The main political institutions of the country, including the modern history of the Labour Party, are all soiled goods. Corbyn promises a new politics, but that must mean a new Parliament; fair votes; control over all the real controllers - in the City - in the major corporations. It must mean the guarantee that each new generation will have a better life than its predecessors.
From which emerges the second substantial reality of Copeland and Stoke. The current Labour Party, without any realistic chance of winning a General Election, because of Scotland, because of abstention in England and Wales, because the remains of the Parliamentary Party will sabotage their own leadership, can never present itself as the insurgent, new, rebellious, future oriented force, that would be able to speak directly to and work directly with the people. What is more, already millions realise it. The continued insistence that traditional Labour Party unity can be won, that Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again, that working class people across Britain can return, once again, to the way things used to be, is the real, hopeless and utopian fantasy in British politics today.
As the right becomes more confident across the West, and as the resistance to the next wave of austerity and racism rises up while reaction tries to roll over society, the left wing leadership of the British Labour Party must imagine, build and project much more to people in Stoke, Copeland and the rest of Britain - than their sorrow for unavailable unity with the bulk of Labour MPs.!
UKIP's leader, Nuttall also failed personally in Stoke and his party generally failed across both bi-elections in its explicit aim to replace Labour in both constituencies. In fact the newspapers and TV and Radio commentariat, albeit hesitantly although in some cases trembling with excitement, are suggesting that it is May's Tory party, now in government, that has persuaded many traditional working class voters that it is they who now best represent the interests of Britain's working class!
It is certainly true that in the Copeland constituency the Tory Party absorbed UKIP's vote. And although Stoke was 'held' by Labour, the most pro-Brexit constituency in Britain, the Tories came close to beating UKIP into second place. But this does not tell us that Prime Minster May's Tories are now winning the working class. UKIP wanted to win Labour, working class seats in the North of England using the racist card - but it never did. It is important not to confuse an aim with a reality. What the Tories have done is to 'win', partly in Stoke and in a major way in Copeland, what was, potentially, the UKIP vote. Some commentators revelled in May's brilliant tactics. Others said that UKIP have no longer got their main reason to exist anymore as Britain is now on its way out of the EU. But May's 'brilliant' tactics amount to adopting the main policies that UKIP stood on. The Tories have not begun to win the working class interest. They have adopted UKIP's racism and won a large part of their vote.
Despite claims to have workers on company boards and to look out for those only just getting by, May's Tories have cut welfare (again), are reducing living standards (again) and ruining the NHS and public services in general. They are increasing anti-union laws way above Thatcher's limits. And now they demand that Britain should celebrate Trump. They are, in practise, the most right wing government seen in Britain since WW2. Worse than Thatcher.
Traditionally voting in bi-elections is less than in general elections. Voting for a single MP is not as significant as voting for a government. In Copeland 51% of potential voters voted. In Stoke it was 37%. These are significantly low voting totals, low even for bi-elections. Which raises the first fundamental point about the real meaning of the Copeland and Stokes' elections.
Who are the half of Copeland's voters and the 63% of Stokes' voters who did not vote? Overwhelmingly, they are working class voters. The main thing that the working class of Copeland and of Stoke did is abstain or, in a minority of cases, vote Labour. (Copeland had become far more marginal between Labour and the Tories than most British media admitted.) The meaning of that, which will be of interest to the pundits and commentators but which is a life and death question for the Labour Party, is that a large part of the working class of Britain has disconnected from the traditional political routine, via the continued failure of the Labour Party, over decades, to do anything different.
But this is not just about the Labour Party. In reality millions in Britain find it hard to see any connection between their lives and Parliament - or any of the other melange of institutions by which, apparently, they are ruled. So it is not enough for John McDonnel (Labour's shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer) to say on the BBC's Today program (24 February) that Labour's reputation is still being spoilt by ex - Labour PM Blair and Mandelsons's speeches a few days before voting. He is right, but not really right enough. The main political institutions of the country, including the modern history of the Labour Party, are all soiled goods. Corbyn promises a new politics, but that must mean a new Parliament; fair votes; control over all the real controllers - in the City - in the major corporations. It must mean the guarantee that each new generation will have a better life than its predecessors.
