Labour Leaders-In-Waiting Rush Back to the Centre
Two of Corbyn’s potential replacements cannot wait to make Labour appeal to the Establishment again
Kit Knightly
Jeremy Corbyn isn’t gone yet, but his is now a phantom presence. He’s very much a political dead man walking. His replacements are lining up, setting out their stalls.
Two of them – Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy – have columns in The Guardian today.
Both are keen to blame Labour’s loss of “connection” with the working class, yet neither mentions Brexit.
They’re both trying to sell the idea that Labour was too far left to appeal to areas of England which have voted Labour since World War 2.
There’s a lot of waffle and verbiage but, as usual with any opinion piece, you can distil their entire message down to one paragraph.
Romanticising the struggle deeply offends them and the message of solidarity is undermined by some policies that make little sense. Nationalising rail is a good, sound policy but should we have staked so much of our campaign on that policy when so many of the towns we lost have no train station and rely on buses anyway? Should we really be rejecting nuclear power when it is one of the best sources of good jobs outside London? What is the point of a minimum income guarantee if you have to stack shelves for the rest of your life and want something more, or a big offer on tuition fees if you can’t see a way of getting through college?
Her Labour will promote “competition” and “opportunity” (read: Capitalism), and won’t bother nationalising trains because people use buses instead. They will be pro-Nuclear power, and won’t increase the minimum wage OR scrap tuition fees. (Because that’s what workers want, apparently).
Jess Phillips goes even vaguer with it:
If we are to find a way to reconnect with those working-class voters, we have to be brave. It’s time to try something different, rather than re-enacting old battles. I’ve never been afraid to say what I think. The truth is, there are corners of our party that have become too intolerant of challenge and debate. The truth is, there is a clique who don’t care if our appeal has narrowed, as long as they have control of the institutions and ideas of the party.
She will ask the “hard questions” (she never says what those are), and will root out the parts of the party that are “intolerant” (read: the leftwingers). She wants to try something “brave” and “new” – Like a Labour party without socialism.
Later, she writes of helping…
working-class communities who need a Labour government.
But “working-class communities” don’t need a Labour government, they need a Socialist government. And if you abandon socialism in order to get yourself into power the only person you’re helping is you.
It looks like neither of them has a problem with that.
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Please see this hokus pokus…..
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/29/neoliberal-is-unthinking-leftist-insult-all-it-does-it-stifle-debate?CMP=share_btn_link
If like so many of us you have full confidence in Jeremy Corbyn, please could you sign the petition below and get as many people who agree to sign it too? Thank you! Let’s fight the corrupt establishment from every angle that we can.
Vote of confidence in Jeremy Corbyn:
https://www.change.org/p/labour-peers-vote-of-confidence-in-jeremy-corbyn?recruiter=40538671&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&recruited_by_id=a2b59b20-50cb-0130-b9ec-3c764e049c4f&share_bandit_exp=initial-16761807-en-GB&share_bandit_var=v0
Just found this, not sure if this was already shared here: Jess Phillips, on prime time TV, being quite happy that Labour lost, but able to put on a straight face (as only actors can do) when she (after a few moments) understands that she is not talking in private with the muckymucks, but is live on television.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/hot-mic-moment-exposes-insane-sleaziness-of-british-political-media-class-909bd4980ba2
I had posted the video link below. But I would hardly even call Phillips an actor. It was the kind of performance that would have made anyone with a conscience or even with any capacity for embarrassment shrivel up into a foetal position on the floor. But Phillips just carries on in her blunt charmless way. The galling thing is that it doesn’t matter how obvious they are about their true intentions. The script churns on anyway. Blair himself has now launched an attack on Corbyn for losing the election. The sheer depressing predictability seems to me to be part of the ‘psyop’. I think the aim is to instil despair at the very shamelessness of it all.
Defeated figures like Zac Goldsmith and Jo Swinson are likely to be among those who could be handed peerages – despite losing in last Thursday’s election. Nicky Morgan – who ‘stood down’ as an MP – has already been awarded a peerage and now gets to stay on in the same ministerial role she stood down from. You couldn’t make it up.
Let’s be clear what that means. More Lords voting on our laws for life – after losing the confidence of their electorate. And claiming £305 a day tax-free for the privilege.
Its gut wrenching stuff I’m afraid geoff, made worse when I consider the two Kinnock’s in the Lords, working hand in glove with his son to destroy what remains of the actual Labour Party – much of the crap that afflicts the Party today can be traced back to Kinnock and his push for ‘Professionals’ to represent the heartlands, Angela Eagle is an example of this crap, and that’s before we get to the Blair babes, which, means theirs hardly any Giants within the PLP anymore, which is a far cry from the late 60s and &0s when the LP/PLP contained at least 10 persons of genuine rank and ability, among them one Ms Barbara Castle, who’d eat the Blair Babes for breakfast – the saddest matter is, the two most genuine women MPs who offered hope to all lost their seats in the Brexit purge, whilst Dame Margaret Hodge remains – how crass is that i ask you?
There’s very much wrong with the crony-capitalism of our day. We do not have a true capitalist system, we have an oligarchy of bought-and -paid-for politicians enabling the banksters and global corporations to capture most of the wealth whilst never paying for the external costs of pollution and waste which is never costed and is destroying the planet.
We have a clique of rentiers – of wealthy insiders who make their gains via the financialised economy. Supported by corruption in high places the working class, or the 90%, have been excluded from the amazing growth in ‘wealth’ over these several decades albeit mostly on paper. The numbers can’t lie, but the official government statistics do and fool the people, such as low inflation, low employment rising wages etc.
Nothing will change until the system changes so if the Labour party want to promote ‘socialism’ in the form of the ‘peoples’ government, then perhaps they could do worse than to see our 6 Demands which will ensure our leaders become accountable to the people for the first time in centuries:
http://harrogateagenda.org.uk/ and a short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvJAmkSOuck&feature=youtu.be
For those wishing to understand the Global Financial System, then have a look here and apply for a free PDF of my manuscript to: [email protected]
https://www.gofundme.com/f/fnahvp-free-book
People need to know how and why they are being fleeced and what to do about it. Perhaps a revitalised Labour Party could rise again with a mandate to serve the people in general, the many not the few.
Before I leave this article comments section (to try to enjoy the remnants of the run-up to Christmas), people should look up the company, IDOX (electoral services) and postal ballots. Who this company is associated with it – very eye-opening stuff!
Hope you have a good one everyone!
Okay I’m angry today – the neoliberal establishment, with its MSM and Blairite lackeys have surpassed themselves, it is a sickening, spinning disgrace. Why do we keep falling over and over again for all the establishment’s machinations and their lackeys’ spin? Why should Jeremy Corbyn resign? Why should the movement be stopped? Seriously, why?! Remember, that is the outcome that the establishment has coveted from the beginning of Jeremy’s leadership. We all know he shouldn’t resign; and the movement he started should carry on. Jeremy has been pushed and pushed, cajoled and shoved into the 2nd Ref trap by not just the Blairites but also by a couple of his so-called allies who should’ve known better! They should have listened to him not shunt him into the bear trap. All the Blairite-traitors should be made to leave the LP not Jeremy – let’s not forget all the ‘treasonous’ things they have done over the last four years and all the things they, no doubt, will try to do to us (again!).
Is it about time we all stopped looking into the palantir (establishment’s lackey-MSM)? Because as we all know, it is a device to influence us (instill fear and make us defeatist) rather than reflect the truth; and of course it does not forecast our future! Hey, isn’t it best to ignore it and instead get reaquainted with our inner Tony Benn – have we forgotten him already?! He didn’t give-up. Yes, we lost a battle – but they, the underhand establishment, cheated us again and again! So let’s dust ourselves off and carry on – we can make a difference especially if we stick together, keep our spirits up, put our thinking-caps on, and soldier on! Jeremy Corbyn if you are up for it – stay leader!
“There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.” –Tony Benn
I’m with you Tallis. Some of the proposed replacements are clearly absurd. But I do not know enough about the allegedly better ones to trust any of them. Corbyn’s life and work spoke for itself. I would rather he continued as leader than Labour reverted to being a ToryLite NeoCon party.
Thanks, James. Yes, it is very unclear whether any of the people being put forward as LP candidates are trustworthy. It also isn’t the right time to have a leadership contest imo.
So many people are angry right now with this ‘silent coup’ and many of us know we shouldn’t just let things lie. I’ve just seen a tweet by @upsadaizy who is trying to find out how many people would want Jeremy Corbyn on the Leadership ballot, if it were possible and if Jeremy was up for it. My humble guess is that most of the LP membership would want him on the ballot?
Fingers crossed that the spirit in this country now is to fight the establishment to expose this ‘silent coup’.
P.S. I have a feeling the establishment are betting on Keir Starmer winning if the leadership election is on. Apparently, he is part of the Trilateral Commission so if that’s true, quelle surprise!
No, it’s got to be one of the wimmin.
Corbyn never had a chance when surrounded by these chancers. He should’ve stuck to his guns and at least he may have fell on his sword via his own terms I.e backed brexit result etc. In saying that it is obvious these politicians are spooks I.e they do the bidding of the suits behind the scenes. Everyone knows the spooks ultimately decide state policy and woe betide anyone who goes against it. Cameron even admitted himself to the family of John Finucane. Watson,hodge etcgot the ball rolling to steer Corbyn into the ditch, the ones now clamouring to be leader are the real enemy within.
Israel and their syanim was the main enemy working to stop Corbyn becoming PM. UK government followed orders.
I’m sure it’s al;ready been l;inked to, but: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/hot-mic-moment-exposes-insane-sleaziness-of-british-political-media-class-909bd4980ba2
I hate her. She is poison. I hope she gets roundly kicked in the arse in the “leadership battle”. If she even gets close Labour really are finished for a generation, which I suspect they will be in any case..as it was supposed to be…
excuse i…it was posted two posts down…ahem…
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/the-real-reason-corbyn-s-anti-racist-labour-just-can-t-deal-with-anti-semitism-1.8191704
Here’s an opinion piece from the liberal Israeli paper, their sort of Guardian, about the ‘poison’ of anti-Semitism in Corbyn, Labour and the wider Left in the UK. Most of the media and the Establishment in the UK could sign up to this, with ease.
What’s striking is how vague it all is and how subjective, also how quickly open and real examples of anti-Semitism are merged, or pushed aside, in favour of a ‘definition’ or charicature of ‘anti-Semitism’ that comes to equal scepticism, opposition, or criticsm of the Israeli state’s policies and actions in relation to the Palestinians. Though in the article this is also covered by layers of vagueness, but it’s pretty obvious.
What still staggers me is how passive and totally inadequately the Labour Party and Corbyn dealt with the accusation of widespread, deep-rooted, structural, anti-Semitism flourishing in the party under Corbyn’s leadership. When anybody with half a brain, surely, must have understood how damaging such a smear was? It’s like Assange being called a double rapist or being called a paedophile.
reality is irrelevant; perception is everything
No such “poison” of antisemitism in Boris even though that book he wrote can be construed as such.
He wasted no time proving he is not……..
https://www.jpost.com/International/Boris-Johnson-to-pass-anti-BDS-law-official-says-611044
Along with that ‘poison’ theme, don’t forget the other magic word used so liberally by the BBC i.e. ‘precipice’ – as in the ‘precipice we are all facing’. Now listen very carefully you soap and strictly watchers: ‘poison/precipice/poison/precipice/poison/precipice…….’
Actually I have a lot of time for Gideon Levy the Israeli dissident who writes for Haaretz. He writes:
Gideon Levy: The Zionist Tango: Step Left, Step Right
See. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQS-_9K5-Dk
Apologies if anyone has posted this before – but here’s an interesting bit of behaviour modification:
This clip now seems to have been nobbled.
She thought the Labour defeat was almost as hilarious as the increase in men committing suicide and the increase in male cancer.
Charming creature.
And that’s saying it.
I actually applaud people who say what they actually think; if more people did it the world wouldn’t be in such a fucking mess…It’s just that Slasher Phillip’s thoughts are just bile-filled man-hating codswallop (or plopcarpet?!)
