68

Why vote Labour today?

Philip Roddis

Following my Jesus or Barabbas post yesterday and – replicated on OffGuardian – Dirty War on the NHS post the day before, I’ve seen fit to respond to commenters who share my view of parliamentary democracy as a sham, but draw a conclusion I do not share; namely, that in no circumstances can any party, including Labour under its current leadership, be supported.

This is my response to that erroneous conclusion.

*

The Labour question has preoccupied the Left for a hundred years. Ever since Lenin advised the fledgling Communist Party of Britain to “support the Labour Party as a rope supports a hanged man” (this from the man whose brother went to the gallows after a failed ultra-leftist uprising against the Tsar) it has divided those who see parliamentary democracy for the chimera it is.

There are those within that minority – anarchists for instance – who couldn’t care less what Lenin thought. And even those who do care fall into two broad camps.

Both see a stark choice for humanity: socialism or barbarism. (The latter updated to add environmental meltdown to the list of possibilities.) And both are with Marx in insisting a capitalist ruling class will never allow socialism via the parliamentary route. (A seventies film, A Very British Coup, is excellent on the why and how of this).

But they differ on whether Lenin’s advice still holds. Or – forget Lenin – whether the inability of social democracy to deliver socialism makes the Labour Party, notwithstanding its ties to trade unionism, unsupportable – however conditional and limited that support.

At some point I’ll dedicate a post to the history of this but for now I’ll just say that I see blanket refusal by socialists to back Labour under any circumstances as sectarian. The British section of the international working class is facing, as is the French section to name but one other, assault on every front. I focused on the NHS but that’s a metonym for wider attacks as Capital seeks to make labour (small l) pay for its crises.

As I said before, this is the most vital election since 1945. I urge all socialists to vote Labour not because Corbyn is an honourable man – though he manifestly is – but because he has been a lightning rod, a conduit for impotent resentment hitherto mistaken by our rulers and their tame media for acquiescence and passive consent to ‘austerity’ – in reality a cover for rapid transfers of wealth from the many to the few.

With Labour in office on these terms, even with a civil war between Tory-lite and socialist wings, the unions will be emboldened and direct protests both inevitable and necessary.

I urge all British socialists to vote Labour today because when it betrays, as it must, there’ll be a stronger current prepared to take the fight beyond Westminster, to support and if need be bully Corbyn into not backing down when the pressures for him to do just that will be immense. He has already conceded too much ground and this also is what parliamentary socialists – actually an oxymoron – always do, however steely their character and piercing their intelligence.

This is not personal. There’s a science to it.

But do we join those sectarians who insist on all or nothing? Regardless of where most people are at? To do so is to insist there’s no difference between the utterly unprincipled BoJo and the demonstrably principled Jezza. Or to put it in less personal terms, no difference between the Tory’s plans for the NHS – remember, I use this as metonym – and the collectivist aspirations of Labour as it is currently led.

This is not 2015. At the very least the ruling class can proceed with its plans, to make the many pay for its own crises, a good deal more speedily under Boris than under Corbyn.

I think that makes this a no-brainer. Especially when the ultra-leftists who advocate abstention have nothing to offer in lieu. Nada. Zilch. Sweet Fanny Adams.

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kevin morris
kevin morris
Dec 13, 2019 5:05 PM

Well, the parliamentary Labour Party clearly prefer the electoral wilderness to a Corbyn led government because they know that this result will cause Jeremy to resign. Having tried to defeat him twice yet without success, it was their only option.

RobG
RobG
Dec 13, 2019 12:14 AM

Calm down folks.

Does Britain really want another decade of ‘austerity’, and all the rest of it?

Of course not.

Which suggests that these election results have been rigged.

I cannot of course (at the moment) prove that. Everything I’ve seen today pointed towards a narrow Labour majority.

The ‘youth vote’ was very big, and the psychopaths who rule us panicked and gave Bojo & Co a big majority.

That will prove to be a big mistake.

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 13, 2019 7:37 AM
Reply to  RobG

If the “election results have been rigged” then that would explain the curious inactivity of the Tories. And I’m becoming so jaded now that I’m even wondering if Flaxgirl/Petra is right in suggesting that you’re even supposed to KNOW that it’s a fraud. It’s like the sadistic torturer opening the door and waiting for you to try to escape before tripping you up.

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 12, 2019 11:38 PM

What fresh hell is this? Are the British public really as criminally gullible as these exit polls suggest?