From which emerges the second substantial reality of Copeland and Stoke. The current Labour Party, without any realistic chance of winning a General Election, because of Scotland, because of abstention in England and Wales, because the remains of the Parliamentary Party will sabotage their own leadership, can never present itself as the insurgent, new, rebellious, future oriented force, that would be able to speak directly to and work directly with the people. What is more, already millions realise it. The continued insistence that traditional Labour Party unity can be won, that Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again, that working class people across Britain can return, once again, to the way things used to be, is the real, hopeless and utopian fantasy in British politics today.
As the right becomes more confident across the West, and as the resistance to the next wave of austerity and racism rises up while reaction tries to roll over society, the left wing leadership of the British Labour Party must imagine, build and project much more to people in Stoke, Copeland and the rest of Britain - than their sorrow for unavailable unity with the bulk of Labour MPs.!
Wednesday, 22 February 2017
Dates of note - the rise of the right?
The Dutch General election falls on March 15th. Trump junior lookalike Wilder, seems set to get the most seats in Netherlands's Parliament but, as with the French political system, the Dutch 'failsafe' mechanism then comes into play, and all the other parties get together to block a Wilder government. The 'failsafe' mechanism assumes of course that nether the Dutch nor the French right can win more than 49% of the vote. Perhaps. But what is missed here is the effects on a large part of the population of globalisation and continuing austerity. In both the Dutch and French cases only more despair will be evoked against a bankrupt political system unable to provide any clear and straightforward answers. In other words such an outcome will be part of the growing problem rather that any sort of solution.
The right in the US, in the UK, in the Netherlands in France and across Europe lead on racism and the need to halt types of immigration as their answer to the effects of globalisation. Wilder's latest insult against what he called 'Moroccan scum' demonstrates the directly racist leading edge of his campaign (against the 4% of the population who are Dutch Muslims and live in Holland.) But the foundations of his agitation are actually primitive but radical propositions about Tax and State authority. In his 'WEBLOG' he writes at the end of his program
'9. A lot of extra money for defence and police
10. Lower income taxes
11. Halving of car taxes'.
There is emerging across all the new right in the West, another 'solution' to the insurgency caused by unemployment, poverty and racism. Besides attacks on minorities it suggests a more directly authoritarian answer to the failure of mainstream politics to deal with the impact of globalisation.
The 23 April is the opening round of the French Presidential Election. 7 May will be the final round between the top two candidates. Again, Marine LePen is a shoe-in for one of the final two. Again it is supposed that the French electorate will vote 'anybody else' against France's fascist. France has been in a state of emergency since 130 people were killed in the November 2015 attacks in Paris. A state of emergency also describes the situation of the two main parties that have ruled France since the 1980s with the independent Macron, a politician deracinated of politics, the only answer to the far right wing threat. Already this latest 'independent' is weakening in the French polls. Already the establishment's political answer to the threat from the right is faltering. And Le Pen junior is now ramping up the 'defence' of French society to deal with the 'thugs' that have risen from Paris's Banlieues once more defending themselves against the police. According to Le Pen, the confidence and the authority of those 'defending' law and order must be rebuilt!
Meanwhile Douglas Williams on the British 'Guardian' website (17 February) has pointed out some of Trump's less well circulated executive actions to deal with the impact on those left behind by globalisation in his first days in office.
'The executive order titled Presidential Executive Order on Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers' promises to:
Pursue appropriate legislation, consistent with the Constitution’s regime of limited and enumerated Federal powers, that will define new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing Federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.
Review existing Federal laws to determine whether those laws are adequate to address the protection and safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.'
"That’s right. In a country where police chiefs consider resisting arrest a hate crime punishable by ten years in prison and where state legislatures are considering immunity for those who run over protesters, the Trump administration has signalled that, actually, we are not tough enough on protesters and activists. As bad as this may be, however, it is this part of the executive order that is the most chilling:"
'Following that review … make recommendations to the President for legislation …. defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, as well as for related crimes.'
Enhancing or even reconstructing state power is invariably a critical objective for the far right. The new right's objectives in the West are a so far a weak echo of a more direct and brutal process in Egypt that was as a response to the Arab Spring and now in Turkey, with its fear of the emergence of a Kurdish state.
Another date of note is therefore the 16 April, when a constitutional referendum will be held in Turkey. Voters will vote on a set of 18 proposed amendments to the Constitution of Turkey. They are singularly authoritarian in character. They include the introduction of an executive presidency with a wide range of judicial and military powers, including the extension of the office which in Erdoğan's case could run on to to 2029. It would replace the existing parliamentary system of government, abolish the Office of the Prime Minister and change the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors. While tens of thousands of critics of the regime are in jail, convulsions are expected around the referendum and will certainly be provoked if they do not arise spontaneously.