She was clearly afraid to say what she so obviously thought with her reaction to the Labour loss in that C4 clip. If she really had been fearless, then after her jubilation, instead of doing a 180 degree turn and giving us the old “I’m devastated!” bollocks, she shoud have said, “I’m glad our stabbing Corbyn in the back finally paid off!”
…..as queer as a clockwork orange…. are these two …..
Labour will continue engaging smug, globalist-loving, false humanitarians and champagne socialists as only those types would be able to turn a blind eye to the illegal war and murder their party started not too long ago for the chance to preach to us about “values” and “principles” and what we don’t know is best for us. Good riddance Labour and all who support you.
This was the second Brexit referendum dressed up as a general election. I am a Labour Party member, and it is essential that we make sure that anybody who was remain in anyway shape or form gets nowhere near the new leadership…_
Thornberry and Flint have kicked off the fight for Jezza’s crown with a big slanging match.
Writs and lawyers all round.
They should sort this all out in a bout of mud wrestling instead.
Phillips and Nandy could join in as well, making it a tag team foursome.
Winner takes all.
What the Labour Party really needs now is some Third Wave Feminists.
LOL
the friends of tel aviver
boys in image above will do a great job
for oded yinon new mappa.
on the radio today london global radio today 5 hours so far of corbyn needs too go now.
by the end of play today maybe 10 hours go now.
EYE SAY corbyn stay
stand firm fight
When I say ‘Corbyn’, I don’t just mean him alone, but the rest of them at the top of Labour. They all lack basic leadership skills to an extraordinary degree in my opinion. Of course there are those on the left that don’t even like the idea of ‘leadership skills’, including Corbyn himself.
What it means it the ability to take hard decisions, coherent decisions, and lots of times choosing between a multiplicity of ‘bad’ options, but attempting to choose the ‘right’ or ‘least bad’ one, because, in politics their are rarely ‘good’ options.
Especially if one is a opposition party determined to overturn a ‘rigged’ political and economic system that’s been in charge for, well, basically, centuries.
Only Corbyn doesn’t like taking decisions or responsibility for them. For years he could ‘hide out’ on the cosy backbenches and polish his principles and bask in the adoration of sections of the radical left. In many ways that was an easy set of options for both parties. Only that kind of career doesn’t prepare one for the bloody cut and thrust, the butchery, of frontline politics in the vicious glare of the media searchlight. Here the mild-mannered monk was found wanting. On the modern media battlefield one simply has to be made of sterner stuff, or, when one’s weaknesses are revealed, one is just detroyed.
Sometimes it makes you think if he was part of the system, his support for the white helmets seems rather strange to me
Who else could have stood up to the “butchery” of the Zionists. Can you name anybody in US, UK or elsewhere who have done so. See The Antisemitism Wars by Karl Sabbagh.
You are missing the point that Labour got more actual votes in this election than Blair got in 2005, but Blair got a 66 seat majority. Corbyn is not to blame for our unfair electoral system – we need PR
Another example of the lack of real determination, grit, intelligence and basic tactical competence by the Labour leadership, was their unwillingness to take on the Israeli lobby directly and their fellow travellers in the media. I think they were actually complicit in framing the attacks on Corbyn as credible. That he was the kind of person who was friends with or supported terrorism and mindless violence.
For example, why was it acceptable for Labour Friends of Israel to routinely meet Israeli politicians inside Israel who’ve overseen the mass slaughter of innocent Palestinian civilians on a scale that dwarfs that of the socalled ‘terrorists’ that Corbyn’s been repeatedly linked to? Why is Palestinian use of violence so ‘wrong’, when attempting to fight an illegal military occupation of their land, compared to the Israeli state’s use of violence? Why can’t Labour advocate arming the Palestinians so they can defend themselves against Israeli military attacks and aggression, at the very least? Surely, something has to be done?
Why didn’t Corbyn or his team demand, when attacked by the Chief Rabbi, that he condemn Israeli Army atrocities on the border with Gazza, the gunning down of medics, journalists and children thowing stones across the prison fence? Why didn’t Corbyn start legal proceedings against the Rabbi for libel or defamation? Why didn’t he just say that the Chief Rabbi was lying about the level of ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party?
Had Corbyn simply given up by that stage and didn’t think they were going to win, so why bother to fight back?
Then there’s the problem for the left of the result in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Why, if the EU is so bad and clearly bad for the ‘working class’, did it receive so much support in Scotland and NI? What’s so different about Scotland? Northern Ireland has seen its’ economy lifted by substantial grants and investment from various EU sources that have funded thousands and thousands of jobs and that’s before we even get to EU support for the agricultural sector.
I appreciate, that as an old lefty, Corbyn is somewhat critical and ambivalent about the EU, which translates into him finding an excuse for not having a coherent policy on Europe, like so much of the left; but what is the realistic alternative to EU membership that makse sound economic sense? It certainly isn’t ‘socialism in one country’, that’s a fantasy, a dangerous mirage. The alternative is the UK willingly becoming an economic colony or protectorate of the US, as we are about to see unfolding. That also means supporting US wars in the future, like fighting Russia in Ukraine. Is that the better alternative the Left wants, because that’s the future senario, not… ‘socialism.’
So true, i’ haven’t met anyone who has offered a sensible reason for leaving the EU, the usual shit unelected bureaucrats etc, not like here with head of state, house of Lords , civil servants , and at the time unelected PM remarkable really
Geoff,
I suggest, as I suggest to many others, that you actually take a gander of the Lisbon Treaty, specifically its monetary policy/fiscal policy dictates, and, competition rules that are threatening state-owned entities within its boarders – I would also ask you to pay specific attention to the ECB itself, its absolute lack of transparency and how much you actually desire German monetary ethics to push these across all EU members, be they Euro insiders, or Euro outsiders – but above all, I’ll remind you that the monetary & fiscal policies driven by Brussels, which on the fiscal side the UK was signed up to, and which on the monetary side, had an absolute impact on the UK.
Further Geoff, and which our Remianics friends seem utterly incapable of understanding, when discussing trade relations with Europe, it the fact that Sterling from its peak in early 2007 has declined massively against the US$ and the Euro, such a depreciation has made UK exports, both physical and non-physical far more cheaper for this paying in Sterling, so, when we baulk at horror at No Deal WTO importation taxes within the EU, a 10% increase has already been covered by devolution. And, even with devolution, our balance of payments are ghastly. Still Geoff, what do I know, I mean I’m but a Leave buffoon who does not understand global finance, banking and trade.
And, as I’m an honest chap, not one for propaganda, i’ll give you a down side, namely, all good traded in US$s or Euro’ s of course become more expensive when Sterling devalues, hence, the nation needs to re-localise much, particularly manufacturing – would you like me to discuss global supply line risk management whilst we are at it, as in a globalised economy the supply chain has many, many risks associated with it, and a little upset in one place can cause many adverse outcome.
In a nutshell, you’ve been sold a pig in a poke with the EU, which economically speaking is in decline, challenged by those economies in South East Asia that don’t cripple themselves by establish supranational Institutions with aspirations to become a United Staes of Europe, an aspiration that will never be met I’m afraid too say, as Germany has no desire to be the banker of last resort for the EU.
Of course it helps my analysis greatly living outside of Europe for most of my time, whilst visiting wales on average 8-10 times per year. And I’m not in Asia by choice anymore I’m afraid to say, so labour sacrificing any chance of retiring to Government on the alter of Brussels does not chime with me I’m afraid.
I’d start reading Bill Mitchell if I was you, other proponents of MMT, and those who live outside of the neoliberal orthodox that’s destroying any discourse of alternatives when we have narratives like your’s, namely, which is TINA.
Well Chris, he’s started already banning rail strikes, where in the world does that happen ? but all will be OK when we leave the EU eh? he will be able to repeal them !
Recognizing a sensible reason when one is offered probably requires a sensible brain in one’s head.
Yes.I didn’t take that into account
”i’ haven’t met anyone who has offered a sensible reason for leaving the EU.” Hmmm, can I suggest that your social circle seems to be a little constricted. Try this:
Precarious work – aka monkey Jobs – and Europe’s new reserve army
Oct. 25, 2017
by Harald Schumann and Elisa Simantke
Abridged by Frank Lee
The misery of bad jobs has many faces. It can take the form of work contracts without health or social insurance; it can be part-time jobs, which don’t pay enough to live on. Moreover, those affected are kept dangling from one temporary contract to the next, or they have to eke out a living as bogus self-employed and contract workers. The methods vary from one country’s national legislation to that of another, but the outcome is always the same: millions of EU citizens have to get by with insecure and badly paid jobs, offering them no perspective – and this is a growing tendency.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron wants to enhance the trend still further. In future, his government will permit employers to hire workers for individual projects only – on contracts which can be cancelled at any time. This often coincides with the dismantling of nationally valid collective agreements, which up to now have offered protection against such practices.
This has a particular impact on young people. Nearly half of employees up to the age of 25 are employed on temporary contracts, in Spain this figure is even more than 70 percent. “That is very problematic,” says Marianne Thyssen, EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs. “It prevents them leaving their parents’ house, they cannot buy a home or make any decisions, and that weakens the entire economy … People in insecure jobs do not invest in their skills nor do their employers,” she explains. “The more precarious jobs there are, the less productive the economy is.’’ She is in agreement here with eminent economists. “All these insecure forms of work are extremely expensive – both for those affected and for society as a whole,” argues Olivier Blanchard, the long-standing chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.
The keyword for this low-wage cum job-insecurity is “flexibility”; Europe’s economic policymakers are obsessed with the idea that the labour market is a market like any other and therefore has to be made as flexible as possible. But that means enabling companies to employ workers at their own discretion and as cheaply as possible – in other words, employees are the losers. Labour market policies are following this maxim all over Europe, precariousness is the logical result.
There has been a wave of deregulation affecting EU countries’ labour laws over the last two decades or so, and it continues to this day. Just since 2008 the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has counted more than 400 changes of national labour market rules. And most of these structural reforms, as they are called in economists’ jargon, follow the same recipe: if workers are sufficiently flexible and cheap, then companies create new jobs, unemployment falls, and the economy grows. Cheap is beautiful! Actually, this is BS, since low wages means low levels of aggregate demand, low investment and economic stagnation.
Be that as it may Chancellor Schröder used the words “flexibility” and “making flexible” no fewer than eight times during his government declaration on the subject in March 2003. And so temporary employment was “freed of bureaucratic restrictions”, and the upper limit for temporary work at start-ups was extended to 4 years. Low-wage and ‘mini jobs’ were given favourable treatment by the taxman, and the unemployed were forced to accept any job offer, no matter how badly paid. Parallel to this, countless companies opted out of collective wage agreements and used contract workers, part-time and temporary workers to push down their wage bills.
But the Euro jobs ‘miracle’ is misleading. Although in Germany the number of people in employment increased by more than 10 percent between 2003 and the end of 2016 from 39 to 43 million. But this was achieved mainly by replacing full-time jobs by part-time and mini jobs. Additionally, the economic climate improved in 2011, but the volume of work has been growing much more slowly than employment and is still below the levels of the early 1990s. And that is why in 2016, 4.8 million people in Germany were living entirely from mini jobs. A further 1.5 million are working against their will in part-time jobs. And around 1 million contract workers and more than 2 million self-employed without employers, and most of them do not have enough work.
This ‘miracle’ has condemned millions to a life on the poverty line; they have to get by on less than 60 percent of average income, about €1,070 per month. Despite the high rate of employment this proportion of the population has been growing for 18 years and has now reached 16 percent. And even a large proportion of those in full-time employment have been left behind. After deductions for inflation, the lower 40 percent of wage earners in Germany earned in 2016 less than they did 20 years ago, as the federal government had to concede in a report on poverty and affluence. And that is why the “Financial Times” called the German miracle “just a myth”.
Today’s fashionable concept of the flexible employee has become a powerful doctrine across Europe. In Spain short-term contracts of a few months became the rule, the Netherlands made their workers more flexible with variable part-time contracts, and in Italy bogus self-employed status became the norm after liberal professions like lawyers and architects were “opened up to competition” in 2006 and tariff regulations were abolished.
Job security became most precarious in overhyped Poland and its putative miracle. To make the country attractive to international investors after EU entry, the government added a particular attraction to fixed-term contracts in 2004: anyone who was only employed for a fixed period anyway, could be dismissed at any time without any reason being given. Those affected are denied not just social and health insurance, but also the legal minimum wage.