Paolo
Paolo
Dec 12, 2019 11:48 PM
Reply to  George Mc

Yep, its shocking isnt it.

paul
paul
Dec 13, 2019 12:02 AM
Reply to  George Mc

IF this pans out, the lesson to be drawn from it is that a party can’t win an election when it is at war with itself. The same was true of the Tory party from the early to mid 90s.
What was it, 180 plus in the PLP tried to stab Corbyn in the back not once, but twice? Mouthing off that he wasn’t fit to be elected dog catcher?
How can you ask people on the doorstep to vote for a party with that record?
The Tories were divided as well, but not as badly.
Or a party which treated Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone the way it did?
Another factor is the north/ south divide. Most Labour MPs, whatever their constituency, are representative of the metropolitan elite.

paul
paul
Dec 13, 2019 2:44 AM
Reply to  paul

Plus you can’t just trash a referendum result and ignore 17 million people, whatever your view of Brexit.

TFS
TFS
Dec 17, 2019 8:13 AM
Reply to  paul

Thats because Brexit was made a THING. It was made a THING as an oppourtunity to kill off the Corbyn project.

People became so fixated, they never realised that under Corbyn, they would get their chance again.

As a Brexiteer who voted Corbyn, those that voted with the Tories first chose to ignore the other stuff of greater importance he stood for. It was they who turned their back on prehaps the greatest chance to change this countries course.

Corbyn may have put a foot wrong on the issue but it was a minor transgression compared to the people who turned away and sided with the Tories. They can bitch to the cows come home how he ignored them. The coutry will pay the price for their pettiness.

Of course given our pathetic voting system, this doesn’t preclude the fact that the votes were rigged.

Bring on the PLP, the Israeli lobby in getting Labour fit for the next 20yrs of being another Tory party.

kevin morris
kevin morris
Dec 13, 2019 9:05 PM
Reply to  paul

Your right about the PLP stabbing Jeremy in the back, but now they have their way. The result of yesterday’s election has been clear since it was called. I can only conclude that many in the PLP will be secretly rubbing their hands with glee because they have finally succeeded where two coups had failed.

The question which now must arise is, whither the Labour Party? Not a resurgence of Tony Blair or a chosen successor?

paul
paul
Dec 14, 2019 1:03 AM
Reply to  kevin morris

Labour was a lost cause, a dead end, and a waste of time and energy long before this election. It was eviscerated by Blair and his cronies and is now politically dead.

Jo
Jo
Dec 14, 2019 10:12 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

Well, various idiots suggest it doesn’t matter who, as long as it’s a woman. Even bigger idiots suggest Jess Phillips and the utter lunatics suggest Lisa Nandy so I wouldn’t expect improvement any time soon!

Jen
Jen
Dec 13, 2019 12:07 AM
Reply to  George Mc

But who is reporting the results of the exit polls? If the folks reporting these results are the ones who don’t want Corbyn as Prime Minister, and who have painted him as Britain’s real life answer to Lord Voldemort, would you put it past them to report the opposite of what the exit polls are actually saying?

Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Dec 13, 2019 12:14 AM
Reply to  Jen

Alas, exit polls tend to be pretty accurate. We can hope for a miracle — after all, Brexit was going down in flames until it wasn’t — but this may just be clutching at a straw.

If it does turn out to be a disaster for Labour then the only glimmer of hope from this is that we in the US can hopefully glean some lessons from this to prevent a similar debacle in our General Election next November.

RobG
RobG
Dec 13, 2019 12:44 AM
Reply to  George Mc

It’s been the most mixed-up election in modern history.

The Brexit issue seems to have won over (despite the fact that Bojo & Co will never deliver it).

For the record, I’ve lived in France for decades, I’m a Brexiteer, and I get bored with trying to tell Brits about the massive social unrest that’s going on in France at the moment.

Methinks this will come to the streets of Britain sometime soon.

kevin morris
kevin morris
Dec 13, 2019 8:59 PM
Reply to  George Mc

The British public but excluding your good self who is clearly above such follies.

Of course the Labour party which said it would support the people’s will on Brexit then reneged, or the Lib Dems who simply said that they would ignore the result of the referendum, thereby casting the concept of democracy into the rubbish bin- neither are responsible for the fact that millions throughout the north and the midlands felt they had nowhere to go other than the Tories.

I am a member of the Labour Party and I am ashamed of the stupidity that has ruled over the past two years. Although I considered spoiling my paper yesterday, since I knew my party hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance of winning, I voted for the sitting Labout MP who did manage to get in, but only just.

WHat sickens me, apart from the fact that Jeremy Corbyn, a thoroughly decent man probably not cut out for high office will be resigning, is the arrogance and the stupidity of those who can only blame Labour’s disaster on the criminal gullibility of people who have had enough of the endless procrastination on Brexit.

If you want to blame anyone, don’t blame the people. Blame Labour’s change of policy. Frankly, we all knew what the result would be and we have done since Labour, the Lib Dems and the nationalists conspired to undermine the people’s will. Boris Johnson had no alternative but to call an election. It was obvious that the people, criminally gullible or not, would back him.