The new right's need to destroy the 'enemy from within' emerges from its first steps to reconcile the irreconcilable. Trump, the Tory right, Wilders, Le Pen and Erdoğan lead on the race/culture/national threat as the reason for impoverishment, lack of services, loss of jobs etc., but their notions are utterly absurd and ineffective. Accordingly repression is required to resolve the ensuing quandary. The right's answers do not work. But if resistance is supressed then there is less and less of a problem to sort out. And with the ensuing silence new and more expansive ambitions become possible.
If this all seems a little bloodthirsty in the UK context, with its apparent history of stable politics and society, then readers might turn to comments written by Britain's leading liberal political journalist (Observer 19 February). Andrew Rawnsley's weekly half page was entitled
'Why some Tories fear blood on the streets in a couple of years'. Underneath Rawnsley wrote 'Further spending cuts, higher taxes and a renewed squeeze on living standards all add up to trouble ahead.' Rawnsley was anti-Brexit and tried to paint his picture of gloom as a result of Britain leaving the EU. Unfortunately for his perspective he had not read the pages in his own newspaper about the catastrophic situation in Greece, or previous pieces about the crisis across Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, all inside the EU. Being inside or outside the EU was never any sort of answer to the impact of globalisation (except in part in Germany.) Now it seems that Britain too may have to try and resolve the issue of the effects of globalisation via an increase in state power rather than via Brexit or a change of mind about the EU and a new referendum on EU membership.
And of course on 23 February the British Labour Party and its Corbyn leadership will face the results of 2 bi-elections. (See Blog 13 February.) It looks likely that working class spiv Nuttall has blown away UKIP's chances in Stoke with lies about his role in the Hillsborough disaster. (Middle class spiv, UKIP's Nigel Farage, never faced anything like the media barrage that Nuttall has endured.) And the fight to defend the NHS against the plan to close the general hospital in Copeland seems to have overwhelmed local fears about Corbyn's previous views about nuclear power. If Labour scrapes by, it will still be a Corbyn failure as far as the right majority of Labour MPs are concerned (lots of stuff about the small majority vote etc.,) but will probably put off any immediate direct action against the leadership. Nevertheless while the Labour right's revolt is a minor and fluctuating part of the general trend of the times, it is as inevitable as the arrival of the new Spring and Summer. The old Labour Party as it exists today has no answer whatsoever to the impact of globalisation either. It will thereby inevitably fracture, possibly into a new future with a recomposed left, or perhaps just dissolve into parliamentary leavings composed of some ambitious hotspots. As with the position in most of the West (and even in Turkey) the social forces that could drive an alternative to the new right are still strong and certainly not defeated. The challenge for the left is to create a new left that really does have an attractive, popular and credible alternative to globalisation and austerity.
The right in the US, in the UK, in the Netherlands in France and across Europe lead on racism and the need to halt types of immigration as their answer to the effects of globalisation. Wilder's latest insult against what he called 'Moroccan scum' demonstrates the directly racist leading edge of his campaign (against the 4% of the population who are Dutch Muslims and live in Holland.) But the foundations of his agitation are actually primitive but radical propositions about Tax and State authority. In his 'WEBLOG' he writes at the end of his program
'9. A lot of extra money for defence and police
10. Lower income taxes
11. Halving of car taxes'.
There is emerging across all the new right in the West, another 'solution' to the insurgency caused by unemployment, poverty and racism. Besides attacks on minorities it suggests a more directly authoritarian answer to the failure of mainstream politics to deal with the impact of globalisation.
The 23 April is the opening round of the French Presidential Election. 7 May will be the final round between the top two candidates. Again, Marine LePen is a shoe-in for one of the final two. Again it is supposed that the French electorate will vote 'anybody else' against France's fascist. France has been in a state of emergency since 130 people were killed in the November 2015 attacks in Paris. A state of emergency also describes the situation of the two main parties that have ruled France since the 1980s with the independent Macron, a politician deracinated of politics, the only answer to the far right wing threat. Already this latest 'independent' is weakening in the French polls. Already the establishment's political answer to the threat from the right is faltering. And Le Pen junior is now ramping up the 'defence' of French society to deal with the 'thugs' that have risen from Paris's Banlieues once more defending themselves against the police. According to Le Pen, the confidence and the authority of those 'defending' law and order must be rebuilt!
