The return of Fascism

Although the aftermath of Britain’s Brexit vote still dominates the news, it’s not the only story unfolding in Europe right now. A shadow has been cast across the continent, a shadow that has stretched from the Turkish border to the arctic circle. This shadow is the return of fascism to Europe.

Nationalism, xenophobia and authoritarianism are rising at an alarming rate in Europe. In Greece there is the Golden Dawn, in Hungary we have Jobbik, France has a newly resurgent National Front, Finland has the True Finns and in Britain the remnants of the BNP and EDL are coalescing around Britain First. The rise of such parties is a serious problem that should terrify anyone who believes democracy and liberty.

The question is, what has caused this sudden rise of authoritarian parties? Is it because capitalism has become so unjust, and mainstream politicians so impotent, that voters are turning to extremes? This seems unlikely, as we have not seen a corresponding rise support for radical anti-capitalist parties. Is it that the memory of past fascist regimes has faded to the point where voters have forgotten the danger they present? Unlikely, as the memory of fascism in Europe runs deep.

Is this just an expression of human cruelty, people refusing to recognise the humanity of others and trying to make their lives more difficult? What is happening seems like more than sadism unleashed; it is organised and popular. The simple truth is that the defenders of democracy have no response to the return of fascism, because we do not understand its causes.

Fascism itself is difficult to identify, partly because overuse of the word has muddied its meaning. ‘Body fascist’ and ‘kitchen fascist’ are two such overuses cited by writer and broadcaster, Jonathan Meades, in his masterful documentary Ben Building on Benito Mussolini, as examples of how the word has lost all meaning. Fascism is not a perversion of the politics of the far right - or even the far left. Meades says: "if the extreme right is a race horse and the extreme left is a cart horse, what sort of horse is fascism? It is the sort of horse that is called a combine harvester, which is not a horse". This is the essence of what makes fascism different.

The problem is we think of fascism as a political system; it does not have an ideology. Every time Mussolini was asked what fascism was, he defined in a different way that was convenient to him at that point. Fascism is so new that it eradicates the past, but it also deeply rooted in the traditions of the past. Fascism desires total control through authority. Fascism does not accept criticism. Fascism does not object to murder or even mass death. Fascism turns its leaders into living gods. Fascism desires total war. Fascism glorifies death, especially death for country and leader. This is the anatomy of fascism, but it is not an ideology. Fascism is not the perversion of a democratic system. It is an entirely different system, like a monarchy or theocracy.

Are the collections of far right, nationalist and authoritarian parties I mentioned above fascist? They all have elements of fascism in them, but it is hard to tell if they are truly fascist because fascism is not one thing.

Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has become the Republican nominee for President by stirring up nationalism, racial strife and refusing to accept any criticism. The debate about whether he is fascist continues, as fascism is difficult to spot until you are in the midst of it. I would say that Trump has elements of fascism - certainly his authoritarianism, and refusal to accept criticism - but he is not a true fascist. Given more power and less oversight he could evolve into one.

If fascism is one thing then it is against democracy and individual liberty, and seeks to overturn these in its parallel system of government. What we are seeing across Europe in the rise of these new parties is a movement to suppress the liberty of certain people. These people are the Other. The migrants; the people who are different from the “indigenous population”. If liberty trumpets the rights of the individual, and fascism suppresses the rights of the individual, then the suppression of the individual rights of one group of people is as much fascism as the suppression of the rights of all people. It is in the racism of these new nationalist parties we can see origins of fascism.

Is modern fascism like old fascism? The essence of fascism is its totalitarian control of all of individuals. Vladimir Putin has created a cult of personality and effectively eliminated opposition in Russia. This is the direction many of these proto-fascist parties want to move in. They appear to be modern democratic movements, but their goal is to move their countries outside the democratic process so that they can brutalise the people they do not like. Fascism may have changed its face, embraced social media and contemporary crises in Europe, but at its root is still the desire to control others through aggression.

Pointing at people who are odious (like Trump) and calling them a fascist does not bring us any closer to understanding what fascism is or what these new authoritarian, aggressive and nationalist movements are. Those opposed to fascism and its constituent parts of hatred, violence, egomania, war and tyranny have no response to the return of fascism because of this lack of understanding. To defend democracy and liberty we must first understand what threatens it. Fascism should not be dismissed; it should be a warning sign that this is something we need to pay attention to.

Defenders of democracy and liberty need to think about what has brought us to this dangerous cross roads, where fascism has returned to Europe when we thought it had been banished to the history textbooks. Understanding fascism is the route to fighting it, and we need a means of fighting fascism.

Why I am depressed about the future of the Labour Party

On a recent episode of the Guardian's Politics Weekly podcast, Nick Cohen claimed that Labour supporters were not sufficiently scared. The writer and journalist suggested that members engaged in internecine fighting were not frightened enough of prolonged Tory rule. Let me to tell you, Nick, as a Labour Party member I am very frightened right now. Probably more frightened than I have been at any point in my adult life.

I cannot see any way out of mess the party has found itself in. The Labour Party seems more divided than the country as a whole, and the prospect of a permanent split is greater than at any point in the last 30 years. Whatever path it chooses, I only see ruin in its future.

The most likely short term outcome is that Jeremy Corbyn survives the current attempt to remove him as leader (or he is replaced by someone who also does not hold the confidence of the PLP, like John McDonnell). Any leader not from the Corbyn faction would have to win over the party membership, who are firmly pro-Corbyn.

So Corbyn stays and Labour mostly likely splits into two parties directly in competition with each other for the same voters. Due to First Past The Post, they would both fare poorly in a general election and the total number of left wing MPs would fall considerably. Labour's loss is the Tories’ gain. What follows is 15-20 years of Conservative rule, as Nick Cohen suggested in his podcast. In order to get back into power Labour (or what survived of it) would probably stand on a platform similar to what David Cameron offered in 2015 as a moderate alternative.

As a Corbyn supporter, I would be willing to accept a compromise to avoid this. The last thing I want to see is permanent split in the party - remember how well that went in the early 80s? This compromise would need a clear plan of how the party is to progress towards winning an election. As I have said before, “put Dan Jarvis in charge” is not a plan.

Suppose for a moment that the less likely short term outcome does occur, and an alternative to Corbyn succeeds in becoming party leader. This new leader would have to crush the left wing of the party to secure their authority, losing thousands of party members. We would go back to the days of senior party figures saying that Labour had been too soft on disabled and unemployed people who want some kind of quality of life and being intensely relaxed about the rich avoiding their taxes.

Voters want politicians they view as genuine. The Labour Party does not have on their front bench any communicator as talented as David Cameron. Still, despite his obvious skill in using the media and presenting his arguments, Cameron has struggled to build a consensus behind his premiership, because he seen as inauthentic. Do the Labour moderates feel that any of their pale Cameron imitators will do any better in convincing voters that they genuinely care about their lives? The Labour Party has lost the ability to communicate with sections of its core support, and I do not see Hilary Benn or Chuka Umunna doing any better.

Would deposing Corbyn herald a change from a party of protest to a government in waiting? This overlooks the obvious lack talent on the party’s right who cannot even execute a coup properly. With Scotland out of play, any Labour leader would need to win as big in England and Wales as Tony Blair did in 1997, and I do not see any front bench Labour politician who can achieve this.

This hypothetical Labour leader would need to be both a conviction and a consensus politician; media savvy yet authentic. Able to appease the party’s left and right. Anyone who thinks that person is Dan Javis or Tristram Hunt is wildly overestimating their abilities as politicians. If the moderates take back the party we will be lucky if we return to Ed Miliband levels of competency.

Even if the Labour moderates did retake the party and unite its disparate factions, they would then have to face the Tories in a general election AND deal with the fallout from the EU referendum. They have no means of responding to Brexit’s victory; they are pro-EU but confused by elections that they do not win. They have only one analysis for defeat: we were too left wing, we must become more right wing.

The Labour Party is faced with an impossible blind, as writer and journalist Laurie Penny recently said, "we have a choice between riots now and riots later". A general election will be called soon and it will be fought over the Brexit vote. The Labour Party would most likely stand on a pro EU, pro freedom of movement platform and lose the election after alienating 52% of voters, many of whom are its former core supporters. UKIP would pick up a lot of former Labour voters and the country would be led by a radically right wing coalition.

