Suits You, Sir Keir!

Behind You! - The allegedly scruffy Jeremy Corbyn followed by Man in an Empty Suit

Reeling from a 7% swing to the Tories in the latest opinion poll, haemorrhaging members and money and struggling to be heard even in the silence of the depleted Covid Commons, Labour's leader Sir Keir Starmer has taken a leaf not so much from the Biden as the Trump Playbook to try to revive his flagging fortunes.

In the true spirit of neoliberalism and new Nu-Labour, a leaked report recommends the party needs to "make use of the (union) flag, veterans and dress smartly". 

In an unsurprising triumph of form over content, the report from the party's Research team has found that after nearly a year of the startled Starmer regime, the vast majority of voters have no idea what the party is about or what it stands for. Possibly seeking to consolidate this vacuum, the proposal seems that the party should become even more indistinguishable from the Conservative Government, to whom Sir Keir has repeatedly leant his support or, failing that, his abstention on issue after issue through their dreadful mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Supposedly intending to hold Boris Johnson to account via his lawyerly "forensic questioning", he has rarely landed so much as a light smack on the fingers to the Old Etonian prefect as now over 106,000 citizens have died. The supposedly lame Ed Miliband has been the only Labour frontbencher to come anywhere near embarrassing this laziest of Prime Ministers during these historic days, only to have to hand back in time for Starmer to try to outdo the Tories in demanding schools stay open in the face of union fears - until of course he heard Johnson was going to close them and so rushed out a closure demand just ahead of the PM's announcement.

Similarly, he has singularly failed to challenge the appalling nepotism and pork-barrel politics of this most corrupt of government and he has backslid on a raft of legislation. The latter has included notably supporting the Brexit Deal in spite of doggedly insisting on opposing the almost identical Theresa May deal two years ago and later dragging his party to supporting a second referendum - this latter step was a fatal move that drove millions of Labour voters over to the Tories and Brexit Party, shearing the party of dozens of seats. More recently and even more shockingly Starmer failed to oppose new powers granted to the espionage services including the right to torture and kill, in spite of his past fairly good record as a challenger for human rights in the courts. 

His time as Director of Public Prosecutions though perhaps pressaged his true or maybe changed self.  Quite aside from the failure to prosecute Jimmy Saville (not his direct decision, but on his watch), his tightening of the criteria for viable prosecutions for sexual assault led to a marked and immediate decline in rape prosecutions which remains the case today, a decade later.

But of course, the one thing that does seem to set the wooden knight aflame is attacking the Labour Left and in particular Jeremy Corbyn, now expelled from the Parliamentary Party (though readmitted to wider party membership by the National Executive Committee). In spite of campaigning for the leadership election on a promise of keeping the socialist, transformational policies of the Corbyn era, he and his Shadow Cabinet have now backed away from tax reform, from ending student fees and have even signalled a move away from the radical Green New Deal. Once the pandemic crisis is over, it seems only a matter of time before his Shadow Chancellor Annaliese Dodds will be out-austeritying the Tories on balancing the budget after the months of furloughing employees (a policy adopted by Sunak and Johnson after their one and only meeting with Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in the early stages of the crisis).

So as he waves his flag and patronises veterans in his best pinstripe, Starmer seems unlikely to see the truths staring him in his seemongly ever-startled face: that when Labour previously embraced this Tory-lite strategy under Tony Blair, it was in the backwash of the collapse of the USSR and the "end of history", where voters were however uncertainly willing to accept neoliberalism and the benign guidance of the liberal "Political Class" in return for some meagre share of the Dream. 

But we are twenty years on now and Cool Britannia is buried under thick icy sheets of  personal debt, broken promises and shattered lives. The Tories have successfully played the new landscape by setting neighbours against neighbours and sharpening conflict everywhere. Even their ludicrous, vicious predatory purchase at above-the-odds prices of over seven times the quantity of covid vaccines needed to innoculate all of the UK has been driven by an attempt to stymmie other countries' efforts to vaccinate and save the lives of their citizens. 

Yet from Starmer, there is nothing. Some level of complaint that some things haven't been done well enough, or soon enough; or a bizarre notion that he can bring down Boris by pointing out some time or other that the PM muddled his figures - when anyone knows he can't even count his children properly but his voters don't care.

Just as Biden needs Bernie Sanders, AOC and others in the USA to drive him hard if the grievances that Trump leeched off are ever to be resolved, so here we need more than a Man in a Suit - especially this particular man (after all, even Corbyn managed to wear a suit with "for the many, not the few" pinstripes during the last General Election). Voters will not be won back by some well-scrubbed liberal with excess hair gel oozing his support for the incumbent. Rather, they want the transformational politics skewered in December 2019 by the vitriol of the billionaire press, the bias of the BBC and the rampage against their own party by the Labour Right - quietly among them, perhaps, Starmer himself with the more than obviously suicidal strategy of his insistence on Corbyn backing a second Brexit referendum.

Like the rest of the world, we are at a historic crossroads. The death and devastation of the pandemic demand something better than the "business-as-yesterday" Blairite revanchists. We do well to remember that the last time Labour lauded veterans in this way, it ended with scores of sons and daughters of some of the poorest communities in the UK lying dead or maimed in Iraqi deserts or on Afghan hills. True love of country, or of community, involves challenging its wrongs and making it into something better. It isn't about the flim-flam of waving flags and putting on a tie.

Above all, it isn't about being another Tory Party. We've already got one. And that's already more than enough.

Things Fall Apart : one week in the disintegration of Boris Johnson

"All this has happened before and will happen again."

Whether this line brings to mind Peter Pan or Battlestar Galactica may perhaps indicate your age or taste in the fantastic, but this week it seems relevant to what was once called the "Brexit Election" in which Theresa May was going to take apart Corbyn's Labour Party.

Apologies.

...the "Brexit Election" in which Boris Johnson was going to take apart Corbyn's Labour Party.

Sooo last Saturday, isn't it? Harold Wilson, Corbyn's urbane predecessor back the the swinging sixties, is held to have said a week is a long time in politics and this week has been no exception.

Seven days ago, Prime Minister Johnson was poised to see off his upstart Brexit challengers from the Farage Fan Club through a concerted programme of threats and promises and could look forward to patriotically heading up the Remembrance Day ceremony at the London Cenotaph for the first time as PM.

But now, one week on, for all his bravado, Johnson must be gazing fitfully and misty-eyed into his cups as he contemplates the week it all went wrong. While still holding a substantial poll lead, it has now nearly halved with almost a month to go to polling day, and if he isn't ruminating on how pride comes before a fall, he should be.

Straight off the block, last Sunday morning, there he was lined up at the annual commemoration of the war dead, his tie askew, his pale face distracted, his steps distinctly off kilter as he stumbled forward ahead of cue to place his wreath upside down in front of the monument to the Unknown Soldier. While the Sun newspaper concentrated on claiming Jeremy Corbyn's head when he bowed to the Cenotaph was clearly at a treasonous, Bolshevist angle of inclination, Johnson temporarily got away with looking as if he had just stumbled out a taxi with a cold kebab in one hand and a bag of his own sick in the other.

