The Big Meeting is a celebration of radical left culture

Socialism can look like a series of policy positions. It can be described as a movement of politicians who are committed to, for example, renationalising the railways, raising taxes on the wealthy or spending more on welfare. It is these things, but that is the tip of a much larger iceberg. Socialism is a culture, a history, an outlook, even a way of being. This culture is what has given life to socialism over the decades. It is deeper and has more emotional resonance than policy positions. 

One of the institutions in this culture in Britain is the Durham Miners’ Gala, which takes place every second Saturday in July the city of Durham. It’s a celebration of radical left culture, a bringing together of like minds in solidarity and rallying point for the movement.

A new documentary called The Big Meeting, directed by Daniel Draper, has captured the vibrancy, diversity and energy of the gala for everyone. “Visiting and filming the Gala in 2016, I was exposed to the colour, noise and environment for the first time. It’s something I’ve struggled to articulate into words to people ever since,” Draper said. I myself have never been, but this film made we want to go. It captures how exciting it is.

The Gala began in 1871 and was started by miners’ trade unions. Today it takes place at the old Racecourse in Durham and attracts representatives from many different groups in the labour movement. Its history has been interwoven with the history of the trade unions, the Labour Party and the radical left of British politics for the last century and a half.

The gala consists of many things that are iconic of left-wing working class culture, such as brass bands (many affiliated to collieries), old banners of trade unions and radical organisations, marches and speeches from leaders of the labour movement. There is also live music from Billy Bragg and people selling radical books and pamphlets. All of these are staples of left-wing culture, but at the gala their power is felt. Colliery bands and banners come to life when they are in the presence of so many people who I appreciate the rich history they embody.

A sense of the scale and energy

Filmed over the course of the 135th gala, the film uses observational documentary techniques to immerse the audience in the event. Interviews and voice over and kept to a minimum to make space for close, fly-on-the-wall observations of the people attending the gala. This brings the atmosphere to life. As a viewer, you get a sense of what it is like to be amidst the crowds, marches and music. Montage is used to show the vast range of people, groups and activities and split screen is employed to show different events in the gala occurring simultaneously.

The film follows a few characters through their experience of the gala. This allows us to get a sense of the scale and energy of the gala. “I don’t think words can do justice to such an occasion - I feel like the Gala is a living and breathing organism, something not static, but immovable - a celebration of working-class life, not just today, but almost as if it takes place in the past and future simultaneously.” Draper said.

The film features grandees of the left. There is footage of a speech from Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders appears via a video message to the gala and the film also features interviews with Paul Manson, DBC Pierre and others played over old photographs and historic footage of galas gone. The later puts the current gala into its historic context and shows how it’s the modern embodiment of a radical tradition.

The presence of these well-known figures are supplementary to the film. The main focus of the documentary is on local gala attendees. We follow Charlotte Austin, a student at Oxford University whose family is of old Country Durham Mining stock, who volunteers for the People’s Bookshop selling radical left-wing books at the gala. There is also Laura Daly who is introducing a new banner celebrating women’s’ history in the labour movement. We meet Robert McManners who collects and chronicles working class left-wing art. It is through their time at the gala that we experience it.

The film is an unvarnished portrait of the gala's history. There are candid discussions about the sexual encounters that took place at past galas, where the event was an opportunity to escape from the restrictive sexual mores of the day. There scenes showing the heavy drinking that some partake in. A more saccharine film would have glossed over these aspects, but this film shows what the gala is like and has been like.

This is not presented as a criticism of the gala, more a warm reflection of how the gala reflects all aspects of what people need from radical politics. Yes, there are great speeches outlining a vision for a bold new world, but also a chance for people to let loose and throw off the restrictions and judgments of society, if only for a little while.

Pride in mining communities

There are sombre moments to the film. There is a service that takes place in Durham cathedral where new banners are blessed and brass bands play that captures the solemnity of the history of the labour movement that is being celebrated and pays homage to the struggles of the past.

This reflects the gala’s long and proud history, but it’s also a modern event that embodies the radical left today. The film follows the introduction of a new banner celebrating the contribution of the woman of Durham. There are also interviews with LGBT activists, including representatives of Lesbians and Gays Support The Miners who were immortalised in the film Pride. There is a focus on current struggles for liberation and self-determination around the world such, just as there was a focus on Irish self-determination or Civil Rights in the past.

The gala, and by extension this film, is a celebration of working class and radical left culture. It’s wonderful to see the joy and pride that the attendants have in our culture captured on film, as equally worthy the subject of a documentary as the Royal Ballet.

The film shows people with a huge sense of pride in coming from a mining community, which is not often depicted on film. The film shows people who are proud to be on the left, gathered together, having a good time and organising to continue the struggle for a fairer society. It evokes a strong sense of community, of everyone belonging to a radical left culture. This sense of everyone being together, being equally valid and partaking in a rich left-wing culture is the essence of socialism.

THE BIG MEETING will be released in UK cinemas 6th September www.galafilm.co.uk

We need to act to stop the climate emergency

We need to do something to stop the climate catastrophe. It’s not some distant prospect, it’s something that is happening now, with record breaking temperatures in summers and polar ice melting faster than expected. Wars, the mass migration of people and political instability are already being caused by climate change. This will only get worse. 

Many scientists agree that we have 12 years to take steps to limit the Earth to 1.5 degrees of warming. Whether this can be done may be decided in the next 18 months, through a series of upcoming climate summits. It’s no exaggeration to say that time is running out.

I am not alone in thinking like this. In the last year of so there has been an explosion of climate related activity. Greta Thunberg and her school strikes have gotten the world's attention, Richard Attenborough is using his star power to change minds, Extinction Rebellion have brought a new sense of urgency to the climate movement. Many people I know are going vegan, giving up on flying and trying to live greener to make some kind of impact.

I should do something

I feel that I should do something. I shouldn’t sit on the sidelines. I want to be someone who stands up and makes a difference. We are facing a crucial point in the history of human civilisation, a crossroads, and I want to be part of the process through which humanity finally accepts that we have to protect the natural environment. We have to do something to save millions of human lives and countless other species that we share this planet with.

Brexit has paralyzed politics in the UK. Remain and Leave exchange tirades of anger and nothing changes. I feel powerless when it comes to Brexit and I’m not the only one. What I want from Brexit, i.e. to stop it, seems like such as distant prospect and our elected leaders seem heedless to our calls not to throw the country off a cliff. On the issue of climate, I feel a sense of energy. Change is essential. If politicians don’t deliver it then they will have to be swept aside to save life on Earth as we know it.

I have passion on this issue, but what should I do? I want to make a difference. I want to more than write a blog or retweet George Monbiot.

Individual change or systemic change?

I certainly could recycle more, buy less single use plastic, fly less and eat less meat. These are things I should do to lessen the environmental impact of my life. However, these are individual changes and I don’t think that is the solution to the climate crisis. A world that is not threatened by the climate catastrophe is one where we will probably eat less meat and fly less, however, it will certainly be a world without oil companies. To achieve this world there is only so much I can do as an individual when just 100 companies make 71% of global emissions.

I thought about joining Extinction Rebellion, they are the most radical and interesting group pushing for the change to our politics that is needed. However, their objective of getting a certain number of arrests from an action scare me. I am a wimp and honestly, I am not sure if I am prepared to go to prison for what I believe. This is a question I must settle with myself.

I have considered joining Greenpeace. To some degree their thunder has been stolen by Extinction Rebellion, however, media coverage is one thing but what results are Extinction Rebellion getting? Maybe it’s too soon to tell. Greenpeace have been raising the profile of the climate catastrophe for years and the sudden impact of Extinction Rebellion is partly a result of the work that Greenpeace and others have been doing for years to keep this issue in the public’s conscientiousness.

Maybe I am over thinking this when I should just start acting. I want to dive in and make a difference to avert the climate catastrophe. We all need to. We don’t have long to save life as we know it.

On the anniversary of the Addison Act it’s important to remember the origins of council housing

Many people have a grim view of council housing. They think it’s a poverty trap, organised into crime ridden sink estates, where the very fabric of society has broken down. In their minds they see modernist monstrosities of concrete piled on top of concrete, which resemble the grim fantasies of totalitarian leaders and busybody social engineers; cramped, poorly maintained battery farms for humans that are freezing in winter and boiling in summer. They think of the worst excesses of a government that thinks it knows better than its people how they should live.

This vision, carefully built up over decades, has allowed the vital safety net of council housing to be dismantled. It makes me very sad that because of these blanket assumptions about council housing, many people today lead lives far more precarious than they need to.

To counter this narrative, it's worth thinking about the origins of council housing. Today is the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act, better known as the Addison Act, after the Minister for Health Dr Christopher Addison. The Addison Act was the groundbreaking piece of legislation that laid the way for what became known as council housing.  

The Addison Act provided subsidies for local authorities to build 500,000 new homes; although only 213,000 were built. The act required that councils assess their housing need and plan to meet these needs.

In the interwar perioid 1.1 million council homes were built. They replaced Victorian slums that had grown up as the population of cities had exploded in the 19th century. These were sites of terrible poverty, lack of sanitation and overcrowding. Council housing vastly improved the living conditions of the poorest in society and provided a safety net against people being exploited by slum landlords.

More than poverty relief

Council housing was more than just poverty relief. It was housing that was provided for anyone who needed it. It was good quality, at least by the standards of the time, provided on mass with secure tenures for residents. These homes were a universal provision, like health became after the founding of the NHS. Council housing laid down the basic idea at the core of the welfare state. Huge estates like Wythenhsawe in Manchester were built to provide housing for thousands of people. This showed that mass provision of services by the state was possible, before we had the post-war consensus.

Some of them had excellent designs and pushed the art of architecture forwards. Such as Erno Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower in Poplar, East London. Councils employed top architects and their commissions were sort after. The best architects of the time wanted to put their talents to work on the huge canvases that council housing offered.

Obviously, there were problems with some council estates. Goldfinger’s Terllick Tower, his larger follow up to Balfron Tower in Kensal Green, West London became known as the “Tower of Terror”, synonymous with crime, drug addiction and social decay. The causes of the social problems on some estates are complex and beyond the scope of this article, but it’s undeniable that there were problems.

Some estates were built with the best of intentions, but were flawed. The lack of external doors on Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, meant that the only door to the outside world tenants had was the door to their flat. In theory this was a good idea as it mimicked the arrangement of the Victorian terraced houses the estate had replaced. The estate was also built with wide corridors so that if mums pushing prams stopped to chat they wouldn’t block access. However, the lack of external doors to the estate meant anyone could enter the estate and the vast corridors and stairwells quickly become convenient places to sell drugs.

Everyone should have a home

Although there were flaws in execution the idea of council housing was not flawed in principal. Everyone should have a home and the state should provide one to those who cannot access a good quality home through private markets. Council housing was more than just housing for those in desperate need or to avoid the exploration of the poorest. It was for everyone.