Possibly even worse is the prospect Labour could win that election, keep Britain in the EU or negotiate a Norwegian form of Brexit that protects freedom of movement. This would be seen as a betrayal of the 17 million voters who voted for Brexit mainly because they opposed immigration. Many of these Brexit voters are already very alienated from mainstream politics. If even 0.5% of these people are motivated to violence by this betrayal then the country could descend into race riots, the flames fanned by ongoing austerity.

What if Labour opposes freedom of movement, and backs ‘full Brexit’ in a cynical attempt to win over those 17 million voters? This involves the party supporting a campaign based on racism and xenophobia, as well as causing a huge recession, thus making the Labour Party very unpopular and probably leading to rising violence as sudden falls in GDP are related to civil unrest. Hence as Laurie Penny said, violence now from betraying the Brexit vote or violence later from a recession.

The future for Labour looks bleak. I am really depressed about the situation Labour is in and I cannot see any way forwards. The Tories are in a complete shambles, still divided over Europe and with no plan to implement Brexit. Many senior Tories are directly responsible for a divisive and racist EU referendum campaign, but still Labour cannot find a way to capitalise on Tory woes. It is infuriating to watch.

The country needs the Labour Party to unite and become an effective opposition because this brief spell of Tory infighting will end and then they will return, united and committed to a radically right wing vision of Britain. Labour need to get their act together now for the sake of the future.

I cannot see any chance of this happening. Even if Labour survives the current spate of internecine fighting then the problems of the Brexit vote and the lack of a clear plan to win a general election means the long term future of the party is awful to contemplate. We could be looking at the end of the Labour Party as a meaningful political force. So, Nick Cohen, yes I am very scared right now. Scared, and with a pronounced sense of hopelessness.

It is madness to get rid of Corbyn now

The Blairites have made no secret of the fact that they have wanted Jeremy Corbyn removed as Labour leader since he was elected last September with a huge mandate from party members. Now they are in open rebellion against Corbyn, trying to force him to resign. The timing is perfect for the Blairites. The mainstream media is distracted by the fallout from EU referendum vote, the Prime Minister has resigned and the pound is tumbling in value – it’s the perfect opportunity to move against Corbyn. His enemies are hoping for a quick palace coup before anyone notices and have chosen now as their moment to strike.

However the so called "moderates’" plan is remarkably short sighted. They can force a vote of no confidence in the party leader (which is likely to pass) but then they will face a leadership election. The party membership is firmly behind Corbyn and there is nothing to stop him standing again for leader and winning. Eventually the Labour moderates will have to come to terms with the fact that they are deeply unpopular with the grass roots of the party. Their plan is not that well thought through.

Even if they were able to take control of the party and install Chuka Umunna or Tristram Hunt as leader, then what? Under Corbyn the party had a clear direction. What will the new direction be? Have the moderates considered what they would do with power? Remember, a general election is probably going to be called soon, so whoever leads the party needs a plan to face the electorate.

Just so that we are clear. Here are some things that are not plans:

• Anyone but Corbyn for leader
• Step 1: Make Tristram Hunt the leader
• Step 2: Er...
• Step 3: Win general election
• Surf into power on the back of the huge popular recognition of and support for Dan Jarvis based purely on the fact that he used to be in the army. People like soldiers, right?
• A commitment to austerity and controls on immigration. Just like Ed Miliband, proposed.
• Whatever the Sun says the plan is, that’s the plan.

Labour Party is facing a lot of external challenges right now. Challenges that predate Corbyn’s selection as leader. UKIP is gaining support in the former industrial North. The Tories are eating into its middle class support. Scotland is firmly off the table as a source of Labour MPs to form a majority government. Disillusionment with professional, media trained politicians is turning voters away from the large parties. The country is divided, between those gaining and losing out from globalisation, while politicians lack a narrative to bring it together unity. All of these will be important factors for Labour in a future election. So, what‘s the platform the moderates will offer to tackle these issues and win an election? What is the plan for solving the nation's problems?

Under Corbyn's leadership the party has grown in members. People now know what Labour stands for, whereas under Ed Miliband it was unclear. The public are responding well to Corbyn's authenticity, the fact that he is clearly different from inauthentic media trained politicians, and that he has clear principles. Policy is being developed from a range international economists including Thomas Piketty and Yanis Varoufakis. It is better to stick with the current platform and leader than to face the country with nothing expect a new leader who no one outside the Westminster bubble has heard of.

This sudden change in leadership being pressed for by the Blairites is a bad idea, especially if the new Tory Prime Minister calls an early election. It is a really bad idea to get rid of Corbyn now and replace him with uncertainty and lack of policy. The actions we have seen from Labour's moderates over the last few days do not indicate that they have a well thought through plan. This is just a reckless attempt to divide the party.

What does a Brexit vote mean for the left?

We were told it would never happen. We were told the public was too sensible for this. We were told no-one ever lost an election running on the platform of a stronger economy. We were told wrong. This is not the Britain we thought it was.

Brexit, and the fall of a moderate pro-European Prime Minister, is the result of this massive assumption. To the outward observer, this looks very much like a right wing palace coup. The higher offices of government will soon be held by Boris Johnson (a man who would support King Herod if it would get him one inch closer to Downing Street), Michael Gove, Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith. Nigel Farage has been on TV, looking like the cat that got the cream. You could be forgiven for thinking that the country lurched to the right on Thursday.

You would be wrong. Not everyone who voted for Brexit voted for the above – although it was very likely to happen. The EU referendum campaign showed how divided Britain is, but this is not a country divided by left and right. The division in this election was between those doing well and those losing out from globalisation. Those who voted for Brexit were drawn from the ranks of Labour, Tory, UKIP and non-voters. This election redrew the political map. This is the only election that I have found myself arguing alongside Tories and against members of my own party. Brexit was not caused by a surge in support for the right.

Many people who voted for Brexit wanted to shake up the political system that is working against them. They had voted Labour or Tory and nothing changed in their lives, their communities, or their towns. So they voted against the thing that the leaders of all the main parties were telling them support. Brexit may have been a moment of anti-establishment hatred, crystallised into action, but it is a false one. This result will not hurt the establishment. The recession and right wing Tory government that is likely to follow will hurt the poorest most. We have kicked out an Etonian Oxford graduate from Number 10 to be replaced by an Etonian Oxford graduate.

The anger at the political and economic establishment that led to Brexit should be fueling the left, however the left has failed to win support from those who lose out from globalisation. The Labour Party is currently sleep walking into a major election defeat – one that moved much closer now that the Prime Minister has resigned.

There is no plan to take back the country, from either the Jeremy Corbyn leadership or his critics. There is no plan to appeal to anyone outside the narrow band of middle class, metropolitan liberals who already support the Labour Party. Their lacklustre EU referendum campaign shows this. Labour should have found a way to reach out to disaffected Brexit supporters, but Labour could not get its message out to those who are losing out from globalisation.

This problem is not unique to Labour. Cameron was a much better communicator than anyone on the Labour front bench. He had a much more disciplined communication team and a much better grasp of strategy, but still failed to effectively communicate the benefits of staying in the EU to those who were opposed to it. Even the heavy-handed doom mongering of leaving did not work.

Politicians of all stripes have lost the ability to talk or listen to large sections of society. Before her death, Jo Cox told the Guardian that she was concerned that voting for Brexit had given large groups of Labour supporters the confidence to switch to voting for UKIP in future elections. The consequences for Labour from this inability to talk to their natural supporters could be dire.

Labour need to change its approach to stand a chance of winning an election in the future. This does not mean that Labour should shift to the right. The assumption that Brexit is an indication that the country is drifting further to political right is a false one. The new senior members of government will be more right wing, but the country is not rushing to embrace the Tory right. Labour have an opportunity to present a passionate, policy driven and genuine opposition to the government.

Scotland is making moves towards independence again (which is bad news if Labour want to be back in government). There are renewed calls for a united Ireland and a letter of no confidence against Corbyn has been submitted by MPs. Brexit has shaken up the political establishment and the political landscape could be very different by the end of year. Everything is up in the air right now.