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 14, 2019 6:23 PM
Reply to  kevin morris

So I was right then when I said in another comment to try and explain this vote other than by reference to fraud: The only logical alternative – if you can call it that – is that “Brexit at any cost” was the main incentive behind much of the voting. It seems to me that these determined Brexiteers were so focussed on getting away from the admittedly swinish EU that they didn’t see they were headed towards that vastly more swinish US salivating over that juicy NHS banquet. From the sinking ship of the EU to the sunk ship of the US.

Capricornia Man
Capricornia Man
Dec 12, 2019 11:37 PM

According to reports reaching Australia, exit polls suggest Tories 368 seats, Labour 191.

No info yet as to where Labour has lost seats, but if they are in the party’s North of England heartland, its Brexit U-turn must be blamed. This would vindicate the views of George Galloway and Kit Knightly – the latter declared that Corbyn had signed his own death warrant when he agreed to the policy.

Meanwhile, ABC radio today continues its inglorious tradition of broadcasting only those of right-wing views: Theresa May’s former Director of Legislation and Britain’s two chief Iraq war villains: Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell (of dodgy dossier infamy) the latter trotting out the usual anti-Corbyn smears.

Mike Ellwood
Mike Ellwood
Dec 13, 2019 4:23 PM

Yes, that’s what the exit polls said. In the event, they slightly exaggerated both Tory gains and Labour losses, as well as exaggerating SNP gains. It was still a terrible night for Labour, and embarrassing for the LibDems to lose their leader (the SNP could not help themselves, even though she is more pro-EU than Jean-Claude Juncker, as is the SNP. They have to have their wee IndyRef2 d’ye see noo?).

I hope the SNP get their IndyRef2, and that the result is precisely 52% Yes and 48% No, a nice parallel to the EU Referendum. And then I hope the “No” side spends the next 3+ years fighting this with gritted teeth through the courts, especially the Scottish Court of Session. that would have a feeling of rightness about it.

Thomas
Thomas
Dec 12, 2019 11:30 PM

This is how it goes when they ignore Brexit. Time to wake up, left.

Bootlyboob
Bootlyboob
Dec 12, 2019 11:14 PM

MSM are calling a Boris landslide. Let’s hope they’re wrong.

paul
paul
Dec 12, 2019 10:42 PM

This is too bleak. IF Labour is smashed and disappears, it makes room for something that can only be better than what we have now. Like when the dinosaurs became extinct. Something emerges to fill the vacuum.

Jack_Garbo
Jack_Garbo
Dec 13, 2019 12:45 AM
Reply to  paul

Why should something better succeed Labour? We’re not talking resurrection here but politics. Why not a Nazi party next, like Ukraine? Frightened citizens, like stampeding cattle, will plunger into the sea to escape a fire, even if they can’t swim.

paul
paul
Dec 13, 2019 1:57 PM
Reply to  Jack_Garbo

You could be right. Hope not.

Jack_Garbo
Jack_Garbo
Dec 13, 2019 11:14 PM
Reply to  paul

So do I. I’ve seen fascists at work, humans become animals. But if “hope” were bankable, I’d be a millionaire. I’m not.

paul
paul
Dec 14, 2019 7:38 PM
Reply to  Jack_Garbo

The people who lord it over us really like Ukraine and Bolivia as they now are. Maybe that’s what they’ve got planned for us.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Dec 12, 2019 10:37 PM

I remember some time back in the early 1970s when I was a member of a small radical left-wing group. The view was that we should play part in the unions and Labour party since this is where the people were. These seemed eminently plausible to me at the time given the dreary round of leftist student politics. We believed that we, and others like us, could move the Labour party into a more radical direction and that sectarianism was to be eschewed. So this was the position which we adopted. But the dog it was that died. We didn’t infiltrate them, they infiltrated us. By a slow insidious attrition social-democratic formulations practises and the deadly routinism inherent in Labourist politics wore away our revolutionary fervour. What were once radical socialists became middle-aged and resigned to the slow plod of gradualism and incremental reform. Incremental reform wasn’t permanent however; it was easily reversed by the neoliberal counter-revolution of the early 80s.

Moreover, the Labour Party was to move inexorably to the right until we ended up with the structural assimilation to Blairism. I’m only speculating but I believe that this process is probably irreversible. That has certainly been the case on the continent. BTW this is not a new phenomenon. It was brilliantly outlined by Roberto Michels in his magnum opus Political Parties first published in 1911. An incisive study and critique of social-democracy in general and the SPD in particular.

Where exactly do we go from here? When revolution and reform have failed it would seem to be a time to give some deep thought of what a viable strategy should be. Any ideas?