Today more than a third of all Polish employees work without any security or for poverty wages – more than in any other EU country. Poland’s labour laws are a “throw-back to the 19th century,” according to Adam Rogalewski, the Europe Secretary of the Polish trade union confederation OPZZ. Where’s Walesa and ‘Solidarity’ when you need them.
The EU low-wage flexible work orthodoxy was also a leitmotif with Mr. Barroso’s Economics Commissioner, the Finn Oli Rehn, who called on crisis-hit countries to pursue “flexible wage determination and offer more incentives for the unemployed to find work.” Concomitantly, ECB boss Mario Draghi put the governments of Spain and Italy under pressure. In order to win back their creditworthiness, they should “reform the system for negotiating wage agreements and approve agreements at the level of individual companies in order to adapt wages and working conditions to their specific requirements,” he wrote to Rome. And he required of Spain that it “take measures to reduce wages in the private sector” and to permit employment contracts “which pay very low compensation in the case of dismissal.”
In the case of crisis-hit countries of Portugal, Greece and Romania. These latter countries’ governments were dependent on emergency loans from the other euro states and the IMF. The officials of the appointed “Troika” from the Commission, the IMF and the ECB used this – on behalf of the creditors – to make radical changes to existing labour and collective bargaining laws in order to benefit employers.
This enforced end of wage negotiations contravened the UN Convention on labour rights, according to a finding of the UN labour organization ILO. But this didn’t bother the EU Commission . On the contrary, its officials implemented the same radical reform in Portugal too. There they stopped the expansion of centrally collectively bargained contracts which included all companies of a branch of industry. It was a resounding success. Up to 2008, around 45 percent of all Portuguese employees’ contracts were based on a nationwide applicable branch agreement. Six years later, that figure was just 5 percent.
In Romania EU officials even exceeded their legal mandate in order to implement radical market ideas when they made it a condition for granting an emergency loan to “streamline institutions for wage determination.” This was grist to the mill of “The Council of Foreign Investors’’ and the ‘’US Chamber of Commerce’’ who were involved in the drafting of new labour laws and very happy (to do so).
What resulted was a labour law which allowed companies to place employees with full-time contracts on part-time, to issue new employment contracts only on a fixed-term basis and to make use of unlimited numbers of contract workers. At the same time, the government under the aegis of the EU Commission abolished national collective bargaining and the negotiation of new contracts was to be at the discretion of employers.
Unsurprisingly these reforms compressed wages and now 40 percent of all employees are paid only the legal minimum wage. “We are paid as if we were a country of unqualified people,” complains trade unionist Mr. Dandea.
Attempts to reverse this process were stymied by the IMF together with an input by the American Chamber of Commerce.
It has been known for some time that “structural reforms” which penalise employees achieve no measurable success for economic growth and development. Even the traditionally market-liberal economists of the IMF, OECD, the club of wealthy countries, conceded last year: “Most empirical studies investigating effects of flexibility-enhancing reforms suggest that they have, at worst no, or a limited positive impact on employment levels.”
A study published in May by the “European Trade Union Institute” (ETUI), the think tank of EU trade unions, examined this question on the basis of comprehensive surveys from eight countries, including Spain, Poland and Germany. These data produced a very clear result. There was “no empirical proof” that “deregulation” had “increased employment or reduced unemployment for certain groups.” However, the reforms were “accompanied by an increase of precarious employment -i.e, ‘monkey jobs’- particularly in the countries where there had been particularly energetic deregulation.”
Even ECB President Mario Draghi, who once urged Spain and Italy to exercise wage restraint and weaken trade unions, is now plagued by doubt. Because now the economy is growing but not wages. This means that inflation remains so low that Mr. Draghi and his colleagues do not dare to restore interest rates to customary levels. “Wage and price setting behaviour in the euro area have changed during the crisis”, Draghi said recently. “For example, structural reforms that have increased firm-level wage bargaining may have made wages more flexible downwards but not necessarily upwards”, he complained.
This mechanism has an enormous inherent risk: the unsuccessful reforms have entangled EU countries in a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions. Next stop France: other EU countries trapped in insecure and badly paid jobs. French employers, however, see this as a disadvantage and are pushing for “decentralization” of wage negotiations and flexible employment contracts. Macron is now delivering just such a “pro-business” reform, as the Financial Times put it.
Although “there is practically no proof that a liberalisation of the labour market in France will increase employment levels,” warned the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, that doesn’t mean squat diddly to Mr. Macron and his advisers. In future, employees and managers are to negotiate directly at company level, and the government has decided to abolish the application of national collective agreements which has been legally guaranteed up to now. “We are giving employees and employers the freedom to organise themselves,” explained the leading official of the Labour Ministry and Mr. Macron’s chief architect of the reform. The gentleman did not wish to be named. Mr. Macron’s technocrat denies that it is all about reducing wage costs, although that was exactly the consequence of such reforms in Spain or Portugal.
At the same time, the Macron government is clearing a further path towards precarious job security: in future, workers can be hired for a “projet des chantiers” (contract work) formally without a time limit, but in effect limited to a project and therefore easily dismissed.
That is how France is heading for further job insecurity, although the opposite would be necessary. “If we want to deal with growing inequality, then a ‘re-regulation’ of labour laws would be required, to strengthen the negotiating position of employees again, says, for example, Gustav Horn, head of the trade union-linked German Institute for Macroeconomics (IMK). “Precarious jobs must not become the norm,” is also the opinion of Marianne Thyssen, the commissioner for employment and social affairs in Brussels, who wants nothing more to do with the authority’s former deregulation policies.
One possible instrument would be to significantly increase employers’ social security contributions in the case of fixed-term contracts. After all, the people affected have to draw unemployment benefit much more often than others. So it would only be logical for companies to pay the costs of employing workers “flexibly”. “We don’t want any ‘free-riders in the social systems’,” criticises Commissioner Thyssen.
But that would only be a first step. It would also be necessary to reform the basic principle of labour laws, demands Claudio Treves, general secretary for the liberal professions at the Italian trade union confederation CGIL. Instead of regulating the many different contract forms which exist in the EU, the aim should be to create “a European charter of employees’ basic rights”, which guarantees every worker the right to health and pension insurance as well as a minimum living wage, no matter what contract he or she has. This demand has already been signed by 1.3 million people in Italy, reports Mr. Treves.
But the new advocates of job security do not yet have the political power to enforce something like this. Only very few of the people with precarious jobs are trade union members. But that could change soon, because digitisation is escalating job insecurity to a new level: companies of the new platform economy like Uber, Foodora or Amazon circumvent labour laws on a broad scale, and their employees generally have no social safeguards, no works councils and no protection against dismissal.
Such is the situation of labour in continental Europe. A real workers’ Shangri La! One wonders why the Remainer berserkers in the UK are so keen to join this abject failure?
Do you think if we leave the EU the slob will abolish ZHC s ? this country has always been at the bottom of workers rights in western Europe and always will be, people are more interested in watching multi millionaires kick a ball around for a couple of hours and get paid more for doing so that most could earn in ten years, that’s why there is so much coverage for it, I was in a pub the day after the election, in Liverpool, there was five chaps from I think from Crewe, and that’s all they were talking about, they’re just not interested, I’m sure you must have witnessed this yourself.
Well Francis, he’s started already banning rail strikes, where in the world does that happen ? but all will be OK when we leave the EU eh? he will be able to repeal them ! this is what I don’t understand with the leave voters, did they not see all this shit coming, because I did and it’s not going to stop there with these fascist bastards running the country, so I say again well done to all you leavers.
The Zionists had indicated that essentially they would do anything to stop Corbyn being PM. So to what extent had he and his family been threatened by these ruthless individuals.
For what this may be worth to some: Brexit the Tragicomedy pdf
Norman,
I’m afraid Brian Green needs to relook at the figures he presents us with, he claims a majority of the electorate that cast a vote on Thursday were effectively endorsing Remaining in the EU, or endorsing a Second EU Vote – this is utter bollocks I’m afraid to say, and such inadequate interpretation of the figures would have very poor outcomes, as they say in Data analysis, if you put shit in you get shit out.
Now, I’m a member of the Labour Movement, and have been all my adult life and lent my weight to Corbyn, whom I hoped could transform the Labour Party for the better – he failed!!!!
Now, I also happen to be a Leave Voter, and unlike many others, be they Remain or Leave, my own reasons for exiting the EU was based an an analysis of European Monetary Union and the fiscal (spending constraints) imposed by both EU membership, and membership of the Euro itself, essentially, I’m no fan of the Lisbon treaty, or subsequent minor changes to said Treaty forced by the Euro Crisis beginning circa late 2009, so, lets call me a ‘soft’ Leave voter, rather than a ‘hard Leave voter, as epitomised by George Galloway.
Now, am I to believe, as a Leave Voter and sceptic of the traction of the EU that by voting Labour on Thursday I was voting to Remain in the EU, or at the least, supporting a People’s Vote, namely a second EU Referendum, which I’ve opposed daily?
That a small minority like me exists within the membership, that a small minority like me exists within the Green Party means an over simplification of the votes cast is a dangerous thing – that fact clearly remains that the UK is evenly split on its relationship with Europe, however, if persons actually read the Lisbon Treaty, and paid specific attention to tax harmonisation, the conduct of monetary policy, the considerable fiscal constraints imposed on member states, and the competition rules within that document, many less person in the UK would lend their weight to the EU, as, to all extents and purposes, it propagates perpetual austerity for the bulk of its membership, and, if this election proves anything, it is that it don’t like austerity, which is even why the Tories started throwing money about as if it were confetti – and, by the way, this was the greatest achievement of Corbyn, namely challenging austerity and neoliberal economic prescriptions that cause austerity, which was needlessly applied in the UK without any EU pressure.
Chris: you are a highly intelligent contributor, and I really respect – and more or less totally agree with your analysis. So, you have a highly cogent personal and nuanced set of reasons for voting: which I am not invalidating. But I want to point out that the State Electoral Process (SEP) invalidated your views for you. And mine. And everyone else’s. Which is a form of systemic depersonalisation and dehumanisation.
The SEP is completely blind to your personalised nuance. Wherever you plant that ‘X’ – unless your nuanced and balanced view is totally aligned to ‘the Party’ – it counts for nothing. Except to you. You entered into a quasi-formalised and quasi-legal consensual contract by which your own personal POV is transferred to that of the Party political view …which was for ‘second say, second stay’. But whatever the policy, and however they evolve – they are now your policies. By consensual agreement: the decision making process is no longer your own. But the co-responsibility for the deferred decision making is.
Now you may get some small change out of your MP on the minor stuff. If you lobby hard enough; you might get a question tabled, or something. But you can lobby your MEP all you want: but nothing is going to change. As far as radical reform goes: you, me, and the rest – are now voluntarily depoliticised. In reality, the big decisions get made by unelected and unaccountable corporate ‘shadow sovereigns’ and their lobbyists. They bureaucratically administer our autonomy as hierarchical dominative overpower dominative and super-sovereignty over us. By consensual agreement – despite whatever reservations we may have.
They are dead to the system: and so, by and large, are we …once we give our consent. Withholding it is the source of any vestigial power we may have. The revolution ain’t gonna happen, not in the UK. We desperately need a new system of more inclusive direct self-rule. Representative democracy is representative of the corporatocracy: not the People. It is a corporate participatory system of rule: where the transnational fictive legal personhood of the corporations (literal and figurative ‘incorporations’); combined with the national fictive legal personhood of the state; act as functional executors of the ‘Body Politic’ and the General Will. Which is co-constituted by the subordinated and performatively powerless natural personhood. That’s you and me and circa 30 million other people in voluntary servitude to incorporated authoritarianism for the duration.
Which has been variously described as ‘totalitarian democracy’ or ‘inverted totalitarianism’. America has the hard version: we are following closely with the soft version. But that could change rapidly if we ever decide to empower ourselves. For which we are generally too obsequious. Though, I see ‘Strictly’ has finished now …so you never know!
