President Trump's racist tricks.

When President Trump says that he is 'very clever' he is not judging himself academically, or even claiming that he is knowledgeable. Trump is sly. He knows he is sly. Sly is what Trump means by 'clever.' Getting 'one over' shows that he is clever. Trump believes he is smarter than Obama. Obama knew a lot of stuff. He sounded good. But he did not get one over anybody! And of course what really shows it up is not that Obama couldn't get anything done. It was that Obama was unable to hide it!

Trump is a racist. Trump (and his dad) have 'form' when it comes to racism. From legal battles about racist employment issues going on to support for 'good people' among the militant fascist groups in the US, the Trumps bend towards the extreme right wing. His 'camps' for immigrants on the Mexican border are the latest vile initiative which demonstrate that.

But everything in Trump-land has another purpose. Many Trump actions are deliberately designed to cover up previous Presidential claims and start new directions. For example, Trump's camps are covering up the colossal defeat of Trump's wall. It was number 1 or 2 of his promises when he stood for election. The wall has been hidden away from national controversy for the time being. Trump's racist attacks on 4 Democratic Congress women have two, clever/sly objectives. (Britain's two candidates for Tory Party Leader and UK Prime Minister were too scared to call-out Trump as a racist!) First, Trump believes that many traditionally blue-collar Democratic voters will vote for white supremacy. Second, he believes he can split the Democratic Party itself by using the socialist credentials of the women he has maligned. (Fox news is already calling them communists.)

New jobs yes, but mainly folding boxes or serving coffee; wages static; no wealth trickling down from Trump's monster tax relief for the rich; no alternative to Obama-care; gun nuts still on killing sprees and teachers taught to shoot back; the black population criminalised; abortion under threat. It rolls on.

What does Trump offer as he campaigns for a second round? White supremacy and 'get' the communists. In Trump's mind, that is 'clever.' It substitutes for policy.

Trump's view of the world is that the US is big enough, as a nation, to tame the international corporations - especially if he can break up or isolate the huge geo-political blocks like the EU, or China's international grip. That's his answer to globalisation. But his drastic failure to dominate, or accommodate, or even to get close to the great digital giants, most recently with his totally laughable attack/acceptance of Huawei, illustrates that even the greatest capitalist power in the world is unable to 'rewind' globalisation.

That means there is no way that the US's ex-blue collar workers have any real future following Trump's direction - or the genuine, US, middle classes. (Just has they had none under Clinton or Obama.) But Trump has no intention of failing like he saw the Clintons or Obama did. And as he cannot stop the basic trend of capitalism, it means Trump has to do something else. He has to fiddle the elections (for example reducing or removing voter registration, using Supreme Court action to increase 'State Rights); he has to up and up racism and the fear of minorities; he has to use the Democrat Party weaknesses - in that its leadership have no answers either, and he has to create sly initiatives to keep the whole, empty show on the road. In the end, his bellicose trade 'wars', up to now relatively harmless, might spill over into the real deal. After all, Hitler secured his domination through international war. But as Trump is so sly, he could do it just by accident!

Corbyn, Scotland and the end of the UK

On the 27th of June the former leader of Scottish Labour said 'there is a serious prospect' that Jeremy Corbyn would agree to hold a second independence referendum (in Scotland.) Kezia Dugdale said she believes Mr Corbyn would give consent for indyref2 if he needed SNP support to form a government after a general election. Despite the clear call in the Labour Manifesto of 2017 to keep the union and not to hold a new referendum on Scotland, Corbyn has personally stated that he would support a second referendum if 'the Scots' called for one'.  

In part, this was an item of news buried in the BBC News on the Internet and generally unmentioned in TV news in England. But it was and remains a critical question for the UK's future. 

The very ex-Tory leader Teresa May made a speech about the UK's Union (4 July). Most commentators who bothered making any comment about her plan to review Devolution ... and her big new thought about how the THE UNION should work ... cringed at the hypocrisy and emptiness of May's discovery - that there were all these other places, besides England, who, it turns out, were in the same country!

One result was Boris Johnson (Britain's next Prime Minister) spending a whole sentence or two on how he was going to be Prime Minister of 'The whole Union!' Now that North Sea Oil (and its wealth) is out of the way (the strange Norwegians mostly put their oil returns in 'The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund', which reached $2 Trillion this year) the Scots could however at least be sure that they would be as poor as the rest of the overwhelming majority of the UK.