RobG
RobG
Dec 13, 2019 12:22 AM
Reply to  Francis Lee
Cesca
Cesca
Dec 12, 2019 10:18 PM

The SCUM are seriously taking the p.ss now, there’s no way the Tories could even dream of that sort of majority for real. think this election result should be decided in the courts.

paul
paul
Dec 12, 2019 10:10 PM

No, it’s all over according to the BBC. 368 seats for our Tory chums. The Botty Bangers Club has spoken.

lundiel
lundiel
Dec 12, 2019 10:06 PM

Oh God, exit polls suggest a big Tory majority.

Loverat
Loverat
Dec 12, 2019 9:39 PM

Problem is today’s Off G could turn into Counter Punch.
Endorsing Labour with ‘caveats’. Tomorrow who knows.

Disappointing for the first time. Then again I don’t generally read the election and BREXIT threads which breeds this mentality, even here.

Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Dec 12, 2019 9:02 PM

If I’ve missed something in this regard please someone correct my misperceptions. Perhaps the populace of the U.K. is ready, motivated and poised to vote for a new massive post-capitalist, eco-friendly, post-imperialist, post-materialist paradigm shift (something I totally support) – only to find that Corbyn and Labour have made it clear that they are steadfastly standing in the way of that change. If that is the case, and I’ve somehow missed this story in all the MSM smears of Corbyn and Labour, then I can certainly see why one might not vote labor, or might choose to refuse to vote as some form of protest.

However, even if simply maintaining access to basic services including affordable health care for common folks through the NHS means anything in one’s value system – well, I guess I’m a bit mystified as to why one wouldn’t vote Labour (with all it’s warts) and would instead continue to empower your own version of the amoral Orange buffoon we are saddled with here in the U.S. From my limited vantage point it somehow doesn’t seem like your choice is quite as clearly odious as having to pick between Trump and Hillary ‘the rot’ Clinton, for example, as our last election was.

bob
bob
Dec 12, 2019 8:57 PM

ideological crap

BigB
BigB
Dec 12, 2019 8:37 PM

To which I replied:

Nothing to offer in lieu but life. Life which the neoliberal market economy society has all but rejected. So we have two flavours of market economy society to choose from. Both are completely contingent functions of the globalisation of market forces. And we make the limited self-preservational choice on marginal contingent policies – subject to the global free-enterprise market doing well from its core ‘money multiplier cancer’. So how do you choose a particular brand of metastases? Or between cancer and kidney-failure? On a pantomime unpopularity contest?

I cannot believe we have got to the latest stage of capitalism’s cancerous imperialism over all life without even diagnosing the pathology and etiology of our disease. Have you read McMurtry’s ‘Cancer Stage of Capitalism’? Because it diagnoses the ‘transnational money multiplier sequence’ as being the ’cause of causes’ and ‘pathology of pathologies’. Which has its central accumulation hub in the City of London. And here we go extending its exponential metastatic mandate for another five years.

What happened to radical analysis: because this pathological contradiction with all life on earth was readily identifiable in Marx over 150 years ago? In 150 years: our analysis has been trivialised and sanitised of its global consequentionalism. And stripped of its post-Marx potency: in Sociology, Critical Theory and Continental School anti-capitalism. Instead we elect for bad faith bourgeois socialism at home: without even addressing the global consequences of our actions. Since when did neo-Marxism become capitalism? And why has eco-socialism been stillborn?

We are the climate bourgeois: in terms of consumption/pollution and historic emissions. We are both the richest (in terms of per capita consumption) and most polluting market economy society on the planet. And I draw those facts directly from LabourGND’s website so as not to be controversial. Along with LabourGND’s own proposition that if everyone lived by our consumption standards – the ecosystems would collapse. From 3.45 planets per capita – around 28,000 tonnes per person mass aggregate consumption (global average 7,000 tonnes) [Hickel]: we are voting to extend our biological footprint many times over. This is not only amoral: it is actually insane. To give credibility to the alleged decency of one man: we commit to destroy the life-ground of the planet …foreclosing the future for extended consumption today.

Of course: this can only be done in denial of what I say. But is it actually untrue? Because I have checked my facts – or drawn them from LabourGND. Or are we just blindsighted to the true globalised effects of our actions and consumption addictions? Because it seems absolutely clear to me to extend our biological footprint on the basis of EV fetishism; planning three EV giga-factories with ‘end-to-end’ UK support networks; a pseudomillion unionised green industrial revolutionary jobs; all powered with a science fiction ‘just transition’ to 90% renewables by 2030-ish is not only contra the Laws of Physics …but a clinically insane hallucinatory episode.
.
Which – if you read Cory Morningstar’s expose – is sponsored by every green finance capitalist on the planet. Something everyone has been avoiding doing since January. So we vote for cancer or kidney-failure on the option of which is more survivable? Because it seems neither is to me. Or do we diagnose the cancer at the heart of all global pathologies by a much more radical analysis than we are seeing today? And identify the cure for the root pathology? Because radical means root of the root analysis. To which I have remained true all my life.