Labour (and the left in general) need to think about how we are going to change our approach after this vote. Corbyn’s authentic nature and outsider status has endeared him to some voters alienated by Blair’s smooth, heavily media trained politicians, but the increasing transformation of Labour into a party of middle class, metropolitan liberals has alienated others. The lack of a clear strategy to win back popular support (again this criticism applies to all factions of the party) is troubling.

The left could not convince people of the merits of staying in the EU. Now the poorest members of society will suffer the most under a new recession, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the new austerity plus that is likely to follow.

We are not living in the Britain that UKIP and the Tory right want us to live in, but it is quickly becoming it. The lesson the left need to learn today is that we need to get better at listening to and talking to the people who are losing out from globalisation, the people who are outside our usual communication comfort zone. If we the left can unite divided Britain, then we can achieve real progress. If we continue the way we are - then the future is bleak indeed.

Why We’re Voting to Remain in the EU

It will cause the worst recession in recorded history. Every single firm in the country (apart from Wetherspoons) will fail and everyone in the country will be unemployed. The very cliffs of Dover themselves will split and fall into the sea. Also Great Cthulhu will rise out of the English Channel to spread madness and death across the land.

At least that is what will happen if you believe David Cameron’s warnings about the risks of Brexit. The Prime Minister has made so many doom-laden predictions about the post-EU future that you wonder why he allowed this vote to go ahead at all. If the risk of leaving the EU is so massive then surely this referendum should have been avoided at any cost?

Cameron’s rhetoric aside, it is very likely that the UK will be economically worse off outside the EU than in. In the past, we’ve complained about the economic doom-mongering from the Remain campaign. Not because their projections are inaccurate, but because it’s a scare tactic designed to bully us into staying in the EU. This, of course, does not make the argument a lie. Without wanting to get too philosophical, the truth can be scary.

Britain needs a positive argument for staying in the EU. Not one that boils down to the City of London exacting economic revenge on us if we dare to disobey them. Without it, nothing will be resolved by this referendum. EU disenfranchisement will be worse if we’re be bullied into staying. If we vote Brexit then it will be without a clear understanding of what we are leaving. Our thinking on Europe will not have advanced.

So here goes our attempt at outlining the positive pro-EU case that the Remain campaign should have made. They should focused on the mixing of cultures that has been allowed by the free movement of people; Britain’s diversity has always been its strength. They should have mentioned that the EU is a venue where nations can work together to face the threats of the future, economic instability, international terrorism, rampant nationalism and climate change.

Remain should have reminded us that the EU is a shared collective endeavor; that we can achieve more together than apart. This all sounds pretty positive, doesn’t it?

If that argument seems a bit abstract, then here are some more concrete positive things the EU can do. Firstly, it can regulate trans-national capital. In an age of globalisation, questions around national sovereignty are academic at best. Only large trans-national organization can stand up to the power of big business, and make them pay their taxes.

The EU guarantees workers’ rights, in part by maintaining a level playing field, preventing countries competing to provide the most ‘business friendly’ regulatory framework. The threat to workers’ rights from Brexit is stark.

A "bonfire of British workers' rights” is likely to follow a Brexit vote. The last thing we want to see is Boris Johnson and Michael Gove given the freedom to do whatever they want to low-paid British workers. It isn’t the Johnson and Gove set that stand to lose out in the recession that will follow Brexit. In fact it’s their set that stand to gain from the extreme neo-liberal Britain that they will build outside the EU, without pesky things like human rights and environmental controls to get in their way. With Johnson in Number 10 and Gove at Number 11 we’ll see just how nasty the Tory right’s vision of Britain’s future gets.

The referendum campaigns have both been insultingly awful, but Gove and Johnson have outdone themselves in this race to the bottom. After their economic argument failed to gain any sort of traction, the Tory Brexiters and the right wing press have turned their full attention to whipping up fear of migrants, especially Turks. As a last resort they’ve appealed to Britain’s xenophobic tendencies to get their result. We cannot let them win with this nasty campaign that has demeaned us all.

If we vote for Brexit, this xenophobic sentiment will only get worse. In several years time Prime Minister Boris Johnson will still be negotiating our withdrawal from the EU and migration levels will have remained the same. Brexit will not be the quick fix to the nations problems that leave promises. Then where will the hatred that the Leave campaign has awoken be directed? At immigrants with the right to remain? At British citizens who people think resemble migrants? It’s frightening to consider where this may lead.

Being pro-Remain and left wing means recognizing the benefits of immigration, but also being honest about the pressure it can put on wages and conditions. These are Labour issues, but all too often, Labour and the left have dismissed any concerns as racist, failing to grasp that a sense of abandonment that has led to immigration becoming a lightning rod issue for a myriad of grievances.

This attitude needs to change. We need progressive, compassionate policies to manage the effects of immigration and public perception of it. Only then can we begin to address the toxic division and scapegoating whipped up by Farage and the Tory right.

This is not say that everyone who votes to leave the EU is motivated solely by fear of migration. There are plenty of understandable left wing reasons - the EU is certainly a very flawed organization. It has treated Greece appallingly, it has forced austerity on countries where the youth unemployment rate is over 40% and it could do a lot more to stand up to trans-national companies that disregard their social obligations.

We understand the temptation to light the blue touch-paper and run, but this is a time for putting out fires, not igniting them. The alternative is to give more power to a callous Tory government.

Our view is that we must remain part of the EU - and then reform it from within. By working with our neighbours we can create something larger than ourselves, something greater than the sum of our parts. Another Europe really is possible. Whatever happens, we will continue to belong to the continent, and we need to be involved in the important decisions that take place there.

We can see a positive future for the EU, but it has to fought for. This begins with voting to Remain. Then we fight for a better Europe together.

The two Britains

There are two Britains. Divided not by left and right but between the haves and the have-nots. One Britain is prosperous and the other is struggling. One is embracing globalisation, the other is suspicious of it. One believes the nation is going to hell in a handcart whilst the other is on the Eurostar for a weekend in Paris.

They exist in the same towns and in the same streets. They can be young or old, North or South. There are many divisions; they share the same pubs and cinemas but they never mix. The intensity of the EU debate is because of this great cultural gulf, not the cause of it.

The fact that there are two Britains means that the leave/remain arguments from both sides seem irreconcilable. Do you want your country to be modern and outward looking? Or do you want your country back? The two Britains speak past each other and not to each other. When they do address each other, it is to call the other side stupid or corrupt.

For too long our leaders have only appealed to one of the two Britains. All our leaders and MPs, on both the left and the right (save for a few rare exceptions) come from the prosperous Britain. Some politicians (again almost always from the prosperous Britain) have mobilised the less prosperous Britain to upset the establishment and extend their own influence. They have raised populism, anti-politics and hatred of elites to achieve this. The Westminster bubble, the expenses scandal, politicians refusing to give straight answers and sometimes showing concept for the public: all these are very real, but fan the flame of anti-politics lit by those who stand to gain from starting a fire under the establishment.

Not all the politicians and writers exploiting the anger of the less prosperous Britain and directing it at the political establishment are conservative or in favor of Brexit. The radical left, of which I am supporter, has been complicit in stirring up anti-politics, populism and hatred of the political establishment. This was done in the name of fighting neoliberal hegemony. However, pointing at business and media elites and shouting about how there is a conspiracy against the public has been used to cover up the lack of a convincing economic model to replace capitalism. The radical left is partly responsible for the appeal of anti-politics and the hatred of politicians.

Plenty of politicians from outside the dominant parties are also responsible for spreading anti-politics sentiment. Nigel Farage is the self-appointed spokesperson for the frequently ignored Britain, whether they agree with him or not. He has used his position to fan the hatred of mainstream politics, because it is the easiest way of achieving his political goals. Through repeating the lie that the media and mainstream political parties are out to suppress him, Farage encourages the hate of the political establishment.

The prosperous Britain is far from blameless for the spread of anti-politics and disillusionment. There are plenty of metropolitan liberals (who vote either Labour or Conservative) who sneer that any argument for Brexit is racist or stupid. They cry about the threat to recovery from Brexit, without ever thinking that there are towns in Britain that have not recovered from the 1980s. What difference does boom and bust make to perpetual poverty?