The fight for Scottish independence has a long history. The Scottish Labour Party backed independence in the late teens and early twenties of the 20th century. But it was the emergence of the national movement from the late 1970s and 80's that revealed the main basis of Scotland's right to its own self-determination. Scotland (unlike Northern Ireland, but similar to Wales) have both experienced long periods in their modern history where they have been politically oppressed; by an English government and its state. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, was set up as a ruthless, imperial toehold, built to undermine full Irish independence. The apartheid state, set up by Britain in Northern Ireland, was dominated by a totally second rate existence, socially, religiously, economically, racially, as well as politically, for all republicans. The Northern Irish arrangement was created and dominated by British imperialism. 

Both Scotland and Wales were not created by British imperialism.  Although there were significant echoes of the Irish national experiences (the organised hostility to waves of immigration of the Irish to the west of Scotland, the second rate treatment of Welsh miners etc.,) these countries were not established as imperialist colonies and, in a general sense, were not ruled as imperial colonies. (For example the first British King was Scottish and the Scottish ruling class, eg in banking and financial services, has always been a significant part of the British ruling class. The industrial revolution, denied in whole or in part to Britain's colonies, was never blocked in Wales or Scotland.)

This distinction, between the Irish question and current national movements in Scotland and Wales, is relevant to what is happening now to the UK. Historically speaking, British imperialism was finally brought down by independence movements across the whole globe, including in Ireland, following the two World Wars. (In Northern Ireland the war of independence has only recently finished.) The process now emerging among the movements organising for the separation of mainland Britain, is instead a decisive political act, within what remains of Britain's imperial heartland. And its fundamental character, in Britain's mainland, is that it is a key step towards overturning the whole of Britain's role in, and its subservience to, the domination of globalisation. The 'break up' of Britain is, in that sense, a thoroughly progressive act; an act that is a key part of the reorganisation of the politics and economics of Britain itself. Scottish (and if called-for, Welsh) independence are necessary acts to reverse Britain's political and economic systems  - but they are not sufficient. 

Why necessary? Why not sufficient?

It is necessary because the deeply required, indeed essential, disruption and transformation of British politics and economics is currently held up by the siege towers built over centuries, designed to protect Britain's ruling class. And those siege towers; the City of London, the 'First Passed the Post' voting system, the 'Home Counties', the public schools and Oxford and Cambridge universities, the Monarchy, the Lords, the select judiciary and the rigid class structure of the armed forces and on and on, are rooted in southern England. Breaking domination of these institutions in Scotland, in Wales will not be possible unless these parts of Britain become separate, critical nations - for themselves. Breaking away from the UK is a solid platform - for breaking up Britain. If the separation is denied or fails to carry through in the struggle to create a new type of nation, a great, not to say historic advance will be lost not just for the new nations but for all in Britain.

The paradox is that the unification of working class people across Britain (see current divisions over Brexit) can only open out once the core structures of Britain, post imperial Britain and its 'special relationships' are denied and then broken down. 

Not sufficient? 'Solving' the national question in Scotland (and Wales) however will not be sufficient. Precisely because these struggles are not a battle to overthrow imperialist domination. They are struggles to identify and then secure the political system which those nations reflect and want - as against their participation in political systems which constantly deny their political choices. But of course the political wishes and requirements of the Scottish and Welsh people (should they demand it) lie on a bedrock of economic foundations that criss-cross the globe. To begin the process of moving the predominant economics in the world, in order to meet the requirements of most of the people in your country, is eminently an international requirement.

Again, the paradox of the new nations of the old Britain, is their requirement to reach to all those who seek the same destination as themselves wherever they can be found - not as a kind act - but as an essential necessity. 

The future politics of Britain

Britain is experiencing a farce. This is Act 2 and it is provided by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. They are trying to win the votes of the richest, whitest, oldest, most male and the smallest, mainstream party in the world. Potentially, 75,001 Tories will make Hunt or Johnson Britain's next Prime Minister - in a country of 66 million.

Hunt constantly calls himself 'an entrepreneur' because a lot of business (mainly men) are Tory Party members and they have the vote. (They also run Britain's Rotary clubs and the Freemasons.) Hunt's claim to be an entrepreneur comes from his three business failures, followed by access to his father's resources which, as his father was an Admiral, ended up providing for a 'jolly good' fourth shot at 'entrepreneuring'. Finally, this meant Hunt could grab £14 million for himself.