On that point: where is everyone else? I’ve been exposing the GND all year. I exposed the fantasy of perpetual growth many times over. And I exposed Corbyn: from when he began to support the White Helmets and the humanitarian interventionist front the Jo Cox Foundation. It’s not like I started on the eve of the election. If everyone had a modicum of moral fibre: they would have walked away from Labour in 2016. Here we are with no alternative but to vote Labour. How close to actual extinction do we actually have to get before we see the real globalised metastatic market forces of perpetual extractivism, expansionism, and expropriation in play and seek healing from the root of the root of their cancer? Because it is not about me or you: it is about the global consciousness of survivability. The chances of which everyone will to voting to negate today.

There is a burgeoning science to support sustainability and degrowth too. Not that anyone has looked at it. Where is the science of exponential expansionism? And where in the post-Marxist literature does it say we should support bourgeois market socialism?

Loverat
Loverat
Dec 12, 2019 8:31 PM

The fact there is a debate about this shows Labour in its present form is like the other parties, unfit for office. Now if you are asking me if it’s slightly better they win yes of course. In the remote hope they do in power that they failed
in opposition – are they suddenly going to get some balls and chuck out the Blarites?

Is that any clearer to those normal rational people selling their soul to a
The current election media circus?

Paolo
Paolo
Dec 12, 2019 8:30 PM

As far as i see it it is imperative to vote Labour. Finally they have a viable and serious leadership,. The laughable accusations of anti semitism (errrr…..election interference anyone ???) smack of the same crazed desperation that clouds the current impeachment efforts in the US despite Corbyn and Trump being politically on opposite sides of the spectrum.
Some want war and some dont. Those that do are evil, and that is where we are.
Vote against evil, condescension and greed , even if it’s making jokes, stroking dogs and delivering the milk in that jocular pied piper fashion that Tories have always carried off with aplomb. Fuck ’em!!!

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Dec 12, 2019 8:05 PM

Voting for ‘what’ exactly?

Does NOT do what it says on the tin! – to misquote the Ronseal advert.

Socially engineered outcomes are rolled out regardless of apparently left or right feet.

Brexit was presented as IF a chance to leave the EU – and as IF democracy has any power or place in a corporatocracy, but EU is simply one currently reconfiguring region of a globalism that doesn’t care who or what runs the country or region, Britain was and is starkly divided by brexit and other neo-truth agenda and may be intended to cease to continue as the UK. The brexit debacle was economically framed from start to finish with limiting migration almost the only symbolic icon for ‘independence or freedom’.
The disaffected brexit voter is suitably primed to vote for our our own version of Trump – our very own Chump – who is the puppet of GM, Biotech, and technocracy US-style – though in banking and energy and other affairs we – or at least the City of London – has always been a partner at the least.

So to push open the way for a US/ISR takeover of Britain is not what my ‘leave the EU vote’ was for.
But there never was, and never is, any vision for a human future – excepting the choice of management towards a New World Order that surprisingly few seem to be aware of as implicit to The weaponisation of climate as energy and carbon unit behaviour control under 5G+ and the IoT – with the privatisation of Nature and the clearing of the land into smart concentration zones – under a new ‘economy’ of austerity that doesn’t need computer modelling to predict an actual catastrophe. Throw in mandatory vaccinations toxic exposures and toxic food and toxic mainstreamed narrative control – and what kind of vision is that?

My sense of humanity may lean me to social solidarity, but my sense of freedoms that are inherent to awakening individual relational honesty hold me apart from collective sacrifice for systemic ‘fairness’ under a state that is already captured by corporate interests.

Propping up a failure demands sacrifice without limit – and the thinking that runs as a systemic substitution for relational honesty is a failure to own and admit it.

Jeremy Corbyn is not the Labour Party, and he has been given perhaps the worst press-smearing of anyone in British politics for NOT being the selected candidate to a trans-party regime. I abhor the deceits of the climate hysteria – but I see Corbyn as basically willing to listen. Is that true? I haven’t met him. Communication cannot be ‘correct’ or systemic and BE real. But real communication is the only avenue of the correction of errors that we are averse or unable to address for fear of loss of identity, or control – that is largely set AGAINST what we hate or do NOT want rather than having a cultural expression in who we are and what we do want. Perhaps because this has been conditioned out of us.

The destruction and takeover of the European identity is in full flow. But identity is an investment that can be revised or re-aligned with that which identifies you truly. This comes of itself when we cease to persist in propping up and defending a false investment BECAUSE we hold a love of life rather than a fear of loss.

When everyone gets stuck in the same place they call it ‘reality’.