However, for whatever reason - and we can speculate, given the tortuous explanation eventually provided - the BBC Breakfast programme the next morning ran footage of Johnson at the Remembrance ceremony back in 2016, when he was rather better turned out, and failed to note the fact on any of the three times it ran it. Viewers and the Labour-leaning Daily Mirror were soon highlighting the fact and commentary on the Premier's messy appearance and attitude was soon widespread on social media and many mainstream outlets.

So far so bad, but it soon got worse.

As his opponents criticised Tory cuts to river and canal defences in the light of widespread flooding in Doncaster, the PM rather languidly journeyed to South Yorkshire to be pictured pretending to mop a sodden shop floor before attempting to sympathise with rather disgruntled soaked locals. "Where have you been?" they demanded irately as he refused to declare the risen waters an emergency. Asked what she thought of him after a chat, one elderly resident gave her considered opinion of the PM: "One word.... Arsehole!"

From PR disaster to turning water into wee came next. Hassled by his funders, Farage caved in to demands that he stand down Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held seats after he watched a video in which Johnson promised no extension to the Brexit transition deadline on 1 January 2021 - raising the prospect of an eventual possible No Deal departure after all. However, between the Brexit leader's announcement and the close of nominations, Johnson's acolytes pompously over-reached their own egoes by seeking to push the Brexit Party to drop candidates from seats where Tories are challenging sitting Labour MPs.

This proved too much for the stripe-suited lounge lizard Farage and he responded with a blistering series of complaints that the Tories were offering bribes in the form of public appointments and peerages to his waivering candidates. The Tories denied it, but if true it would be a clear abuse of office. And so now, after former Labour Lord Chancellor, Charlie Falconer, formally reported the claims, the Tory Party is under police investigation for possible offences under the Representation of the People Act.

Facing off against him has been Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, issuing a mouth-watering range of eye-catchingly imaginative policy proposals - massive new funding for the NHS alongside an end to health privatisation; free dental checks; taking rail and energy back into public hands; a 32 hour working week without pay reduction; free broadband for all by 2030; a big extension of employment rights; and a Green New Deal to transform Britain and slash our carbon emissions.

Against this, Johnson has floundered ever more, now quite incapable of keeping the debate anywhere near his "oven ready" Brexit deal (a blatant lie, as even Farage has pointed out). Free broadband would be "communism", he gasped as his aides struggled to come up with something bad about it.

Umm, wow, should I touch him? What do I say?

Next up, there he was, smirking in an internet video showing him pacing the offices of his campaign, awkwardly greeting a carefully placed BME guy who had evidently been told to walk past him. Next he was making tea and claiming to like The Clash (whose fans were not amused) before explaining in what may have been a bizarre attempt to sound "ordinary" that he starts his day by taking his dog for a poo.

And then a new low: a visit to a nursery school where he sat with mothers and toddlers and, Redwood-like, pretended to know the words of "The Wheels on the Bus", but apparently didn't and so sat looking distinctly uncomfortable. Perhaps he was wishing he was at home where, as we know, he very truthfully passes his time making model buses. By Friday, his exposure was being restricted to film of him talking to staff on a boat, all stage-managed - the Great Communicator and Man of the People no more.

Meantime, his party Chairman, James (not-so) Cleverly, became so confused on one radio programme that he wasn't allowed by his own party to appear on a TV interview. Finally, aping 2017's social care payments disaster, the Government finished the week by bringing forward its plans to raise the retirement age for women to  68 seven years earlier than previously planned to head off Labour's intention to stop them.

It is still early days, but the whole ambience is very familiar - 2017 revisited but at coke-speed. The

Corbyn - slowly, slowly...

opportunism of the Tories is evident in almost every pronouncement, yet still like a reverse Midas Effect everything Johnson touches seems to turn to sh*t. Theresa May must be gleefully running through every imaginary wheatfield in her head.

With the Lib Dems now fading into well-deserved irrelevance after Ed Davey's economically illiterate declaration today that they will work to a permanent budget surplus, a.k.a. continue austerity, the path seems increasingly clear for Corbyn's Labour - and the polls are now showing this, with an average 5% rise in support over the last week to ten days. Since the start of the month, the Tory lead has declined from as much as 16% in one opinion poll (Opinium, 1 November) to as low as 6% in another(Survation, 8 November).

Things fall apart, seems an apt line to summarise Johnson's week. Yet the Yeats poem from which it comes is probably rather too optimistic for our bumbling PM as he perhaps nurses his bruised sense of superiority tonight, hoping against hope that he may yet have a "Second Coming".

Taxi for Johnson.
Hold the kebab please...

The Loneliness of the Short-attentioned Ar**hole

Not The Brexit Election

Sick and tired of Brexit?

Sticking to the Tory script, Sky News is running every single new bulletin with a "Brexit Election" tagline, even when the subject doesn't feature on the news for a rare change. Similarly, the one-trick ponies that are the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats feature their respective demands on Europe prominently, if not in their actual name then at least on the side of their bus.

Yet, after almost four years of relentless debate about our EU membership, are the public really aflame and up for another five weeks of intensive debate about it? As Jo Swinson hypes her mission to save us from ourselves, Johnson bumbles about unleashing creative forces not even his grandiose imagination can comprehend and Farage drinks for England, they need to hope that everyone else is ready to squeeze into their Brexit Bubble, where nothing matters more than whether we are outside a trade block pissing in or inside pissing out.

The Green Party co-leader Sian Berry yesterday argued that "some things are even bigger than Brexit" as she declared this to be the Climate Election and outlined ambitious plans to tackle the global warming crisis with £900 billions of investment over ten years to make the UK carbon neutral by 2030. It is perhaps surprising that just a day later her party has made a deal with the Lib Dems, who, as well as accepting funding from frackers, take a much more leisurely approach to the climate crisis with a net zero target put well back to 2045. This is just a mere five years ahead of their former Tory partners' mid-century "objective". Nevertheless the Greens' core point is well-made and the urgency palpable.

Her words echoed the declaration a few days earlier by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, that "This election is our last chance to tackle the climate emergency with a Green Industrial Revolution at the heart of Labour's plan to transform Britain." Backing this up was a pledge to insulate every house in the UK to cut energy costs and carbon emissions, as well as massive investment in clean public transport and bringing the energy companies back into public control. Labour have also dwelt heavily on a range of other issues including ending austerity, redistributing wealth, ending student fees and investing in the health service.

It might be argued of course that Labour wouldn't want to talk about Brexit given their complex history on the issue. Yet Corbyn has devoted a speech to this too - reflecting on the need to talk to "the 99" rather than "the 48%" or "the 52%" he accused the other parties of focusing on to the exclusion of roughly half the UK. But it is clear that his strategy is to campaign on a much wider range of issues - the General Election should be just that, a general election on a variety of policies and initiatives stretching across the next 4 or 5 years. It should plainly not be a substitute referendum - Corbyn has made clear that Labour will hold a real one if they become the government.