Hunt was that very typical sort of British 'entrepreneur' that repetitively fails. This of course results in loads of dumped employees and living on the edge of criminal debts. Then, when Hunt finally succeeded, he sells his fledgling company to a big corporation for all the money he can get. And Hunt is now free from any unpleasant labour. He can share his exceptional experiences with the world and manage the rest of us without petty distractions.

Hunt told the BBC's senior political editor recently that he had wanted to be PM for 30 years! That means he decided his political future at age 22. (Which was somewhere around the first or maybe the second business failure.) His own squirmy glee at his announcement in the interview suddenly worried him and so he tried instead to look amused.

Hunt's main political claim to fame was his time as Health Minister and his attack on junior doctors which has led to the worst results in the NHS health delivery since targets were set. Unsurprisingly perhaps - because he was described by many NHS doctors as the worst Health Minister in its history. Maybe his early judgement of the NHS, when he wrote a co-production of a pamphlet entitled  'Direct Democracy: An Agenda For A New Model Party' in 2005, which called for the de-nationalisation of the NHS, explains this, his first, major, political failure. Sadly, even an Admiral can't sort that out. (Although it is perhaps noticeable that Hunt is now proposing a big money hike for the armed forces.)

In other words Hunt is a deep-down Tory stereotype, with a doubtful past and whose main fuel is ambition.

And then there is Boris. Unlike Hunt he is a well known political pop-star (who manages to have less ideas than Trump!) Because he is well known and a lively figure he sits perfectly in Act 2 of Britain's political farce. It is not necessary to describe his characteristics or his history because all of it is well known. His attraction to those participating in Britain's farce so far is that when he was 5 he wanted to be 'king of the world! 17 years ahead of Hunt. He's tubby, like Churchill, and the serious Tories hope that he's funny enough to stop the victory of Corbyn's Labour Party in a General Election. Billy Bunter has taken over the 6th Form common room at Greyfriers /Eton /Oxford/ the establishment. Yarroo!

These are the 'Punch and Judy' who are leading in Act 2.

What was Act 1? Act 1 started with the Brexit Referendum and ended with the political death of Mrs May. Act 1 turned the Tory agony over membership of the EU into the prevailing issue across the whole country. Before Act 1 really got started, the main issues in British politics were the rise of Corbyn into the leadership of the Labour Party and its novel left-facing direction; the overturn of the Tory snap election in 2017, and the huge, social support for Labour's new Manifesto. And then followed the shock of the Grenfell fire, which underlined a decade of austerity and the years of anti-government anger, which had started to show in the streets. All of this, the politics and the public action, was replaced in 2017/18 by the megaphonic noise of Brexit, ballooned into the whole of society, starting from the Tory government's particular turmoil.

And the Act 3 to come? It is rare indeed for a farce to provide unique developments at the end of its show. The audience are waiting for a solution that, in their heart of hearts, they know is coming. Normally the characters and the events of the farce are turned on their head, with the effect of making all come right. Alas, Britain's political farce cannot continue. Economic and political forces are too powerful to allow the show to go on. Britain's political farce is about to blow up.

Act 3 and the Westminster theatre will therefore start disintegrating in an indisputable war between the remnants of a ragged Tory government, topped by its new PM, besieged by Farage and the new right, all mobilising against the Labour Party in England and Wales; the SNP in Scotland and the rise of Republicanism in Northern (and Southern) Ireland. The weakness of the Westminster government and the strength of the government's opponents means an early General Election. Either immediately this year with the breakdown caused by 'No Deal', or as the Brexit agony deepens, more and more effecting the 'insecuriate' UK population, the current Westminster government will fall. And as the Peterborough bi-election already shows, Labour has a good chance of breaking through the dominance of Brexit and restoring the prominence of its social program, which challenges the social and economic malaise, at least in England. In any event, a Johnson Tory government which is constructed to deliver a catastrophe, will not stand.

As the current political farce collapses, two further, interwoven, developments will, in one form or another, certainly rise.

First, any Labour Party led government will finally fully face its class contradictions as the Brexit wind blows in its different directions. That means most of its MPs will finally refuse to carry out Labour's social and economic program - because it is too difficult, because business is not yet ready etc etc. On the other hand most of Labour members and some of the Corbyn supporters in Parliament are likely to fight to carry through Labour's Manifesto. But even parts of Labour's left will believe that 'Labour unity' is more important than Labour's program. The previous Brexit Westminster has also energised more Labour MPs to pursue their 'independence', read defend their personal seat in Westminster. So the regroupment of a class struggle Labour could be very small - at least in Parliament. The best possible outcome from this process depends on the second of the two developments.