Mike Ellwood
Mike Ellwood
Dec 13, 2019 4:36 PM
Reply to  Brian Steere

I abhor the deceits of the climate hysteria – but I see Corbyn as basically willing to listen. Is that true? I haven’t met him.

Ironically, his brother, Piers Corbyn, is a Climate sceptic, or rather a CO2-induced, anthropogenic-Climate-Change sceptic. See various Youtube videos featuring him, and his website, www. weatheraction.com (the latter is mostly about weather forecasting, but does have some climate stuff on there. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s been designed on the back of an envelope).

He’s also at least as left-wing as Jeremy, and is an EU-sceptic. (But very loyal to Jeremy, so you won’t find him criticising the latter’s differences on policy).

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Dec 13, 2019 6:08 PM
Reply to  Mike Ellwood

I’ve met Piers. My brothers are entirely free to hold their own views. Why not the Corbyns?
However, Jeremy will certainly be very aware of Piers’s views. But on both I wonder if being preset AGAINST the establishment – renders them unable to read anything but their own hates? And trapped in their own moral superiority?

Business’s and corporates pay for Piers’s long range weather predictions, that analyses Solar activity patterns with matches in the past record. There is more to the stars than a giant Nuclear explosion rising from gravitational collapse, and even in nuclear explosion the actual force that breaks out from its nuclear containment is primarily electrical – with radiant energy being a subsidiary of its own interactions. Is the Sun covered in Lightning – or plasma discharge in arc-mode? And is the Solar ‘wind’ a constantly fluctuating electrical field in which its planetary system is embraced – whose membrane is out where Voyager 1 and 2 are peeping out? Cosmology like a lot of science is mathematically modelled technologism serving whatever narrative its funding assigns it. But its narrative significance is become a mainstream banality sexed up with dark fudge and Brian Cox so as to maintain the sustainability of a model that has too big an investment to fail.

A weaponised climate narrative as part of a captured environmentalism is not about science.
If you are running for votes in a situation that is already heavily stacked against giving you a voice – then you can hardly ASK a question about climate models with Co2 as the driver – and man made CO2 as at the tipping point of a runaway extinction event – which is therefore not only SHOUTING a just and necessary case for shifting to the ‘Banking Nature’ (Utube it) model, but to global energy controlled scarcity under a 5G Internment of Things.

In other words the disease may be imaginary – but the proposed treatment is deadly.

More likely you are required to say things to demonstrate compliance – or be suspected of DENIALISM – and if the facts turn out to be less than computer models ‘prove’ – nonetheless the purging of all denialism ensures that no one speaks what cannot be spoke excepting the narrative controllers.

Climate weaponisation has split a corporately funded ‘environmental moralism’ from any capacity to think – because 97% of World Experts (sic), have done your thinking for you. WHO then actively denies? – but characteristically accuses its own sin in anyone who questions the narrative mandate.

You don’t need to be a scientist to smell a rat.

Emily Durron
Emily Durron
Dec 12, 2019 8:00 PM

A seventies film, A Very British Coup

That was an early 1980s novel by Labour MP Chris Mullin, which some years later was adapted into a very good BBC series, not a film. Off the top of my head, I would say about 1982 and 1989.

Mike Ellwood
Mike Ellwood
Dec 13, 2019 5:13 PM
Reply to  Emily Durron

After Corbyn got elected, Chris Mullin wrote an article in the Guardian, speculating whether JC would be subjected to a similar coup. Possibly he already has been, thus preventing him ever becoming PM. I wonder if the truth will ever fully come out.

Mullin hinted he might write a kind of sequel, inspired by Corbyn. If he has, I’ve not heard that it’s been published, but

it may yet appear some day.

lundiel
lundiel
Dec 12, 2019 7:47 PM

I have, as always, without any hope, voted Labour today. One reason to be very unhappy. My polling station, which is always near empty, has cars backed up down the road, waiting to get in the carpark. You can’t move for doddering, wealthy old fuckers going to stop the security risk, anti-Semite and get Brexit done.
The only hope now, is in 5 years time there hasn’t been a collapse of the Euro or more countries bailing out which would vindicate Johnson. People will then know Johnson was lying when we’re still as close to Europe as ever, and paying through the nose for the privalage. The middle-class will very likely find themselves squeezed by Indian immigrants…….and if Corbyn’s replacement is a left winger, Rebecca Long Bailey(?) Who knows. But that’s grasping at straws. More likely the Labour party will return to right wing control.

Loverat
Loverat
Dec 12, 2019 7:43 PM

Philip

What is a British socialist?

This is my scenario . I live with an 81 year old mum whose terrified of Corbyn because she rightly fears as I can see is going to taxed when she dies – more than the tories.
Meanwhile me I’m anti war. ( which my lovely conservative mum is sympathetic) I have empathy for the people next on the US hit list.