Meanwhile Douglas Williams on the British 'Guardian' website (17 February) has pointed out some of Trump's less well circulated executive actions to deal with the impact on those left behind by globalisation in his first days in office.
'The executive order titled Presidential Executive Order on Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers' promises to:
Pursue appropriate legislation, consistent with the Constitution’s regime of limited and enumerated Federal powers, that will define new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing Federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.
Review existing Federal laws to determine whether those laws are adequate to address the protection and safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.'
"That’s right. In a country where police chiefs consider resisting arrest a hate crime punishable by ten years in prison and where state legislatures are considering immunity for those who run over protesters, the Trump administration has signalled that, actually, we are not tough enough on protesters and activists. As bad as this may be, however, it is this part of the executive order that is the most chilling:"
'Following that review … make recommendations to the President for legislation …. defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, as well as for related crimes.'
Enhancing or even reconstructing state power is invariably a critical objective for the far right. The new right's objectives in the West are a so far a weak echo of a more direct and brutal process in Egypt that was as a response to the Arab Spring and now in Turkey, with its fear of the emergence of a Kurdish state.
Another date of note is therefore the 16 April, when a constitutional referendum will be held in Turkey. Voters will vote on a set of 18 proposed amendments to the Constitution of Turkey. They are singularly authoritarian in character. They include the introduction of an executive presidency with a wide range of judicial and military powers, including the extension of the office which in Erdoğan's case could run on to to 2029. It would replace the existing parliamentary system of government, abolish the Office of the Prime Minister and change the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors. While tens of thousands of critics of the regime are in jail, convulsions are expected around the referendum and will certainly be provoked if they do not arise spontaneously.
The new right's need to destroy the 'enemy from within' emerges from its first steps to reconcile the irreconcilable. Trump, the Tory right, Wilders, Le Pen and Erdoğan lead on the race/culture/national threat as the reason for impoverishment, lack of services, loss of jobs etc., but their notions are utterly absurd and ineffective. Accordingly repression is required to resolve the ensuing quandary. The right's answers do not work. But if resistance is supressed then there is less and less of a problem to sort out. And with the ensuing silence new and more expansive ambitions become possible.
If this all seems a little bloodthirsty in the UK context, with its apparent history of stable politics and society, then readers might turn to comments written by Britain's leading liberal political journalist (Observer 19 February). Andrew Rawnsley's weekly half page was entitled
'Why some Tories fear blood on the streets in a couple of years'. Underneath Rawnsley wrote 'Further spending cuts, higher taxes and a renewed squeeze on living standards all add up to trouble ahead.' Rawnsley was anti-Brexit and tried to paint his picture of gloom as a result of Britain leaving the EU. Unfortunately for his perspective he had not read the pages in his own newspaper about the catastrophic situation in Greece, or previous pieces about the crisis across Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, all inside the EU. Being inside or outside the EU was never any sort of answer to the impact of globalisation (except in part in Germany.) Now it seems that Britain too may have to try and resolve the issue of the effects of globalisation via an increase in state power rather than via Brexit or a change of mind about the EU and a new referendum on EU membership.
And of course on 23 February the British Labour Party and its Corbyn leadership will face the results of 2 bi-elections. (See Blog 13 February.) It looks likely that working class spiv Nuttall has blown away UKIP's chances in Stoke with lies about his role in the Hillsborough disaster. (Middle class spiv, UKIP's Nigel Farage, never faced anything like the media barrage that Nuttall has endured.) And the fight to defend the NHS against the plan to close the general hospital in Copeland seems to have overwhelmed local fears about Corbyn's previous views about nuclear power. If Labour scrapes by, it will still be a Corbyn failure as far as the right majority of Labour MPs are concerned (lots of stuff about the small majority vote etc.,) but will probably put off any immediate direct action against the leadership. Nevertheless while the Labour right's revolt is a minor and fluctuating part of the general trend of the times, it is as inevitable as the arrival of the new Spring and Summer. The old Labour Party as it exists today has no answer whatsoever to the impact of globalisation either. It will thereby inevitably fracture, possibly into a new future with a recomposed left, or perhaps just dissolve into parliamentary leavings composed of some ambitious hotspots. As with the position in most of the West (and even in Turkey) the social forces that could drive an alternative to the new right are still strong and certainly not defeated. The challenge for the left is to create a new left that really does have an attractive, popular and credible alternative to globalisation and austerity.