There are Tories in large houses who deny the realities of poverty and claim that the poor are poor because they are lazy. These are the people who cannot see why everyone else does not aspire to be more like them. They care nothing for those left behind by the relentless march of globalisation.

There are Labour and Green voters who swell with sympathy for the less well-off, just so long as it does not involve talking to them, listening to them, looking at them or visiting where they live. These people want to make a better world, so long as they do not have to give up their iPhone or holidays to Italy. The prosperous Britain shows indifference or outright hostility to the less prosperous Britain and is responsible for expanding the divide.

We are reaching the point where our political system is starting to break down under the tension of this division. We cannot shout about politicians being in the pocket of big business without spreading disillusionment with politics. We cannot tell someone that their country has been stolen from them and not expect them to despise the political establishment. We cannot sneer and degrade other people’s opinions without pushing them further away.

The immigration issue is symptomatic. Calling out racism is always a worthy cause, but mixed in with the genuine bigots are millions of people with unanswered concerns about housing and jobs that feel ignored or dismissed by the main parties. The root causes of these concerns have more to do with the legacy of the 1980s and the run-down of the welfare state than immigration, but they have been simmering away unaddressed for years in less prosperous Britain. The failure of the two Britains to communicate with each other on the issue lurks behind Farage’s noxious ‘Breaking Point’ posters as well as the watch-it-burn mentalilty of Brexit.

So how do we heal the rift between the two Britains? Is the solution a strong evidence based political campaign to bring us together? A campaign of honest debate and not emotional blustering? This seems optimistic as the two Britains seem entirely unwilling to engage with the arguments of each other. The EU debate is an example of this. One side shouts about the economy, the other about immigration. There is no debate. Trying to create a new consensus around intelligent debate is not going to work.

Perhaps we could try to understand each other, to see what drives the anger of each side. It seems we are drifting towards a situation where our differences can only be resolved by direct conflict and not empathy. This will be unpopular because understanding sounds like compromise and compromise sound like giving up. We need to swear off anger and hate if we are to heal the rift between the two nations.

This week Jo Cox, the MP for Batley and Spen was murdered in her consistency. Her death is an enormous loss to British politics and at this point we do not know the full story. What we do know is that this did not happen in a vacuum. Widespread hatred of politicians is a fact of contemporary political discourse. We need to stand up to the hatred of politicians. We need to stop anti-politics. We need to heal the divide between the two Britains. Understanding is the only antidote to hatred and division. Tragedies like this cut us deeply and show how divided we are as a society.

We need to stop talking across each other and start listening to each other. We need to stop every radical left winger who finds it easier to spread hatred of politicians than to argue coherently for their cause. We need to stop every right winger wants to spread hatred of some group or other to gain influence. We need to stop every person from the prosperous Britain who denies the need for change, who denies the divide between the two Britains itself. We need to find a way to make the two Britians one again.

Please donated to the Go Fund Me campaign set up in memory of Jo Cox and to support causes that were important to her. More details can be found here:

https://www.gofundme.com/jocox

What lessons can Labour learn from the 2015 election?

No one expected the Tories to win the 2015 general election outright, not even the Conservative Party itself. It took the nation by surprise. A year on, a clearer picture of what happened is starting to emerge. The pre-election polls show that the Tories were perceived as better on the economy and leadership, and no party has ever won an election after being behind on these two metrics. However, the problems with the Ed Miliband era go beyond his leadership and his policies - although these were part of the problem. The left is out of power across Europe and the right is maneuvering on the centre ground. The left needs do some serious thinking about how it has found itself in such an unpopular position. What have we learned with the perspective that time brings?

Not everything about the 2015 election results was a disaster for Labour. The party did expand its vote in many seats. However, it piled up extra votes in areas where Labour already had strong support - mainly middle class, metropolitan areas - so it did not translate into more seats. The same result can be seen in the local council election results under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Support for Labour is increasing, but not in a way that makes it likely that they will win the 2020 election.

The oblivious conclusion to draw from this is that Labour need to change its tactics and expand its electoral support in areas that are not metropolitan, liberal and middle class. Labour used to dominate working-class votes in the former industrial heartlands of Britain. Now the SNP and UKIP are eating away at that support. If UKIP makes gains in the former indisputable north similar to those which the SNP did in Scotland, then the Labour Party could be all but wiped out at the next general election. So, how does Labour expand its support?

Enter Tristram Hunt, who has edited a book entitled Labour’s Identity Crisis: England and the Politics of Patriotism, which looks in detail about why Labour lost the 2015 election. It details the experiences of 10 Labour candidates across the country and the complex changes in British politics that are working against the Labour Party. One such candidate is Suzy Stride, the unsuccessful Labour candidate for Harlow in Essex, who describes a disconnect between middle-class Labour activists and working-class potential Labour voters. This is unsurprising as Labour has become a party of the metropolitan, liberal, middle class. Labour’s entire make up as a party needs to change to tackle this disconnect.

Stride goes on to describe Labour activists as “like middle-class Ryanair passengers” when speaking to working-class voters. It appeared to her that talking to working-class people was something that a middle class Labour activist had to endure, so that they could get back to the real work of running the country. The “metropolitan squeamishness” of Labour needs to end if Labour is to expand its electoral support.

Hunt's other argument set out in his book is that Labour is insufficiently patriotic. He relates this specifically to English patriotism, claiming "Labour fails to embrace Englishness". Hunt makes a good point that patriotism has to come from the heart, if it is to be believed from a politician. I cannot imagine anything worse than half-hearted, fake patronising patriotism from a middle class Labour leader who thinks this is a pill he has to swallow to become Prime Minister. That would make Miliband eating a bacon sandwich look like a moment of grace and dignity.

Hunt makes a strong case for the fact that voters felt that “Labour did not really believe in England or the English”, and he goes onto say: “In short, we were seen as insufficiently patriotic”. This problem of Labour being unable to express English patriotism is bound up in the fact that Labour has become a middle class, liberal, metropolitan party. Many middle class, metropolitan, liberals are uncomfortable with the idea of patriotism. They associate it with UKIP and pubs with St George's flags in the windows that they avoid going into. If Hunt wants Labour to become a more patriotic English party, then it will need to address the problem of it being dominated by middle class, metropolitan, liberals.

Patriotism does not have to have to be expressed in a xenophobic UKIP way. It does not have to be the celebration of Kings and Queens, Empire, conquest and the suppression of the weak. It can be found in the writing of George Orwell, the music of Billy Bragg or the poetry of William Blake. It can be found in the shared British culture of everyone who lives in this country, that is strengthened by diversity and immigration. It can be found in the Tate Britain or the England football squad. I know this is a very middle class vision of patriotism and it is not what everyone wants or what will lead Labour back to power, but there is a way to find a relatable patriotic politics that is not alienating to either middle-class or working-class people.

Hunt's book makes a good case for how Labour should adapt to win in 2020, but is it the right approach? For one thing Labour cannot afford to alienate the middle class, metropolitan, liberals – they are the only demographic that still supports them. Embracing English patriotism will not help Labour retake Scotland. Then again, Labour's woes in Scotland are so deep that perhaps everything north of Hadrian's Wall should be written off. That means Labour needs to win big in England and Wales - about as big as Tony Blair did in 1997. English patriotism alone is not enough to deliver that kind of victory. I do not see any prominent Labour politician that can deliver that kind of victory in England.

Politics has changed, the centre is not holding and things are falling apart. There is no single strategy that Labour can use to appeal to the whole country. A strategy designed to appeal to swing voters in the former industrial north may alienate swing voters in the prosperous areas of the midlands and south. Appeals to the asset-rich southerners or English patriotism is likely to drive metropolitan liberals to the Greens. There are no clear answers for Labour, not like there used to be.

The trajectory Corbyn is taking Labour on is likely to increase Labour's support amongst middle class, metropolitan, liberals and thus repeat the pattern of Miliband increasing Labour support in areas where Labour is already popular.

Hunt's book is a good start to the conversation about Labour's future and how to expand support for Labour, but more is needed to turn Labour into a government in waiting. There are no easy wins or quick fixes to Labour’s problems. One strategy will not return Labour to government. Stephen Bush has even gone so far as to say that it is impossible to unite the different social groups Labour needs to win the 2020 election.