So are Labour ignoring reality by moving on from Brexit to other issues?

Possibly, but probably not. Already several polls show that the NHS is seen as a bigger issue than Brexit by most voters, and this is an area where Labour remain more trusted than any other party and where the Tories and Lib Dems are vulnerable given their opening up of front line services to private providers from 2012 onwards. And while it doesn't register as the highest concern, there is little doubt that climate change is a much higher priority for many voters than previously - and 56% of voters back the Green and Labour 2030 date as the zero carbon deadline. Even 47% of Tories support that compared to 16% for the official 2050 one. A YouGov survey shows that 25% of voters view the environment as one of the top three issues compared to just 8% at the 2017 election.

Similarly, crime has risen substantially as a concern with 26% rating it compared to 11% previously, and the Tory/Lib Dem slashing of police numbers back in the Coalition days make them vulnerable. So too the fallout from the initial Grenfall report has highlighted a range of concerns from cuts to fire services from austerity through slum housing, underhand contract deals and Tory elitism to the rampant inequality that stains our country.

Faced with this battery of critical issues, although it remains a key issue for now, it seems that a public that is palpably sick to death of Brexit is less than likely to want to think of nothing but Brexit for the next month and a bit. Given this, Labour have everything to play for and their slow but steady trend upwards in the polls, matched by a slow but evident decline for the Lib Dems, is evidence for this.

Heath's winter election gamble

Boris Johnson claims to be a historian. So he might want to dust down the archives from winter 1973 when one of his predecessor Tory Prime Ministers, Ted Heath (ironically the man who took us into Europe), faced a crisis when a national miners' strike left electricity power plants short of coal. Simultaneously, after the Yom Kippur war between Israel and the Arab states, oil and petrol prices were rising sharply, offering little in the way of any affordable or practical alternative to coal for much of Britain's energy.

Heath dramatically declared a State of Emergency.  His Chancellor, Anthony Barber, implemented a crisis budget just before Christmas. A three-day working week was introduced, TV stations were compelled to stop broadcasting at 1030 pm each night to reduce energy consumption and regular power cuts were implemented with householders huddling round candles to keep warm. All in the middle of winter.

In spite of the crisis, the Tories' poll ratings were generally favourable and a much-trumpeted "Liberal surge" seemed to damage Harold Wilson's Labour Party most. Enjoying as much as an 11% lead, Heath was convinced that because of Labour's close relationship with the trade unions, he would be able to sweep to victory.

So far, so familiar.

And so he went to the country in our last winter election (February 1974) believing that he could triumph on the single question he pompously put to the nation in a Prime Ministerial broadcast: "Who Governs Britain?"

The voters' answer, when it came?
"Not you."

March 1974 - Labour's Harold Wilson began his third term as Prime Minister

Corbyn and the EU: the Clock is Ticking

The last week has seen the fissures in the Conservative Party rent open for all to see more clearly than ever. With Cabinet Ministers falling like nine-pins in what can only be assumed were well-rehearsed tantrums (even the man who wrote the deal was among those who denounced it and resigned!), Theresa May's Coalition of the Damned seemed on the brink of collapse. Opponents inside and outside ranks circled like vultures over an bloodied prairie dog, while the media salivated over a fresh delivery of meat for their 24 hour newsfeast. Even Labour's Jeremy Corbyn mused that he could muster a little sympathy for the Prime Minister on a personal level - though someone might remind Gentle Jezzer that she was of course the Home Secretary who led on inventing the "hostile environment" for migrants, so any empathy might be better directed elsewhere.

Yet, while May is on the ropes and anyone watching must wonder what she does get out of it for herself, the fact is that she will almost certainly still be PM in 6 months time (just) and the Tories will still be in Government with their DUP Orcs snapping loudly but loyal on the benches behind them. The Tories are masters of survival and this time is no exception - their incumbency entrenched by Nick Clegg's typically short-sighted Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, which means that over 100 Tory turkeys would need to vote for Christmas before there can be a new General Election this side of 2022.

We hear that five Government Ministers - yes, there are still that many left - led by the weasel-minded Michael Gove are sticking with Theresa May to persuade her to amend the deal. This would entail both May and the EU being prepared to renegotiate, which is unlikely in both camps. So that leaves two scenarios: either one where the Rees-Moggs and Boris Johnsons suddenly fall into line, which will simply not happen; or, more likely, the deal is scrapped and the Tories and DUP unite around a situation where May signs up to numerous piecemeal arrangements for things like customs checks and air travel before a"Hard Brexit" at the end of March 2019.

This will not be the apocalypse that so many Hard Remainers claim: we will not fall back to eating grass flavoured with the last packets of stockpiled bisto, though without question there will be many administrative problems and disruption especially to transport for several weeks or months.

What we will have is a Conservative regime though that will use the chaos to enact all manner of contingency legislation and regulations to dismantle a swathe of employment and consumer rights, privatise yet more or the state and possibly repress some of its opponents in the name of National Unity. May, her job done (she will say) will resign in May and Gove's hour will arrive.

Unless....

There is, in the next few weeks, a wide open chance for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour to drive not just a wedge between the Tories, but a stake into the heart of the Government. It would involve neither a General Election nor a second referendum.

What if Keir Starmer were to announce that, on reflection, while May's Deal doesn't meet Labour's six tests, the party recognises that, in the short time left, it is the best deal available and the only one that will both honour the referendum result and afford some protection to workers and consumers?

Doing this, rescuing May's deal, possibly with a few amendments, would leave the Prime Minister prisoner of Labour and drive Mogg and co out either to foment ceaseless rebellion within the Tories or alternatively to the netherworld of UKIP - whose own revival, now gaining some traction in the polls where they are back in third place though on just 8%, would also be spiked. May might linger on longer at Downing Street, but her government would be paralysed and the time would come when even she would know the game was up and support an early General Election. Labour would be in pole-position to dictate the terms of the ongoing negotiations for our new trading relationship with the EU (bear in mind that the current deal is only about how we leave, not the future arrangements) and by reaching out across the political divide would be seen a force for unity in this divisive time.

Politics is the art of the possible. And while all acts should always be guided by deep-rooted principle, much of the hot air of the last few days has not been for the sake of beliefs and ideals, but simply jostling for personal and/or party gain at what is one of the most critical moments for the UK since we joined the EEC back in 1973.

The electorate, on the other hand, seek simply a settlement: for now, none of the uncompromising politicians parading before the cameras this last week are likely to have infused anyone with what is needed above all - hope. Corbyn alone has the chance to do so, but the clock is ticking.

The Twin Pillars of Survival: What is the Green Party For?

"We cannot tackle climate change unless we address the system that has caused it,"
 John McDonnell, now Labour Shadow Chancellor, writing in Another World Is Possible - A Manifesto for 21st Century Socialism in 2007.