The crucial change came under Margent Thatcher. Her “right to buy” council house sell off was the largest privatization of her government. She also affected an ideological change that council houses were only for the poorest. They became much less appealing, as living in council housing was now a mark of poverty. It didn’t fit with the aspirational world view of the Thatcher government or the New Labour government, which did not invest in building enough new council housing to undo the damage of right to buy.

Neglect of council estates over the last three decades by Labour and Tory governments has made them worse and informed the negative view we have of council estates today. On the 100th anniversary of the Addison Act we should remember why council houses were built. Council housing shows that mass provision of housing by the state can improve people’s living conditions and give them more secure tenures. It also shows that mass provision, as opposed to means testing, is more effective in making a state service desirable and thus ensuring it continues to exist. This is an essential learning for the future of education and the NHS. 

Today we desperately need more council housing to guarantee a minimum standard of housing for those who are suffering with terrible living conditions in the private rental market. Years of insufficient numbers of council houses being built has led to too many people renting privately and more people living in terrible conditions because they can’t afford anything better.  

We also need to remember that fundamental to council housing is the idea of housing provision for all. The welfare state is there for everyone and it won’t be safe from those who want to dismantle it unless we embrace that concept.

"160920072485" by Paul-in-London is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Radical solutions are needed for the climate crisis

I have always thought it odd when people say we need to “save the Earth”. The physical substance of the Earth will be here for billions of years after we’re all dead, no matter how we die. It’s humanity that’s under threat.  

We are in a race against time to save humanity (and many other species) from catastrophic climate change. The lives of billions of people are on the line if we don’t take serious action to reduce the impact humanity is having on the environment.

The change that needs to happen to all of human civilisation is profound. Radical politics and new economic models are needed to save humanity. Individual changes - such as recycling and cycling to work - are making a difference, but alone they’re not enough. To save humanity, we need a world without companies profiting from environmental destruction.

Swift and radical change

This cannot be done under capitalism. The destruction of the natural environment is just too profitable. Capitalism lacks feedback mechanisms that will prevent it from wiping out the human race. The incentives for profitability are all short term. There is no mechanism to forgo short-term profits to allow for capitalism to continue in the long run. Once capitalism has wiped out all the humans, the cockroaches won’t be starting businesses.

Incremental changes to human society will not be fast enough to save us from climate destruction. This will require swift and radical change. There are only 12 years to make the necessary changes to avoid more than two degrees of global warming. The changes that need to happen in such a short space of time are radical.

We live in a world where politicians are beholden to oil companies and other big businesses. Oil companies especially make huge amounts of money from destroying the environment. It’s hard to see a future where humanity and oil companies can both survive. We need to leave billions of pounds worth of oil in the ground to save the human race. Oil companies will have become extinct.

The power of the state

The state created capitalism in the early modern period and the power of the state will be needed to undo capitalism to save the environment. The state is the means for collective action that can stop the damage that capitalism is doing. However, the purposes of the project ahead must not be to transfer all the powers of private companies to the state. Currently, the state is too unaccountable for the safety of many of its citizens. Transferring much more power to the state could be very dangerous.

The powers held by private companies and the state needs to be transferred to people. It is ordinary people and their communities that have the knowledge to preserve our future. Government is seen by many people as something too distant, too abstract, to make a positive difference to their lives. These distant powers need to be brought closer to home so that people can see that the power of the government can improve their lives.

Once people can see the state making a positive difference in their community and they can see these powers at work, they will be inspired to make the changes necessary to save us all from environmental destruction. If people hold the power at a local level they can use it to prevent climate change

A positive solution

We need to move beyond capitalism. Capitalism is a threat to the future of the human race as it greedily consumes resources and destroys the environment. If capitalism is not stopped it will lead to the deaths of billions of people. The state can a positive solution to the problems of capitalism, but it needs to be reformed first.

We need radical new politics and economics to save the environment and rise to the challenge that humanity faces. However, we must not replace an out of control capitalism, reliant on overly powerful private companies, with an out of control state that is overly powerful itself.

 "Powerplant" by Nucho is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The odds cast some doubt on whether Boris Johnson will be the next Tory leader

Right now I’m feeling pretty depressed about the prospect of Boris Johnson becoming the next Prime Minister. In order to move into Number 10, he doesn’t have to win an election, or even get the backing of the majority of Tory MPs. He just needs the support of Conservative Party Members and for enough MPs to be mad enough to put him on the final ballot. 

Under the Conservative Party leadership election rules, MPs vote in rounds to eliminate the candidates until there are only two. These prospective leaders are put to the membership for the final decision. The number of Tory Party members unknown. As is much about who these people, who will be choosing our next Prime minister, are. We know that they are generally older than average, wealthier than average and more pro-Brexit than average, but that is about it.

I can believe that the majority of people who would pay money to be in the Tory Party want Boris Johnson, with all his bluster about a No Deal Brexit, as PM. I can also believe that enough Tory MPs are mad enough about Brexit, or are desperate enough after the kicking they got from the Brexit Party in the EU elections, to put Johnson to the membership. In other words: the outlook is very bad.

Surprises ahead

Johnson - I refuse to use the cuddly “Boris” moniker for a man who flirts so openly with authoritarianism - may be the front runner, but when I looked back at previous Tory leadership races I found that it has rarely been the frontrunner who won in the end.

Johnson was favourite to succeed David Cameron in 2016, until he was betrayed by his partner in Brexit, Michael Gove, who went on to detonate his own candidacy. Certainly, Theresa May was not at the front of everyone’s mind, partly because a Home Secretary had not become Prime Minister since James Callaghan. (Callaghan was also Foreign Secretary in-between being Home Secretary and Prime Minister. The last Home Secretary to move directly from the office to being PM was Henry Temple in 1859.)

It can be hard to remember what we thought about the 2016 Tory leadership race while it was happening. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy to see now how May won, but it wasn’t inevitable at the time. So, I looked back at the odds various bookies had given the candidates in 2016. Contemporary odds from betting markets are a good aggregator of the prospects of candidates at the time.

What did the bookies say?

Below are the odds of the five leadership candidates in 2016 (expressed as a percentage).

Source

May was the favourite, but Gove was high in the ranking. At that point it could have gone either way. From these odds, no one would have predicted that Andrea Leadsom would come as close as she did to becoming Prime Minister. 

Going further back, David Cameron was not the front runner to succeed Michael Howard in 2005. Below are the odds of the five candidates back then:

Source 

David Davis was the front runner and the bookies also rated Ken Clarke’s chance of becoming Tory leader. It would have been smart to bet on David in 2005, but ultimately wrong.

This time it is harder to predict who will win as there are many more candidates. For ease, let’s look at the odds being given to the top five candidates according to the bookies:

Source

Johnson is still the favourite, but Gove is close and Leadsom is not too far behind. This might indicate that Johnson has it in the bag, but the odds were wrong about Davis in 2005 and Leadsom’s performance in 2016. The Tory leadership race may yet surprise us. It also worth noting that neither Jeremy Corby or Ed Miliband were the favourites at the beginning of the two previous Labour Party leadership contests.

What does the data suggest?

I think we should focus more attention on Gove as a possible winner, as well as Leadsom and Dominic Raab as possible outsider candidates that may yet surprise us. I wouldn’t assume that Johnson has it in the bag because he is the favourite. I would, however, assume that the winner will be a Brexiteer as the Remain supporting candidate with the highest odds is Jeremy Hunt who is trailing the other top five. 

As a Labour Party member, I’m opposed to all of these candidates and I think that any of them will be bad for the country. None are likely to tackle key issues such as rising homelessness, the housing crisis, the NHS crisis, the climate emergency, inequality, the rising use of foods banks and everything else the previous two Tory PMs have visited upon us.

My biggest worry right now is Johnson taking us out of the EU with a disastrous No Deal Brexit, which would be economic suicide and the effects of which will be felt by the poorest most acutely. I don’t agree with Gove on much, but I think he is at least not stupid enough to go for a No Deal Brexit.

Don’t assume it will be Johnson

Assuming that Johnson will definitely win will mean we don’t give enough scrutiny to the other candidates who may surprise us by ending up in Downing Street. All future Prime Ministers should be properly scrutinised before taking office. We must make sure no one slips in the back to Number 10 while we are distracted by the Johnson show.

The race to be Tory leader will doubtless have some surprises for us. It’s best for us to not be complacent. We need to look at the whole range of candidates and not just Johnson.

"DSC00511" by Matthew Dawkins is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

The sudden success of the Brexit Party should make everyone on the left very worried

A party that didn't exist a few weeks ago, has no policies and campaigns on only one issue has won the European elections. This should give everyone on the left pause for thought. This was a clear sign that there are still millions of people in the country who want Brexit to happen, no matter what. 

Granted the Brexit Party did about as well as UKIP did in 2014 and they are led by Nigel Farage, the most recognizable politician who isn't the prospective Prime Minister or the leader of the opposition. However, it took UKIP years to build enough momentum to win a European election and as appearing as Farage is to a certain class of voters, he is toxic to others. The success of the Brexit Party goes beyond the appeal of Farage.

The terrifying success of the Brexit party

The Brexit Party have used the frustration at the fact that we haven’t left the EU very well. When campaigning, Farage doesn't talk about immigration or the cost of the EU or EU democracy or any other prominent pro-Brexit talking points. He only mentions one thing: people voted to leave and we haven't left. This has whipped up rage aimed at the leaders of both main parties. Even if Britain leaves the EU this year, the anger at the political class that Farage is exploiting will not go away.

The Brexit Party is just a vehicle to get Farage what he wants: to go on TV and act like a big shot. However, I’m very worried but how far he will take this. He is clearly riding a tiger of populist rage, which could lash out in any direction. The more Farage winds up Leave voters about how the elites have betrayed them, the more likely it is that something terrible will happen.

A riot? Bricks being thrown at MPs? Another assassination? None of these are out of the question. I am worried that the Brexit Party could become Britain's Yellow Vest movement with Farage riding the nuclear bomb like Major Kong from Dr. Strangelove until it explodes.

Brexit extremes

Already the Brexit vote is drifting to extremes. Support for Theresa May's deal, a deal to take Britain out of the EU, has been described as treachery as, apparently, it’s not Brexit. Farage is at the core of this hardening of the Leave vote. He is simultaneously benefiting from the hardening of the Leave vote and encouraging a narrative of Brexit betrayal to make the Leave voter harder.

As gratifying as it was seeing the Tories do really badly in the most recent EU elections, those of us in the Labour Party have to admit that last Sunday's result was a disaster. This is not the performance Labour should be delivering if it wanted to form a government soon. The Labour Vote is being split, but Labour voters are mainly backing the Greens and the Lib Dems, pro-Remain parties. Change UK have failed to make an impression and will doubtless be folded into the Lib Dems so that its surviving members don’t leave their seats.

Despite the growing threat to Labour from the unambiguously pro-Remain parties, I’m not convinced that calling for a people's vote with a "Fuck Brexit, stay in the EU" option on the ballot paper is the best way forwards.