So you can kiss your ecosocialism goodbye. It’s rape and extraction from hereon in. Until we develop a viable alternative – TINA. We are stuck in a totalitarian systematic destruction of the biosphere which will be accelerated by finance capital and corporate social responsibilities fake greenwashing of themselves. To which the only viable solution is rapid degrowth, radical self-sufficiency, and autonomy via mutualised inclusive self-determination. The antithetical polity to the institutionalised and intentional systematic hyper-growthism, ultra-individuality, and hyper-masculinty, 30 million of us have just consensually. And given legal-rational legitimacy and co-constitutional power of domination over the biosphere to. To say we are going in the wrong direction is understatement. Given the ecological impact the supercharged industrialised GGND could potentially have: in five years there may no even be enough to make the same fatal mistake again?
The System does not respect your intelligence and nuanced analysis. It just wants your consent to do what it does best: make our intelligence and independence evolutionarily redundant on a permanent basis. At which it excels: given our permission.
[You don’t think the system controllers will ever change, no matter how actively lobby?]
BigB,
I’m under no illusions, quite the reverse, I strongly believe in delivering home truths, however comfortable these may be, which is why, like you, I’m sceptical of those parroting notions of Green New Deals, which ain’t green by a long shot, dissatisfied completely with those pushing notions of perpetual economic growth on a planet with finite resources, and saddened that the majority of our elected representative have no idea what ‘De-Growth’ actually is, and what it actually entails, which certainly is not poverty for all, but certainly lifestyles no dominated by Consumerist crap, much of it made with materials that are poisonous to life on our planet – these matters are for a later date, the fact remains we needed to get someone, anyone at least, who opposed neoliberalism and the globalisation that goes with it, a globalisation that impoverishes billions – the good news is that at least persons like Christopher Williamson are starting to get it, be it MMT, or the impending resource constraints and ecological disaster that will soon confront us – so, I’m a one step at a time bloke, one clear in his intent, essentially in the UK a massive political revolution, and then from there begin challenging the madness of our consumerist society on steroids.
BigB,
I should have added to my initial response to you, that I’m still of the opinion that if we throw democracy under a bus, however corrupted and perverted it may be presently, I’m none too sure how you expect any change whatsoever, by voting I certainly don’t endorse the present status quo, and would quite like to cast my vote in favour of persons best able to challenge the status quo, and all that goes with it, hence, I take my vote seriously and I take politics seriously, regrettably, its tough trying to change or challenge when those we elect are part of the problem, of course, within the LP, some of this could have been addressed by the party adopting Open Selection and allowing the CLPs a greater say in the operation of the Party, and, by clear definition, the type of policies pursue in Parliament. Thus, under no circumstances as a person from a region that laid down blood for adults to get the vote, will I relinquish said vote, which is why i was outraged that self professed liberals and liberals in name only, liberals in name only as they fervently believe you can ignore the expressed will of a majority of the Electorate that could be arsed to cast a vote our ancestors laid lives down for – given Chartism was heavily supported in my neck of the woods in the 1830s onwards, and then the nascent Labour Party, which in 1945 I trust you’ll agree did make a huge difference to people’s loves, warts and all, that we should at least attempt to get meaningful change democratically, despite all the hurdles the establishment will throw in our ways. And, if the required change that is so necessary fails to materialise, we, that is the People, always have the option of open rebellion/revolution – or of course, could refrain from the process altogether, thus ensuring perpetual Elite management of our lives, which, I’m none to keen on, until a tipping point is reached, be this ecological disaster, or, economic disaster.
At the end of the day, and despite all his shortcomings, we had a bite of the bit with Corbyn, that the Establishment, represented by many in the PLP itself, ensured such hope was removed is unforgivable. So, politics ain’t perfect, but if we refrain from it under the curious definition that we are actually part of the problem, what change do you really expect, that, and that fact at least some of us fight our corners and don’t refrain from pointing out many valid points you yourself make, particular the fact we are fucked if we continue with this mass indoctrinated consumerism that ultimately does not make peoples lives happier, or healthier.
And, I think another observation we must make, as a result of this latest defeat, at least people are now looking at organising locally and fighting battles locally – this grassroots empowerment is not negative to me, particularly if the bloody Trades Unions themselves began democratising again and takes a role in said battles.
Anyhow, much to digest, and ain’t lying down – i’ll fight and challenge, and break the law when necessary, particularly if the Tories try banning BDS, or restart fracking operations in the UK.
How much of a ‘challenge’ to neoliberal austerity does Corbyn and Labour really represent?
Here is a slightly different take to yours, by the same Brian Green whose interpretation of the numbers of the election you doubt, with another set of numbers with which I suspect you will also disagree, but that should in my opinion give any supporter of Labour at least a little pause: A manifesto ‘For The Many,While Preserving The Few’
If you ignore the endless backstabbing of the two Blairite ladies above and all their kind, the chicanery and skulduggery of a certain Levantine minority in collusion with the MSM and the spook organisations, and various other shortcomings, the prime reason for the disaster was a monumentally inept Brexit policy, which seems to have succeeded in alienating simultaneously both Leavers and Remainers.
It should have been a relatively easy matter to obtain a large measure of success, if not outright victory, against the Tories. For the past 9 years, they have presided over increasing poverty and inequality, the decline of the NHS and all public services, including the police and armed forces. They are extremely vulnerable in many areas. 14 million in poverty. Food banks. Universal Credit. Zero hours contracts. The north/ south divide. NHS waiting lists and assorted scandals. The railways. Creaking infrastructure. Housing and homelessness. Education. Student debt. Knife crime. To name but a few. Most people would note other important omissions from this list.
And it is not as if the Tory party has been blessed with stellar leadership over this period. Cameron was hardly very popular, and May verged on the disastrous. Johnson, for all his bluster and affected chumminess, hails from the same Eton/ Bullingdon Club set. He is a lazy, louche, dishonest opportunist, with little grasp of detail. Class and regional differences could hardly be more marked.
Yet Labour succeeded in snatching a disaster from what should have been the jaws of victory. Anyone with the record of the Tories should not merely be defeated, they should be tarred and feathered and run out of town. Yet areas like Sedgefield and Grimsby voted Tory probably for the first time in living memory. And not by a small margin.
Yet there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Brexit will not be an issue at the next election. Or if it is, only a very minor one. Scotland will be a growing thorn in the side of the Johnson Regime. It is unlikely that any of the UK’s many outstanding problems will be resolved. The level of competence displayed by Johnson and his administration is unlikely to be of a very high order. Its unpopularity is likely to grow significantly, particularly in Labour heartland areas with newly elected Tory MPs. A serious economic downturn is highly likely if not inevitable.
A Left party could legitimately look towards the future with some measure of optimism. Preferably a completely new organisation rising from the ashes of Labour, rather than business as usual, with Phillips or someone like her emerging as leader and charging down Identity Politics rabbit holes. But Murphy’s Law applies, and we are far more likely to end up with the latter rather than the former.
Well said Paul .
Maybe the likes of the graun and the mirror can stop pretending more people than ever are remainers when this election has well and truly proven that to be veeeesery wrong! I won’t hold my breath
I think even quite strong remainers didn’t relish the prospect of this dragging on indefinitely into the dim and distant future, with protracted negotiations and feasibility studies and Commons votes, followed by another referendum.
There is an estimate that the working class vote went 48 – 31%, Tory – Labour.
The result might not be quite as grim as is being made out.
In terms of MPs, it is the worst result in 80 years.
But the actual share of the vote is higher than in a number of Labour defeats from the 80s onwards.
Yes, this doesn’t surprise any of us. If the neoliberal establishment take hold of the party again (including making one of their puppets the leader of the LP) the Labour Party will implode because the reason for the colossal growth of the membership was Jeremy Corbyn and the movement he helped start.
I (like so many other people) will be extremely devastated (to say the very least) if Jeremy Corbyn steps down, not just because there doesn’t seem to be an appropriate successor imo, but also because he truly is a rare, kind, gentle yet determined spirit.
That being said, I do understand he may have very legitimate reasons for doing otherwise – not least because of the four years of constant bludgeoning from all sides – who but the most hardy could stand that for as long as he has?. It is not hyperbole to suggest he is an extremely strong man beneath that gentlemanly veneer.
Would I be right in guessing that most of the LP membership would rather he stayed on if it were possible? I have a feeling that is the case. The result of the election had everything to do with Brexit and nothing to do with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership nor his policies – the establishment and their lackeys can spin things until they are blue in the face but the huge amount of evidence is stacked against them (the details outlined by so many people here, on other forums, independent news sites, and even some of the corporate media).
I hope with all my being that Jeremy Corbyn stays on because to me, this movement Jeremy and his team helped start has inspired so many of us and given us hope; reinforced and reminded us of the truth that fairness, integrity and principles are vital; and showed us we can make a difference if we organise and put our thinking heads together.
I am realistic though. I know everything will be thrown at us to stop our movement, and some days it will seem too dark and too hard but everyday we must try to stay strong, help each other at every turn (not just physically but also spiritually) and carry on!
Hmmm…..Jezza or Jess Phillips? Difficult choice, isn’t it?
He was and remains to be a Trotskyist social democrat who’s former calling card was being a Labour Party loyalist while mildly criticising the liberal empire party! The best run down critique of Jeremy I’ve ever seen wasn’t done by the daily fail or the graun or right wingers etc etc but it was this article by the CPGB-ML https://thecommunists.org/2019/12/12/news/brexit-election-death-of-project-corbyn/
While the article you link to makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately it doesn’t tackle the socially conservative mindset of ignored, rural, traditional Labour voters for whom immigration is the cause of all of their problems.
They’ve been ignored for so long, they’ve accepted the false reality that neoliberalism is the only solution. They work together in their local communities (I know this because I live in a tower block. My neighbours are collectivists but believe in the concept of “the white van man”, Freedom from government controls, “indigiyounus” citizens, the idea that foreigners are at fault and extreme nationalist love of the royal family, who they believe, in the face of logic, are on their side. is prevalent so, the last 40 years have worked their magic…….the rural working class are untrusting, believe in collective solutions and accepting of right-wing, supply-side solutions…….They are lost to the left.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/15/britains-new-political-landscape
Here’s an article from the Guardian that shows what a bad election Labour had, and the scale of the task it faces if it’s ever to win power again. The author thinks that the Conservative share of the vote 44% is really significant, only he doesn’t think that the fact that the opposition to the Tories got substantially more votes combined, about 54% is, in contrast, particularly significant at all, or that the lower Tory share of the vote is turned, by Westminster ‘magic’ into a whopping great parliamentary majority over Labour, the Liberal Democrats and others, who actually won the popuar vote.
Perhaps, while he’s still leader of the Labour Party, Corbyn could do something really ‘radical’ and really principled and go a visit Julian Assange and bring some attention to his terrible conditions and the ghastly fate that awaits him, if he’s dragged off to some American hell-hole of a dungeon for the rest of his miserable life. What’s Corbyn got to lose? Do the right thing for a change, man, and show some determination and courage.
Counted 79 comments to this point in time. All, for some reason, discussing individuals who will 150% guaranteed be controlled by and be assets of the ‘Invisible Hand’ (who even have their own police force and a flag with an ickle pointy thing on it).
Genuinely confused Malloy can you explain what you mean
Whoever gets the job they will need the approval of the Jewish lobby first.
You have to admit the AS campaign against Corbyn has been spectacularly successful.
Parliamentarians on all sides have stood back and allowed the AS hoax to do its work in doing over Corbyn.
The IDF could murder a thousand Palestinians tomorrow and there wouldn’t be a single word of criticism from anybody in Parliament such is the fear of being branded AS.
They did kill and maim thousands this year.
It is as bad as the apartheid regime was in treating whites as the chosen people at the top of human evolution and all else as on a scale to worthless.
The Empire was built on such a rock.
The bullshit US constitution was built on the same rock – it held that slaves and natives had no room in the pathetic ‘all man are equal’ bs.
speaking of apartheid, did you see Sacha Baron-Cohen blabbing on to the ADL about how he “marched against apartheid in the 80s”? My irony meter caught fire
“he fear of being branded AS”
It is truly a toxic atmosphere. There has been nothing like it since McCarthyism. The media has a fear running through it caused by a little voice that says, “Just watch! The slightest deviation from the permitted script and we say the magic spell: ‘anti-Semite’ and away you go, career finished, reputation ruined, livelihood gone” It’s like Stalin’s Russia. (Or at least Stalin’s Russia as presented in the West.)