If Labour wants to win in 2020, they will need a strategy that is regional, speaks in different ways to different people without being contradictory, is precisely targeted and different to anything that has come before. It’s that simple.

1984: A critique

George Orwell's 1984 has a good claim to be one of the most famous books of all time. It is certainly one of the most famous books about politics, and has given us terms such as Thought Police, Big Brother and Orwellian. 1984 is frequently referenced in political discourse, but I am curious as to how many people who quote the infamous line about ‘a boot stamping on a human face – forever’ have actually read the rest of the book. Until recently, I had not read 1984; I knew the story, set up and characters, and I have read many of Orwell's non-fiction books, but I had never actually read his seminal text. So I decided to read the often-referenced indictment of tyranny and oppression.

1984 lived up to the hype. As well as being a terrifying vision of the future of humanity, where individualism, free thought and emotions are crushed by a cruel one-party super-state, I found it to be brilliantly written. I also found the book to be strangely old-fashioned in its thinking. Not conservative or even suffering from having an outdated vision of the future, many of Orwell's ideas about constant surveillance, entertainment machines that monitor you, and a fearful population constantly policing each other have come true. The key difference is that it is Google and Facebook who are constantly watching us, not the government. It is not a political party that wants to crush any dissenting thought, but hundreds of angry middle aged men on Twitter sending abuse to any woman who dares to question patriarchy. 1984 brilliant predicts 21st century life, but behind the scrutiny is not a not a shadowy political elite but large companies and ordinary human beings.

Our political debate has moved on from 1984. On the surface, Orwell's novel is an argument against the power of the state and for individual freedom. Orwell lived through the rise of Fascism and Stalinism in the 1930s and saw the USSR stretch its influence across Europe after the Second World War. He joined a Trotskyist brigade in the Spanish Civil War and fought against Fascism, but was appalled at how Stalinism was crushing alternative political movements on the left. Orwell believed in democratic socialism and individual freedom, and was against the naked tyranny of Stalinism. He wrote 1984 as a left-wing criticism of Stalinism, and not as a blanket condemnation of Communism - which unthinking readers often assume that it is.

Today, the threat of a specifically Stalinist dictatorship conquering the world through its subversion of the worker's struggle for emancipation is a distant memory. However, individual freedom does not reign worldwide. We are still watched over by a unknown elite, but now it is the masters of big data, not big government. Our thoughts and actions are still policed, not by political officers but by each other. Stalinism is dead, but we are still as frightened and as alienated as we were during Orwell's lifetime.

From our contemporary point of view, 1984 reads like a vision of the future from the past. It seem as a strange as the view in 1975 that we would be living on the moon in 1999. As I was reading the book, I kept asking myself, who supports this system? Who passionately believes in it, in the way that men on Twitter defend patriarchy and capitalism? Does everyone only support it out of terror? The political system of 1984 is so mercilessly awful that I felt that someone needs to gain from it or feel more secure through its existence to create the social cohesion that holds the system together. There are a few inner-party people who gain from the system, but what does the majority of the population get from it? Neoliberal capitalism benefits mainly a tiny group of the ultra-rich and oppresses billions worldwide, however the power of the ultra-rich is built on a comfortable middle class, who are supportive of the system because of their fear and superiority over the poor. The middle class lose out under neoliberalism (how many middle class people can afford to buy a property in London any more?), but they support it because they benefit enough from it not to cause a fuss.

In 1984, everyone suffers but no one questions. I do not see a political system like this surviving today, not with our ability to self-organise through social networks. Look at the Arab Spring and how the cruel dictatorships were swept aside by popular resentment (unfortunately to be replaced by war, chaos and more dictatorships). A system like that shown in 1984 could have conceivably existed the 1940s, 1950s or 1960s, but not today. Social control still exists, but not in such as an aggressive and heavy-handed way.

Orwell was a member of a Trotskyist Party in the Spanish Civil War and a Marxist critique of class and capitalism runs through his writing. However, 1984 does not take into account the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci on cultural hegemony. The totalitarianism of 1984 is heavy-handed and unstable. Culture is used to protect the party's power; the character of Julia works writing novels for the Ministry of Truth, but these are also blunt instruments of state control. Today social control still exists, but without taking away our individual freedom. It exists through subtly convincing us all that an artificial economic system - which only really benefits the very rich - is natural, inevitable and in all our best interests. If Orwell was writing 1984 today, it would reflect a similarly bleak future, but it would also reflect how individual freedom is co-opted by cultural hegemony to suppress dissent against the economic and political elites. The nature of Marxist critiques of society have changed.

One of the most positive things that happened during the second half of the 20th century was the decline of totalitarianism and the expansion of democracy. The Berlin Wall fell and the dictatorships of Eastern Europe transitioned to democracy. China has liberalised, apartheid has ended in South Africa, and totalitarian in regimes in Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Burma and many other countries have ended or are currently embracing democracy. The Arab Spring showed how the oppressed people of the world hunger for freedom and democracy. However, we are still not free. We are not free from class when social mobility is declining, we are not free from patriarchy when 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, we are not free from racism when Donald Trump can glide his way to the Republican nomination on a platform of Islamophobia and anti-Hispanic racism. Russia transitioned from a communist dictatorship to a capitalist one. The far right and neo-Nazi parties are growing in popularity across Europe and Fundamentalist Islam is spreading in the Middle East across Iraq and Syria. With the fall of Communism, it looked like freedom had won, but freedom is as much under threat today as it looked when Stalin might roll his tanks from Berlin to Lisbon.

Tyranny is still real, but it's face has changed since Orwell wrote 1984. It has become subtler and more appealing to our fears and insecurities. In the 1930s and 1940s, Stalinism and Fascism wanted aggressively to take away our rights and suppress our individualism; now, it is our rights and our individualism that is used to police us. There is no Big Brother, no Party, no Thought Police, but we are constantly watching each other and any deviation from the dominant ideology is swiftly punished - ask anyone who stands up for women's rights on Twitter. The ways in which a shadowy elite control society and politics for their own interest have become much subtler since 1984 was written, but they are still just as present. If you want a vision of the future, just imagine a voice whispering that this is natural and in our best interest into your ear, forever.

Labour need a better strategy

Now that the dust has settled on "Super Thursday" we can critically examine Jeremy Corbyn’s first big electoral test as leader of the Labour Party. The results are very mixed. The Labour Party had some successes, most notably Sadiq Khan’s election as Mayor of London ending the Tories’ eight-year occupation of that office. Elsewhere Labour did not fare so well, losing overall control of the Welsh Assembly and slipping to third place in the Scottish elections.

The severe trouble that Scottish Labour finds itself in predates Corbyn’s election as Labour leader; he cannot take much blame for it. However the real problem comes from the wider test of Corbyn's electability, the council elections. Last Thursday the Labour Party became the first opposition party to lose council seats in mid-term local elections since 1985. The Labour Party picked up fewer councilors than Ed Miliband's Labour in 2012 or William Hague’s Conservatives in 1998 - both of which went on to electoral defeats.

This does not necessarily mean Labour is doomed to a landslide defeat in 2020. It is almost impossible to accurately predict the outcome of an election four years in the future. However with Tories, Lib Dems and UKIP eating into Labour’s support and no clear path back to electability in Scotland, the outlook for Labour is not so good.

In many ways the Corbyn leadership is going badly. There have been a series of unprofessional disasters including John McDonnell waving around Chairman Mao's Little Red Book and Ken Livingston opening on Hitler a week before a critical election. The Conservatives are maneuvering on the centre ground of British politics and increasing their electoral support. At the same time, accusations of rising anti-Semitism are proving difficult to refute.

The ultimate question for Labour is what alternative is there? Corbyn's three leadership rivals were dismissed by party members not because of sudden love of socialism, but because they offered no chance of winning an election. The simple truth is that there is currently no alternative plan to get Labour back into government. Moderates talk about Dan Jarvis as a replacement leader, however, I do not understand what happens after Jarvis (or any other moderate) replaces Corbyn. What is the moderates' strategy for winning back voters and getting Labour into power?

In order for Labour to win the 2020 general election the party needs a platform that is radically different to what Gordon Brown offered in 2010, Miliband offered in 2015 and what the Tories are offering now. Repeating the failed 2010 or 2015 approach will not work in 2020. I do not see a direction that the moderates would take Labour in that would be different enough from the mistakes of the past and the current Tory government.