The country is split three ways: between No Deal, No Brexit and an orderly Brexit. Nothing commands a majority. Yes, the parties of No Brexit won the most votes in the EU elections, but that’s only the case if you include the nationalist parties (I'm pretty sure there are people who want Scotland out of the U.K. and the EU) and even then it is still less than 50% of the vote. We are a long way off the slimmest of consensus on Brexit, let alone anything that will put the cursed issue to bed one way or another.

I don't think this EU election settles anything. Lots of people voted for strongly pro-Leave and pro-Remain parties. This indicates that we are still deeply polarised on Brexit, which we didn't need an election to know.

Problems for Labour

Losing Remain votes to the Lib Dems and the Greens is bad if you want to see a Labour government any time soon. However, Labour pretty much maxed out its pro-Remain vote in the last general election and it didn't win. The route to a Labour government is either through Leave voting swing seats or Tory voting Remain seats, which will not be swayed by Labour's radical program. The choice is either compromise on Brexit or compromises on everything else. I guess I’m resigned to a compromise in Brexit.

Once again, I feel the need to say that I voted Remain and would like Brexit to go away. I just don't want the Labour Party to have to throw itself on the fire of populist anger to save us from Brexit. The lesson from the pain destruction of Scottish Labour after siding with the no to independence side in 2014 should be instructive. Yes we saved the Union, but at the cost of Scottish Labour.

We need a new argument

The sudden success of the Brexit Party should make us make left Remainers worried about our complacency over Brexit. I’m worried that Remainers are underestimating how deep and how strong the support for Brexit is. There is a powerful feeling, that transcends traditional party affliction, class and region that Brexit is what's best for the country. This is not a sentiment I share, but we need to accept that this big cultural divide won't go away even if we can convince 51% of the people to vote against Brexit in a second referendum.

I don't see anyone on the pro-Remain side making arguments that would appeal to people on the Leave side. Who’s saying that a vote for Remain in a People's Vote is a vote for a serious commitment to rebalancing the economy and that voting for Brexit is a vote for a Singapore style No Deal Brexit that only benefits the City of London? Who is making the patriotic argument that Britain has been committed to being heavily involved in Europe since the Napoleonic Wars and that we would honour the troops for have fought for a free Europe by not walking away from the continent of many Britons lost their lives defending?

This invocation of patriotism doesn’t appeal to me, but I voted Remain. You don't need to convince me that making it easy to pop to The Pompidou Centre for a day trip is in my best interest. We need different arguments to stop the spread of The Brexit Party.

Remainers fall back on the arguments that play well to Remainers. That all Leave voters are racist, that Vote Leave cheated, that it's bad for the economy. All of these arguments have had a fair hearing and they're not moving the dial. If we really want to stop Brexit then we need a new argument.

No Deal vs No Brexit

No one learns anything and Farage is still on TV advocating the worst possible thing for the country as the best possible thing for the country and no one has worked out a way to make this simple point stick. I am worried that if Labour comes out for a second referendum then this will only grow the support for the Brexit party and Farage’s narrative of the elites stealing Brexit from the people.

It may eventually come down to a showdown been Farage's No Deal and No Brexit, in which case I hope that the left pulls together and stops the economic suicide of No Deal, whose pain will be felt the most by the most disadvantaged in society. Until then we need to work to lower the temperature on this issue.

The sudden success of the Brexit Party should worry everyone on the left. We are running the risk of ignoring a rising tide of populist anger that could bury us all. I am worried that despite our noble efforts to oppose Brexit, we are not taking seriously how angry people are about the issue.

Nigel Farage picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.

The end of a career that no one will mourn

Until the day before yesterday, my life has seen five Prime Ministers leave office. On Friday Theresa May became the sixth and I have never seen a Prime Minister leave in such a sorry state of disgrace; including John Major slinking off after the Tories’ extreme drubbing in 1997. 

May leaves the country in a much worse state then when she came to office. Around 560,000 people use a food bank every year, the number of people sleeping rough has grown, the NHS is on its knees and in some parts the country the schools are so cash strapped that pupils have to bring their own toilet paper. May has done almost nothing with the enormous powers of state that the Prime Minister is invested with to improve people's lives. 

Despite this disgraceful lack of action, the ruin that she has left Brexit in is even worse. Brexit has become a dumpster fire that has that has ultimately consumed her premiership, ended her political career and most likely tarred her name in the annals of history.

This is the point where I have to acknowledge that she was given a difficult job. David Cameron owes some blame for the mess that we’re in after calling a referendum, losing it and then fucking off. A 52% vote for Leave with no clear plan of what that meant was a difficult situation to inherit. However all Premierships face challenges. It is the measure of a Prime Minister as to how they rise to them.

Following a narrow vote for Leave, May could have bought the country and Parliament together around a soft Brexit. She could have reached out to the Labour Party early on to secure a sensible Brexit that would have passed the Commons. She could have been honest with the public about the compromises that were necessary to deliver Brexit. She didn’t.

Instead Theresa May saw an opportunity to use Brexit to destroy the Labour Party. By owning the process and trying to deliver a Tory Brexit, for which she could claim credit for, she planned to steal the support of social, small “c”, conservative Labour voting Leavers and lock Labour out of power. In failing to destroy the Labour Party she might have destroyed the Tories. The next Tory leader could well be their last. The world's oldest political party could split in two and this will be largely May's fault.

While I shed crocodile tears for the likely death of the Tory Party, there is still the wildfire of Brexit burning through British politics. Brexit is in a dire state. May's often utterance of "no deal is better than a bad deal" is partly responsible for the fact that the complete economic suicide that would be a No Deal Exit from the EU currently polls at an alarming 45%. Extremism has completely captured the Leave side of the Brexit debate. No compromise is brooked. Faith in politicians is at an all-time low. Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson are likely to do well in the EU elections. This is a shit show.

It is terrifying that for many supporters of Brexit, May's deal, which is a deal to deliver Brexit, is seen as at best no-Brexit or at worse treachery. Let that sink in. Brexit supporters feel that a deal which delivers Brexit is treachery. Some of the blame for this situation - which would be funny if it wasn't terrifying - must go to supporters of No Deal, the Boris Johnsons and Nigel Farages of this sorry world. However, much of the blame must land on May and her complete failure to unite the Leave supporters behind not only her Brexit, but any kind of negotiated Brexit. This situation is so utterly fucked that the only thing I can do is to try to think about it as little as possible to avoid a life spent cowering under my bed in a constant state of sheer terror.

May has made an utter mess of Brexit. Nothing commands a majority in the polls. We have become a country divided into three unreconcilable camps of No Brexit, No Deal and an orderly exit. Never mind uniting the country, the sunlit uplands of a slim majority getting their way and the rest having to lump it seem a long fucking way off. We’re stuck in a state of constant crisis and never-ending paralysis.

There is something deeply terrifying about the person whose main job it was to deliver Brexit, walking away having completely failed. I cannot see a way out of this situation other than having a People's Vote and hoping to god that Remain can find a winning narrative this time. That won't solve the problem of a lot of angry Brexit supporters, who are now a lot angrier following May's "efforts". Eventually we will have to have a reckoning with the fact that so many people are angry and alienated. Another thing May did nothing about.

The only nice thing I can think to say about May is that what comes next will likely be worse. This is just another way that we lower our expectations from politicians. Then they fail to meet our lowered expectations and everything gets worse. The prospect of Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister is just another thing that I’m trying really fucking hard to not have to think about. Maybe we'll be lucky and get Michael Gove as PM. At least he pretends to be a normal human being and not a cartoon version of an aspiring authoritarian.

So May has gone and no one will mourn the end of her political career. My Brexit box is well stocked, which means that I will stay alive long enough to see the complete collapse of the country into civil war. Watch this space for further updates on that. May's legacy is the terrible mess of Brexit that she leaves behind. Whoever comes next's legacy will be the fallout from that mess and it's likely to be much worse than what we have seen already.

Theresa May picture created by Jim Mattis and used under creative commons.  

Extinction Rebellion gives me reason to be hopeful

In an age of so many political reasons to be depressed, the recent Extinction Rebellion protests should give those of us on the Left at least one cause to be hopeful. Seemingly out of nowhere, here were thousands of people willing to make a stand about what ought to be the defining political issue of our time.

People of all ages turned out to the protests in London during late April to demand urgent action on climate change, but they were predominantly – crucially – young. One image from the protests brought this home to me in particular: a young woman holding a placard stating ‘You will die of old age. I will die of climate change’.

This not only succinctly illustrate the gravity of the situation humanity faces; it also provides a counter-narrative to the lazy assumption that has persisted for far too long: that young people are too preoccupied with hipster fashions, cat videos on YouTube, their own image on social media, or whatever other supposed indicator of their shallow lack of awareness is being used to denigrate them this week.

Against this background, Greta Thunberg, climate activist and school striker, is the ideal icon of resistance for our times. Engaged, articulate and angrily speaking truth to power, she proves that today’s generation of young people are far from the vacuous, self-centred bunch they are often accused of being. She, and everyone else involved, are of course right.

Looming crisis

I don’t need to repeat here the looming crisis we, as a species, face due to climate change. We are in deep trouble. Yet, for too long, politicians have been prepared to side-line the issue; at best paying lip service and fiddling around the edges with this or that issue (as long as it’s business-friendly, of course). Or at worst, denying that there is a problem at all.

This isn’t just about climate change. Young people are increasingly aware, angry, and flexing their political muscles in a way that the establishment do not like at all. Age is becoming the defining dividing line in British politics. 70% of 18-24 year olds voted Remain in the EU referendum. In the 2017 General Election, Corbyn’s Labour would have won easily if only the under-40s had the vote. In both cases, the relevant vote share declined with each upward age bracket.

Some would put this down to naïve, youthful idealism. On the whole, I disagree. Young people are simply voting for their interests. Far from always voting to the left, and despite the ‘Rick from the Young Ones’ caricature, young people played their part in electing Margert Thatcher because they believed she offered them hope for the future. Today, the reality is stark: young people recognise that our current political consensus is driving our planet towards inhabitability, and this doesn’t seem overly appealing for those who, or whose children, will be around to see this happen.

It’s a far cry from what I remember of being a teenager myself. People of my age at the time were predominantly apathetic, aloof, and cynical when it came to politics. Granted, the era of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ and the supposed end of ideology, was not the most inspiring for political engagement. Even in the case of the 2003 Iraq War, an anachronistic flashpoint in a generally unpolitical era, the response of many of my peers wasn’t just to support or oppose the war. It was disinterest or, worse, ‘there’s no point in protesting. It doesn’t work’.

There’s no point in protesting

In my view, this was just another toxic legacy bequeathed to my generation by the privileged Baby Boomer generation. Along with dismantling the welfare state, and imposing tuition fees they themselves were unburdened by, they told us that they’d done the hard work for us: we protested in the 60’s and 70’s, they told us, then we grew up and discovered there’s no point – so you don’t have to bother.