Not Stalin’s Russia.
The present day United Snakes, Israel’s bitch.
Stalin is the most lied about man in history while Churchill is the most lied for man in history
What’s the chance of the next leader being selected solely on merit – zero?
The Labour party which I used to love and vote for, has been dead for some time and is turning into a decaying corpse.
To ignore Brexit is to hold their voters, their natural, traditional voters in contempt.
Well said Andy.
I don’t know if Nandy is a suitable candidate or not, don’t know enough about her or her history since I live overseas now, but she did make sense this morning and held her own when being attacked by Marr.
Most interesting for me was her point that Labour HQ had to move out of London and away from the Metropolitan bubble, as well as holding their annual conference in normal towns across the country. She’s fully understood that traditional Labour voters were ignored because HQ and doesn’t understand them nor their genuine concerns.
Personally I don’t think it’s as simple as that, and I do think that McDonnell would make a very good leader, but he’s ruled himself out.
How about moving Labour HQ to – Wigan? Would it be a bit like Scargill moving the NUM to Barnsley?
Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Newcastle, Sunderland, Birmingham, all are suitable.
Birmingham. I’d move parliament there as well. (Might leave the Lords back in London, and then quietly forget about them. 🙂
“normal towns”
Eh?
Labour has held conferences in “normal towns and cities” throughout the UK for decades! So Nandy, again, is talking rubbish. Absolute rubbish.
Labour HQ also didn’t ignore the Brexit vote. Many in the PLP did! Corbyn didn’t and was crucified for that by many Remainers in the PLP for it.
Nandy comes over as naive and very immature and, sadly, limited in every way. It’s frightening that she’s seen as a condender. I take it Starmer has been told to keep quiet because he’s a man. Jesus wept!
I believe she meant away from typical resorts like Blackpool, Brighton, etc.. She’s promoting a non-London-centric future for Labour and I can only support that, since I was born and bred in Yorkshire.
Well said Frank.
The echo chamber of New Labour London, where everyone thinks that everyone else in the UK is on £80k per annum or more.
My missus is an MSc scientist on £21k in the South East with 20 years experience.
How we worry for our future.
Starmer is a f’ing remainer, who will try to stop Brexit any way he can. The EU is hurting ordinary working class people across Europe, by imposing austerity measures upon them and driving wages down. Casual employment is rising and crippling people, including me.
Momentum and the other anarchists who supported Corbyn, favour open borders etc.
Christ I am so glad that I am in the twighlight of my life.
Corbyn sat on the fence regarding Brexit, and that was what cost him votes in the Labour heartlands.
To be fair to Corbyn, the disastrous Brexit policy was forced on him and John Mc Donnell by the PLP. He probably did his best under the circumstances.
Andyoldlabour if Trotskyists and anarkids are involved walk away it’s bound to turn into a shitfest soon enough because one group is deeply unpopular and needs entryism to get anywhere in life and the other views being told to tidy their bedrooms as a form of oppression! God I despise anarkids and Trotskyists with a passion!
I see from your other posts that you are a Stalinist. So what are your plans for that?
Not really. The majority of Labour voters in the North voted Remain. Plus, it has become fairly clear there are few, if any, benefits of Brexit to working people. Labour under Corbyn were wise to be lukewarm on it.
You are deluded, or just plain disingenuous.
Nice lie Thom you’ve been told for 3 years now that no one wants to leave anymore except imagined hardcore racists and you’ve been proven to be full of shit
Imagine being a grown up and voting labour your whole life and wondering why zero socialism happened! Gullible beyond belief that party was NEVER on your side you sheep dipped fool
Yes but there are labour voters like myself who wanted to remain, I didn’t vote in the referendum because I thought it was going to be rigged to stay in
The only feasible replacement of Corbyn and keeping his ideals intact is bringing the best front bencher to the very top of the Labour Party.
Richard Burgon;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Burgon
I have to agree. He is currently a 100/1 outsider with the bookies. I like him because he has always been loyal to Corbyn, he voted against military action in Syria, and he has been criticised in the past for saying that Zionism was a significant threat to world peace. Overall he has very much the same principles as Corbyn and doesn’t seem to buy into self-promotion. Unfortunately, for all these reasons, he doesn’t stand a chance.
https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/leeds-mp-richard-burgon-delivers-17414377
Agree 100%. I like him a lot. I think he said he would like to be Rebecca Long-Bailey’s deputy. I know nothing at all about her, but have read some disparaging comments about her online (non-specific, so I have no idea what is supposed to be wrong with her, apart from being a Corbyn loyalist). I gather from Wikipedia that she’s from Manchester. Having northerners as numbers 1 & 2 wouldn’t be a bad thing, and a good balance (1 Yorkie, 1 Lancy 🙂 ).
Yes, have northerners in charge and move everything (parliament, party HQ) up to the Midlands. Get politics out of London for a change.
Mike
I can only endorse your view of northerners, especially Mancunians. 😀
Northerners both sides of my family tree, but I was born in the benighted south. 😉
Yeeeeeeeah clever idea lets all stick with one of the two evil bastard parties why not!? Many of you will laugh at yanks who still cling to the DNC’s teat but you’re all doing the exact same thing in English accents! You’re not as bright and not as clever as you all pretend to be! You’re all just a bunch of desperados clinging to a sinking ship hoping theirs mores lifeboats abroad but their isn’t! Pure idiocy from everyone still hoping for labour to be nice and not a gaggle of bullshitters
Can it get any better for the tories?
First the country buy lock stock and barrel into the shameful lies told about one Britain’s few decent MPs.
Then they win a large majority thus creating ideal conditions for full blown Americanisation of our culture (ie never ending war, mass poverty, shitty workplace conditions, and exhorbitant health care costs).
But the cherry on the cake must be the thought of an opposition led by low calibre opportunists like Phillips or Nandy: why don’t they go the whole hogg, for christsake and nominate Jo Swinson!
As an aside here is Jess who dosen’t seem to be too upset about the fact Johnson rather than Corbyn won.
https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1206129221543829506
Harry,
I was just talking about the election results in a phone call to my elderly ex-mother in law. I soon realised that she had voted Tory when she remarked that her vote reflected her support for Brexit. As I had your post on the screen in front of me as I spoke to her, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to, diplomatically, take the liberty of quoting your description of what people were supporting by voting Tory. There was a moment’s silence followed by “Ohh… Oh well, I’m too old to worry about those sorts of things. But Boris did say he wasn’t going to privatise health care.”
I’m afraid there are more people around, whose reaction would be the same, than we might care to believe.
For me, Corbyn reminded me of a humble monk, wearing sandals, clutching a wooden cross… walking out onto a jousting field to face a Knight on horseback, clad in steel armour and holding a long, pointed, lance with barbs on the end. Where, I wonder, should one place one’s bet as to who wins?
He won the moral war by a landslide. If there’s a heaven, he’ll be rewarded with spot there.
Corbyn had the job and the hopes thrust upon him. Over the last couple of years he’s been very, very, poor as a leader and seemed completely unable or unwilling to defend himself properly against the vile smear campaign that he was a racist or anti-Semitic. That was a terrible mistake. I used to think the strategy was to absorb the punches and deprive the story of oxygen, don’t get into such a dangerous area at all then it would fade away. Why waste time on something so ridiculous, why waste the energy? Only that was wrong I think. They didn’t have any reasoned strategy at all, no plan. Allowing his old comrades to hang and twist in the wind, sacrificing them on the gibbet of ‘anti-Semitism’ was a terrible idea, but one that typified Corbyn’s rule. He simply refused to lead and stamp his authority on the Party. The anti-Semitism smear campaign could have been a opportunity for him to galvanise his supporters because it was so transparently a giant lie designed to weaken his position. Exposing the giant lie was a opportunity, only it required a very different response. I won’t have people in the Labour Party spreading lies and libels about me, there out! I’m not a racist, and I’ll be damned if I’ll allow anyone in this party to call me one! They can call whatever they want, but not while they’re inside my party!
You have to get down in the gutter with these people and repay them in their own coin.
Trump understood that instinctively, for all his faults.
I’m very pessimistic, but I pretend not to be because that’s no way to live. I attempt to live as if there is ‘hope’ for the future and change is possible, when underneath I don’t really believe that. So each day I rise and live a kind of lie. I often feel like Cassandra in Troy, who was given the gift of seeing into the future, but the curse that no one would believe her!
What do I really think? I think the era or age of bourgeois democracy is over and what we now have is a form of dictatorship, which is increasingly totalitarian in character. The idea that ‘socialism’ is possible anymore, if it ever really was, working through a system, the Westminster system, which was specifically designed to thwart anything like ‘socialism’, seems like a… ‘quaint’ idea to me, actually rather ridiculous.
Most people don’t know that the British Establisment created modern ‘news’ as a form of state propaganda designed to protect the system and undermine the opposition to it, or any real alternative politics, narrative, or ideas. A lots happened over the last century and ‘news’ and propaganda have almost completely taken over close to everything that matters in society. There’s irony here, because, at the same time more and more people question the state narrative and have rejected the propaganda, but too many people have replaced one set of propaganda narratives with another which is just as false; like poeverty in the North is linked to the UK’s membership of the European Union!
Why doesn’t Labour or the broader Left, or what remains, have a proper and coherent media strategy that makes sense? What about, for example, a policy of making the media far more ‘democratic’ or even nationalising great swathes of it, because it doesn’t serve the people, but enslaves their minds and makes them infantile? Obviously I’m painting with a big brush here, but the point is the Left seems to have no real coherent media strategy at all, apart from going underground and alternative.
For example, one would think that Corbyn and his hapless crew, would have agreed on some conditions for supporting Johnson’s demand for a second referendum, sorry, a new election; like Johnson would have to get a majority of the votes, 51% before the recognised the result as legitimate. Okay, Get Brexit Done! but only if you agree you have to get 51% of the votes. 43% doesn’t mean you have a mandate for Getting Brexit Done! Only Corbyn was too stupid to frame the election in this way, putting what was about to happen in its’ proper context, that of a second referendum where Johnson only had to get 43% of the votes, claim he had a mandate from the British people, a ‘landslide’, and now he could Get Brexit Done based on rolling roughshod over the views of the majority of voters!
Corbyn was never really a radical. That was nonsense. He was an old-style Labour social democrat. Back in the Sixties no one would have seen him as ‘radical.’ Only the Sixties was a very long time ago and politics and society in the UK has lurched so far to the liberal/neocon right that Corbyn appears to be… ‘radical.’
I think Corbyn represented the last, nostaligic, gasp on old-style Labourism and social democracy. Now the right and the Establishment are firmly back in charge once more and Corbyn experiment is dead and over with.
We face, probably, ten years of a vicious rightwing Tory Party in power and with nothing in parliament to stop them doing whatever they want with society and the economy, heaven knows what their foreign policy will look like!
I think society will become massively more unfair, unequal and polarised economcally. A return to the 18th century in a way, with wealth and power concentrated in fewer and fewer hands at the top of the social and economic pyramid. Society has become way to individualised and the cult of the self and crass materialism has taken over vast swathes of public life, along with ‘entertainment’ crass, stupid, and vulgar, that makes the bread and circuses of ancient Rome look like a sophisticated utopia.
Excellent comment.
For the benefit of the Remainers.
Germany – EU powerhouse – Or leader of neoliberalism in the EU
Is Europe socialist? Let’s have another look at Germany, its economy and its social services.
The health care system is cheap compared to the US, but also chronically underfunded. My father-in-law recently needed an endoscopy, and they wanted him to wait months for an appointment. German hospitals are terribly understaffed, and nurses complain they are often all by themselves during the night shift at a station.
Millions of people are unemployed in Germany. Many receive Hartz (reforms) IV, long-term unemployment benefits, but these only cover the bare necessities of survival. If someone misses an appointment at the Jobcenter, they can have even this meager support cancelled. A massive bureaucracy forces unemployed workers to accept any job at all – this is one way that Amazon gets workers to do back-breaking labor for low wages. This is why Germany is a European leader in terms of low wages, limited contracts and part-time jobs. Women are particularly affected by these precarious working conditions – the wage gap between men and women is larger than anywhere else in Europe.