Those who argue for a return to Blair’s triangulation strategy miss the point. Rather than a cohesive coalition between working and middle class voters, the 1997 landslide relied on chasing ‘aspirational’ Middle England, safe in the knowledge that working class core voters could be relied on to vote Labour anyway. Endemic political alienation since then, along with the financial crash, means re-running New Labour is not the answer either.

Labour is under attack from all sides. Centrist middle class voters are defecting to the Tories; working class and northern voters are being wooed by UKIP. Scotland is off the table, for now. The strategy that the moderates would adopt to win back centrist, middle class voters is likely to drive working class voters to UKIP, and left leaning, metropolitan liberals to the Greens. There no is guarantee that Labour would fare any better under a different leader.

It is not enough to simply write off victory in 2020, as I fear both Corbyn and the Labour moderates have done. Labour needs a plan to return it to government. This criticism applies to both Corbyn, and to the moderates: fighting over control of the party does not matter if the party loses 100 seats in the next election. There has to be a clear strategy to win, and "make Dan Jarvis party leader” is not a plan, it is barely even the beginning of one.

Labour cannot spend the next 4 years squabbling and hand the Tories a landslide victory in 2020. Labour needs a clear, workable strategy to win the general election. Now is not the time for complacency. Now is the time for action.

Hillary Clinton cannot save America

Hot take: Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are reinvigorating politics and shaking up the left wing establishment. It's a cliche of political blogging, drawing out the obvious comparisons between old white men, both veteran socialist campaigners who are enjoying an unlikely period of success despite many people writing off their ideology in the early 90s.

It shows how complacent the centre left in Britain and America have become. Before the UK general election, and when the American Presidential election had only been going on for 6 months (why does it last 2 years?), no one would have imagined that Jeremy Corbyn would win a landslide victory to lead the Labour Party and that Bernie Sanders would give Hillary Clinton a run for her money. Then again, a year ago we were told that Donald Trump could never be the Republican Nominee.

The centre left (the Clintons, Coopers and Burnhams of this world) have been startled by a surge in support for the far left, mainly amongst younger and more disenfranchised party members. Their only response has been scare tactics. The conversation has been remarkably similar on both sides of the Atlantic: "he'll alienate moderates, he's unelectable, look at that awful right wing guy with freaky hair who will get power if we choose him".

If Sanders and Corbyn are so completely unelectable, then how come professional centre left politicians with years of experience, huge amounts of money, massive popular recognition and opinions that (apparently) everyone agrees with cannot beat them? Could it be because the centre left has completely lost its way and has nothing to offer anymore? Does anyone seriously think that electing Hillary Clinton as President will change much?

When Barack Obama was elected President back in 2008 I was hopefully for change. Eight long, painful years of George Bush Jr's presidency was coming to an end. A young, energetic, exciting politician was sweeping his way to victory. Surely after the disastrous wars and economic collapse of previous Republican government, things were going to be different this time.

For a while that hope lasted, Obama said he would close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and deliver healthcare for millions of uninsured poor Americans. Then the Republicans took back the House of Representatives and the rest of the Obama presidency became a slow war of attrition between the Democratic White House and the Republican Congress. The pettiness reached its height in Autumn 2013 when the Republican shutdown the entire US government simply because they could.

I do not think Clinton will tackle the deep rooted problems of America: the huge economic inequality, the systematic unemployment, the criminalisation and intense poverty of African Americans, the openly xenophobic politics, the systematic assault on women's rights, the hollowing out of worker's rights, the sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that gives rise to extremism. I had more confidence that Obama would tackle these problems when he was re-elected in 2012 (despite four years of painfully slow struggle) than I do in a future Clinton presidency. What does Clinton have to offer to tackle America’s problems? Not much that is particularly inspiring.

The issue in Britain and America is that the centre left has nothing to offer to fix the problems of society (a lot of which were caused by their past periods of power, i.e. Blair and Clinton I). The centre left has run out of things to offer other than being opposed to the centre right, which they look quite similar to. The only reason why the centre left is in less of a crisis in America than in Britain is because the right is in thrall to the far right, which is scaring moderate voters. Trump is a gift to Clinton; I do not think she could have beaten Jed Bush or Marco Rubio.

Obama has achieved a lot in his 8 years, he did provide the healthcare he promised and stopped the Republican Congress from defunding it. He did pull America out of Afghanistan and Iraq (after a while). He brought Iran in from the cold and avoided the worst effects of the stagnating global economy. He did not close Guantanamo and he has taken America into wars in Libya and Syria. Clinton does not fill me with the confidence that she can even achieve this much. Her centre left politics do not seem capable of responding to the more complex and frightening world of the 21st century. They seem more appropriate to the mid 1990s when we thought the good times will never stop rolling. A slightly more compassionate neoliberalism is not what the world needs now. The world's needs change, now more than ever.

Bernie Sanders offers the change that America needs. Unfortunately his campaign was doomed from the start. His poll ratings among ethnic minorities are very low and he cannot win the democratic nomination without the support of black and Hispanic democrats. The current delegates spit is 2,228 to Clinton and 1,454 to Sanders, with 2,383 being the magic number to win the race. It looks like it will be Hillary Clinton.

Clinton will most likely defeat Trump to become the next President. I am sure she will be a good liberal President. She is unlikely to ban Muslims from entering the country or pass a national ban on abortions. However, I do not think she will tackle the deep rooted structural problems in American society. Oppression, hopelessness and feelings of powerlessness are rising and this breeds extremism of all flavours. America needs the type of change that Sanders promises and it needs it soon.

Will Britain leave the EU?

Britain's EU membership is divisive on the left and the right. In conversations recently, I have been told on separate occasions that there are no valid arguments for staying in or leaving the EU. I believe there is a case for both remaining in the EU and for leaving it. Leaving aside which way you should vote, can we predict what the result is likely to be?

The polls are currently predicting a narrow win for the remain camp, but after last year's surprise general election result, faith in polling is low. All polls should be taken with a pinch of salt at this point.

The majority of the electorate has not made up their mind. Very few people engage with politics outside of a general election, and the looming implications of the referendum are yet to dawn on most people. The majority of voters will decide 2 weeks or less beforehand, around the time they realise that their vote matters because referendum results are more proportional than a general election.

The way a voter makes up their mind is important when considering the outcome of any vote. In the EU referendum the argument for leaving is mainly an emotional one. It hinges on the belief that the EU is crushing British identity and pushing the country in a direction the people do not want to go in. If you on the right this is epitomised by uncontrolled migration; on the left it is a corporate assault on the NHS. Voters who make up their mind based on emotional arguments are more likely to do this immediately before the election itself. Emotional decisions are quick ones, they feel instantly right.

The remain argument is a more logical one. It is simply that Britain will be better off as a member of the EU than outside it. It comes down to jobs and money. It is not inspiring, it is cold and rational. Voters who make decisions based on logic tend to make them further in advance. This is why polls taken further out from an election will generally return a result that follows an argument based on logic. Polls taken nearer to an election will show a greater degree of voters influenced by their emotions.

With most voters likely to make up their minds only in the final few weeks, the emotional resonance of the leave argument is yet to have an impact. This makes it difficult to predict what the result will be this far in advance.

A case in point is the Scottish Independence referendum. Similarly, remain was a logical decision, based on jobs and money, and leave was an emotional decision, based on freedom and national identity. Polls taken far in advance showed a clear majority for remain, whereas polls taken immediately before the vote showed a majority in favour of leaving. Remain started strong and slowly declined as emotional voters moved from the undecided to the leave camp.

On the day, more voters were influenced by the logical arguments based around the money in their banks accounts than an emotional appeal to their national identity. However the emotional argument still resonated and that has translated into continuing success for the SNP.

There is clearly a lot of dissatisfaction with the EU. The left have found it hard to articulate their support in a concrete way. There are lots of problems with the EU - how undemocratic it is, how secretive it is, and how it pushes a neoliberal agenda on its members. I get the feeling that many on the left support the remain campaign because the leaders of the leave campaign are so repulsive. There is very little willingness to agree with Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, Nigel Farage or George Galloway (regardless of how the latter sees himself as the saviour of the left).