Well, that orthodoxy, depressing as it was, is over. That answer isn’t good enough for young people any more.

Unsurprisingly the protests haven’t gone down well in all quarters. London Mayor Sadiq Kahn stated repeatedly that he ‘shared the passions of those protesting that the government needs to do more on climate change’ whilst imploring the protesters to call it all off, end the disruption, and go home.

This just illustrates the point of Extinction Rebellion. The time for supportive words whilst treating climate change as a side-issue, and doing nothing, is over. I understand why, in his position, Kahn has to take this law-and-order oriented approach, but like the great civil rights struggles of the past, it’s clearly going to take something more assertive than asking politely to push climate change up the agenda.

Young people are a force to be reckoned with

Even more hostile was London police chief Cressida Dick’s recent suggestion that laws should be changed to enable the more rapid arrest of protesters. The disruption caused by Extinction Rebellion is genuine – that was the point - but she should recognise how non-violent the week-long protests remained. They were free of even the fringe violence that marred earlier comparable left-wing protests, such as the G8 anti-capitalist protests in the 2000’s. It’s difficult to imagine, say, ‘Tommy Robinson’ supporters achieving the same peacefulness whilst exercising their freedom to demonstrate.

I hope that Extinction Rebellion achieves its goal of robust action finally being enacted by the government to deal with climate change. I remember, in the pre-financial crash world, occasionally someone in politics would say that climate change was as serious a threat to humanity as terrorism. Well, they were wrong. It’s much worse than that. It’s far more important than Brexit, as well. There are already some encouraging signs from Labour that the issue will form a cornerstone of its future programme for government.

But for now, if nothing else, Extinction Rebellion proves – once again – that young people are a force to be reckoned with. Political parties who ignore them could well end up regretting it as they, like our planet’s future, face oblivion.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

“We really believe in theatre that has a social value and brings communities together.”

Theatre can be a powerful tool for communication, artistic expression and creating empathy. It can open the watcher to new experiences and make you understand what it is like to be someone else. This can help bring communities together, which is why LegalAliens Theatre, in conjunction with Haringey Welcome, have been running theatre workshops for migrants at the Migrants Resource Centre.

The reasons for attending the workshops are diverse. One attendee said: “It was a dream of mine to attend theatre workshops and try acting.” Adding that the workshops had: “Boosted my creativity.” Another attendee said: “It was a fantastic opportunity to explore yourself. Absolutely positive experience which I will never forget.”

The attendees have come for a wide range of backgrounds, including people from Italy, Latvia, Turkey, Syria and Bulgaria. The length of time they have been in the UK also varies, from three months to three years. One attendee said that they had joined the workshop because they were: “Interested in acting and performing,” and “I wanted to meet new people and challenge myself.”

The workshops are also attempting to address some of the stereotypes about migrants. Lara Parmiani, artistic director of LegalAliens, said: “We’re trying to get rid of the label migrant. They are just people living here.” She added: “[Participants] want to be themselves and assert their identities.”

These workshops have changed how some participants think of themselves as migrants. “Day after day something has changed and continues to change. Day after day I feel less migrant,” one attendee said. “I feel as part of the community,” another said. 

Another attendee added: “I obviously still perceive myself as a migrant, as someone different from the others but in the several contexts where I found myself, me being of another nationality was something enriching, an added value somehow.”

The workshops culminated in a short performance on the 26th of March at All Welcome!, an event organised by the local campaign group, Haringey Welcome, to fight against the anti-migrant, hostile environment. Lara said: “We really believe in theatre that has a social value and brings communities together.” She said that this was the origins of theatre: “Communities coming together and telling stories.”

The workshops have encouraged several participants to continue with acting. One said: “I would like to do more acting in the future because thanks to this theatre workshop I discovered that I like and enjoy it.”

LegalAliens are continuing to run their weekly theatre workshops until June. Migrants looking to improve their English and express themselves are welcome to join. The atmosphere is friendly and fun. Lara said that participants have enjoyed meeting other people who are new to the UK, saying they like: “Having a place to come where everyone is in the same boat.”

One attendee said: “I met like minded people from all over the world.” Another agreed: “It was a fantastic opportunity to explore yourself.”

Image provided by the Minnesota Historical Society and used under Creative Commons.

The Notre-Dame fire is a tragedy, but so was Grenfell

The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris is a wonder to behold. Paris is a city with arguably the most famous landmark in the world, but Notre-Dame offers some strong competition to the global icon of Frenches. Situated on Île de la Cité in the Seine, the 12th-century Gothic cathedral shows Medieval architecture at its finest. The building is covered in sculptures, arches, spires and buttresses; everything you could want for a building to mentally transport you back to a time when people marveled at stain glass and colonnades. To stand inside Notre-Dame is to be joined to an artistic continuum that stretches back from today to medieval Europe. 

The fact that such a beautiful building, that has been an integral part of what must have been thousands of peoples’ lives over the centuries, has been damaged is a tragedy. Notre-Dame is a beautiful work of art and as it’s a building, it’s a work of art that we can all enjoy unlike a painting locked away in a vault somewhere to appreciate in value. When a historic building burns we not only lose the building, but we lose our connection to the people who lived and died in its shadow. The countless dead who lives have been shaped by Notre-Dame, never really die while it endures as a permanent connection to their collective memory. When something old is lost, many people are lost with it.

This is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy that has to be put into a political context. No art exists in a political vacuum. In art and architecture, as in all other things in life, systems of power and privilege come into play around Notre-Dame. 

Grenfell Tower

When Grenfell Tower burned in 2017 more people died, but so far more money has been raised to restore Notre-Dame then to help the victims of the fire. The French government has pledged to rebuild Notre-Dame (as they should; to preserve our connection to history) but many former Grenfell Tower residents remain living in temporary accommodation and it is within the power of the British government to find them a home. Is this because these people were poor, generally not white and many of them born overseas? The Grenfell Fire is the greater tragedy, but it has not produced the same reaction.

In America, three historically black churches in Louisiana were burned by arson attacks recently. These churches are much poorer than the Catholic Church and don’t receive the same level of funding from the state, but there has been no pledge to rebuild these. Is this because their congregations were black and poor?

Already the wealthy are volunteering their money to save a great work of art and a national symbol of France. The support of the uber-wealthy is appreciated, so that the burden of restoring this monument doesn't completely fall on the French taxpayer, but surely it would be better if they paid their taxes in the first place so that the state can be well funded and there is enough for welfare and to protect important pieces of history.

The NHS

In Britain, the NHS is on its knees and an injection of money (or properly paid taxes) would be very helpful in saving this national symbol of Britishness. If it’s a building the super-rich want to save, then the neo-Gothic British icon of the Palace of Westminster is in danger of falling down, and will need a huge quantity of public money that it will have to compete for against the NHS. Why can’t the uber wealthy pay for that?

Injustice and inequalities are also tragedies, but they are frequently unacknowledged. They happen every day, big and small, while no one notices. Social forces such as race, immigration status and wealth prevent millions of people from reaching their potential or from living fulfilling lives but there is no major energy to tackle these problems. There has been an explosion of energy to restore a historic building and this cannot be separated from these big social forces.

Louisiana churches

There is some good news to come out of all these tragedies. Enough people online pointed out the double standard of people being willing to donate to rebuild Notre-Dame, despite the wealth of the Catholic Chruch, but not to poor historically black churches in Louisiana that the GoFundMe page for the three Louisiana went viral. This led to $1.9 million in donations to these churches. Internet whataboutery finally did some good, and many people did acknowledge the inequality of wealth and power in this situation and then decided to do something about it.

We should be angry over what happened with Grenfell. We should be angry about the injustice, the inequality and loss of life. Something should be done to make Grenfell never happens again and also something needs to be done for the millions of people living in dangerous and substandard accommodation.

The fire that burned Notre-Dame is still a tragedy as something that was beautiful and meant a lot to a lot of people over a lot of years was damaged. But we should still care about the Grenfell survivors. We should look after both our history and the poor. The two are not mutually exclusive for a caring society.

 "Notre Dame" by thinkrorbot is licensed under CC PDM 1.0 

The Mueller Report is the end of the beginning of the Trump Presidency

Liberals, leftists and anyone who doesn't want the world to end in the next few years have been waiting with baited breath for the release of the Mueller Report. For those lucky people who have been living under a rock, the Mueller Report is the final report from the investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign’s possible connections to Russia conducted by Robert Swan Mueller (yes that is his real middle name). The idea was to answer the question of whether the current President of the United States colluded with a hostile power to cheat his way into the White House. Writing that sort of unbelievable sentence is the new normal. 

Anyone who hasn't gone that peculiar type of mad that the American Right has gone have been hoping that the Mueller Report would be the end of the Trump Presidency. Or, hopefully, the end of Trump as a public entity, after he had been thrown in prison for a long time for conspiring with the enemies of the country he professes to love so much.

Sadly, the Mueller Report doesn't look like it will be the end of Trump. It didn't lead to the Republican Party finally turning on him and holding him accountable for all the ways he has threatened the democracy they claim to love so much. (There is more than enough hypocrisy to go around when it comes to Trump.)

The Mueller Report doesn't appear to be the beginning of the process to get rid of Trump. Even if the Democrats in the House of Representatives start impeachment proceedings, there is not enough in the report to have him convicted in the Senate or forced from office. The Mueller Report seems more like the end of the story of Trump impeachment than the beginning.

When thinking about the sorry state of US politics (summed up by the fact that their President is a reality TV star who lost money opening a casino) I am reminded of a Winston Churchill quote: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

This is the end of the beginning of the Trump Presidency as it ends the questions raised by the campaign. The Mueller Report settles the issue of whether the way that Trump became the President means that he is not legally allowed to be President. It reminds me of when the Supreme Court ruled on the election of President Bush in 2000; it means that a legal process won't end the nightmare the world has found itself him.

I think that Trump is completely unfit to be president because of his character, the fact that he is a bully, he mocked the disabled, he stirred up racial tension, attacked the institutions of democracy, lied a lot, refused to condemn Nazis, was endorsed by the KKK, is a failed businessman, is an idiot and for many more reasons than I can think of right now. He doesn't need to break election law to be bad for the whole world. However, the Mueller Report shows he hasn't invalided his Presidency by his own actions.

The Mueller Report is not a complete exoneration of Trump, whatever he claims. There are many wrongdoings highlighted by the investigation and many senior people from the campaign, including the man who ran it, are in prison. The problem is that the Mueller Report isn't going to be the impeachment ejector seat that many people, myself included, hoped it would be.

The struggle against Trump and the ethnonationalism he exploits continues. It will be a long struggle and there will be many painful defeats along the way. However, we must continue to fight Trump and his ilk with everything we have. The far-right won't be beaten by a legal technicality.