The early Grenfell spirit desperately needs restoring. And among the growing chaos of Westminster that spirit has the new possibility of connecting to the lead shown by the Glasgow women fighting their local authority for their equal pay, to the battles against the corporations who deny workers rights, to the movement that is growing against racism and fascism. Action by millions, including those MPs willing and able to carry out a radical social and economic program that would also ally with anyone, from any party and none, and supported Labour's program in action - could change Britain's politics both inside and outside Westminster.

It is the failure of the Westminster Parliament in the first quarter century since the millennium that is now creating Britain's political future. As Britain bumps and grinds its way past Brexit so the real possibilities begin to arise. Britain can become a series of small and medium style countries, with new, genuine and humble democracies, involving all, focusing their priorities on the daily needs of the people. And grateful that the wretched Empire is really and finally over.

Labour MPs back Boris.

When 8 Labour MPs opposed the Labour Party's vote in Parliament which was aimed at preventing a 'no deal' Brexit, they defeated the Party's resolution and thereby secured the current Tory Government's immediate future. At what a cost! The 8 effectively decided that maintaining the worst government in Britain since World War 2, with the guarantee of austerity multiplied, was better than agreeing either a possible manageable Brexit deal in Parliament and/or a further vote on Brexit. Sectarian, anti-working class madness. This was the first, significant attack on the Corbyn-led Labour Party which has a potentially drastic outcome for huge numbers of people, that has been thrown up by Labour MPs.

309 to 298 votes in Parliament now allows the virtually unchallenged Tory heir to the throne, Boris Johnson, to maintain his fantastical vision of a Brexit future. A future where his 'no deal' threat is supposed to force the EU into compliance and which will actually lead to new depths of impoverishment for millions - even should any emergency measures be temporarily accepted. If the 8 had abstained, as 13 other Labour MPs did, then Boris (and the mini-Borises') would have started to lose their platforms. The Tories would then have split under pressure of Farage's Brexit party and there would likely have been a very early, anti-Tory, General Election.

What is the engine driving these degenerate acts? Undoubtedly sickening self-aggrandisement generally contests with basic fear among those MPs who identify themselves as the masters of politics and the arbiter of all important decisions. They turn the (very rare) major, contested, political issues in Parliament into the smallest scraps of individual consequence. More significant than the psychology of the hangers on of the political class is the utterly false understanding of the meaning of Brexit itself. It is not addressed as it should be understood, that is from the point of view of the interests of the working class (which is supposedly the basis for the Labour Party's political representation.)

The fundamental object of a political party is to change (solidify or reverse) the conditions of the majority of the people. The drastic decline of Britain's majority, in contrast to every generation since 1945, means that it falls to the Labour Party to reverse the big trends that have created that condition. Uniquely (in Europe) the current British Labour Party not only has a chance to form a government, but it does so on the basis of a radical program of reforms. And this is by far the most important issue in British politics today.

Throughout political history, the most effective changes, including the development of democracy itself, are mostly created by the sustained mobilisation of ordinary people in all the areas of day-to-day life. (The 'yellow vest' movement in France is such an example.) While there have been mass actions in Britain in the last three years, from the point of view of many (but far from all) ordinary people, they have been wracked by the Brexit issue and not focused on action needed against their sinking conditions. Instead it is Brexit that has (deliberately) stood as a symbol of the capacity of ordinary people to change things, which has stirred a third of Britain's population but is of course a genuine fake! And this idea has been heated by classes on the margins of Britain's dominant rulers and by political movements that define a whole system of society by its local enemies rather than any of the great issues of life.

While attachment or otherwise to the EU is a serious question, it is, in reality, utterly subordinate to the immediate changes necessary and possible in Britain's society. The EU is not a neutral organisation. It is the largest international block against radical reform in the UK (or elsewhere in Europe.) But today's question is getting rid of the Tories and backing a new, radical government. (The Peterborough bi-election is a hint that it is possible to get beyond Brexit in a strongly Brexit borough.) The last thing it involves is defending, as our 8 Labour MP's did, a Tory Brexit which is meant to prepare a Tory election victory in 2 years time.

In the way that history can begin with the end, so the mass movements to come in Britain will probably be those which take the cautious reforms of Corbyn's Labour and turn them into the actions that challenge a whole system of society. But it is that door, winning a Corbyn government not fiddling with this or that version of Brexit, that must be opened now.