Ten years on, there was the same man, just yesterday, on the BBC Marr Programme, doing his best to reassure the audience that a Labour Government would prevent any post-election run on the Pound by working hard with the City to keep the confidence of the financial speculators, something he has already been busy doing. Marr himself signed off laconically with the observation, "I do like the picture of John McDonnell sitting down with asset managers all the time."

McDonnell's caution is understandable - the precarious situation of the Tory-DUP pact makes a further election far from an impossibility in the coming months. Labour's vulnerability to the fury of the capitalist media and quite inaccurate but well-embedded psychological fiction that greedy Tories are better with public money has lost them more than one election.

Yet, for all Labour's exuberant return to its programme remains inherently social democratic rather than socialist. And for all Mr McDonnell talked about tackling climate change yesterday, his economic plans remain fully anchored in 1940s style Keynesianism, with continued growth at their heart. It may be a welcome shift in emphasis from the grasping privatisation of the Tories (and discredited New Labour), but it is avowedly not a Manifesto for 21st Century Socialism, nor indeed for 21st Century Survival. For, with the climate emergency threatening to overtake us and deep scarcity looming across a range of vital resources in barely a decade from now, traditional economics are no longer fit for purpose, whether touted by the Tories or by Labour.

This conundrum much occupied the agenda of the Green Party conference last week. For the Greens, the General Election was a bitter-sweet outcome: their decision to stand down in upwards of 35 constituencies may have made sufficient of a difference to deprive the Tories of their outright majority, but equally the party saw its vote halve from its 2015 record over over 1.1 million votes and in spite of huge efforts in several seats it failed to advance on its solitary MP, the Co-Leader, Caroline Lucas - though it is worth bearing in mind that this was still its second best-ever General Election performance, both in terms of its national aggregate poll and votes-by-seat.

Under the circumstances, some degree of reflection was both to be expected and very necessary. Corbyn's manifesto had swept up a wide range of Green proposals from 2015 and with them had taken several hundred thousand Green voters - where now, then, for their twin pillars of environmental sustainability and social justice? Time, some suggested, to return to their verdant roots and focus on being an ecological party. Two motions proposed that climate change should be included in every conceivable message. Another called for all talk of alliances with Labour to be closed down. A workshop on campaigning heard demands for the Greens to focus on winning Tory votes and to drop calls for taxing the rich or taking resources into public ownership.

Fortunately, all these were voted down - the Greens were not, after all, so ready to stop highlighting their commitment to social justice alongside tackling environmental sustainability. Indeed, many questioned why anyone would doubt the interdependency of the one with the other - as even a longstanding ecologist argued, a steady-state economy would not be feasible without massive redistribution of wealth.

Yet by itself, this reaffirmation of the twin pillars of their values is far from enough to give the Greens' continued resonance and purpose in the political arena. The ecologists were right to argue that the party needs to highlight its differences with the Labour Party rather than appear like a willing subset of Momentum. The need to campaign on climate change in these days of Trumpian America and a British Government with Brexititis is daily more evidently critical - but far, far beyond raising the threat of global warming, the party needs to focus on what is central to defeating it: economics and ownership.

The cruel fact is this - Labour's social democracy will fail. For all their inspiration and well-meaning, Corbyn and McDonnell inevitably are dragged down by the bureaucracy and incumbency and even conservatism that comes with leading the Official Opposition. Hence the Marxist lamb sits down with the Asset-stripping lions and cautiously pushes change within the contradiction of consistency - a word McDonnell repeatedly used in his interview with Andrew Marr. 

Sooner or later, in a world of systemic collapse, it will not be enough. In a time when politics has never been more volatile, with voters earnestly or even desperately searching for new answers to increasingly challenging questions, only a party or movement convincingly embracing genuine radical change, far, far beyond building new roads and stopping PPI hospital contracts, can offer a positive way forward. All else leads ultimately to ever more pain and chaos.

As we face a world slipping week by week further towards climate chaos, the challenge to the Greens is whether it is they who can fashion a clear, radical and egalitarian economics - one founded on a steady-state economy that brings nearly all resources into common ownership, that embraces the bounty that new technology can bring in freeing people from labour and that stewards our limited resources fairly and sustainably. To do this, they need to address how to remove the market system from large swathes of economic activity and so reduce waste and inequity. They need to develop a clear narrative of how localised economies can work for the benefit of all.

Then they need to show how all of these things would work, day by day, for citizens, for families and communities. In a Green society, how would you get a house, or an education? What sort of jobs would exist and what would your working conditions be like? How would you travel about and would it still cost anything? What would you be able to do with the free time gained from a shorter working week? What new possibilities might open up post-capitalism, post-scarcity, post-rat race?

They also need to get angry: they need to bare their teeth not just to the frackers and tree-cutters, which so many Greens and their allies have very bravely done so well of late, but to all the vested corporate interests that are commodifying everything on our planet - even, it turns out, our individual DNA. Such behemoths will not go gently into the night; Greens need to gird themselves for a harder and longer struggle than Mr McDonnell seems willing to contemplate as he sups with the Futures traders, regardless of the length of his spoon.

And with the imbalance of wealth, nationally and globally, at historically obscene and environmentally unsustainable levels, yes, they need to take on the rich because the rich are not the friends of humanity nor of our planet. They never were, they are not now and, no matter how much charity a few of them dole out, they never will be.

But beyond them, beyond their fetish for accumulation and alienation, the rest of us, the vast, overwhelming majority of homo sapiens can transform our world and share it equitably.

Of all the parties capable of producing a first blueprint of that new world, perhaps only the Greens have the space to dream it into being, to fashion it into something real, meaningful and genuinely transformative. Many good policies are already in place covering everything from citizens' income to a maximum wage to employee ownership - but they have still to be joined up and given a compelling narrative, a true vision of tomorrow. 

It must be one they are open to sharing with other radicals on the left as the dynamics of our politics remain as potently fluid as they are now. They need to stand ready to work with those with shared values from other parties, transcending the tribalist barriers that all too often have frustrated the popular will - and one of these parties, for the foreseeable future by far and away the largest, will be Labour, or at least part of Labour.

Unencumbered by the Establishment weights increasingly affixed to McDonnell and Corbyn, the Greens can be the forge to generate the ideas and build a movement to create the conditions for deep, radical cultural change. Through this we can then finally unleash, in the words of the ecosocialist Murray Bookchin, "the basic sense of decency, sympathy and mutual aid (which) lies at the core of human behaviour."

Murray Bookchin, ecosocialist

The Free Trade Delusion

Since the UK Brexit referendum result and Trump's win in the US Presidential election, the liberal polity on both sides of the Atlantic have been wringing their hands and pronouncing on the surprise (to them) of both results. The cause, they have repeatedly declared, was the anger and ignorance of the "left behind", the detritus of society they hadn't noticed from the confines of their comfy, evidence-based neoliberal bubble until the ingrates turned up and spoilt their party.