Currently, one in five children in Germany is growing up in poverty. Upwards of 800,000 people don’t have their own home, while over 50,000 people are living on the streets. You can’t take the train in Berlin without seeing all-encompassing poverty.
Germany is an incredibly wealthy country – why can’t it afford to give high-quality health care, housing and jobs to all its residents?
Germany is a capitalist country. This means economic resources are allotted according to the needs of maximizing capital accumulation. Some of the worst effects of capitalism are mitigated by state regulation. But these regulations don’t mean we have socialism. At the end of the day, the capitalists are in charge.
A recent example: The car-maker BMW just had their offices raided. It seems they were using illegal software to manipulate exhaust tests. Their diesel engines were spitting out nitrogen oxide at a rate far above the legal limit. The very same week, BMW announced it would be paying out more than one billion euros in profits to the Quandt siblings.
These profits were created by the labour tens of thousands of BMW workers. When these workers went on strike earlier this year, demanding a reduction in the working week, the owners claimed this would be too expensive. Now just two of them are getting a cool billion. What did they do to deserve these benefits? They own the means of production. Or, more specifically: their grandfather was particularly adept in working with the Nazis and exploiting slave labour.
This is supposed to be “democratic” socialism? How is it democratic for a tiny minority of the population to own all of society’s wealth? I think socialism can only be based on democracy – but for me, that means putting the means of production under democratic control of the workers and all of society. When thinking about the vast industrial resources owned by BMW, it hardly seems democratic to leave them under the control of a few Nazi heirs. It needs to be the workers themselves, and the whole population, who decide how these resources can best be used to satisfy transport needs.
Expropriate the expropriators
Socialism means expropriating the capitalists. A socialist program cannot be carried out by the existing state, no matter what party is in government. The state exists precisely to protect the capitalists’ wealth. The police, the army, the courts, the bureaucracy – at the end of the day, their whole purpose is to protect the interests of the tiny minority of people who own the means of production.
So no, Europe is not socialist. Capitalism in Europe might be somewhat differently organized than in the US. But not much. All around the world, with very few exceptions, every state exists to make sure the rich get richer, by expropriating the wealth we as workers create every single day.
What Europe does have, in contrast to the US, is a stronger tradition of real socialism. In many European countries, workers built up their own political parties. These parties have been corrupted by pro-capitalist bureaucrats, but they leave behind tiny remnants of class consciousness. In the US, in contrast, the workers’ movement has for almost a century been tied to the bourgeois party of the democrats.
Europe has also been much closer to real socialism. In revolutionary struggles like the Paris Commune of 1871 or the German Revolution of 1918-23, working people to take power. In Russia in 1917, workers were even able to seize power and begin the construction of socialism. Unfortunately, the first two revolutions were defeated, and the third degenerated as a result of the extreme poverty and isolation of Russia. Nonetheless, these experiences left behind all kinds of lessons.
More than just reforms
That’s what we can learn from Europe. Getting rid of capitalism requires more than voting for candidates who promise social reforms within the existing system. The fight for improvements to our lives needs to be part of a strategy to break the power of the capitalists.
That’s why, all over the world, we need to build up genuinely socialist parties based on working people, independent from all wings of the bourgeoisie. These parties also need to be independent of social democratic politicians like Sanders, who defend and administer the capitalist system.
In the 15 years I’ve been in Europe, Social Democrats and “Socialists” of the bourgeois variety have been responsible for lots of military interventions and austerity programs. It was the SPD in Germany that created the Hartz IV system and sent German troops to Afghanistan. It was so-called socialists who imposed brutal cuts on Greece via the EU.
“Government socialists” promise to make this system more “humane” – but they end up administering an inhumane system. Bernie Sanders himself has voted in favor of imperialist wars, and supports the US arms industry. Were he to be elected president, he would apply the same policies that his co-thinkers in Europe do.
In Berlin, I now organize together with hospital workers fighting for better conditions. I support university employees who struggle against our “socialist”government. I work to build up a revolutionary socialist party of working people. And that, with slight adjustments, is the same program we need even in the Texan suburbs I started out in.
Actually, a better solution is forming mutualised businesses owned by employees and managers and proving that mutual options can succeed.
They do not need to be based on profits for shareholders, although they can pay dividends if owners agree to it. They can prioritise solvency, fair working conditions, apprenticeships, maternity and paternity leave, if they can manage to successfully.
Trying to slay the State is much harder than building successful businesses on mutuality principles.
Some examples which might work:
1. Childcare facilities founded by mothers.
2. Local taxi firms owned by taxi drivers.
3. A plumbing firm owned by 12 founding plumbers.
4. A construction firm owned by 10 skilled tradesfolk.
5. An insurance firm owned by policy holders.
6. A cross-brand car repair firm owned by six mechanics.
7. A 1 hectare farm owned by 200 people investing in a weekly veg box scheme and the farming family they support.
8. A local sports centre owned by 5000 local residents.
9. A professional football club owned by 30,000 supporters.
10. A building society owned by 100,000 depositors and 25,000 borrowers.
If self-help is not associated with exploitation and usury, why is the state necessary for local initiatives?
The State should be about national infrastructure, defence, air traffic control and the like.
Local folks should just try and succeed themselves in partnership.
No better way to build community strength than to be in something significant together, eh?
Sorry for the possible repetition, but the system “ate” my comment after distorting it, so here it is again.
While I agree intellectually with the idea of cooperatives as a more realistic option at present, the pessimist in me sees its ultimate (sometimes rapid) degeneration. There is an old Garrison Keillor radio skit in which the young woman says (this is a paraphrase), “Yeah, like we started this commune..and then I became the owner.”
I tried to interest my co-workers in a co-op when the small business we work for was for sale. The germinating plan was doomed at the organizational meeting, several people seeking to establish themselves as the “leader,” others remaining silent. People have grown up in a culture lacking in cooperation; they are schooled to see themselves (even in psychological testing) as leaders or followers. The self-styled leaders usurp the conversation, and the rest content themselves with the employer-employee relation, happy to gain the extra time for their personal pursuits, ruing their own meekness but accepting the “rules of the game.”
Many of the proponents of co-operativism are themselves “leader” types. I can barely imagine them as part of their own putative co-operative enterprise.
Erm, it’s not democratic socialism any longer Francis, it’s Mutti’s neoliberalism. A nice essay, but aimed completely at the wrong target!
It’s also the rump SPD’s (partner in the coalition) neoliberalism.
The coalition is collapsing, isn’t it?
It’s called “internal devaluation”. Bill Mitchell has written extensively on it, and other problems with Germany and the Eurozone in general. Also about the demise of the “left” in Europe, e.g. the SPD in Germany, Syriza in Greece. New Labour had gone that way, and it seemed to work for them for a while, until 2007/2008, and the Global Financial Crash, which caused all sorts of problems here, in mainland Europe, and in the USA, but specifically paved the way for the coalition here, and what we have today, with a hopelessly demoralised Labour Party.
I suppose everyone here’s tired of the post-mortems, but I just read an article at RT by Neil Clark that summed it all up perfectly:
Heart breaking is it not Seamus,
And, as a reminder, I’ve been corresponding with Christopher Williamson and Steve Howell, Corbyn’s deputy election advisor in 2017, both had warned JC against appeasing the Israeli Lobby and endorsing a People’s Vote, which all could see was actually a second EU Referendum, that Corbyn’s own advisors, among them Milne also battled against this policy adoption says it all – what I’ll never understand is how John mcDonnell, another longtime EC/EU sceptic, not only changed his mind on Brussels, but forced JC to adopt a policy that was suicidal, a fact he’s accepted this morning. A bit fucking late now, the damage is done, and working class oiks like me understood this fact as far back as May this year when the PLP Remianiacs went into over drive.
The upshot of all this is that Ms May’s racist, toxic immigration environment remains in place and I’ll never be able to live with my own family in South Wales, based on the fact my wife’s the wrong colour and I ain’t rich enough. Thank’s John McDonnell, and thanks to all the ‘cunts’ in the PLP.
Good points Chris but I disagree about your view on McDonnell. He’s a very principled and honest man. He’d make a very good leader.
At the end of the day, Corbyn is the leader and he made the wrong, naive choices. He was too trusting and got ripped to shreds by the fascist attack dogs. He’s politically dead, yet still they fight against him relentlessly. Please try not to blame McDonnell and other people of the “project” when the whole State machinery and their billionaire friends are trying to kill them off.
Sorry Frank,
Such sentiment does not cut ice with me, it also does not cut ice with 30,000 plus other legally married couples, one of whom is a full UK citizen, denied a family life in the UK.
It also does not cut ice with the 120,000 needless deaths attributed to nine years of Tory austerity, now to be extended yet again and the countless others who will suffer as a result of persons selling snake oil to the leader of the Opposition, who’s own staff certainly knew better – John ain’t got nothing to worry about, the Rightist scum that remain on the benches of the PLP ain’t got nothing to worry about, the MSM propagandists ain’t got nothing to worry about – but my God, millions are impacted by this disaster. And for what, for fucking what?
Brussels, fucking Brussels that’s what for.
Philips and Nandy, amongst a whole host of others yet to ‘appear’ are obviously so much better than your average Joe or Josephine, that you know it’s right they should speak – they can’t help themselves. Nothing is ever their fault. They don’t need reflection and true analysis because they are the ‘answer’ and we should get behind them – to push them OFF the cliff – NOW!
Throughout its history, whenever they fail especially, there is always the call by the right of the party known as labour that it has been ‘infiltrated’ by the left and that it will never get back into power unless change occurs. That change means reification of the power of capital, the diminishing or removal of anything that smacks of being socialist and the full incorporation of neo-liberal ideas. We all know, don’t we, that these risible people do not have the interests of the electorate/ population/people at heart. They are self-serving trolls who infest everything that could be good for us all. They are a stain upon the nation, they are a cancer in our midst.
Yet there are those who re-elect them no matter what. Why? have we not had enough of them already?
We’re heading for a Likud MK 2 party, that’s my lot with politics , I’ve had 74 years of it and we’re still no better off , any of this garbage get hold of the reins it will be another 15 years of toryism , when will the people wake up?
You can always rely on the entire executive class (politicians, media etc.) to grind out the same thing till the end of time: capitalism, capitalism, capitalism. Any failure, any lack of popularity for a movement is always interpreted as ‘It was too Left!’ This is where the endlessly requoted definition of madness as ‘repeating the same actions and expecting different results’ falls flat. The ones repeating – or at least their masters – know perfectly well they will get the same results. They LIKE the results. They WANT the results.
I already dipped into Jess’s sea of vacuity. I see no reason to dip into the other one. Surely everyone by now must know that these figures are just wafting the required fart noises to please the neoliberal order.
It’s not capitalism, it’s crapitalism
What and you thought corbyn would bin capitalism?! Haha you Trotskyists are a laugh riot no wonder you always lose
Hmm ….Don’t think I said that, J-J. I see JC as someone who would do what theofficial left always do i.e. carry on with c(r)apitalism with a few more crumbs to the masses. That even this miserable concession is no longer to be allowed says a lot about how the current state of crappywappycapitalism.
That ‘how’ shouldn’t be there. Jesus – I hate this inability to correct mistakes!
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Good news is, there aren’t many Boxers left who happily put all their energy in making the system of the pigs work.
In a Dutch novel, an idiot becomes, by accident, the captain of a ship. He knows to keep his job by shouting, at random but in full confidence, to the shipmates which course they should follow. Everytime I thibk of politicians, I think of the captain of this book. In the novel, the captain, somewhat surprisingly, is able to keep the ship running for a long time and the shipmates take confidence in the leadership of the captain (for some time). But, of course, at some stage the shore does stop the ship.
But the Ocean is big, and the fuel reserves are large, so it may take a long time before the shore is reached. Which may be for the better. But keeping adrift on an Ocean, having no clue where to go and what to do isn’t a good life either… Scurvy and mutiny are some things which a captain can be sure of to encounter when he keeps his ghost ship afloat.
“Don’t worry about trains .. Don’t worry about innreasing minimum wage .. Don’t worry about scraping tuition fees ..”