I always thought of myself as intrinsically pro EU membership. But when I tried to articulate my reasons for this in a positive way, I found it hard to build a concrete argument. A lot of things I like about EU membership - visa free travel and the diversity of London - are unlikely to disappear if we leave. We currently do not need visas to visit Iceland, Norway, Switzerland or Israel, and London will always be a cultural melting pot.

The argument for remaining is mainly the frightening thought that if we leave, there will be job losses and the Tories will be free to do whatever they want to the people of Britain. This negative argument makes me doubt my own support for EU membership.

My own experience seems to be symptomatic. There is a lack of a positive pro-EU vision coming from the left, and without this, many of those who support EU membership do so grudgingly.

If this shortage of enthusiasm on Election Day results in low turnout from left wing voters then Brexit will become more likely - those who are passionately anti-EU will be guaranteed to vote. If the left cannot find a positive and inspiring argument for EU membership then Britain will leave the EU.

The polls may indicate that Britain is staying in the EU, but I think the question of whether Britain will leave is still wide open. This far out it is too difficult to take an accurate reading. If I had to make a prediction, it would be that whichever sides wins, it will be by the narrowest of margins.

What should Greece do? Part 2

In my last post I looked at political problems of Greece’s national debt and the argument against Greece paying the debt. Now I will address the implications of Greece leaving the Euro.

From the interviews with many Syriza supporters in Theopi Skarlatos and Paul Mason’s film #ThisIsACoup, I got the impression that this is what Syriza’s supporters want them to do. They feel that Greece has been humiliated by its creditors and they want Syriza to stand up for Greece. Whenever Syriza make a deal to with Greece’s creditors, Syriza supporters say they feel betrayed by the party they voted for.

The reason why Greece cannot default on its debt is because its economy would collapse. As has been said before, the majority of the Greek national debt is propping up Greek banks. If Greece defaults on its debt it would have to leave the Euro, and if it left the Euro then the EU would stop lending to Greek banks. This will cause them to collapse. In today’s finance based neo-liberal economy no country can survive the collapse of its banking sector, people would lose all their savings and their homes. So defaulting on its debts would mean economic armageddon for the Greek people. Understandably this is something Syriza want to avoid.

One of the points that Theopi Skarlatos and Paul Mason’s film makes is that Syriza’s mistake was playing for time. They argue for an extension on Greece’s debt while they renegotiate their position. During this time Greek banks have become more dependent on EU lending. Syriza could have got out of the debt if they had defaulted earlier, perhaps as soon as they had taken power, but by the time the negotiations were concluded it was clear that defaulting on Greece’s debt was not an option.

Another reason for Greece to not default on its debt is that it would take around 12 months for Greece to set up a new national currency to replace the Euro. If Greece started to lay plans to leave the Euro in 12 months time, it would be discovered and would mean announcing that Greece planned to default on its debts. This would create a panic, all assets would be removed from Greece by investors and creditors and the economy would collapse sooner. Leaving the Euro and/or defaulting on its debt would ruin the Greek economy and is not an option.

If paying the debt, or defaulting, are not options then a compromise will have to be reached. A compromise where Greece pays some of its debt but not all of it. After watching the film I think this is the solution that Syriza want and is the most sensible.

The only problem with this approach is that the EU does not want to compromise. Throughout the film the EU refuse to allow any amount of Greece’s crippling debt to be written off. After Syriza’s first debt extension, the EU demands that Greece pass a law saying the EU could veto any future Greek laws, which only increases their power over Greece. Later Syriza wanted to give free food to the poor and the old, but the EU used their power veto this. Clearly the EU were only interested in putting as much pressure onto Greece as possible so that they would pay the debt back. However, as discussed above this debt was illegal and practically cannot be paid back.

In the absence of a compromise, and faced with two impossible options, the negotiations between Syriza and Greece’s creditors do not lead to a resolution. The film shows Greek Prime Minister and Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras looking increasingly tired as he tries to find a way out of this impossible bind, even resorting to calling a referendum and a snap election to give the Greek people as much say as possible in the future of their country.

The film ends after the second general election victory for Syriza in September 2015. Since then there has been no clear solution to the problem of Greece’s debt. The film ends with the gloomy implication that if Syriza fail to resolve the problem in a way that is satisfactory to the Greek people then we do not know where the anger that drove Syriza to power will go next. If it becomes support for neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, then the implications for the whole of Europe are terrifying.

From watching this film I initially thought that Greece should default on its debt because it was crippling its economy and the EU had no interest in compromising. After thinking about issues and listening to the Q&A with Theopi Skarlatos and Paul Mason, I realised that this was not possible. A compromise between the EU and Syriza is the only viable resolution to this situation, which has grown worse with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants and the possibility of a Nazi takeover in Greece. Surely the EU does not want to see a Nazi government in control of so many vulnerable immigrants, so they will have to compromise with Syriza. The Greek national debt is still a live issue and we need to remember the possibility of a fascist regime with a million non-White immigrants is a real possibility and should be avoided at all costs.

Syriza are up against forces much more powerful than themselves and they are hampered by the fact that their own supporters are not always in favour of what they do - although so far their electoral support remains strong. I have a lot of respect for Alexis Tsipras and the other leaders of Syriza who are faced with such a mammoth task. I believe they do have the best interests of the Greek people at heart and are trying to work towards a realistic and workable compromise. Hopefully they can succeed, because I am very frightened of the implications if they fail.

Safe Spaces? Censorship on Campus

‘Well I am just a student sir, and I only want to learn / but it’s hard to read through the rising smoke of the books that you like to burn’.

These lines from a mid-sixties protest song by Phil Ochs convey the same message as many of the era: cultural and political conservatives had, for years, tried and succeeded in policing what students could read, watch or listen to, but it was time to challenge old authorities.

More recently, there has been a trend which can be seen as an inversion of this model. Student campaigns, considered broadly left-wing, have been advocating, with some success, various forms of modern day censorship. The chances are you’ve heard of some of them – the removal of (often seemingly benign) texts from syllabuses, or the addition of misrepresentative ‘trigger warnings’, the cancellation of speakers, or the removal of items such as building names or statues from university campuses.

The general aim has been to create and protect ‘Safe Spaces’ for those often marginalised or discriminated against. No doubt well-intentioned, the trend is nonetheless disconcerting.

It’s an emotive topic, and it seems wise first of all to explain what this article is not. It is not an argument against the concept of Safe Spaces, the idea that universities should take into account the sensibilities of an increasingly diverse student population.

I will not be arguing that white, male, straight people are the real victims of discrimination nowadays. They aren’t. Neither is it an argument in favour of untrammelled free speech. There have always been laws and customs limiting free speech, and rightly so. I will, instead, argue in favour of open, honest, challenging academic debate. This cannot always, or perhaps shouldn’t always, be comfortable. To use a word well-worn by the advocates of Safe Space, censoring things that might offend is, in the least, problematic.

There is a precedent of left-wing censorship at universities, including for less-than-honourable ends, as any reader of Malcolm Bradbury’s satirical campus novel, The History Man, can attest. But in general, forces of the Right were the ones (usually not literally) burning the books. On the Left, the obvious antecedent is the longstanding NUS No Platform policy on racist parties like the BNP. As a student, I supported this, but now, I’m not so sure.

What were we afraid of – that impressionable students would be converted into fascists by one of Nick Griffin’s half-wits? No, we don’t want them goose-stepping all over campus beating up ethnic minorities, but letting them have their say is a different matter. Racism is easy to defeat in open debate, and we shouldn’t have been afraid to do so.

No Platform has now been extended, on different campuses, to all sorts of speakers from feminists to UKIPers. But whatever their views, is it justifiable? In a university of all places? It makes us look frightened, like we don’t trust people with certain arguments. Let’s treat people as rational adults who can make up their own minds. I don’t like Germaine Greer’s views on transsexual people (or her views on men for that matter) but I don’t see any inherent harm, as students at Cardiff evidently did, in letting her have her say.

The now well-known Rhodes Must Fall campaign to remove colonialist Cecil Rhodes’s statue from Oriel College, Oxford, is symptomatic of the movement. It seems like a good idea at first glance, proposed by people whose motivations are understandable. But Britain’s troubling colonial history is surely addressed best head-on, not swept under the carpet.