Liberal democracy, of course, is about little more than the unwashed turning up every four or five years to confirm the Great and Good's right to rule via very flawed ballot box processes. Democracy should validate the status quo, maybe with a little nudge leftwards here and rightwards there, especially under the mind-numbing post-ideological consensus in place since the fall of the Communist bloc.

So, when the electorate goes off-script, we soon see just how thin-skinned liberalism truly is: the voters were misled, didn't know what they were voting for, are bigotted racists/sexists/homophobes, etc. They have voted against their own interests as well as wider society because of their moronic stupidity and so in Britain we should rerun the Euroreferendum, or find some variant that will ultimately let us stay in the EU, while in the USA, liberals are fantastically speculating about California seceding or joining up with Canada.

Yes, Trump will do nothing to help most of the people who, disillusioned with the US capitalist system, voted for him in response to his divide and conquer tactics of blaming foreigners and migrants for their lost jobs and deep poverty. And Brexit may well mean that British workers lose some of the meagre employment protections conferred by the EU. But neither a Clinton Presidency nor a so-called soft Brexit would do anything to resolve the deep-seated inequality and accompanying alienation that has led us to this pass.

At the heart of western economics in the post-war era and codified in the institutions created by the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the rich nations have pursued an aggressive commitment to so-called free trade and movement of capital. As globalisation has take grip over the last two and a half decades, this ideology, often called neoliberalism, has been applied as the orthodox economics across virtually all the planet. The G20 summit in 2009 explicitly stated that it remained committed to these principles and to rooting out all forms of protectionism wherever these are found. Indeed, in recognition of this dubious aspiration, many free trade agreements, including the recently passed CETA between Canada and Europe, have included Investor-States Dispute Settlement mechanisms. Under this, multinationals could sue national governments and their taxpayers for any measures that reduce or deny them profits, from health and safety rules or environmental legislation through to any refusal to privatise public services.

Proponents of free trade repeatedly argue that its advantages can be seen by a rise in wealth around the world and claim that removal of trade barriers, quotas and tariffs creates a virtuous circle of economic growth and prosperity. The International Monetary Fund has put this central to its rescue packages to developing nations when they have needed financial assistance - in return for loans, they have had to remove any protections on or subsidies to domestic industries. This has been done while ignoring the fact that the rich economies all have long histories of protectionism when they were growing their own early industrial infrastructure. Indeed, many rich nations still run a range of protectionist measures - and trade blocs such as the European Union do a fine job of keeping any manufactured goods from poorer states out of their domestic markets, but they of course are far less likely to be in thrall to the IMF or World Bank.

Yet even within rich states, free trade has had massively damaging effects, especially where the ideology has been adopted as part of an international trading system such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (and more recently the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty aggressively pursued by the Obama administration) and within the European single market. Removal of trade barriers and tariffs certainly makes international trade more profitable for companies and being able to relocate their manufacturing and service bases to poorer areas with a lower paid workforce makes their products cheaper (and their profit margins bigger).

However, this has come at a huge cost to the workforces laid off in developed economies as part of  corporates' pursuit of competitive advantage via cheap labour abroad, while in developing states it has favoured big business at the cost of the destruction of small scale local enterprises. As a self-employed textile trader in Lima told the BBC World Service this week, "They talk about Peru growing, but it is just the rich growing richer." Economists such as Paul Krugman cite the obsession with trade liberalisation as central to this.

The deceit of rightwing populists like Trump and UKIP of course is to blame foreigners and migrants, attacking one of the symptoms rather than the true cause - something these buddies of big business will never honestly do - and very much designed to buttress rather than challenge the elite. At most, they are "Opposition by Appointment to the Establishment" -  a tool to neuter the anger of the public and incorporate it into the continuing narrative of a hierarchical, globalised economics. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has railed at Trump and UKIP's Nigel Farage as voicing nothing more than "the fake anti-elitism of rich white men".  Like in the old Czarist Empire, pogroms will come long before any genuine reforms.

All the more reason then for the Left to articulate genuine change, to advance a vision of a very different world and the economics needed to achieve it. And yet, on this, quite the opposite seems to be happening.

While Labour's Chancellor John McDonnell called Brexit an opportunity for Britain rather than a threat this week, he neither developed what  opportunities he foresees, nor was he speaking to the prevailing mood among British socialists and progressives. Corbyn himself has set continued access to the European single market as a priority for Brexit negotiations, and Green co-leader Caroline Lucas echoed this sentiment when she attacked McDonnell for apparently giving succour to hard Brexiteers.

Yet, rather than blindly clinging to some sort of soft Brexit which continues to focus on free trade arrangements, isn't this precisely the time for greens and socialists to challenge the status quo? Why would we want to cling onto a single market, removing as it does the ability of a democratic government to protect its industries and the well-being of its people where and when it chooses? Why cling to something that removes the revenue from tariffs on imports, reduces the public purse and bans the ability to subsidise enterprises which may be commercially unprofitable but socially or environmentally beneficial? How can we build a fairer, sustainable world on a template carved out to enable the very worst of capitalism?

Given the racism that has accompanied both Trump and Brexit, there is clearly a need to counter the nationalism and xenophobia of their faux revolts. But we can have freedom of movement and culture without embracing free trade: indeed, perhaps ending free trade would be the best way to ensure continuing cultural diversity around the world, given multnationals' drive to commodify and homogenise the entire planet.

Lucas and Corbyn have both said they accept the UK is leaving the EU. Yet, while the silent secrecy from the Tory Bexiteers is clearly frustrating and undemocratic, their insistence on making such a totemic issue of access to the single market is baffling and a major strategic error. For if there was ever a time to be forging a path to a more sustainable world founded on a fairer, co-operative and localised economics, it is now. That inevitably means a rejection of free trade and embracing instead economic intervention by the state, new forms of community and mutual ownership, regulation and, yes, protectionism.

The vast majority in our rampantly unequal societies across our troubled planet face ever greater difficulties to make ends meet and live their lives as they might have hoped in a world of great abundance. If the Left does not rise to the challenge to show how we can create a different paradigm and instead leaps to knee-jerk reactions to populists' lies, only tragedy awaits us. To quote Gramsci, writing of a similar age of chaos in the 1920s, "The old world is dying, but the new one struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters."

Mr Corbyn's Rail Journey

Shock! Jeremy Corbyn may have found a seat on a Virgin rail service after calling for railways to be re-nationalised while being filmed on the floor outside the toilet on one of Branson's specials up to the Tyne.

Well good on him! For in spite of the privatised rail firm's best endeavours to pour scorn on his claims of not being able to find a seat, anyone unfortunate enough to use their service on any regular basis will know that they are frequently crowded or the seats are all booked up even if unoccupied, which was precisely the problem Jezzer faced on his odyssey to the Tyne.

Try the morning service from Leeds to Birmingham (it goes on to Plymouth) if you want to stretch your legs for a couple of hours, or the ones in the opposite direction anytime after 4pm if you want to get acquainted with the acrid mixture of post-workday body odour and the obstacle course of luggage that stands in the way of the dozen or so people irritably vying for the last unbooked seat.