We need to defeat the far-right at the ballot box, in culture, online and in the streets. This fight is bigger than one report or even the Trump Presidency. It is a struggle against authoritarian and ethnonationalist ideas that we can see in Brazil, in Poland, in Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Russia and elsewhere. We can see it in the UK with the rise of Tommy Robinson and UKIP's change into being an openly xenophobic party. The tolerant people of the world need to repudiate intolerant.

The hope that the Mueller Report would neatly remove Trump without the need for a messy election is similar to those in the UK who think that if we can just revoke Article 50, and stop Brexit, then everything will go back to pre-2016 automatically. Even if Remain can win a second referendum, Tommy Robinson will still be a blight on our politics. We need to organise against everything that is wrong with Britain, not just Brexit.

Everyone needs to get involved. You can contribute in big and small ways. You can vote, volunteer, march or join a group. What you do doesn't have to be party political. You can volunteer at a woman's Shelter or with a group who support migrants or stand up to Uncle when he says “that Gerard Batten chap makes some points.”

The lesson here is the way to defeat Trump and the far-right is not to claim that there has been an administrative mistake, like someone who has been served the wrong thing in a restaurant, but take to the streets.

2020 is when we end Trump. George Bush won a second term, we can’t let Trump win again. The Mueller Report shows that the origins of Trump won’t be his undoing; only a movement of resistance will be.

This is the end of the beginning of the Trump Presidency and now the real the fight begins.

Donald Trump picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.

Brexit has broken our politics

Brexit is getting worse and not better. The longer we delay in either doing it or canceling it, the angrier everyone gets. The indecision that has gripped parliament is causing tensions to rise. At this point, having an election or another referendum will only make people madder as they are both different forms of Parliament not making a decision and opting for further delays.

Brexit has broken our politics because it has created a problem that cannot be resolved as no option commands popular support. The parties are split on Brexit; it cuts across the traditional left/right divide. This new political axis combined with the old is tearing out politics apart.

Parliament refuses to pass Theresa May’s Brexit deal and has instead been holding a series of indicative votes on what they want instead. Although, none of these are supported by a majority of MPs. Both a customs union and a second referendum came close to passing, but not close enough to be the unambiguous will of the house.

No one can agree on what Brexit should be, which is the essence of Brexit itself. It’s not one thing, but a collection of loose ideas, values, aspirations and fears that have merged into a single political project. Nothing tangible can satisfy these feelings. The debate we are currently having, about what real-world form the bundle of dissatisfactions that are Brexit should take, is one that we should have had during the referendum or immediately afterward. We have left this terrifyingly late.

There is no consensus in Parliament because there is no consensus in the country. There is no majority in Parliament for what the majority of the people in the country will hate, which is currently everything. Everyone is waiting for some group to jump first in some direction, be it the DUP, ERG, Labour or Tory Remainers, and no one is willing to take the damage of sticking their neck out first. So it looks like everyone is going to stay hunkered down in their fox-holes until we crash out of the EU without a deal.

As no one is willing to compromise, delay is the only viable option. Although the continual delay is only making everyone angrier. We cannot escape from this cycle of delay and rising exasperation without a viable solution, which is the one thing we don’t have.

The more time goes by, the more I am convinced that Brexit is something that needs to be stopped. It will do huge economic and culture damage to our country, which will be felt by the poorest hardest. Even with May’s deal, that is a lot worse than the deal Britain has as an EU member. The left must oppose the regressive, nationalistic, anti-immigration, hyper-neoliberal Tory Brexit that the Boris Johnson or any other of May’s likely successors will visit upon the country.

At the same time, I am worried about how angry people could get if Brexit is canceled (or even if a second referendum is held). On 29th of March, the supposed Brexit day, the atmosphere in Westminster took on a new, frightening character. This was not a few old people with “Leave Means Leave” signs in Parliament Square. This was Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage speaking, people drinking and marching wearing St George’s crosses, journalists being verbally abused and fights with the police being started. This was angrier, nastier and more energetic than anything we had seen before and it’s a taste of what’s to come.

I find myself with unhelpful opinions. I have lots of detailed criticisms of the mistakes that got us into this mess - such as no Brexit white paper, the media not adequately scrutinizing Leave’s claims, a social media Wild West, dodgy campaign money sloshing about and no ownership of the outcome – all of which would be helpful if I could just find my time machine.

I think that we should have some kind of public vote if the deadlock in Parliament isn’t resolved soon. However, I must highlight that I disagree with, and am not associated in any way with, those who think that Remain could easily win a second vote or that revoking Article 50 would be universally welcomed. Anyone who believes that is crushingly naive.

Farage and Robinson are already whipping people up. It will get a lot worse if their message of Brexit betrayal is given legitimacy by the right leaning press or bunch of self-serving jingoistic clowns that are the Brexit wing of the Tory Party. This could get very ugly indeed.

It won’t be white, craft beer drinking, liberal, Remainers in Dulwich whose doors are kicked down by the Brexit mob. It will be poor people of colour in forgotten corners of the country, in small towns most people don’t know the names of. It’s these peoples’ lives we gamble with if we roll the dice on a second referendum. That’s if Remain wins that vote. Imagine the state of British politics if Leave wins for a second time.

My lack of useful suggestions mirrors all politicians’ lack of solutions. We are stuck and I don’t see a way out. Delay and indecision are making things worse. Now there is talk of holding EU elections, which may be the flare that the “Brexit is being stolen by the establishment” mob needs to really get going. If these elections return a horrendous group of right-wing, pro-Brexit reactionaries then this will demonstrate how bad a public vote could be. Either a second referendum or general election. However, a set of disastrous EU election results may be the catalyst Parliament needs to stop delaying and to do something, even if that something is putting this back to the people. I guess if we’re going to tear ourselves apart over Brexit we should get on with it.

Until Parliament makes a decision there will be delay followed by further delay, which will make everyone angrier. Brexit has already broken out politics to the point where it cannot function. That doesn’t mean that things can’t get much worse. 

 EU flag image created by Yanni Koutsomitis and used under creative commons.

Should the radical left support a People’s Vote?

The radical left doesn’t have a moral or philosophical position on Brexit. There are arguments for both Leave and Remain from a radical left-wing perspective, but there is no consensus. Take the figurehead of the radical left, Jeremy Corbyn. He doesn’t have a principled position on Brexit, which is odd for a man who has strong principals on everything else. He prefers the position that will make him Prime Minister. Brexit is making Corbyn act like a regular politician, where his great strength is how unlike a regular politician he is.

The radical left finds itself in the difficult position of thinking tactically about Brexit and not leading from our core principles. Our principles of Internationalism favours Remain, but the nature of the EU as a hyper-neoliberal, technocratic institution favours Leave. The memory of how the EU treated the economically ravaged Greece doesn’t inspire good feeling from the radical left, but then neither does the nationalistic and right-libertarian tones of the Brexit movement.

Many people I know strongly support the idea of having a second referendum as a means to kill Brexit once and for all. This has led me to think about whether, as a member of the radical left, it’s the right thing to do.

Giving people more of say over their lives is something I strongly believe in, which is why as a member of the radical left I support more localism and democracy being more than just people putting an X next to a name on a ballot paper every five years. A citizen’s assembly would be a good way to address Brexit, but neither the government nor Parliament is considering this.

A People’s Vote would give people another chance to express what they want and it could break the deadlock in Parliament. It might also be a way to avert a No Deal Brexit, the economic fallout of which would be felt by the poorest hardest. You can bet that Boris Johnson is financially protected from the No Deal he advocates.

If Remain were to decisively win another referendum it could end the nationalism, racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric that has come to dominate the country since the referendum campaign began. It would be a chance to revoke the language of hatred that has infected our political discourse.

Whatever Brexit was supposed to be, it has become an attack on all the positive functions of the state (such as linking disparate people together into a common web to achieve things together and provide protections for labour and the environment) by attacking the EU from a right-wing free-market position and focusing anti-government rage against it, whilst simultaneously seeking to enhance all the negative functions of a state (such as heavy-handed policing, mass surveillance, data collection on an industrial scale and a mechanism for perpetuating inequality and plutocratic rule) through a sovereignty oriented appeal to give more power to the British government. All this must be opposed and a People’s Vote would give us the opportunity to stop it.

Despite this, I have my doubts about a second referendum. My main concern is the anger unleashed by any attempt to stop Brexit. Certainly, a People’s Vote could be sold by any unscrupulous politician wishing to whip up support for themselves as a betrayal of the first vote. Do we know anyone who might be tempted to act like that? There are certainly elements of the pro-Brexit press and Conservative Party that are itching to splash “Brexit Betrayal!” across newspapers and internet. Already Donald Trump Jr is talking about Brexit betrayal and that democracy is dead in Britain.

Satirist and host of The Bugle podcast, Andy Zaltsman, described the first EU referendum as like the nation sticking it’s penis in a plug socket. This seems like an apt description as, like walking in on man with his penis in a plug socket, I have no idea how we got into his situation but everything about it is simultaneously incredibly stupid and incredibly degrading. I’m not sure what can be gained from sticking the nation’s penis in the plug socket for a second time.

Emotions ran high over the last referendum and they will run higher over another one. The last one pushed the country apart and ripped open a new political fracture. Another EU referendum could shatter us entirely. One MP was killed in the last referendum campaign. How much violence could be unleashed by another?

There are many other ways a second referendum could go wrong. What happens if Remain wins, but by less than 52%? What happens if Remain wins on a lower turnout, or wins but with fewer votes than the 17.4 million who voted Leave last time? All of these outcomes will resolve nothing and make us a more divided and bitter nation.

I am not sure if it’s even possible for Remain to reach the dizzying heights of 52% in a People’s Vote. It’s hard to gauge which way opinion will jump after the campaigns gets going. Supporters of a second referendum have highlighted how demographic churn could benefit Remain in a People’s Vote - it’s always the sign of a decent political movement that it’s celebrating the deaths of people who think differently to them – but Remain started with a larger lead last time and went on to lose.

I also don’t think that we have a convincing argument for Remain beyond “make this shitshow stop”. I’m sure many people wish this nightmare was over, but do they really want the pre-2016 status quo back enough to vote for it? I don’t think this is what most people in the country want and I don’t see Remain providing any other arguments beyond the raw of indignation of a middle class person in a slightly posh restaurant when something hasn’t gone their way.

Recent voting has also shown that there is no majority in Parliament for a People’s Vote. Many strong Remain supporting MPs, like Caroline Flint, have changed to supporting Brexit as that’s what their constituents voted for. Is there an argument that can win other these MPs? The most obvious one is that Brexit won’t fix their constituents’ problems and will most likely make them worse.

Herein lies the core of the problem with the case for the EU. The best way to argue for it is convincing an elected leader that what’s in the best interest of their constituents is the exact opposite of what they want. Their views don’t matter, only some other greater good whose benefits are intangible. Meanwhile their lives get worse, they feel they have less control and become more culturally alienated from everyone else. The arguments for the EU have contained within them their own undoing.