Monday, 13 February 2017
The British left takes a major initiative
For those who don't receive the Peoples Assembly Emails, the main Anti-Austerity movement in Britain took the initiative on the 10th February to convene a meeting and organise a committee with the following objective;
'The Committee aims to campaign locally and nationally to get Theresa May’s invitation to Trump rescinded because of his racist, misogynist and warmongering policies, and his climate-change denial. It aims to build the broadest-possible movement against Trump, and to work with everyone interested in organising a huge public protest should he visit London as the government intends.'
Below are a list of those who support the initiative and the date of the next rally
'The attending organisations interested in establishing the campaign were:
Abortion Rights
Alliance for Free Movement
Communist Party of Britain
CWU
Daymer
Egyptian revolutionary committee
Friends of Al-Aqsa
Friends of the Earth
Friends of Equador
Jeremy Corbyn’s Office (observing)
Kate Osamor MP
Muslim Engagement and Development
Momentum
Muslim Association of Britain
Muslim Voices
NUS
NUT
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
People’s Assembly
Rainbow Coalition
Stand up to Racism
Stop the War Coalition
Student Assembly against Austerity
TUC (observing)
UCU
Unite the Union
Venezuela Solidarity Campaign
Woodcraft Folk
Stand up to Trump: National Organising Summit
Saturday 18 February 10am - 5pm, Friends House Euston, London.'
All sorts pf poisonous political leaders have 'been (invited) to London to see the Queen' in the past. None of them should have been allowed to come. They all demonstrate the fawning hypocrisy of the British State. But the significance of Trump is that he and his coterie seek to lead the West into an authoritarian, war-mongering, planet ruining, racist and sexist future. This is something that the people of Britain can directly effect. The need first to refuse Trump, and then to push back all the right wing leaders popping up all over the West who have the same agenda and who draw their strength from Trump, is the most profound and critical matter in the here and now. We must hope and plan for the largest mass actions that Britain has ever seen.
There is another vital concern in this great moment.
On 23 February voters in Stoke Central (a city to the north of the English Midlands) and Copeland (in Cumbria in the Northwest of England) will play a major part in the future of the Labour Party. Polls show that both of these two previously held Labour Constituencies (seats) are in serious danger of falling to far-right UKIP's new leader, Paul Nuttall in the case of Stoke and to the Tories in the case of Copeland.
Any Labour losses will be put down to Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, both by the national media and by most Labour MPs. Corbyn's anti nuclear views have featured heavily in the Copeland campaign. The constituency hosts the Sellafield nuclear plant, and nuclear submarines are built in nearby Barrow. The local Labour Party has tried to insist that Corbyn's views are not Labour's real policies and have refused to have him campaign in the Constituency. (It is also worth noting that the largest British Trade Union, UNITE, currently support Corbyn but oppose his stance on nuclear weapons and energy.) In Stoke the UK Independence Party, which ran second in many traditional Labour constituencies in the Midlands and the North in the 2015 General Election, are making a huge effort to topple Labour in Stoke and crown their own party leader with a seat in Parliament (which previous UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, has never achieved.)
In reality Corbyn's leadership has very little to do with the meltdown of the Labour Party. There is no sign that Labour's Scottish bloc of MPs will return after decades of complacency and lack of interest that Scottish Labour was renowned for. The same applies to many regions in England and Wales, where the traditional vote for Labour was ignored and despised by a Labour leadership desperate for decades to be part of the establishment. In reality Corbyn (as a Labour rebel for most of his life) offers what embers of enthusiasm are still there to be stoked, for those who want a transformative government. But the house whose tenancy Corbyn took over was already falling down. The hostile press are writing that Corbyn will step down voluntarily if the polls stay bad. That will simply make things worse. There is no way forward either inside or outside of Parliament via a shift to a leader with a new route, stuffed with concessions to the past, leading only to a dead future.
What the Peoples Assembly's initiative does is potentially rally the heartland of a new left in Britain - in action. It is still possible for the Corbyn leadership of Labour - and the movement against Trump (and his wretched European epigones) to fuse; to become a new political movement of the left; to begin the creation of a new political radicalism, out of the wreckage of Labour; with the best of the MPs who want and who give faith to those millions who want change. In other words to accept that Blair's New Labour is in its death throws and now the new left needs to reconstruct an alternative.
What is the alternative ... if there is no alternative? Labour will continue to rot and shrink. Mass action against austerity and the new right will continue, but without a new political point of departure, without an independent political voice. The paradox is that traditional Labour's agony can yet become a tremendous political renewal. And now the Peoples Assembly has made its unifying move, the opportunity to change British political history opens.