Indeed, sometimes, even if you manage to get a seat, a little electric panel above will inform you in a less-than-unmenacing manner "Seat may be reserved en route". Yes, even although you've got an unbooked seat, Jezzer, if he finds out where you are, Owen Smith might try to book it out from right under the seat of your pants. Now, doesn't that sound familair?

Of course, Corbyn's biggest mistake wasn't his video. It was boarding a Virgin train in the first place. As a rule, while the staff are usually perfectly nice, the environment is claustrophobic. Quite aside from fitting in other people, there's usually no space for luggage beyond something the size of a toilet bag. This is an item the average Virgin user might struggle to avail themselves of as the bathrooms in turn often don't work and, in my humble opinion, more than rarely fill the whole carriage with a certain all-embracing odeur d'ordure. Indeed, any regular tripper on one of these Shareholder Expresses might have seen Mr Corbyn, sprawled out on the lobby floor with his stuff around him, and reasonably wondered if in fact he had passed out from the stench of Branson's predatory capitalism.

How ironic that this was on what was once the last publicly owned, very well run and profitable state railway service, East Coast. This was popular and efficient so consequently was to be temptingly easy meat for a predatory combo headed by the private island-dwelling magnate. How chompingly easily they grabbed it a couple of years ago as the Lib Dems and Tories had a fire-sale of the few remaining state assets.

So, as Mr Branson luxuriates on the shores of his sun-kissed, private tropical island, issuing missives to take Corbyn down, spare a thought for the real truth that is being betrayed. And that is that, with public subsidies now more than double what they were, in real terms, when the railways were in public hands, whether he was on the floor or in a seat, Jeremy Corbyn spoke the truth.

On The Eve of Destruction?

The hours are going by as our MPs debate whether or not to approve Prime Minister David Cameron's plan to join a number of other countries such as the USA and France in bombing the so called Islamic State in Syria - UK jets have been attacking IS in Iraq for some time already. After the appalling terrorist attacks in Paris (though with little mention of similar ones in Beirut a few days before), Cameron insists that the only way Britain can defend itself against IS/Daesh is to join in an aerial campaign in the Syrian parts of the would-be Caliphate.

How this will achieve anything is a puzzle. The UK is likely to contribute at most 8 bombers from bases in Cyprus - a third of the current French force and tiny compared to the US input. It is highly unlikely to lead to any significant change in the balance of the fighting but, in the crowded skies over Syria now that Russia is also mounting a bombing campaign, who knows what scope there is for another international incident between the West and Putin, quite apart from Daesh? What possible calamity could develop out of that given all the recent sabre-rattling against Russia over the seemingly forgotten Ukraine crisis?

And as for bombing making us safer in the UK - is this the same David Cameron who warned that Russia's bombing campaign would make it more likely to suffer an Islamist terror attack? And in that, wasn't he for once correct as we saw with the subsequent downing of the Russian airliner above Sinai? And how did the aerial bombing by France, now going on for some months, make the poor people slaughtered by jihadi butchers on the streets of Paris a couple of weeks ago in any way safer?

But on Cameron goes, ludicrously but chillingly denouncing anyone who does not toe his line as "terrorist sympathisers", a tactic that assaults the right of Parliament to have free debate, of citizens to have freedom of speech and calls into serious question whether Cameron is actually fit for office. For if anyone is doing Daesh's work for them, it is Cameron, ignorantly failing to see that by his words he is both destroying the values he claims to defend and forcing the very polarisation that the jihadis seek: Daesh want this reaction, they want to be bombed. Given their death-cult beliefs, the more bombs that fall, the better - each piece of ordinance will blast away a bit more of what Daesh deride as the "grey zone", the places where Muslims and non-Muslims coexist peacefully.

But when our bombs fall on Raqqa, ISIS's capital city, however well targeted, they will fall not only on the 30,000 or so ISIS troops and their supporters. They will also fall on the 300,000 civilians who were captured in the city when it fell to Daesh. They will fall on schoolchildren, and on ordinary families with nothing to do with Daesh other than have the misfortune to be their prisoners. They will fall on the Yazidi women Daesh keeps as sex slaves, on the prisoners they have seized from among Shia, Allowite and Christian communities and on the western hostages they continue to hold.

Tory MPs, most of whom have only pointed guns at defenceless animals, fantasize about precision weapons that somehow won't explode on the wrong people. Similarly, their leader has seemingly assumed the magical powers of Gandalf to summon up an Army of Moderates - 70,000 currently invisible soldiers who will appear from the mountains and deserts of Mesopotamia to sweep the Islamists away after British bombing allegedly clears a path for them.

So much is at stake tonight. For once, in speeches by Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, the SNP's Angus Robertson and the Greens' Caroline Lucas, we have heard strong arguments against the Government's plans. Several Tories, including David Davis, have also made clear their opposition and it may be that if Cameron carries the day it will only be with the help of the extremist DUP and the tattered and pathetic remnants of the Lib Dems, whose Christian leader seemingly feels "reluctantly" drawn to dropping bombs.

But beyond this, what?

As David Davis has said, any bombing, whatever damage or casualties it inflicts, will be largely "symbolic" in the wider scheme of things. It will not destroy ISIS - it may in fact make it stronger. And meantime, Cameron plans to continue to trade and sell and work with the Saudi regime whose scions have planted and carefully nurtured the seeds of Daesh. He has repeatedly rebutted any complaints or calls for him to act, for example, on the young democracy activist the Saudis plan to crucify for daring to question their absolute monarchy. This is because they apparently give us "valuable intelligence" about threats to our national security - yes Dave, that's the very same threats they have themselves helped to create, so they probably do indeed have valuable information.

There is no strategy, no forward plan, no collaboration with effective local forces like the Rojavans. And while apparently £1 billion is earmarked for post-conflict reconstruction, who is going to do the reconstruction? Have we learned nothing from Libya, where UK-US-French bombing caused over £20 billions of damage and left the country in anarchy with the Black Flags of ISIS and al Qaeda fluttering over half the land?

What will we do when this doesn't work?

The Real Corbyn Speech: "The Hope That Lives In All of Us"

Jeremy Corbyn delivered his first speech as Labour Party leader today. It was passionate though reasonable, showing him as an authentic person, caring and decent. On a Sky TV survey designed to pick holes in him, 53% of those watching reported that they could see him as Prime Minister, while an ITN News online survey chalked up an 89% approval rate at one point.

Needless to say, the media were quick to ignore these figures. Instead, the BBC's Danny Savage spent the afternoon in a pub in Leeds where he found a man who said the liked Corbyn but he "is far too decent." Shocking.Clearly he prefers to be ruled by men capable of gross indecency, perhaps committed while joining a millionaires' mutual appreciation society at university.

Similarly, Sky decided to wheel on a PR "specialist" to look at some photos of Corbyn in his office. Breathtakingly, she managed to invent all sorts of meanings into meaninglessness - his white shirt apparently was to show voters he was organised, while a fruit bowl on his table was supposedly planned to portray him as hard working (eating on the go, no lunch!). To be fair, she did concede that maybe in fact it was all just genuine stuff, especially when she looked at his red socks and sandals, before she toddled off, perhaps for her own expensive lunch.