If we had a People’s Vote, we will need to learn from the last referendum. We haven’t got any better at selling the EU. In the last three years, no new arguments have risen for Remain that can convince people this time. The only new development is now that we see how complex Brexit is.

Politics right now is too unpredictable to call another referendum. The outcome is almost impossible to predict and with the likes of Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson having a larger platform than they did three years ago, a second vote could turn very nasty.

Despite this, a No Deal Brexit would be so disastrous that I cannot support the idea in any circumstances. It must be prevented at all cost. The wealthy won’t suffer under a No Deal, but everyone else will. It will be like the 2008 financial crash all over again, but much worse. However, if we do nothing then a No Deal will happen. A second referendum would be accepted to stop a No Deal Brexit. The possibility of something terrible happening is preferable to the certainty of something terrible happening.

All of this is tactical thinking. I have not managed to find a moral answer to the question of whether the radical left should oppose or support a People’s Vote. Brexit is dividing our movement, cutting across the political spectrum and creating new divisions. This is the effect of the great wound that Brexit has opened up in our politics.

Brexit is eating a shit-sandwich, but No Deal is eating a grenade

I am at my wits end over Brexit. As I write, the only certainty is that Britain will leave the EU next Friday unless an extension to the Article 50 period is agreed. Currently, there is no agreement. This gives us five days to sort something out or face the national catastrophe of a No Deal Brexit. 

Even if the Article 50 period is extended, what happens then? MPs clearly don’t want the deal that is on the table as they have already voted it down twice, and now Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow has said it cannot be tabled a third time. MPs have also voted against a No Deal Brexit - or a momentary outbreak of sanity has occurred, whatever description you prefer - but without MPs deciding on what alternative they want to a No Deal exit, No Deal remains the default position.

So, nothing has changed and we’re dangerously close to throwing the country off a cliff because parliament cannot agree on which of a series of shit-sandwiches it wants to eat.

If there is an extension, will it be just another in a long line of kicks to the proverbial can as it travels down the road towards the cliff edge of a No Deal Brexit? If so, we are rapidly running out of road to kick the can down. What will be done with this extension? More arguments that produce no solutions? More votes that don’t provide resolutions? More time wasted chasing the Brexit mirage that is constantly on the horizon but forever out of reach?

Brexit was never something I desired. I never found it appetising, but it has certainly now become the political equivalent of freshly battered faeces served in bread in a cafe with very poor health standards. Parliament is presented with a series of bad options, from May’s deal to Norway+++, or whatever they’re calling it this month, to the Malthouse compromise, a compromise that is already compromised as it won’t work. So, we now have a whole menu of shit-sandwiches that no one wants to eat.

It looks increasingly likely that Parliament cannot decide on which flavour of cack-bread it's going to chow down on. Which is understandable as no one wants to eat poo, no matter how nice the bread is. The hitch is that MPs were able to pass the triggering of Article 50 into law and fix the leave date of 29th March 2019, which means that if Parliament doesn’t eat one of the shit-sandwiches by that point the whole country will be forced to eat a grenade. I assume I don’t have to tell you why that is a bad idea.

If Parliament cannot decide what to do, then it needs to either call an election, so that we can get a parliament that can agree on which flavour of disgusting excrement it’s are going to eat, or have a referendum in an attempt to call this entire stomach churning dinner party off. It’s that or eat the grenade.

Someone at the back is screaming: “Don’t eat any turds at all! Just hold a second referendum and the smell of all this will be so bad it will put everyone off!” The issue with this is that some people are really into this whole eating already digested and excreted food and they’ll be pretty angry if their dinner party is called off.

We may not understand these people and their weird ways, their culture may be unfamiliar to us, but does that mean we should ignore the outcome of a referendum? They might have different views from us, but one man’s shit is another’s delicious bowl of organic, locally-sourced muesli washed down with a lovely hoppy IPA from an East London microbrewery.

Again, I can hear the call of: “Yes! We should hold these people and their weird different views in contempt! Fuck Brexit!” At the risk of being unpopular, I’m not sure it’s as simple as just stopping Brexit, or even calling a second referendum, winning it by a huge margin and then stopping Brexit. Doing this won’t be the cakewalk some claim it would be.

Let me be absolutely clear that I don’t want Brexit to happen. I voted against it. I think it’s a bad idea. I just wrote over 500 words about how Brexit is a shit-sandwich because I believe it is. I’m not in the pay of the mainstream media or the EU. I do this on my own time.

I think Brexit is an awful idea, but I know that many people disagree with me and would dispute this whole shit-sandwich analogy. For them, Brexit is not so much a turd-filled piece of bread, but a cool glass of water for someone who has crawled through a desert. Just because everyone I know is against Brexit doesn’t mean that stopping it would be easy. Over the last three years I have become painfully aware of the bubble I live in.

Around a million people marched for a second referendum this weekend and an online petition requesting the revoking of Article 50 currently has over four million signatures, so I’m not alone in wanting to stop Brexit. The question is: does the majority of people in the country want to stop Brexit or is this just a very large bubble with several million people in it? Demographic churn suggests that Remain could win a second time, but the campaign hasn’t begun yet and last time Remain started way ahead and went on to lose. Also, it’s always the sign of a decent political movement when it’s celebrating the deaths of people who think differently.

I’m worried about what could happen with a second referendum. Last time there was an increase in racial violence and an MP was killed. Emotions are running higher now. I’m frightened of the rage a second referendum could unleash and what it’s political outlet could be. The SNP now dominate in Scotland following losing in the Scottish independence referendum, a second EU referendum could be the fuel that English Nationalism needs to get going in a big way. Also, has anyone thought about how awful the Brexit situation will be if Leave wins for a second time? Surely, that will mean a No Deal Exit.

I’m worried that we’re being complacent like we were in 2016. A second referendum is not so much playing with fire, but playing with fireworks on top of a huge pile of TNT. Bad things could happen in another referendum and anyone who says otherwise is naive. There’s a risk, so a second referendum is another shit-sandwich on the buffet of foul poo-filled food that no one wants to touch.

Despite all of this indecision, something has to happen. We cannot continue to defer the moment when something awful finally gets eaten. I am terrified that the decision has been deferred for this long, but we cannot carry on for much longer like this. There’s been a lot of huffing and objecting, but now it looks like someone is going to have to eat something rank. Brexit maybe a shit-sandwich, but Parliament may have to eat it to avoid eating a grenade.

The left’s answer to rising knife crime needs to be more than just spending money

A terrible tragedy has struck two separate families on the same day. 17-year-olds Yousef Makki and Jodie Chesney were both murdered on the same evening in different cities, Manchester and London. Knife crime now dominates the front pages of the papers as much as Brexit does.

Knife crime has been increasing steadily over the last five years. A year ago I volunteered at a community centre in Tottenham, North London. In the two weeks I was there, a teenage boy was stabbed in our car park, another was shot outside a nearby tube station and another was stabbed outside a local cinema. It was unclear whether these were related attacks, part of a conflict between local gangs, or isolated incidents.

Knife crime has been in the news, but it has taken on a new political salience now that the victims are white, well-educated and suburban. Stabbings and other knife crimes have long been a feature of life in inner cities and poor estates, but neither the government nor media cared when the victims weren’t white. While I lived in Tottenham from 2010 to 2012, there were three stabbings in our quiet, side street alone, but none of these attracted national attention.

One reason why these stabbings have attracted a lot of attention is that they have occurred at a time when the damaging effects of Tory austerity can no longer be denied. Theresa May denied that there was a link between cuts in police numbers and rising knife crime, but the evidence shows that crime has risen over the last five years while police numbers have declined.

May’s premiership is a disaster. Whatever Brexit we ultimately get will be unpopular with huge swathes of the public and we may yet end up with a disastrous No Deal exit. Now May’s legacy at the Home Office is unraveling. Her draconian hostile environment policy to bring down immigration resulted in the Windrush scandal. Now the cuts she oversaw are resulting in blood on the streets.

Of course, the rise in knife crime is not just due to the cuts to the police. Social service, community centres, educational programs, employment programs, even after school services and youth clubs have been decimated by austerity. The willful neglect of huge areas of the public realm collectively impacts on crime on our streets.

The fabric of British life has been ripped apart by the cuts. We can see this in rising numbers of people sleeping rough. We can see it in schools that have to ask students to bring in their own toilet paper. We can see it in the return of Victorian diseases such as Rickets and TB. We can see it in rising knife crime.

In all these instances it is the most vulnerable who are hit the hardest. The poor, those with insecure accommodation, children and the people who have been so massively failed by society that they have turned to knife crime. Austerity was a policy designed to an advance the political goal of a smaller state and larger private sector that was achieved by making life worse for the people who would never vote Tory.

The impact to cuts across a whole range of public services are felt most acutely by those who have multiple social problems. This may seem like academic jargon, but consider the following. People with low paying jobs and insecure accommodation are most at risk of homelessness. Children in families whose benefits have been slashed and who attend schools that are underfunded are the most at risk of malnutrition. Many repeat offenders grew up in care. Communities hit by the closure of youth and social services and cuts in police numbers are seeing rises in knife crime. This is not just about cuts to the police. This is about the complete failure of society to look after vulnerable people, because of a callous political project.

The question I ask myself is: what would the radical left do differently, given the huge power that comes with being in charge of the British state? Our solution to complex social problems needs to be more nuanced than just spending lots of money. Austerity is a cause of many of these problems and I am not opposed to state spending, but we need to do more to tackle the effects of austerity.

The left also needs to do more than just beef up the police. Heavy-handed policing is another cause of the breakdown in trust between communities and the police that has led to the rise in crime. Although the police need more money to do their jobs, we won’t make people’s lives measurably better by turning disadvantaged communities into police states.

I am not an expert on crime or in gangs, but whilst volunteering in Tottenham I attended a gang training day, run by a charity that works helping people out of gangs. The key thing I learned is that there is no single cause of gangs, or of activities often (but not always) associated with gangs such as knife crime. Gangs grow when the soil is fertile for them to grow in and what makes the soil of society fertile for gangs brings in issues to do with racism, poverty, culture, gender, economics and localism. There is no magic bullet for this that the radical left can purchase once we have control of the state’s coffers.

Our response to knife crime must be varied and complex. It will involve listening to communities that have suffered from heavy-handed policing. It will involve giving the initiative to teachers, social workers, community organisers and a whole host of other people. It will also involve giving these people the money they need to do their jobs, that will be an important part of this, but the money must be spent on the people who are already working hard to make a difference in communities ravished by austerity. The money must not be spent on increasing the power of the police or reach of the state.

The radical left needs to recognise the deep and complex causes of knife crime and have a sophisticated response to it. Austerity is a huge factor in the rise in knife crime and we must work to undo the damage done by the Tories. We need to remember that every victim of knife crime is a tragedy, not just the white and suburban ones. Above all, we need to offer hope that the future can be better than the despair of the present.