Brexit Party blows a hole in Brexit

Nigel Farage made himself scarce after the election for a new Peterborough MP. The election was won by the Labour Party candidate and further clarified the real battle in Britain (7 June). Farage (along with the 'bookies' and their betting odds; virtually all of the mainstream media; the campaign to target Labour as anti-Semitic; the Tory Party and the biggest part of Labour's MPs in Parliament) believed that the new 'Brexit Party' would run away with a victory in Peterborough. It would win Farage's inaugural MP. (The first example of a rat jumping onto a sinking ship!)

Now that Mike Greene, ex local Tory, and Farage's last totem, becomes part of the dust of History, the real implications of a typically low local vote (less than 50%) in a marginal 'seat', that has swung between Labour and the Tory Party for the best part of a century, becomes clearer.

At around 2 am Boris Johnson (the most favoured candidate for Teresa May's ex position) tweeted '... Conservatives must deliver Brexit by 31st October or we risk Brexit Party votes delivering Corbyn to No10.' What was Boris looking at? Not at the low turn out among the Peterborough voters. (Normally that would jump up in Labour's favour in a General Election.) And not at Farage's latest kite that did not fly? No. He was scared that the Liberals and the Greens (12% and 3% respectively) did not take the 'return to the EU at all costs' votes from Labour, an assumption that has been readily promoted following the the recent EU elections. But Farage's vote, (29%), definitely cut into - indeed, cut the head off - official Tory candidate Paul Bristow's 21% of the vote. 

The Labour vote in Peterborough (note the referendum vote; to leave 61%; to remain in the EU 39%) has not blocked a Labour victory when its official positions on Brexit have been criticised - including among its MPs - as much as the Tories. But Labour is known as having a program that reaches beyond Brexit. The Tories are still digging their Brexit hole. 

Frankly Boris could not care less about Brexit. He cares about being Prime minister. His Brexit campaign started with two articles, but only one for publication, that argued in opposite directions. He had a hard 48 hours deliberation about Brexit, not because of his scruples, but working out which damn door that would best open for Boris. He has two policies, Boris for PM and a Trump scale tax cut for the rich. And now he is cornered.  The disaster for Boris is not only do the Tories now have to swallow 'no deal' - to squeeze out Farage, but also they have to face the new reality that voters are beginning to look beyond Brexit. Boris's intention was to find something from the EU, anything, that he could get by with. Instead it will be the Tory Party 'no deal' catastrophe in jobs, standards of living and in declining health systems, plus a recalcitrant decrepit Parliament whose only aim is to prevent its own removal, plus a declining minority of Tory and ex-Tory banks of brexit-at-all-costs around the UK that Boris needs in what will finally become that next General Election. This is not where Boris would have wished to be. 

Boris has only one act of leadership he can take. The attack on Corbyn and his program, sadly, only now, is really about to begin. 

Soon; Labour, Brexit, the Union and the Greens.    

The Euro vote, Labour and Boris Johnson.

The biggest problem for the British Labour Party is not Boris Johnson nor Labour's poor results in the recent local council elections and now in the EU parliament vote, it is the success of the German Greens.

The EU elections (traditionally a democratic sideline in most of the EU) are now spinning Europe - and the UK.  They are already wiping out the decaying Syriza, the self-styled left government in Greece, as it decides it has to go for a suicidal general election. The two major parties that ran the EU Parliament since its origin in 1979 no longer have the majority. Marie (the pen), a proto fascist, beat Macron in France. (This particular 'white knight of the future' has already fallen off his horse in France. Now he's also blown his main international project. And, with Macron on the skids the Blairite hopes for the both the UK and the EU have also faded away.) Italy, France, Poland, Hungary and Britain are now filling the majority of their Euro seats with mini Trumpites. Luckily, the British MEP Trumps are too dumb to realise that they are on the same side as the right and extreme right in the EU parliament. Together, if Farage could remove his jingoistic eye pads from his Brexit eyes, the new right have the numbers to take the leadership of the EU parliament, the only vaguely democratic part of the EU! 

It was German voters (and partially the revival of social democracy in Spain and Portugal) that halted the march of the of the hard right in Europe. And it was the German Greens in particular who soaked up the disillusionment created by Merkle's coalition, instead of the expected rise of the Alternative for Germany. Among other things, this was a dramatic shift away from the anti-immigrant upsurge in a key part of the continent. (The UK's Farage echos this when he tells us that his Brexit Party has nothing to do with poisonous immigration - which is now old news. The issue now is democracy!) The German Green's 20% plus, formed a barrier which held back the steady advance of Germany's new fascists to 11% (though the AdF still had more than double the votes of the left party, Die Link.) 