But while his speech today, importantly dwelling on his values, was a good start, perhaps the speech he made in the video below during his barnstorming leadership campaign is The Speech that sums up what Corbyn is about, and what all of us in the anti-austerity, pro-equality movement are about. Passionate, angry at times, dissecting the gross inequality of the betrayed democracy we live in, and the desperate world around us, this is his Political Testimony, a cri de coeur which powerfully expounds on what is wrong and what could replace it.

Watch it, share it, then go and work for it, "the hope that lives in all of us."

Despatches from the Dustbin of History

This will be a brief post as the Lib Dems are barely worth a mention now. But the last few days have seen a smattering of risible press notices as they gather for their first conference since their near wipe out at the General Election where, after five years of enthusiastic collusion with the most extreme rightwing government we have ever had, they ended up with their lowest vote share since the 1950s and just 8 MPs. Their new leader, the rather inconsequential Tim Farron, promised a more progressive left of centre, anti-austerity strategy, claiming this was the natural ground for his battered party.

However, a month and a bit on from his election, this shifty character has shifted his politics distinctly to the right. With Jeremy Corbyn installed as Labour leader after one of the largest democratic exercises in British political history outside of legislative elections, hysterical Lib Dems are claiming a "gap in the market" is opening for their party to "fightback".

1981 - rightwing Labour MPs set up the SDP, which merged with the Liberals

Apparently, this is the yawning chasm between the Corbynite Labour Party and the Cameron Tories. Timmy apparently has fallen for the Daily Mail/BBC line that Corbyn is Stalin's angrier cousin and is preparing to impose a reign of red terror in spite of one analysis showing his economic policies are very close to those of the 1980s SDP-Liberal Alliance.

And so, we have Farron's former deputy boss, Vince Cable, the slayer of employment rights and the defeated MP for Twickenham, declaring that a veritable avalanche of anti-Corbyn Labour MPs are about to defect to the tattered banners of the House of Farron. Timmy himself said that he had "distressed" Labour MPs texting him (they apparently didn't feel like actually calling him) expressing how upset they are at the hundreds of thousands of new members who have joined the Labour Party.

The Labour rightwing have unsurprisingly dismissed the Lib Dems' claims. Yet perhaps it would make sense - our party system is no longer fit for purpose, reflecting neither voters nor even the politics of the respective parties members. We have been governed in a neoliberal consensus for so long that, like the old "front parties" in the Soviet bloc, many of the allegedly democratic choices we are given are devoid of all content, never mind differentiation.

As previously blogged here and across the Left, a realignment is needed and is indeed coming. Corbyn's election is the latest and perhaps most evident stage in it, but it is far from complete. Much sweat and tears will flow before any conclusion is reached - but just as Corbynites and others on the Left like the Greens need to work together, the Labour Right needs a new repository for its band of chancers, warmongers, privateers and dinosaurs. Where better than the apparently welcoming arms of the Lib Dems, whose twisting and weaving rootlessness would be ideal for the pro-austerity Blairites to find some modicum of machinery, however modest or even theoretical it might be in many parts of the country? They might even set up some sort of alliance and promise to break the mould of British politics.

80s revival or a has-beens' tour?

For now it probably is just dreaming on the part of Farron and Cable, a kickback to the 1980s with its perennial false dawns of centrist SDP/Liberal advance in their younger days. As  former New Romantic Timmy's more successful musical contemporaries China Crisis trilled, a case of Wishful Thinking.

For as he surveys the Bournemouth conference hall this weekend, this desperate would-be political gadfly might do well to reflect that the political divide is no longer along some sort of 1980's slide rule with a big soppy, soggy centre segment. In our broken nation, with its ever-growing extremes of rich and poor, the dividing line between progressive and neoliberal is growing ever sharper and deeper. Answers will be found in conviction and commitment to deep-seated change, not spin and dissimulation in some dilatory defence of a slightly softer status quo. Britain and politics have moved on from the vacuum of centrist opportunism.

Timmy may well see a great gap in front of his party. Indeed, it may even be a chasm - the wide, yawning dark mouth of the dustbin of history, beckoning him to jump in.

A Kick up the 80's - Wishful Thinking
 

Better Than Them

Nazis on trial, Nuremburg 1946     

We are used to the media twisting stories, but few stories are more emotive than Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks in the USA. So when issues around them are twisted and misrepresented, the result can be the makings of yet a further tragedy - the sacrifice of truth.

Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn is being excoriated by the Tory press, the leader of what is left of the Lib Dems and by his own party's defence spokesperson for saying in 2011 that :

"There was no attempt whatsoever that I can see to arrest (Osama Bin Laden), to put him on trial, to go through that process. This was an assassination attempt, and is yet another tragedy, upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy. The World Trade Centre was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. Tens of thousands of people have died."

Lib Dem Tim Farron attacked these comments as "utterly wrong", apparently unaware that his predecessor Paddy Ashdown had in fact uttered very similar sentiments at the same time as Corbyn, saying that Bin Laden's killing rather than trial under the due process of the law was "wholly, wholly, wholly wrong".

Undeterred, Labour's Kevan Jones chimed in that Corbyn's comments showed he was out of touch with ordinary people. Yet, what is it that appals us most about al-Qaeda and ISIS and their ilk? Is at least one aspect of it not their arbitrary killings of people without any due process of law?

Labour leader contender Jeremy Corbyn

We will probably never know for sure what happened when Bin Laden was shot dead by US commandos when they burst into his bedroom. It may or may not have been possible to arrest him. But why would we not regret the absence of a trial?

After all, aren't some of the most famous trials in history the ones that took place at Nuremburg in 1946, when the surviving Nazi leaders of Germany were put on trial to account for their many crimes. It was a showcase for both the appalling acts they had committed and for the fact that, what defined democratic countries over brutal thugs like Hitler's henchmen and, by extension, Bin Laden's gang, was and should be the rule of law and the judicial process of fair trial.

Corbyn has made clear he totally opposes all that al-Qaeda stands for; none of the words he has spoken indicate any sympathy or support for Bin Laden and his terrible deeds. What they do warn is that, if we spiral down rather than hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards, we risk prolonging the agony of conflict and we also perversely allow al-Qaeda to win no matter how many times we kill Bin Laden. That is because what al-Qaeda and ISIS want more than anything is for us to stop being ourselves, stop having free countries ruled by fair laws passed by democratic legislatures and enforced by properly functioning courts using due process.

The trial of Osama Bin Laden would have laid bare his crimes, his poisonous worldview and might have put a crashing halt to the radicalisation of some of those who regard him as a hero. Doubtless, it might have raised some difficult questions too about his past affiliations and the Bush family's relationship with his own relatives; but in the struggle to oppose the Islamists advancing through Syria and Iraq, what could possibly have been a more powerful way of showing that we were better than them?