5 examples of political satire books

Some great works of political satire have been written over the years. So many that it is hard to know which ones to read first. To help you in your reading I have included 5 examples of political satire books that everyone should read. 

Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

The farmyard fable is a tradition of English literature, which George Orwell employed for his satire of the Stalinism, Animal Farm. The book uses satire to tell the story of the Russian Revolution through the lens of a farm where the animals have risen up against the humans and taken over. The revolution then falls to tyranny as a Pig named Napoleon’s lust for power destroys all the principals of equality it was built on.

 Such was the impact of this novel that in the USSR it was illegal to name a pig Napoleon and phrases coined in the novel, such as “we are all equal but some of us are more equal than others” have become shorthand for when a revolution aimed to bringing freedom descends into tyranny.

 Orwell was a lifelong socialist, but he wanted to warn the British left of the dangers of authoritarian socialism. In Animal Farm he uses satire effectively to take the complexities of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism, to paint a stark picture of how revolutions can go wrong.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

Joseph Heller’s novel takes aim at the pointless waste of life that is war and the bureaucracy of military-industrial complex. The novel follows Yossarian, a World War 2 bomber pilot stationed on an island called Pianosa. It dramatizes several events where Yossarian is caught between bureaucratic processes in a Catch 22. When we first meet Yossarian, he is in the hospital for jaundice, but the doctors are refusing to treat him until the jaundice fully sets in, but they won’t release him because he has jaundice. Yossarian is stuck as his life is ruled over by processes beyond his control.

Heller uses humour to expose what is wrong with war, religion and bureaucracy in America. He exaggerates the convoluted, contradictory and self-defeating aspects of the American military to make a point about the futility of war and how it ultimately adds up to the waste of human life. This is one of those novels when you have to laugh so that you don’t cry.

I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert (2007)

Stephen Colbert is a master at sending up conservatives via his comedy personality as a right-wing pundit. His show, the Colbert Report, was a mainstay of Comedy Central between 2005 and 2014, and in 2007 he put the character’s take on what was wrong with America (mainly liberals) into book form. Covering topics such as the homosexual agenda, race and immigration, Colbert satirises the hysterical tone of right-wing American politics. 

Colbert’s right-wing pundit character was a parody of American conservatives before they became a self-parody. Recently, Fox and Friend’s host Pete Hegseth denied the existence of germs saying: “I can’t see them, therefore they’re not real.”

The right in America have become some kind of scary, crazy joke, led by a reality TV version of Mussolini. The crazy pronouncements of Colbert now look tame and moderate next to a right that has openly embraced conspiracy theories and fake news. It’s terrifying that the world has become madder than the mad world of Stephen Colbert.

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935)

The idea of a US demagogue is powerful and scary. America has always thought of itself as a freedom loving nation, immune from the lure of authoritarianism. Yet there is a streak in American culture that is fanatical in its worship of flag, military and Americana. Could support for a dictator lurk beneath the surface that prides itself in its liberty?

That’s the idea behind Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here. The novel follows the rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip an authoritarian who becomes President of the United States by appealing to patriotism and a return to traditional values. To say that this book is relevant in the age of Donald Trump is an understatement.

The novel was mainly aimed at satirising Louisiana governor Huey Long, who was preparing a run for president before he was assassinated in 1935. Although it’s satire of the weaknesses of American democracy are still relevant today.

The character of Buzz has a few crucial differences to Trump, he has a street protest movement similar to Hitler and the SS, which Trump doesn’t have. However, other parallels exist, such as the main character being a journalist, a profession that Trump hates. I hope that Lewis’s fiction is not America’s future.

 Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes (2012)

Would we recognise Hitler for what he is if he walked amongst us? That’s the premise of German satirical novel Look Who’s Back. Hitler wakes up in modern Berlin, unaware of anything that has happened since 1945. As he continues to spout his Nazi views, he is mistaken for a method actor or comedy character, eventually finding success on YouTube and re-entering politics.

The novel pokes fun at contemporary alt-right extremists who are able to find an audience for their hateful views via social media. It also satirises our inability to see the true awfulness of extreme right politics and our mistake in assuming what we are seeing is an attempt at humour. Hiding behind a Family Guy-esque shock humour is a known tactic of the far-right. It’s sad to say that if Hitler was alive today, most people probably would dismiss him as a social media provocateur and not see the threat he poses to the world.

Conclusion

The list above covers a wide range of novels from different countries and periods in history. They all have something to say about today as well as the time they were written in. Even the old books have contemporary relevance as we can learn from the past to avoid repeating their mistakes. 

Satire is an effective way of communicating complex political ideas in an accessible and impactful way. What I have included above are a few examples of books that I think are excellent. Let me know which political satire novels you enjoy in the comments below.

A Corbyn government will end the misery of austerity

Eight MPs have left the Labour Party (at time of writing) and joined with 3 Conservative MPs to form a new party. This is clearly a rejection of Jeremy Corbyn and left-wing direction he has taken the party in. With the party splitting, it’s more important than ever to remind ourselves of why it is important to support Labour.

In my view, this can be summed up in one word: change.

It’s obvious that things aren’t going well for many people in Britain right now. This isn’t a flux of nature or a product of global economics beyond our control. It’s because of the deliberate policies of the Tory government. We Labour supporters know that things can be better if the government enacted some genuine left-wing policies.

There are awful tragedies that we see unfolding every day in Britain that the government can do something about. Homelessness has exploded since the Tories came to power and the number of people sleeping rough has increased every year for the last seven years. We can see the effects of austerity in every town and high street across the country as people are denied basic human dignities like a roof over their head.

Food banks and Victorian diseases

Even if people have a home, many of them can’t afford to heat it or eat. Around 560,000 people used a Food Bank each year and one in four parents have had to skip meals as they prioritise giving what little food they have to their children. A Corbyn government can help the poorest and most in need people in the country. People who have been abandoned by a Tory government that doesn’t care for them.

A Corbyn government can make a real difference to children who are being failed by society. Victorian diseases that we thought had been eradicated over a century ago are back, such as Rickets and TB. Schools are in such bad condition that in some parts of the country pupils are forced to bring in their own toilet paper. 128,000 children are living in temporary accommodation, where entire families are forced to share a single room and the facilities are not fit for animals, let alone during childrens’ important formative years. In one of the richest countries in the world, this is an outrage.

The NHS must be a priority for the next Labour government. Our national health system is groaning under the pressures of an aging society and years of under-investment by the Tories. Protecting the NHS and making sure our health service is fit for the 21st century must be a top priority for Corbyn when he is Prime Minister.

Britain is falling apart around us. The welfare of ordinary people has been neglected over the last nine years as the Tories have priorities tax cuts to the rich. Our high streets are full of boarded-up shops, our schools are crumbling and children are growing up in shoebox-sized temporary accommodation.

Corbyn can change this

Corbyn can change this. Splitting off to form a new centrist party will not help the millions of people suffering under a Tory government. We need to remember what Labour stands for right now - a helping hand to poor and the needy.

A general election could happen at any minute. With the government in chaos and the public fed up with the state of the country, Labour has a real shot at winning. We could be a matter of weeks away from Jeremy Corbyn becoming the next Prime Minister. We could finally get a government that cares about the welfare of everyone. 

Our country is crumbling under a neglectful Tory government. A new party will only split the left vote and allow the Tories to continue in power. The neediest, the most vulnerable, the poorest and children are suffering under this heartless government. We need a Corbyn government to help those who need it the most.

Picture of Jeremy Corbyn taken by Garry Knight and used under creative commons.

A Labour split is good news for the Tories

So it finally happened. After all the talk, it’s shit or get off the pot time. In this case the pot is the Labour Party and 7 MPs have decided to shit on it or get off it. At this point the metaphor breaks down.

To tell the truth, I’m not sad, surprised or angry. Some MPs have clearly been apoplectic with rage since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader. This is partly because he changed the party’s direction and partly because his election stopped the rise of some MPs through the party’s ranks. 

As a socialist, I want a left-wing Labour Party that will raise taxes on the rich, stop NHS privatisation, nationalise the railways, spend more on benefits and build more council houses. If some centrist MPs don’t want this and would prefer to be in a party that Alan Sugar wants to belong to, then I can show them where the exit is.

I wish Chuka Umunna and his pals all the best for his future. There’s no need to yell traitor or splitter or turn into the Judean People’s Front over this. I hope this will be an amicable break up. A conscious uncoupling. The electorate will settle this, one way or the other.

It’s too early to tell what will happen. Will this be an SDP version two? Something more? Or as much of a wet fish as when two Conservative MPs defected to UKIP and promptly lost their seats? The SDP managed to get 35 MPs to come with them over a period of months, and the number of MPs that join this Independent Group will depend on how many current Labour MPs feel threatened by deselection. That will all depend on how the Labour leadership handles this.

The odds aren’t good that this break away will work. The First Past The Post electoral system means even if the Independent Group get lots of votes, it might not translate into many seats. The SDP won 7,780,949 votes to Labour’s 8,456,934 in 1983 and ended up with 23 seats against Labour’s 209. The SDP also had two years to prepare for an election. If Brexit causes an election in March, will this new party, that doesn’t have a name yet, be ready for it?

Have they thought through all the implications of this break away? For example, what policy platform will they stand on? I guess it will be anti-Brexit, but Umunna, for example, has made comments about immigration that are unlikely to appeal to Europhiles. Will they be pro-austerity? What will their position on gender recognition be? I don’t think there is a huge constituency for a socially liberal, economically neo-liberal party. Outside the few people who read the Economist, but also think that Apu in the Simpsons is problematic.

Another question is: will they join with other Labour castaways? Will they admit the pro-Brexit Frank Field? Or John Woodcock who is accused of sexual harassment? Or Jared O’Mara who is accused of making misogynist and homophonic comments?

Will they join up with the Lib Dems? As Umunna and friends weren’t happy in Corbyn’s choir, will they want to be backing singers for Vince Cable? Why would Cable, who already runs a party, want to play second fiddle in Chuka Umunna’s Tony Blair cover band? The sort of person who launched a new party, rather than standing for Labour leader, doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would stand quietly at the back while someone else set the tune. 

There’s also the fact that this new party managed to launch with a broken website, so I’m not putting much faith in their organisation skills. There was a brief time when users could choose to agree or do nothing to the suggested principles on the Independent Group’s website. As there was no submit button on page, that error didn’t matter anyway. Then there was Angela Smith describing BAME people as “a funny tinge”.

I don’t doubt that their objections to Corbyn and the direction he has taken Labour in are genuine. I’m sure they see Corbyn’s economic and foreign policy as bad tactically and not in the UK’s interest. I don’t doubt that these MPs are opposed to anti-semitism in Labour either, something Corbyn clearly has a blind spot on. However, you can’t dismiss that disliking the left, and being unable stand the fact that we are in charge, were a factor in the split.