And with a large percentage of the party being Blair toads, what is the point in legitimizing a corrupt system by voting?

Voting today is a ridiculous notion for the smart thinkers.

Rhisiart Gwilym
Rhisiart Gwilym
Dec 12, 2019 8:04 PM
Reply to  Loverat

No love, it’s a ridiculous notion for people who think they’re more perceptive than they really are. For people who actually do have enough common sense to live in the real world, rather than in the imaginary-but-non-deliverable perfection of a ‘correct’ radical political analysis, backing what is self-evidently the much lesser of two evils, with a good chance of it delivering substantially less-bad outcomes than the tory scum will inflict, is just bloody obvious!

Loverat
Loverat
Dec 12, 2019 8:12 PM

come on, I am the most optimist of people, but surely you can’t believe that?

RobG
RobG
Dec 12, 2019 7:04 PM

You can take the cynical route on this (ie, Mark Twain: “if voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it”), or you can take the optimistic route. The optimistic route is that huge amounts of people, all around the world, are protesting against neoliberalism.

This includes our friends just across the English Channel, where we are now into day 8 of a crippling general strike, the biggest general strike in French post-war history. I’m sure those nice people at the BBC, and the American presstitutes, have told you all about this. Not.

My original prediction – re: the UK general election – is that it will be a hung parliament, with Corbyn as prime minister with the backing of the Scottish nationalists.

From what I’ve seen today, I’m now predicting a Labour majority; albeit a slim one (I say this with still three hours to go until the polls close in the UK).

Ignore what the presstitutes tell you tomorrow morning: this has been what is probably the most corrupt election in modern British history.

It will probably be decided in the courts.

Willem
Willem
Dec 12, 2019 7:03 PM

This is not my election, and since I cannot vote (being Dutch) it may be too easy for me to say ‘don’t vote’.

Still, a Labour win would be a ‘decent’ outcome, I think. IMO that would show that people in the UK are opting for care for another and are willing to leave the century of the self behind (which is neoliberalism) and all the identity politics and racism that comes with it. I hope that Labour wins.

But the idea that Labour will change the UK for the better, well I just don’t see it. If I look at the traditional Labour party in the NL (PvdA): as soon as they were capable to form a government, they threw away all their ‘ideological feathers’ and opted for austerity. They did this in the 1990s and in 2012 they did this again, after which a large part of those who voted PvdA in 2012 were very disappointed and voted for the fascists in 2017.

So perhaps, a way to overcome the reflex to vote for facscism out of dissapointment, is by not believing that political parties are there for the voter’s interest. Labour will do nothing for you. It’s high heels vs. low heels. Better than to belief that political parties will do something for you, is to ridicule them, or ignore them all together (when nobody would vote, that would be a strong statement to the establishment that their system of divide and rule is over).

The voter’s interest (for changing politics for the better) always lies somewhere else than at the voting station. It lies e.g., in the institutions on which the government is formed. From thereout there are options to be civil disobedient (in such a way that you put your fellow men first, without having to be scared to lose your job). That is the place where you can influence the system. And then maybe show every 4 years that despite all the propaganda into believing that you should only care for yourself, you vote for the most radical socialist option that is available. It seems from the country where I follow your election that that is Labour today.

RobG
RobG
Dec 12, 2019 7:23 PM
Reply to  Willem

Willem, tell us what’s going on in Holland.

I believe the farmers are a bit pissed-off?

Jim Porter
Jim Porter
Dec 12, 2019 6:33 PM

I am a British socialist, but no longer can vote Labour. I voted for Brexit and my vote is being ignored. Not only that but the working class is completely ignored by the current members of the Labour Party. All their arguments are flimflam and manipulation just to get power and save their jobs, nothing else. I am disgusted by what the Labour Party has become and I don’t blame Corbyn, but the undemocratic bulk of tje Labour MPs who are willing to ignore 17.4 million voters. To be as polite as I can, Labour can shove it where the sun don’t shine.

RobG
RobG
Dec 12, 2019 7:25 PM
Reply to  Jim Porter

Ok, go vote for Bojo, or the other complete lunatic, Swinson.

Jim Porter
Jim Porter
Dec 12, 2019 9:10 PM
Reply to  RobG

No, but thank you for allowing me a choice, even though between them all there is little choice.

RobG
RobG
Dec 12, 2019 7:31 PM
Reply to  Jim Porter

‘Press the button’ and incinerate 100s of millions of completely innocent human beings.

This, when the world has ended, anyway.

These politicians are complete, total and utter psychopaths.

And you vote for them?!