By Lisa Nandy’s logic, filling our food bowel with CARCINOGENS shouldn’t be a probem since we’re going to die anyway. A logic that is already propagated by Big Pharma and AgriChemical businesses.
Do these people represent us at government level? Is this what Democracy gave us? Aren’t they supposed to protect us? Are these people paid to simply mock and hurt us?
“Jess Phillips goes even vaguer ”
Vulturism comes in different echelons.
Jess Phillips – Tories would “walk over hot coals for her.”
The Guardian pick as the “safe pair of hands” to take over Labour.
We need a new political system were truth and reality prevails over mass indoctrination.
Parliamentary democracy is controlled by Financial totalitarianism. If you have money you can participate. People with more money get to participate more too.
Befriend the Queen for knighthood or a title for access to the money. When you become a billionaire give me a call.
MOU
The people hold the upper hand, they outnumber the ‘Money Holders’.
The problem lies in the fact that the MH are in control of the game they created.
Solution, change the structure of the game that gives everybody an even chance and nullifies MH’s omnipotence.
No other way.
Society must have control mechanisms in place to control the system we call society/civilization. Without control systems in place we would have no civilization or society apart from that which is balkanized into adversarial dispositions.
The man on the Clapham omnibus cannot exist without behavioural control & system control of human beings. Freedom is qualified in society.
Wealthy so-called billionaires seem to be parking their jets in my Davos parking spot every year with impunity. I am not wealthy enough to police my parking spot at Davos whereas they are wealthy enough to appropriate my parking spot whenever they so desire based upon means I have yet to obtain.
Changing the structure of wealth is the game since 08 GFC.
Aggregated wealth can only exist alongside aggregated poverty for so long before both impinge upon one another in conflict over disparity.
Warren Buffett will never give his secretary a percentage of the profit as he is hoarding wealth transfer that he has managed to appropriate from society so that he alone can control market activity and the lives of people around him.
MOU
Exactly.
What about making Britain into a confederacy? Direct democracy: power to the actual individuals in the country; localised power in the form of small ‘states’ within it? Parliamentary democracy has now been exposed as a complete sham.
You’ve more or less got it, but it would be set-up in a highly sophisticated way incorporating basic technology that will enable and facilitate social participation on a scale and depth never before envisaged.
A TOTAL RESTRUCTURING OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS FROM THE BOTTOM UP – WITH ONE MAJOR EXCLUSION – IDEOLOGY.
Society of the future will be based (excuse presumption) on ‘what works best’ related to the greatest happiness and fulfillment of the greatest number.
Such a basic determinate could never be realized under CENTRALIZATION. Centralization has proved to be humankind’s biggest enemy, history provides the death count to prove it. EVIL so easily steps in to occupy the POWER AT IT’S CENTRE.
You are absolutely right about centralisation being the biggest enemy. I like the model of the two cantons in Switzerland, Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden – local civic responsibility is key.
Yes, direct democracy must be participatory and it must also go hand-in-hand with a genuinely open, unbiased media/internet/tv/radio/online-forum-moderation etc – all owned and worked by the public (jury-type system); and an education system that genuinely helps people of all ages learn properly and use important skills like critical thinking.
Personally, I think digital direct democracy is too risky – too prone to hacking and manipulation especially in this current era. The Swiss canton ‘market square’ system is vitally transparent and a successful tried-and-tested model that should be emulated?
Forgot to add: ultimately, it is important to remove the inflation/debt-based fractional reserve central banking system first before we can begin to improve our society; and be vigilant of secret networks that are prone to taking hold of our societies by narcissists, control-freaks, sociopaths and supremacists!
Thank you for your positive and constructive input.
Imagine the future social/political system broken within a geodesic network structure (light but extremely stable) that encircled the world.
The permutations and adaptability of such a structure would be unlimited.
If this inevitable happens and Blair reappears in some form, or himself(?!),
I hope the membership haemmorage- I left in July ‘cos of the ‘Remain’ stance.
Start a new party- with or without the unions? Crowdfund?
I’m S.E. England, upper working class (skilled) good pay, good pension, but know how Thatcher and Blair have shafted the North (north of Watford gap)-
Watch Boris have his ‘Black Wednesday’ moment when the ‘markets’ shaft him!!
You’re about as working class as Stilton cheese you’re solidly middle class there is no upper working class AT ALL! It goes under class, working class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, upper classes, ruling elite, aristocracy!
I had to work to put food on the table- I did not rent a house to someone, I did not live off bank interest or stock trading. With no work, I had no food or shelter.
What other definition of ‘working class’ is there?
Just because I was an engineer, doesn’t stop me being a worker! I used a hammer and screwdriver as well as my brain! Remember ‘Clause 4’?
‘By hand and by brain’…
Well said Davemass. You previously mentioned ‘with or without the unions’ and that raises a real dilemma. I’m a Branch Secretary for UNISON, and very close to chucking it all in. Partly because of the member apathy and unwillingness to stand up for themselves, partly because the overall ideological climate of austerity, vicious anti working class policies, and their effects (not least the apathy just cited). It means very few ‘victories’ of any note. Determination to keep fighting is diluted by a third factor: the Remainer rump, their identity politics, and ‘one more push’ bollocks. It hardly seems worth the candle and involves too many compromises with ‘capitalist realism’.
For sure 2020 is gong to be a very very bumpy ride for a lot of us.
All my family were engineers. They are just surplus to requirements now, like zeppelin makers. All the production has been outsourced to Timbuktu or wherever. All the engineers are Chinese.
There is no class.
You have the middle class or more truthfully house slaves, and the working class, the field slaves. Think otherwise? Tell me what you’re free to do tomorrow. The most productive slave is the one that thinks they are free.
OP is a house slave, for the record. White collar workers don’t have the power they once held. An Aircon engineer earns far more than most of the call centre they’ve been sent to service.
Until we realise that we’re all slaves, victories like Thatcher, Blair and Johnson will continue to happen.
Labour is a dead end. The rot is too deep. The problem is a new, pure and decent party won’t last long before the same happens again
I suggested that this could be an option between the first election by the membership of Jeremy Corbyn and events leading up to the second election. Many many people joined or rejoined Labour because of JC. They are equally likely to leave Labour in similar numbers. So do they just drift away or form a modern progressive party? Crowdfunding certainly would be an option. Such a new party despite offering to repeal all anti union legislation would still be opposed by the Unions.
There are several incontrovertible truths.
The Labour Party cannot be all things to all members. A split in the party preferably an amicable divorce would have been the best solution so that the so called ‘right’ could test their policies.
None of those that left the party to form a centre ground have been elected. The most pro remain party pledged to simply repeal article 50 and ignore the referendum the Liberal Democrats (neither liberal nor democratic) suffered the worst of any party.
We have had a referendum and peoples vote Remain lost end of.
Unless we are not very careful there WILL BE a third party formed in England that is more extreme than the Conservatives. Anti democratic and authoritarian.
So I agree an option and a temptation is to let them have the Labour Party and take our money and enthusiasm elsewhere.
You might consider the “continuation” SDP. I know, I know, but they are apparently a bit different now. Pro-Brexit, and pro working class policies. I’ve had it with party politics myself, so I won’t be bothering, but those still with the energy might want to consider it.
A new leader for the Labour Party? (or even better the People’s Party).
Mmm _ _ _ _
Russell Brand? Roger Waters?
Kate Tempest?
Give the suited Psychos the flick.
Keep Russel bland away from politics Jason Unruhe did several good videos on YouTube about that bland git
russell bland is a sicko satanist
a deceiver
he dates trans folks he even dated a rothschild
he is just another bad ashkanazi act
feel free 2 down vote
So, you haven’t sent him a Christmas card then.
I’d see it that we all need true governance instead of plunder backed by coercion and deceit. So I’m on it!
Listening in the heart rather than running off with a mind masking its lack of substance is the basis of ‘relationship’ whose embrace and extension embodies our values. The replacement of relationship with systemic correctness of targets and tick boxes under fear of social and career exclusion if not being inclusive in respect of a rigged system runs a cruel parody of ‘delivering service’.
I don’t see either/or in terms of human skills and potentials but both/and.
Humans are perhaps the only self-endangered species – not least because of identifying in polarised conflict or being defined by what we hate, fear or don’t want.
I had a fantasy about a human alliance based on what we live to each other – not what we mask or present and sell ourself as.
I read that after the collapse of the Roman Civilisation – things were dire – and all kinds of survivors from all kinds of backgrounds had to find common cause together. Monasteries being a node of order.
That may be simplistic or considered wrong – but the idea is that no matter what your background – finding what works comes to the fore when the old world order is destroyed and the new has to be forged out of what is.
I simply do not see the so called NWO as exhibiting anything but Skinner’s rat maze. Incentivised scams for the sustainability of the old establishment in a new biotech set of clothes.
Meanwhile Bezos buys himself a mountain, and builds his millennium clock’ hideout with a rocket launch nearby.
Labour was aborted – but I expect to see a socialist front to global technocracy once they break down any residual checks and balances to state mandated protection of profits and selected weaponised victim-identities. It isn’t to extend compassion and support – its to weaponise masking sympathies and silence questioning.
Politics is not where decisions are made and enacted and imposed as if a grassroots movement – excepting after the fact as part of mainstream mind management.
If Labour adherents believe the election & their party was coopted one only needs to go over to the Tories to coopt them in return. Labour played a short game and the Cons played the long game for the win. Labour does not know how to play a long game for the centrist position & helm.
Bojo nailed the long game for helm.
MOU
Yep, exactly what happened in Australia. Blame the loss on the leader being too much to the left and then install a pro-business, pro-opportunity, pro-capitalist, all that yada-yada. They might as well not even carry the name Labor.
You need a check-up from the neck-up if you ever want to submit yourself to that again. Five years out from the next election – in line with the Fixed Term Parliament Act – I want to make known that we should never vote again. We should be looking to organise around direct democracy and regaining autonomy, self-sovereignty, and the right of self-determination for a co-equal People. And the capitalist state is the enemy of the People.
And if five years elapses: and we find ourselves voting for Starmer, Long-Bailey, or worse – Phillips – then the check-up came back negative …there were no signs of life …because you would have to be severely brain dead to vote for any of these.
If you actually like being immortally infantalised by volunteering to abdicate all responsibility to the capitalist state …five years of Bojos psycho-capitalism should cure that. Remember, the state is an intentional institution we form by informed consensual contract. One that we transfer our autonomy to by social agreement. Which is the very definition of insanity.
Anyone who is sufficiently stupid enough to want to commit to another round of lesser of two evils simulated democracy needs to be committed for their own safety.
And maybe in the meantime we can deconstruct why socialism and capitalism are antithetical and cannot exist together. Or we could just read our own socialist history that told us that over a century ago. Nor can we have authoritarian hierarchical unrepresentative governance. Above all socialism starts AFTER capitalism ends. This is still the pre-history for socialism.
A functional definition of socialism is the ending of wage slavery. That means no more capitalism …pure and simple. Goods exchange for use value and the market – such as there is a market socialism – is in syndicalist and cooperatively ownership. Welfare and education are primary: and people come before profit. Not like Labour’s neoliberal market socialism where profit preceded the People. And welfare was a contingency of surplus profit subsidised by the global poor …whatever were we thinking?
The definition of socialism we were content with was welfare capitalism. If you want socialism …you want something outside the current state electoral process. I can tell you for free: it won’t be on the ballot ever. You’ll have to fight for it. Starmer or Phillips won’t be offering it.
Oh, and socialism is identical with ecology …not market economy. So you’ll need to learn new skills. Because capitalism is determined to greenwash itself. If that is not fully resisted by the true Internationalist solidarity of an informed universal-emancipatory People …there will never be any real socialism. It’s socialism or the GGND …in which form green financialisation’s neoliberal globalised barbarism will be coming in 2020.
Nandy first. I’m sorry, she is a prime example, for me, proving that even morons can go into actual politics. She enrages me every time I hear or read her.
I recall previous pieces she did for the Guardian, one pleading against a second referendum (because Wigan would kick her out). She is selfish to the core. And to say the defeat wasn’t about Brexit shows how deluded she is. Her own constituency warned her it would be. That’s why she broke ranks so often in Commons votes to back May, to back Johnson. That’s why she was working with Leavers to find a way to get the deal through. And it was all to save her own bloody job!