As they’re unlikely to win power, a vote for this Independent Group will only be a protest vote at best. Corbyn has a serious chance of winning the PM and stopping the damage the Tories are doing. This is ironic for a group who called Corbyn’s Labour a protest vote.

Personally, after sticking with the party through Blair’s embrace of Thatcherism, the Iraq War, and everything else, I can’t help but felt let down that they couldn’t handle a few years under Corbyn. I guess they felt that even if Corbyn went, Labour members were too stupid to embrace Umunna and Co’s clearly superior ideas so they have to go directly to the electorate. Again, I wish them well with this. We’ll see how it all pans out.

The most likely outcome of this is splitting the left vote and helping the Tories stay in power. Some people will think that is an acceptable cost to stop Corbyn becoming prime minister. I guess we’ll see how many people really want a government that isn’t Labour, Tory or Lib Dem, far-left or far-right.  

I wouldn’t split Labour to stop another Blaire becoming Prime Minister, as much as my views are to the left of his. The worst Labour government is preferable to the best Tory government. What this shows is that some Labour MPs believe that there are some Tory governments that are preferable to some Labour governments. If you believe that, then maybe you shouldn’t be in the Labour Party. So best of luck to them.

Exit sign picture taken by Paul Wilkinson and used under creative commons.

Western military intervention in Venezuela would be a disaster

The people of Venezuela have taken to the streets and the situation is spiraling out of control. The leader of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó is claiming he is the rightful president and that sitting president, Nicolás Maduro, is a "usurper". This is set against a backdrop of economic hyperinflation, food shortages and a mass exodus. Above all of this is America’s itchy trigger finger.

Selections of the left have leapt to Maduro’s defense. I understand why this is. He is running a socialist government, that has nationalised the country’s oil and is opposed to American foreign policy in Latin America. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, attempted to build an economy that looks beyond capitalism to something fairer.

Venezuela offered some hope of an economic system that was different western neo-liberal capitalism (with its staggering inequality), Russian crony-capitalism (with its staggering corruption) or Chinese authoritarian capitalism (with its staggering lack of liberty). Venezuela, especially the Chávez government, had some interesting ideas about how to organise an economy differently, which drew the interest of the international left.

When Chávez died in 2013, I wrote an obituary that drew on my experience of meeting a Venezuelan woman in New York. She had an interesting perspective on the country. She said the poor in Venezuela where glad to have a socialist government, which provided more for them than many other poor countries.

However, she said what most people in Venezuela wanted was Western liberal democracy. I have my criticisms of Western liberal democracy, especially the economic system it rests on, but I believe strongly that people worldwide deserve the personal freedom that western liberal societies offer (at least in principle). I wasn’t about to tell this woman she was wrong about what Venezuelans wanted.

The Maduro regime is not a regime that I want to live under. It was repressed or jailed opposition candidates in the run to the recent presidential election, which is what led to calls that Maduro is usurping the presidency. There has been hyperinflation and food shortages caused by government mismanagement of the economy that has caused a lot of hardship for the poorest members of society.

That said, I am strongly opposed to the idea of Western military intervention in Venezuela. It will only make things worse and risk huge numbers of people being killed in a war that could last for years, if not decades. America - and the few countries that are deluded enough to still look up to America or desperate enough to depend on American’s good graces – cannot go around being the world’s policeman. The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan are that this doesn’t work.

The West is also very selective in how we enforce international law or the standard of democracy we are supposed to be supporting when we invade another country. The Democratic Republic of the Congo recently had an election where most of the independent monitors claimed that proclaimed winner, Union for Democracy and Social Progress candidate Félix Tshisekedi, committed electoral fraud. The African Union and Catholic Church reported that the Engagement for Citizenship and Development party’s candidate, Martin Fayulu, is the real winner. In Nigeria, Chief Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen has been arrested suspiciously close to the upcoming election he was supposed to be the adjudicator for.

Invading Venezuela, using the excuse that an election was unfair, is wrong unless the West is willing to invade Nigeria and The Democratic Republic of the Congo as well. There have been unfair elections in Russia and China, but we do nothing about them. The Yemenis and Syrian governments are inflicting terrible hardships on their citizens, but we are not invading those countries. Policemen aren’t supposed to be selective about how they enforce the law.

Military action would be a bad idea, but the left needs to acknowledge that something has gone wrong in Venezuela. The government is authoritarian and represses the freedom the left defends. It has brought economic hardship upon its poorest citizens, the people socialism is supposed to offer something better than harsh capitalism.

Venezuela doesn’t show that socialism doesn’t work. It shows that this variety of authoritarian socialism as practiced by Venezuela and in the USSR doesn’t work. The left needs to know authoritarian socialism when we see it, and call it out as against our values. Socialism should provide more liberty than capitalism. Not less.

There are rival traditions of anti-authoritarian socialism. From the works of Rosa Luxemburg to anarchist collectives in Kurdistan to Podemos in Spain and the criticism of authoritarian socialism written by George Orwell.

I hope that the lives of ordinary Venezuelans improve in the future and that they don’t have to suffer food shortages, hyperinflation and live under an authoritarian government. The Venezuela people need to establish the government that they want for themselves. An American or Western invasion won’t help them do this and will only lead to the suffering of more ordinary Venezuelans.

 "Bandera de Venezuela" by Blog Viajes is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit here

Labour must force May to drop her Brexit red lines

In this last week Brexit has gone from bad to worse, something I scarcely thought possible. Brexit as a whole is poorly conceived and its execution has also been terrible. To make it worse, this particular train wreck has a countdown attached. If we don’t resolve this mess by the 29th of March this year then Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal and worse will become Biblically awful.

This week Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement was voted down by parliament and a vote of no confidence in the Tory government failed. It has been a whirlwind. In order to clarify my thinking on what we should do now, I have laid out a few facts as I see them.

Firstly, May’s deal clearly won’t make it through parliament. The only way I can see this happening is if it’s the last few days before a No Deal exit and, all other plans having failed, MPs vote it through at the last minute. Other than that, this withdrawal agreement that has been negotiated over nearly two years is as dead as Boris Johnson’s integrity. Not only is May’s deal dead, but I don’t think any other bespoke deal that the EU is willing to give us will be passed by the House of Commons.

Secondly, this government isn’t going anywhere. Now that a vote of no confidence in the government has failed, the chances of a general election and putting Labour in the Brexit driving seat have been massively reduced. Following the failed leadership challenge in December, May is safe as Prime Minister for the foreseeable future. This means that we have to accept that the Tories in general and May, in particular, will see out the Article 50 deadline in power.

Thirdly, and most importantly, a No Deal Brexit would be a disaster of unparalleled proportions. It could lead to hospitals closing and medicine shortages. The economy could collapse and there could be rioting in the streets when food shortages hit. The economic and social damage done could make the 1970s look like a minor stock market adjustment. A No Deal Brexit must be prevented at all costs.

MPs have been clear that they won’t accept a No Deal Brexit and have done their best to bind the government’s hands to prevent it. However, unless MPs can decide on what kind of Brexit they do want (or postpone/stop Brexit) then No Deal wins by default at the end of March. Parliament needs to act to prevent a No Deal Brexit.

As May’s deal is dead, the Prime Minister has been dragged, against all of her political instincts, to the table of cross-party negotiation. This begs the question, what should Labour ask for in these negotiations? What type (if any) of Brexit should they pursue?

What the past two years of wasting time over Brexit has shown, is that May’s red lines on Brexit cannot be reconciled with each other. She has ruled out remaining in the regulatory orbit of the EU, a border between Northern and the Republic of Ireland (having this as a red line is sensible) and customs checks between Northern Ireland the rest of the UK. Maintaining all three of these is only possible in the deal that May has negotiated with the EU, which is not going to pass parliament.

May’s red lines exist to keep the Tory party happy. It is what they want from Brexit. May is putting her party’s unity ahead of the best interest of the country. As there is no Brexit that the Tories will accept, whilst May retains her red lines she is running the risk of a No Deal Brexit.

All of this leads me to express what is probably going to be an unpopular opinion amongst my middle class, metropolitan, muesli eating, Uniqlo shopping, Guardian reading, craft beer drinking, casual dining, friends. Quite simply, Labour must force May to drop her red lines and embrace a Norway style Brexit with customer union membership and maybe even EEA membership.

This is clearly the best Brexit deal. It minimises the risk of an economic shock, guarantees continuity for UK business and the European people living in the UK and protects pace in Northern Ireland as well as ensuring the Good Friday agreement stands. It is the best way forward and would pass through Parliament. This is what Labour should make the government agree to.

This week Corbyn has been criticised for wanting No Deal taken off the table before negotiations can begin. This is a sensible starting place as No Deal cannot be countenanced by any politician who hasn’t take leave of their senses. The fact that it is being endorsed by Nigel Farage tells you all you need to know about it as an idea.

But what about a People’s Vote, I hear you say? Well if Remain and stop all this madness could win a People’s Vote that would be one way out of this shitstorm. There are a few problems with this as a plan. Firstly, I don’t see it getting through parliament. Secondly, I haven’t seen an official confirmation of what the question on a People’s Vote be. Will it be May’s Deal verses Remain? Will No Deal be allowed on the ballot? Will it be a two-stage referendum? No one from the People’s Vote has a clear answer to these questions.

These technical questions can be addressed and they are not the root of my objections to a People’s Vote. Where my objection comes from is: can Remain win a People’s Vote? Brexit is a slow-motion disaster that threatens to become a high-speed catastrophe, but I think that the millions who voted for Brexit still want the vague jumble of things that Leave were offering and will vote for it again. I don’t think Remain can win a People’s Vote. Also, what happens if Leave wins by a larger margin than last time? What would that mean for the country?

My objection to a People’s Vote is that the ideas is based on an assumption that is not true. Everyone thinks Brexit is going badly and wants it to be over, one way or another, which is completely correct. The assumption is that people are so hacked off with Brexit that they would prefer a return to the status quo over Brexit, which is not true. Most people don’t want the status quo, which is what a People’s Vote is offering.

On top of this, there is the outpouring of rage a People’s Vote will create amongst Brexit voters that will be seized by the far-right. One MP was killed by the last referendum. Will a People’s Vote be worth it if it leads to more violence? How many lives lost is too high a price to stop Brexit? This may seem like pure shock rhetoric, but the People’s Vote need to engage with this question if we’re going to have another referendum. They can’t just shrug and assume that everyone else thinks exactly like them, ie really really wants Brexit to fuck off.

I don’t think a People’s Vote will get us out of this mess, which is why I don’t think there should be one. Although if Labour fails to get May to agree to non-suicidal Brexit, or even any Brexit, then it may be the only option left on the table to prevent a No Deal exit.  

I am very worried about the Brexit process. Time is running out and MPs must do everything they can to prevent a No Deal exit. The nation and history are watching closely what MPs do, so in the words of RuPaul I will say to MPs: good luck and don’t fuck it up.

 EU flag image created by Yanni Koutsomitis and used under creative commons.