Last Chance Election

We are now two days away from the election. I know I have said this before but I will say it again. In my seven decades this is the most important general election since my first. That was in 1945 with the election of the Atlee Labour government which saw the setting up of the NHS. 

In that election my only voice was as a wailing baby. My only actions at the other end of my body. For the first time in my life I am actively involved in what has become a vital struggle to return this country to a semblance of civilisation. We are not talking about a social revolution, but the attempt by a Corbyn-led Labour Party to place the UK alongside the social and economic policies of the Scandinavian countries. 

 

This election is not about Brexit. It is not about the idiocy of Boris Johnson. It is quite literally about life and death. I am alive today because the NHS has been there to save me. Please watch this short video and read ’Nail Your Flag to the Mast’. Then join me on Thursday and Vote for a Labour government. It is the ‘last chance’ election. 

 

 

winning is easy

"winning the election is the easy part" .. my article in 

The London Economic

The war of Corbyn's Hat

This is an updated version of yesterday's blog with thanks to David Rosenberg ..   

Ex BBC and Channel 4 reporter Paul Mason says this, “I'm sickened by the total lack of proportionality in the reporting. We are living through a constitutional crisis and most of the political reporters are treating it like a joke … If Corbyn wears the wrong hat it's a ten minute diatribe … He's fucked it up. He ought to go … And why? For the political class their world is one step from destruction … If May falls it is the end of the right-wing project in Britain for a generation. With Corbyn in power, it is goodbye to the world they thought was permanent.” 

In the middle of all this Brexit is evaporating before our eyes and that means we need a vote. A second referendum takes months. And that referendum campaign would see the far right mobilising its money and influence. In the process the country would become even more divided. On the other hand a general election takes four weeks to organise.

So I agree with David Rosenberg who tweets, "I'd like a People's Vote on Grenfell, Homelessness, NHS privatisation, Yarls Wood, Austerity, Universal Credit, Zero Hours contracts... it's called a General Election. And maybe one more vote on whether Tom Watson is a shmendrik (idiot) or a mamzer (bastard)"
 
For both those who voted Brexit and for the Remainers a general election would allow the stay or leave debate to take place in a political atmosphere offering real political choice. We would be offered a government pledged to end 40 years of free-market capitalism, the rule of the bankers and property speculators, the hedge fund guys and yacht owners. If you want names on this, then there is Rees-Mogg who has made £7 million from Brexit and David Cameron who has pocketed £800,000 from speaking fees alone since leaving Downing Street. And let's not forget Labour's Tom Watson who takes his money from Old and New-Guard fascists.  These people would be replaced in importance by the unemployed and under-employed, the nurses and domestic care workers, the disabled, students and the elderly who would be offered a government that represents them.  

For these reasons I did not attend the Peoples Vote demonstration on 23 March. I could not walk side-by-side with Anna Soubry MP, who voted for the bedroom tax, which was condemned by the United Nations. With the people who abstained on the Welfare Bill that would have abolished child poverty, who have voted to cut child tax credits, cut employment support allowance and cut housing benefits for young people. With Tom Watson and Jess Phillips who head those in the Parliamentary Labour Party terrified at the prospect of a Cobyn-led government which would challenge a status quo that feeds their privileges and bank accounts. 
 
Despite all this a Labour victory at a general election would be the easy part of the struggle. Establishment opposition to government policy would follow and this is why there is the need for a massive social and political movement outside Parliament. If you doubt me read this account of the workings of the civil service.

I conclude with another quote from David Rosenberg: “Good luck to Labour activists campaigning today for local elections. Good luck too to left comrades marching in London for the best motives. We disagree on strategy, but see you on the next protests against racism, austerity, etc minus Blair, Cable and Soubry.
and this from Owen Jones: "Best of luck to the #PeoplesVoteMarch. Whatever the differences over how to get out of this terrible mess, let’s unite against the Tories who plunged us into this crisis, and let’s unite to tackle the injustices that caused so many to vote for Brexit in the first place... It's important to separate the thousands marching who believe in social justice and defending migrants; and the Establishment politicians attending who waged illegal wars, scapegoated migrants, and whose austerity policies made Brexit happen in the first place."

What Democracy Looks Like

Ambrose Bierce, the 19^th century American journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and wit, said that politics is ‘a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.’ This is the 'Politics' that you take up as a profession, with its Privy Councillors (yes it did start in the toilet) and, pardon the pun, Standing Orders; the Westminster 'Palace' full of Right Honourables who barrack and ridicule each other, then go off to have cosy lunches together. I remember being on a trade union rally 30 years ago in Hyde Park when one of the speakers called on us to march on Parliament. Someone grabbed the mike and said he wouldn't join it because he didn't believe in disturbing the dead. At one of the massive demonstrations against the Iraq war I was in Parliament Square as a young woman pointed at the people sitting on the grass as she shouted, 'This is what democracy looks like,' then her arm extended in the direction of Parliament. 'That's not what democracy looks like.' But I leave the last word to Milliband. “Of political parties claiming socialism to be their aim, the Labour Party has always been one of the most dogmatic – not about socialism, but about the parliamentary system. Empirical and flexible about all else, its leaders have always made devotion to that system their fixed point of reference and the conditioning factor of their political behaviour. This is not simply to say that the Labour Party has never been a party of revolution ... It is rather that the leaders of the Labour Party have always rejected any kind of political action which fell, or which appeared to them to fall, outside the framework and conventions of the parliamentary system.” Which Milliband wrote this? Ed, Dave? … no Marxist father Ralph. Have you ordered your copy of 'Left Field' yet? Publication has now been set for early 2016.