Phillips. Blimey! I heard John McTernan supporting her on the BBC today and just despaired. He said what a great sense of humour she has! Oh, that’ll bring the voters running back.
For all that the battle for equality needed to be fought, Phillips’ whole political outlook is rooted in, for me, extreme feminism. Like any other extreme view, it jars. It jars with me and I’m female. I’m sure she’s very committed to her husband but, honestly, at times she sounds like she loathes men! She’s also quick to complain about abuse but, by God, she can dish it out.
Phillips speaks of a “clique” in the Party, of a group intolerant of change. Talk about lacking self-awareness! One such clique has fought change for more than four years…since Corbyn was elected leader…and spent it trying to bring him down. That aim trumped everything else, the state of the country, Brexit, the lot.
The sad thing is that it’s looking like ability isn’t important… the only important thing is that it MUST be a woman leading Labour. That’s depressing.
The reaction to the defeat, from too many, isn’t hopeful. They still want to fight, to bitch, to spout something very close to hate…and to stick with the lies. Hodge continues to spew her particular brand of poison. Corbyn has said he will be going but they’re determined to hound him out now and they’ll go back to the Commons and will sit there hating him until he gives in.
They still don’t get that the worst thing in Labour’s make up was that it was swimming in sheer hatred. Until they accept that and start to confront this honestly, in private, they will never move forward.
Phillips thought that the high rate of male suicide was hilarious.
As was specifically male cancers.
Lovely woman.
The ABC’s pro-zionist national radio channel seems to regard John McTernan as their go-to expert on ‘anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party’. They’ve given him at least two interviews telling us about how prevalent it is. Number of interviews given to speakers contradicting this narrative? Zilch. You can safely dispense with niceties like ‘balance’ when you’re a ‘public broadcaster’ saying what the establishment expects of you.
I can’t think of one female Labour politican that I have ever heard speak that hasn’t made my blood boil. There are plenty of other female politicians from other parties who have my respect, even if I don’t agree with them on much, but the females in the Labour ranks are totally nauseating
I forgot about dear Mo Mowlam…..sorry Mo. It is an effort to think of one though, they’re all so charmless. I’m sure they’re there just well hidden
I quite like Gisela Stuart. I’m happy with her Leave stance, but being on the same bus with Johnson was perhaps a bit of a misjudgement. No one’s perfect.
The word that always comes to mind whenever I see or hear her is “gobshite”.
Hardly surprising: these Centrists are still euphoric from their long fought and victorious election campaign. Naturally they feel that having won the election-by electing a neo liberal establishment majority- they are the natural choice.
Their message to Labour is clear: if you don’t elect us. Or people like us. We will use our positions within the party to sabotage it. On the other hand, elect us, and there will be no more trouble from the Israeli Embassy , the Undertakers, licking their lips over the prospects of this winter’s funerals, and the billionaires’ media which requires only that the rich should be allowed to get even richer and the poor reduced to misery. We are, like Peter Mandelson, ‘intensely relaxed, even totally OK with that.”
Unfortunately the Centrists misunderstand the nature of the world: the conditions that allowed the rise of Blairism as a sort of casual version of Thatcherism, are gone. We live in a new world in which the intensity of the real conflicts of interest between a ruling class desperate to consume everything and a mass of people being rapidly reduced to debt peonage, slum tenancy and employment insecurity, have become the dominant features of politics.
Never mind the Centrists- the time has come for the Labour Party membership to get a grip on themselves-drive out the likes of Jess Phillips, recall the obvious leadership candidates such as Livingstone, Galloway, Williamson and others who have shown their lifelong loyalty to the the principles of serving the poor and disfranchised. Nail the manifesto to the mast and start fighting.
Sabotage involving The Establishment, foreign imperialists and these Blairites, who do not even trouble to wipe the fratricidal blood dripping from their hands, were the causes of the election defeat.
But the context in which that diabolical conspiracy succeeded was one of Labour refusing to fight back. While asking the working class to go, yet again, out on a limb for Labour they signaled very clearly that self defence was not their thing. If Corbyn won’t fight the bullies accusing him of anti semitism, if he won’t defend Chris Williamson against Keith Vaz, if he is OK with Tony Greenstein and Chris Rogers being hounded out of his own party…I suspect that he won’t fight for the things he wants me to vote for-to go out on a limb and vote for.
The defeat was a wake up call-not to listen to Jess Phillips, Alan Johnson and The Guardian but to dispense with them, to expel them just as they have expelled so many better than them.
The real defeat was not in Labour’s failure to get a majority-which in political terms was an impossibility, given that at least two thirds of the PLP remains pro Imperialist, anti-Palestinian, Blairite and wedded to the delusion of the EU- but in the failure to parlay the left’s brief ascendancy organisationally into a solid bloc of socialist MPs incessantly campaigning for socialism in Parliament-and out of its windows. That and the establishment of an alternative to the anti-socialist media.
But none of this cannot still be done: the party still has half a million members, they simply need to avoid doing what the Establishment wants which is to surrender themselves to another Tony Blair.
Who was another Bill Clinton. If the Centrists looked around at all they might notice that Blair’s greatly admired Democratic party is falling apart- there is no future for Centrism. the stark choice remains what it was throughout the C20th and for all but a handful of the wealthy and those aspiring to serve as their courtesans, Barbarism is not a rational option. That leaves Socialism. And it never was a more obvious choice not only for the poor and the friends of the people but for all decent citizens with a minimal regard for their posterity.
Socialists in the EU are completely ineffectual due to MSM and Internet control. Moreover, the only socialist worthy of mention is Yanis Varoufakis PhD. Rally behind him and I’ll believe the European socialists.
Socialism in the UK can only work via a critical Marxist critique.
MOU
Is this the same Yanis Varoufakis who travels around the globe giving talks on finance on behalf of Goldman Sachs ?
If Yanis Varoufakis was on contract with Goldman Sachs Zero Hedge would have had a field day, and would have reported it. Professor Varoufakis would not accept any contract to work for GS. GS would never give Varoufakis any work whatsoever.
Varoufakis working for GS would be like the Pope working for orthodox Marxists.
MOU
aye OK
Varoufakis is a Remainer who participated in selling out his native Greece to the Frankfurt-banksters.
Thank you
A better version of Yanis Varoufakis 🙂 is Costas Lapavitsas. He was a Syriza MP, but not a member of the government, I don’t think. A friend of Varoufakis, but firmly on the side of Brexit.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Left-Case-Against-EU/dp/1509531068
Now working as an economics Prof at SOAS.
If someone hangs out with the elites and is given mainstream coverage in order to seem to be critical of them and their policies AS he frames them – then are you not a little wary?
Mind you a PhD… (?)
If something can only work via critical Marxist critique – are you saying that it can only seem to work under critical Marxist thought mandate?
You are welcome of course to your views – but that mere use of this ism and that ism speaks to me of exhausted identities in search of reinforcement.
For my part I see such identities or labelling as enabling the control of UN, MSM, and every other leverage of influence.
Social masking playing out a hidden agenda through its bot-net mind of fear-driven humanity – including those who think their freedom is in manipulating and deceiving others.
Elitism is self-specialness in general usage – rather than the best of the best in whatever it is they have talent for. Self-specialness is the claim to judge over others while excepting oneself, or in its negative form, the claim to victimhood as the right of vengeance that feeds self-specialness to others in order to use them to serve a loveless and destructive agenda.
Critical awareness of ideas and of ideas being taken out of context as the basis for policy, action, and outcome is necessary unless running as a slave unit to another’s system or mandate. But the human mind is very prone to fall asleep in the archetypal personification of the wars of the gods – as power struggle being the substratum of reality, or good v evil as the corruption of a unifying recognition into a mind-phishing capture.
As if to identify against a perceived and believed evil is in itself ‘good’.
‘… but we’re the good guys…’ – and even bring this to question is to be seen as blaming the evils on those who ‘War on Evil’ – or as Bush said – if you aren’t with us you are against us.
You don’t need a Marxist critique to recognise coercion as coercion.
But for those whose grievance and desire for vengeance as ‘someone has to pay’ – were concerned it all made sense.
And there is always a new victim and a new narrative to rally the mindless in sacrifice of themselves and others.
A true and free social conviviality and solidarity is actively suppressed by regulatory AND narrative capture. Captured ‘socialism’ will be run in at least some of the global regions as a front or matrix of control for those carbon units who are give enough social credit to survive.
Greed and need have always been a vector by which to hack the human mind.
One brings on the other. It a little perpetual motion machine until there is no one left to feed off or dump on.
Fairer distribution of greed and need work backwards.
Power envy doesn’t see its own as hateful but just.
Especially when funded and supplied with weapons and covert support.
Malice given welcome in the heart. What could possibly go right?
I’m confused, Bevin. This is the very party you were militantly exorting people to vote for last week. And chastising me for not voting for. Mainly on the gounds they are imperialists, anti-Palestinian, and neoliberal Blairites …among other things …like the GND. Now you seem to agree? They were totally unelectable before the election. They are totally unelectable now. And they will be totally unelectable forever more.
Labour is dead: exposed as a mirror neoliberal Zionist party. If we want socialism: we will have to form a vehicle outside the state electoral process. We have to form an alternative to capitalism: clear and simple. Not an alliance with it for a hybrid neoliberal market socialism. Boris Johnson is the best ally a true socialist can have. He should make capitalism unelectable in less than five years. Plenty of time to reorganise as if people and life itself were primary: and not secondary externalities to profit. Perhaps Labour had to die for true socialism to be born?
Social-democracy is a spent force. It is dead in Europe, it is dying in the UK, and its American counter-part, the Democrats, is transmuting into an ugly post-modern capitalist zionist party run by Israel’s US proxies, AIPAC ADL and JINSA. Labour has been a machine for turning good socialists into respectable Parliamentarians. The ‘Broad Church’ has been two parties masquerading as one. The notion of a Labour Lord seems too grotesque to believe, but there we have it. Her Majesty’s loyal opposition were co-opted into the UK establishment some time ago.
No doubt the true believers will now be reassuring us that ‘next time it will be different’ and that the love object must not be profaned. Enough of this nonsense, it’s either hyper-capitalism or socialism.
All market economy related parties – predicated on ultra-individualism and hyper-growthism – will falter or fail in the next few years. Indeed, the price mechanism of the market itself may well fail. It is inevitable: but putting a date on it is a mugs game. The longer the overfinancialised market lurches on: the more likely it is to fail. Predicting this trend is the best we can do.
My long term concern is the lack of any real awareness of this means there in no preparedness. And no emerging post-market socialist scenario. Except for the 60,000 military/paramilitary police the capitalist state have ready as a contingency in Operation Yellowhammer [WWSW]. A vortex in politics is good only for ultra-nationalism and ‘Tommy Robinson’ street fascism. Post-Labour party – post neoliberal market socialism would be a welcome alternative to the personality ‘cargo-cultism’ mentality being transferred to Jess Phillips!
I think I would actually sanitize my brain by emptying a shotgun cartridge into it at that point!
“Lord Kinnock”, “Lord Hattersely”, “Lord” Prescott”, “Lord” Blunkett”, “Lord Darling”,
“Lord” Mandelson, [to name but a few]
“Pass the sick-bag, Alice!”
That would be my conclusion too, thanks for pointing it out so clearly BigB. Of course there’s a real risk just now that if a genuinely left-wing party were to split away from Labour it would inherit the smear of bullshit anti-semitism, leaving the neolib rump (the great majority of the parliamentary party, sure) to seem ‘cleansed’, neutered, New New Labour. But so be it” by pushing back vigorously that myth can be shattered. Passively turning the other cheek has very clearly not worked, admirable as it might be at so many levels.
The AS slur techniques are proven technology now, I’m afraid. They’ll be employed anywhere capitalism comes under threat. Which in this carnally capitalist country is anywhere.
I might be biased, but my brothers inlaws are Jewish. I’m led to believe the Jewish community are less taken in by the AS smear campaign than is often made out. Just as I am led to believe there is significant pushback against Netanyahu. I’d really like to think the tide has turned against the Zionist slurrers for defaming their own ethnicity.
And I really would have to laugh if it did pan out. Quite long and hard!
Okay. I’m in.