When The Bubble Bursts - An Open Letter to the Guardian Newspaper

How low the Guardian has fallen when it excoriates a belief in values of equality, public services and peace as "opening the road to the forces of real darkness". Did I really just read that in a supposedly progressive paper, or have you secretly amalgamated with the Telegraph? Nay, the Mail?!

Political Editor Michael White's counsel is one of despair, of minimizing the response to the social and environmental crises that our society and world face, of softly softly business-as-usual. He dismisses Corbyn's meetings for their similarity with revivalist meetings in the Scottish referendum campaign. Now while I do agree they are part of a continuing revolt by ordinary people against established politics - but why is that a problem? With the referendum "losers", the SNP, sweeping 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland in May, surely if Corbyn has a similar impact down here, it is all for the good?

You really should get out of your cosy bubble Guardian and see what is going on. Please don't dismissively patronise those of us who want genuine radical change as "well-meaning", sandal-wearing lentil munchers blind to the allegedly immutable "real" world. Because your real world is one where the likes of Blair and Brown, Clegg and Cameron have shamelessly sold out our national wealth to the corporates who fund them, and then tell us there is no other choice, no alternative. And now you simply echo them, these mundane, machine-men, Guardian.

You could speak for us, with us, rather than at us - it's what you used to do.

"A Different World Is Possible" - Jeremy Corbyn at the Oxford Union

A world where we care for each other.
A passionate speech on why socialism works from Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn at the Oxford Union from 2013. Interestingly, from a Green perspective, a good chunk of it is on ecology and saving the environment, and humanity, from the ravages of the free market. Well worth watching him facing down Tory extremist John Redwood and by the end you can only concur with the statement on the YouTube blurb accidentally made about Jeremy Corbyn by the Oxford Union:

Better Morons Than Mordor

The Labour MPs who have nominated left winger Jeremy Corbyn to stand for leader are morons. So says John McTernan.

Who he? He is former special adviser to Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister and he popped up on Newsnight to slag off the apparent front-runner in the Labour leadership contest in the same week his former boss came out of hiding to claim that anyone whose heart was with Corbyn "needs a heart transplant".

Now of course hearing Blair talking about something as warm and empathetic as a human heart somehow feels strange, jarring against reality as it does, but his pompous histrionics are pretty illustrative of an Establishment in crisis. Although it has been clear for sometime that, with Labour now a one-member-one-vote party, Corbyn stood to poll well, an opinion poll last week putting him 17% ahead of supposed favourite Andy Burnham among Labour members has panicked the complacent upper crust of Nu-Labour. 

Democracy it seems isn't keeping to the script. As people listen to the patently sincere Islington North MP talking about ending austerity, taxing the rich and scrapping nuclear weapons and then compare him to the muddled middle of Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper alongside the sub-Tory clown that is Liz Kendall, his popularity and chances have surged. As well as drawing hundreds to his meetings, he has prompted a wave of voters, especially younger people, to join the Labour Party to support him.

Faced with this revolt, Labour MPs are in meltdown. To stand, candidates needed the nominations of 35 Labour MPs, a high number in their depleted ranks, and Corbyn just made it with two minutes to the deadline when some non-supporters agreed to sign for him. Some apparently nominated him simply to "widen the debate", assuming he would be content to turn up at hustings, be patronised a bit as an unrealistic idealist and then come last in the vote, finally putting a nail in the coffin of the Labour Left. Then the neoliberals who have been in charge since Blair could get on with tactics like not opposing the Tory Welfare Bill and a strategy of seeking to match the Tories on their own far right ground.

And so we have the spectacle of the media, from the Torigraph through the BBC and Sky News to the New Statesman trying to portray the Corbyn surge as some sort of summer silly season story. Just as they have rubbished every other popular revolt, from the Scottish referendum to Syriza and Podemos, they repeatedly seek to decry any demand for genuine change: the public must be misled/having a laugh to not keep the Establishment in place.

One piece suggested Labour members aren't taking the future of their party seriously, otherwise they would know that the last thing they would want would be some crazy old guy calling for wild-eyed schemes such as, er, renationalising the rail companies or energy firms, or investing in public services. The Telegraph today suggested that as a handful of his nominators had said they won't vote for Corbyn because he might win, he no longer has a mandate to stand - which must be the first time someone's burgeoning popularity has been viewed as losing a mandate!

Even more darkly, an item in this week's New Statesman quoted a Labour MP as saying if Corbyn wins, the MPs will remove him "by Christmas." This has to be about as shocking and blatantly undemocratic a threat as could be expected, and proof positive of the ill intent and innate hostility of the elite to any true assertion of democracy.

Labour MPs, cravenly sucking up to the right wing media, have bought the narrative that the only voters that matter, the only people whose views should be taken into account in framing future political debate, are the 3 or 4% of the electorate among the 24% that voted Tory who might one day be persuaded to vote Labour. As these people are by default pretty right of centre, that means Labour must spend their time timidly trying to simply sound like slightly nicer Tories. The 76% who did not vote Tory and who, according to the polls, are generally well disposed to left wing policies on tax, equality, nationalisation and public services (even among UKIP voters)  are discounted.

But it is among the 76% that Corbyn is drawing his support. One note showed how his key nine campaign promises are supported by the majority of the electorate and just as the turnouts at his rallies and the polls show, when people hear him, they warm to him. An LBC debate on Wednesday evening was followed by a phone-in where over 90% of callers, many of them people who had not previously voted Labour, said they supported Corbyn.

It will be some weeks before we know the outcome. A not unlikely scenario is that Jeremy Corbyn will poll first place but, because of the transfers of second and third preference votes from Kendall and Cooper, Burnham will probably scrape in on the second or even third count. If his response or, possibly more likely, the response of those around him in Labour's High Command is to patronise or diminish acknowledgement of the strength of feeling behind Corbyn's campaign for genuine socialist values, the continuing unity of Labour must be seriously in doubt. Yet while this may spark considerable turmoil on the Left, it may also kindle many positive new possibilities of a major and lasting realignment of political forces.

As blogged previously, British politics are in generational transition. The rise of UKIP, the Scottish referendum, the Green surge, and the SNP triumph in May are each way markers on the journey. The Corbyn campaign shifts the gear up substantially in that process. But progressives need to keep guard, and keep calm. Each step forward, each small victory will be derided, scorned and downplayed by the agents of status quo, many of whom simply can't understand what is happening as they are not programmed to. For in a political class whose motto is about near complete personal pragmatism, any candidate or movement gathered under anything remotely resembling an ideological banner will be viewed as an aberration, and a dangerous one at that.

So #GoJezzer. He carries the hopes of millions with him and strikes fear deep into the heart of the heartless Establishment. Blair's Friends and Sponsors won't go quietly or cleanly, but as the Eye of Tony falls disapprovingly on the horde of tiny morons who should know better than to challenge his dark legacy, it is quite clear whose hearts are full of hope as the march on Mordor quickens its pace.