Jim Porter
Jim Porter
Dec 12, 2019 9:09 PM
Reply to  RobG

No

Chris Rogers
Chris Rogers
Dec 12, 2019 7:45 PM
Reply to  Jim Porter

Jim,

I’ve been kicked out of the LP for fighting the buggers, and they play as dirty as the Tories. However, and despite the Brexit September Conference farce, I’ve voted Labour and voted Labour due to Corbyn, who’s been treated awfully by much of the PLP and Party hierarchy, which is most undemocratic, as Chris Williamson found out to his peril.

Jim Porter
Jim Porter
Dec 12, 2019 9:27 PM
Reply to  Chris Rogers

Similar here but Corbyn will be gone by the weekend, win or lose. Then what? The sharks are circling and Labour is down the tube. I feel sorry for the likes of Chris Williamson

lundiel
lundiel
Dec 12, 2019 10:12 PM
Reply to  Jim Porter

Yes, they’ll probably end up with a Zionist, identity politics wonk like Jess Phillips as leader to put a final end to the party.

Mike Ellwood
Mike Ellwood
Dec 13, 2019 5:27 PM
Reply to  lundiel

Was looking forward to seeing her defeated, but no such luck.

Mike Ellwood
Mike Ellwood
Dec 13, 2019 5:23 PM
Reply to  Jim Porter

Well they brought in Alistair Cambell on the BBC election coverage to put the boot in, as soon as the exit poll and a few results showed that Labour was doomed. And today, Blunkett on the radio.

Fortunately, I have managed to miss the man himself, Blair, and Mandelson, but no doubt they are out there somewhere, mouthing off.

lundiel
lundiel
Dec 12, 2019 7:49 PM
Reply to  Jim Porter

Johnson won’t “get Brexit done” in anything but name.

Jim Porter
Jim Porter
Dec 12, 2019 9:29 PM
Reply to  lundiel

None of them have any intention of getting Brexit done.

Jen
Jen
Dec 12, 2019 10:01 PM
Reply to  Jim Porter

Is your criticism only about British Labour not supporting Brexit? What about Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto for revitalising British industry and bringing manufacturing and other production and employment back to the country in the form of investing in renewable energies and other new industries? Would that not be worth voting for?

Or at the very least stopping the rapid privatisation of the NHS and the domination of British hospitals, medical centres, medical staff and the support staff who work at medical institutions by US and other foreign corporations? A Labour government might stop that or at the very least slow down that process or block most of it. Is that not worth supporting?

Who would you vote for that can stop or slow down the Americanisation of Britain if you cannot vote for Labour?

Jim Porter
Jim Porter
Dec 12, 2019 10:20 PM
Reply to  Jen

Their U-turn on Brexit was what first opened my eyes and then all I could see was manipulation and lies. By not leaving the EU means that almost half of their manifesto won’t get to see the light of day. EU rules won’t allow it. On the other half, the only parts that interest me are the NHS and Universal Credit. Half the Labour MPs own shares in the companies that service the already privatised parts of the NHS so my trust is very low. That leaves UC and I would have loved to have voted for them just for this, but they have become so Londoncentric that I don’t believe they care about anyone else. If they had just kept Brexit in their manifesto, they would win by a landslide….. Oh, too late. (Just on exit polls).

John2o2o
John2o2o
Dec 12, 2019 11:18 PM
Reply to  Jim Porter

Sounds about right to me.

I think that Jeremy should have handled the antisemitism smear though. I don’t think that many people believed it, yet Jeremy allowed the wound to fester and I think that diminished his reputation in the eyes of many.

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 12, 2019 6:05 PM

First item on the BBC 6 O’clock news: the London bridge attack:

“A reformed ex-prisoner who fought the London Bridge knife attacker with a fire extinguisher has said he was prepared to die to protect others.”

Gosh – I wonder why that came up at this particular time on this particular day?

John2o2o
John2o2o
Dec 12, 2019 11:15 PM
Reply to  George Mc

Do enlighten us all, oh font of all knowledge.

I recall the immortal words of the late Kenneth Williams, “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it infamy!”

I tire of this paranoia. I don’t watch the BBC or listen to it’s radio programmes, but I find it hard to believe that it is actively working on behalf of the Conservative Party [This rhetorical trick is known as ‘argument from incredulity’- attempting to dismiss a very obvious fact or plausible theory based purely on the subject’s alleged inability to believe it – ed]

Labour has been it’s own worst enemy. Not guaranteeing Brexit and not dealing with the antisemitism smear. (And I voted Remain).

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 12, 2019 11:32 PM
Reply to  John2o2o

Well if you “don’t watch the BBC or listen to it’s radio programmes”, you can believe what you want. I did watch and I saw the most staggering bias.

Isn’t it just a mite curious that this London Bridge story happened two weeks ago, that the latest “news” was something they could have told us at any time and yet they spring it now?

Haltonbrat
Haltonbrat
Dec 13, 2019 12:24 AM
Reply to  John2o2o

The BBC has always worked on behalf of the government.