Returning to political life in Britain, desperate efforts are being made across the media and among many would-be Labour supporters for the Labour leadership to stop their complex set of balletic steps to Brexit and settle for a new referendum vote. After all, there was a significant majority of 'remainer' support in the British EU vote, despite the Brexit Party's win. 

The Tory half-baked government maybe spinning but once again, (see Blog May 24) the confusion in Britain, in the British Parliament and in the Labour Party, is clearing.

The British Tory party is now coalescing around Boris Johnson. First there is an enormous pressure for all Tory MPs to support 'No Deal' if the EU do not make major (post Teresa May) concessions. In fact, 'No Deal' has become the watchword of success in the politics of Brexit.  Second, and more important to Britain's elite and many anxious Tory MPs, nobody else from the Tories except Boris has a chance of stopping Corbyn's Labour. (The last 25 polls in Britain on the outcome of a possible general election put Labour in the lead.) One of the 9 (and growing) Tory candidates for Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary Phil Hammond, states categorically that an early general election 'would be a disaster for the Tories.'

All this shows that the political initiative, at least in England, now firmly rests with Corbyn's Labour Party. But things have changed. What should Labour do now?

Over the last two years the Corbyn leadership has insistently argued for a General Election in Britain as the main instrument to resolve the overall direction of the country - part of which would have been involved with, but not become dominated by - Brexit. And, if Labour had been successful, the types of Brexit might have been calmly and fairly resolved in the context of the broad reforms carried out from the party's manifesto. Instead, in those two years, the growing Tory leadership's uncertainty about Brexit, whether it was hard or soft, could there be a deal or no deal - led by a Prime Minister without any strategic grip or base in her party - has ended up creating two new dangerous disasters. First, Brexit itself has become the synonym for all government activity and policy. Never mind the precipitous decline for millions. Second, UKIP's racist party, with its 4 million voters, who had retreated and dissolved its own leadership by 2017, has now been recreated, by the Tory government's shambles, in the form of the Brexit party.

The Tory projection of its own crisis over Europe onto large swathes of the British population will not now simply dissolve in thin air. And neither will the second UKIP. The Corbyn led Labour leadership now need to break the momentum of this originally second rate turmoil and thereby re-instate the priority of the giant reforms desperately needed by the British people who took Labour to the brink of Government in 2017. But how?

By accepting that Brexit can now be a major problem for the British people - should the 'Brexit believers' decide that they can run British capitalism as a tax haven with 'no deal'. Then Labour should say that the Tories have now brought us very close to that very precipice. If Boris (or a mini Boris) is selected by the Tory Party that will mean all forces opposing Boris, the Tories (and the Brexit Party) have to fight together with the Labour Party for another vote. The vote might contain various options including remain in the EU, devise a close partnership with the EU outside its management, remove all links with the EU. If the Tories back Boris and the Brexit Party then the response has to be crystal clear. And this cannot be subordinate to the call for a General Election, but alongside it.

In the end Brexit (outwith its extreme versions) is not decisive for the future of the British people. And that is why making concessions in either a leave or remain direction in principle is less important than Britain's future government and the implementation of its plans. While there are definitely better and worse outcomes and the different options are not neutral regarding membership of the EU, because Brexit is less important it is therefore possible to amend a position for or against. (And it would be, for example, a wholly negative abstraction to use the Tory referendum to pretend that somehow some sort of genuine democracy was at stake here.) Nevertheless, despite these deeper realities, extreme Brexit is now immediate and Brexit in general has undoubtedly conquered the concerns and understanding of political choices in the population at large - as the Tory Party floods its European contradictions across the land they have fed the soil. This has to be faced now in order to move beyond it.

And the German Greens? If Labour now needs to punch through the Brexit wall it will then need to rally the forces that started to build around the 2017 General Election. The big majority of youth were the bedrock for Corbyn's Labour - and remain so according to social polls. But, the youth were also largely 'remainers.' And it has taken a long time for Labour to recognise their views on Brexit. There is little danger that the LibDems have purchase with Labour's young base. But the new strengths of the Greens, created by the big movements of youth to defend the planet ... that is a much larger question. Whether Europe's official Green Parties are at the centre of, or even really connected to the new climate movement's anti-system thinking is another question, and will be looked at in the next Blog.