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

Vote Tuesday 6th November; Go Green!

The Green Choice: Jill Stein for President

USA - is one of the world's biggest polluters; the average US citizen's activities release nine times the sustainable level of carbon into the atmosphere - almost 18 tonnes per annum against the safe level of 2 tonnes. By contrast, the average European emits 7.5 tonnes; the average Chinese person 7.2 tonnes and the average Indian just 1.5 tonne.

The US is also the biggest user of the Earth's dwindling resources. With less than 5% of the global population, the USA consumes over one quarter of all the resources used in the world each year.

The USA is the biggest spender on weapons on the planet - the US military budget is larger than the military expenditure of almost other country on the planet combined. The USA spends more than $2,000 per person per year (4.7% of national wealth) - compared to just $428 (3.9%) by Russia, $74 (2.1%) by China and $89 (1.8%) by Iran. Only Israel and the UAE spend higher proportions of their GDP than the USA on the military.

There is another way: for a more sustainable economy putting people back to work through a Green New Deal;  using clean, renewable energy; freed from dependence on foreign energy and removed from the conflicts that have isolated America from many potential allies.

Tuesday 6th - for America, for the Planet : go and vote Jill Stein for President of the USA.

Website - jillstein.org

A Real Choice for the USA

Jill Stein - Green Party candidate for President of the USA

Throughout the western world, more and more people are switching off to politics as the mainstream becomes ever more centrifugally clustered around a narrow, pro-free market, capitalist consensus. At best, the choice of leaders and parties is about the same as choosing your corporate bank: variations on a theme. There may be a pseudo-democratic process of voting, but in truth there is no real choice. For all that the western media castigates the "managed democracy" of Putin's Russia, there is little effective long-term difference between Labour and Tory/Lib Dem in Britain, between CDU and SPD in Germany, or Republican and Democrat in the USA.

Sure, there is a lot of noise - a lot of anger and boiling debate - but the dissonance mask the ever smaller and smaller real differences. Tax policy, ownership, banking arrangements, the trade system, energy, outsourced and privatised state services...the practical differences are fewer and fewer. And with big business funding the parties (in some cases, companies even give money to more than one party), it is clear whose agenda is prioritised by the political elite.

But there are choices: the system is stacked against them, whether because of their exclusion from the mainstream media, or by the first-past-the-post voting system in Britain or the huge obstacles to democratic ballot access in many US states. But they are there.

This November, while the media and the money focus on Obama and Romney, Americans do have a real and very different third choice. A politician who stands for a very different, democratic system, one that challenges and tames the corporations, breaks down the influence of big money and big business, brings services back into public hands and takes action on clean energy.

Jill Stein is the Green Party candidate for President of the USA. Thanks to the undemocratic nomination system, she is not on the ballot in every state, even although it is a federal election. But she is mounting a challenge on the ballot in 38 states, as a write-in in a further 5 states and is litigating for access in 6 more. In only 2 - Oklahoma and Nevada - have the Greens no prospect of being a choice for voters.

Jill Stein is a physician, from a Jewish background and is a former candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. She advocates a return to public service and values, a "Green New Deal" to get ordinary people back to work in a more sustainable economy and a redistribution of wealth. She has marched with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, supporting its rebellion against the power of the 1% and criticised the brutal police crackdown on the protests. Last month, during a sit-in at a Philadelphia Bank to highlight housing repossessions, she and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, were arrested along with other Green activists. She has characterised Barak Obama as "a wolf in sheep's clothing" and Mitt Romney as "a wolf in wolf's clothing" - so similar are their agendas.

Cheri Honkala, VP candidate

In foreign policy, she has called for a big reduction in US military spending (which is currently more than all the rest of the world put together), and dialogue rather than confrontation with America's opponents. She opposes the drone strikes which have been used so massively and counter-productively by the Obama Administration in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. On Palestine/Israel, she has criticised the USA's favouring of Israel and called for diplomatic action to respect human rights, bring down the Separation Wall built by Israel, restore free movement for Palestinians and commit Israel to getting rid of its huge nuclear arsenal and banning its policy of assassination of its opponents. In the event of lack of action on these, she believes the US should apply economic and political sanctions.

In one mock election, at Illinois University, Stein polled 27% of the votes cast to 33% for Romney and 39% for Obama. In national surveys, over 90 million Americans have said they do not intend to vote for either Romney or Obama - if rather than sitting at home they came out and chose Jill Stein, they could really make history. 

Interview with Jill Stein here.

Spanish Revolution

Marx - saw it coming and got the teeshirt!

The last twenty four hours have seen a wave of anti-austerity protest in Madrid. Galvanised by social media, the Indignants have marched on Congress in their tens of thousands to demand an end to the harsh austerity measures of the conservative government which, deferring to the European Central Bank's "tight money" regime, have slashed public services and catapulted one in four Spaniards onto the dole.

They have faced rounds of rubber bullets from the police, but they remain in place even now; follow them here.

The Spanish Government's fiscal policy is the same that is being applied across Europe for the sake of saving the beleaguered Euro - while in Britain, which is not part of the Eurozone, the Con Dem Government pursues deficit reduction as its first and, many would argue, sole monetary policy objective. All this in spite of the fact that cutbacks depress economic activity and cause the whole economy to spiral down in an ever-decreasing circle - and with less tax generated and more unemployed people needing state assistance, the deficits continue to grow.

Madrid on Tuesday evening

There are alternatives - Keynes and Roosevelt demonstrated that borrowing to invest in employment pays dividends many times over - a tack echoed in the current round of Green New Deals proposed by Green Parties (including US Presidential candidate Jill Stein). And in the case of sovereign currency states like the UK, expanding the monetary supply by "quantitative easing" (printing money) can kick-start a stagnant economy (and as a nation that can print its own money, the UK can never go bankrupt contrary to Tory and Lib Dem claims of pending insolvency).

But on another analysis, this round of austerity, just like the previous period of expansion, is just part of the never-ending capitalist not-so-merry-go-round; a cycle of boom and bust followed by more boom and bust. It will never end, never be resolved, especially in a world where many resources are fast becoming expensively scarce. On this analysis, the only real answer is to change the economic and social systems completely - to a more planned economy, with resources used to the benefit of all and strict limits placed on what private individuals and companies can take from the common wealth. 

Otherwise, we are condemned to Austerity Groundhog Day:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The Communist Manifesto" (1848)