'The Committee aims to campaign locally and nationally to get Theresa May’s invitation to Trump rescinded because of his racist, misogynist and warmongering policies, and his climate-change denial. It aims to build the broadest-possible movement against Trump, and to work with everyone interested in organising a huge public protest should he visit London as the government intends.'
Below are a list of those who support the initiative and the date of the next rally
'The attending organisations interested in establishing the campaign were:
Abortion Rights
Alliance for Free Movement
Communist Party of Britain
CWU
Daymer
Egyptian revolutionary committee
Friends of Al-Aqsa
Friends of the Earth
Friends of Equador
Jeremy Corbyn’s Office (observing)
Kate Osamor MP
Muslim Engagement and Development
Momentum
Muslim Association of Britain
Muslim Voices
NUS
NUT
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
People’s Assembly
Rainbow Coalition
Stand up to Racism
Stop the War Coalition
Student Assembly against Austerity
TUC (observing)
UCU
Unite the Union
Venezuela Solidarity Campaign
Woodcraft Folk
Stand up to Trump: National Organising Summit
Saturday 18 February 10am - 5pm, Friends House Euston, London.'
All sorts pf poisonous political leaders have 'been (invited) to London to see the Queen' in the past. None of them should have been allowed to come. They all demonstrate the fawning hypocrisy of the British State. But the significance of Trump is that he and his coterie seek to lead the West into an authoritarian, war-mongering, planet ruining, racist and sexist future. This is something that the people of Britain can directly effect. The need first to refuse Trump, and then to push back all the right wing leaders popping up all over the West who have the same agenda and who draw their strength from Trump, is the most profound and critical matter in the here and now. We must hope and plan for the largest mass actions that Britain has ever seen.
There is another vital concern in this great moment.
On 23 February voters in Stoke Central (a city to the north of the English Midlands) and Copeland (in Cumbria in the Northwest of England) will play a major part in the future of the Labour Party. Polls show that both of these two previously held Labour Constituencies (seats) are in serious danger of falling to far-right UKIP's new leader, Paul Nuttall in the case of Stoke and to the Tories in the case of Copeland.
Any Labour losses will be put down to Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, both by the national media and by most Labour MPs. Corbyn's anti nuclear views have featured heavily in the Copeland campaign. The constituency hosts the Sellafield nuclear plant, and nuclear submarines are built in nearby Barrow. The local Labour Party has tried to insist that Corbyn's views are not Labour's real policies and have refused to have him campaign in the Constituency. (It is also worth noting that the largest British Trade Union, UNITE, currently support Corbyn but oppose his stance on nuclear weapons and energy.) In Stoke the UK Independence Party, which ran second in many traditional Labour constituencies in the Midlands and the North in the 2015 General Election, are making a huge effort to topple Labour in Stoke and crown their own party leader with a seat in Parliament (which previous UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, has never achieved.)
In reality Corbyn's leadership has very little to do with the meltdown of the Labour Party. There is no sign that Labour's Scottish bloc of MPs will return after decades of complacency and lack of interest that Scottish Labour was renowned for. The same applies to many regions in England and Wales, where the traditional vote for Labour was ignored and despised by a Labour leadership desperate for decades to be part of the establishment. In reality Corbyn (as a Labour rebel for most of his life) offers what embers of enthusiasm are still there to be stoked, for those who want a transformative government. But the house whose tenancy Corbyn took over was already falling down. The hostile press are writing that Corbyn will step down voluntarily if the polls stay bad. That will simply make things worse. There is no way forward either inside or outside of Parliament via a shift to a leader with a new route, stuffed with concessions to the past, leading only to a dead future.
What the Peoples Assembly's initiative does is potentially rally the heartland of a new left in Britain - in action. It is still possible for the Corbyn leadership of Labour - and the movement against Trump (and his wretched European epigones) to fuse; to become a new political movement of the left; to begin the creation of a new political radicalism, out of the wreckage of Labour; with the best of the MPs who want and who give faith to those millions who want change. In other words to accept that Blair's New Labour is in its death throws and now the new left needs to reconstruct an alternative.
What is the alternative ... if there is no alternative? Labour will continue to rot and shrink. Mass action against austerity and the new right will continue, but without a new political point of departure, without an independent political voice. The paradox is that traditional Labour's agony can yet become a tremendous political renewal. And now the Peoples Assembly has made its unifying move, the opportunity to change British political history opens.
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