Contextualisation, not deletion, might help: a plaque describing, in soberly factual terms, what Rhodes actually did. This view is hardly tantamount to colonial apologism, as some would have it.

The problem with censorship, or even the perception that it is being pushed for, is that it encourages taboos. Taboos become cool and subversive to defy, giving rise to a narrative of ‘political correctness gone mad’ and ‘snowflake’ (i.e. hypersensitive) students.

I instinctively dislike the tendency to pile-on, mob-like, to decry an individual or book as racist or misogynistic; there’s something of the witch hunt about it. It looks closed-minded and reactionary, and it feeds this narrative. The Left shouldn’t end up as a mirror image of the Right’s moralising censorship, setting itself up for challenge by daring convention-breakers.

There’s another problem inherent to this type of identity politics: it can lead to competitive, sometimes directly contradictory, grievance raising. One group’s affirmation of safe space may be the violation of another’s, as was the case in the odd events involving the ex-Muslim Iranian human-rights activist Maryam Namazie at Warwick and Goldsmiths universities, recounted here.

The criticism of those arguing against censorship is often that it’s easy for privileged people (white, male, straight etc) to denigrate Safe Space; we’re not the ones who need it. For people like me, they say, the presence of a particular speaker is merely a philosophical issue, whereas for minority groups, it’s an act of aggression.

I don’t agree. I’m not telling any less privileged group what they’re allowed to be offended by, although I appreciate it may sound worryingly close to that. If words hurt, then the best way to counter is to argue back. Education should thicken the skin and broaden the mind. This ought to apply to those demanding Rhodes’s removal, as well as those who cannot countenance any questioning of his existence without crying ‘political correctness gone mad’.

Universities must, first and foremost, be centres of febrile and fearless discussion. So, by all means, protest, counter-argue and demonstrate. Campaign for syllabuses to recognise different perspectives or be less Eurocentric. But censorship of academic work or political speakers is an apparently easy fix that’s more likely to foment opposition than solve structural prejudice.

Perhaps the trend is just a side effect of the marketization of higher education; students, paying exorbitant tuition fees, see themselves as customers and therefore entitled to complain. This may well be true, but as a society that aims, however falteringly, towards multicultural integration, we need to find ways of balancing respecting the sensibilities of others with free and open debate.

Universities, often a microcosm of, and trendsetters to, the wider world, are the perfect place to work out how.

What should Greece do? Part 1

What should Greece do? It is a complicated question with a complicated answer. The ruling party, Syriza, has been in power since January 2015 and the pressure is on to solve the problem of the enormous amount of debt that Greece owes, which is 320 billions Euros or 177% of Greece’s GDP (figures as of 10 July 2015, source).

Recently I went to see a film by Theopi Skarlatos and Paul Mason called #ThisIsACoup, which covers the period between Syriza’s first and second electoral victory. I highly recommend this film, made as events unfolded, as I felt much more informed about the Greek debt crisis after watching now it. Based on this film, a Q&A with its makers and my wider reading around the topic, I am going to see if I can answer the question of what Greece should do.

The simplest answer that has been put forward is that Greece should just pay off its national debt. This is the argument favoured by middle class British columnists, writing from the comfort of their cottages in Surrey. This is the argument favoured by people who believes that politics begins and ends with personal responsibility. This is the argument that assumes that the Greek debt is exactly the same as the credit card debt of a student who partied a bit too hard during freshers week. Cut back on the craft larger and pulled pork. Show some self-control.

As you can tell I do not have much for time argument, but I will give it a fair hearing. The argument for Greece paying its debts, is that Greece is spending too much on welfare, pensions, its military (which is massive) and propping up stated owned enterprises. The solution is for Greece to embrace austerity as well as reforming its economy to make to make it more competitive; the process that Britain went through during the 1980s. This will allow the Greek economy to reduce its debt and return to growth.

The main flaw with this argument is that it is clearly not what the Greek people want and democracy means that people get what they want, for better or worse. Greece's main creditors are other EU nations and the people of these countries do want Greece to pay the debt, which is a thorny issue. Whose democracy is more important, the debtor or the creditor? EU law does say that Greece should pay the debt. However, I find it strange that people in Britain argue that Greece should be subject to EU law no matter what its people want, but the cries the British people to be liberated from crushing yoke of EU technocrats must be answer.

Theopi Skarlatos and Paul Mason’s film makes the point that only 11% of Greek it went directly to the Greek people, i.e. for spending on Greece's apparently lavish welfare state and overstuffed state owned enterprises. The majority of the money went into propping up Greek banks hit by the global financial crisis, which certainly was not caused by Greece (or the Labour Party) spending too much on welfare or pensions or public health.

If the Greek government does embrace austerity, then the debt will be repaid over the next 50 years. Theopi Skarlatos and Paul Mason raise the question of whether the Euro, the EU or the current global financial system still be here in 50 years? The odds are stacked against it. The wider EU financial crisis and refugee crisis mean that it is very unlikely that the EU and the Euro in its current form will be around in 50 years. Perhaps a plan based on Euro longevity is a bad idea.

Austerity is not simply a case of make do with less; even when less is healthcare, support for the poorest in society and pensions. Austerity has other effects, as well as closing Sure Start Centres and raising child poverty. It creates Financial Melancholia, which is a sense that the future is only about paying for the past. This saps the creativity from the present because it is consumed by one thing: passing for decisions taken in the past.

Theopi Skarlatos and Paul Mason said that young people are leaving Greece in huge numbers because they believe there is no future. The youth unemployment rate is at 50%, which is encouraging them to leave. This will have long term economic consequences. Who will look after the old people? Who will do all the low level work? Who will start new businesses? Austerity does not create economic dynamism; it stifles it through Financial Melancholia.

The main problem with the Greece paying its debts is the question of how the economy returns to growth after going through an austerity regime that is more severe than anything else that has been seen in Europe. The debt repayment ideas requires that economic liberalisation also take place at the same time. Greece is different to most other European countries in that large global brands (McDonald's and Superdrug where the two examples that Paul Mason cited during the Q&A after the film) are not present in Greece. Greece is not a socialist utopia, they have their own large brands owned by ultra-wealthy oligarchs just like every other capitalist country, and these oligarchs have enormous political and social power. They also stand to lose the most if the Greek economy is opened up to international competition.

It is because of this that the liberalisation phase of the pay your debts plan will never happen. What will happen is heavy austerity (which punishes the poor for being poor) and the liberalisation will never actually occurs. This will continue until either the debt is repaid (which will not happen because growth will not return and tax revenue will not grow) or the Euro collapses for some other reason. This means that even if Greece tries to pay its debt, it will eventually be forced to take its other option: default and leave the Euro.

In my next post I will look at the problems with Greece leaving the Euro.

The rise of Trump shows the failings of American politics

I will refer you to all the moderate conservatives who said that Donald Trump will never be the Republican candidate for president. At the time of writing Trump is the frontrunner in the Republican race; it is still mathematically possible for Ted Cruz to win the nomination but it would require an unusual reversal of fortune.

Trump's campaign has been characterised by the rhetoric of the extreme right and has horrified both liberals and moderate conservatives. We were told that he would never get this far. We were told wrong. The success of Trump requires everyone to rethink how they see American politics. The reasons for Trump's success are complicated, but I believe that the rise of Trump shows a failure of American politics to tackle two critical issues: the decline in living standards of white working class Americans and the Islamophobia of American politics.

Trump’s rise as a political force is a result of his ability to exploit the rhetoric of Islamophobia. He is not the first politician to be Islamophobic, but his popularity is a result of the collective failure to stand up to Islamophobia. What was once a dog-whistle of Islamophobic political rhetoric has become just a whistle. We have had 14 years of blaming every Muslim for the actions of the few that have committed acts of terrorism and this has brought us to a point where a politician can be openly hostile to all Muslims. Trump is not new in being an openly Islamophobic, he is just better at it than everyone else.

It was inevitable that we would reach a point where a politician can call for a complete ban on Muslim immigration and imply that all Muslims should be made to identify wear badges that public identify them. It was inevitable when liberals and moderate conservatives failed to stand up to Islamophobia. We all act surprised when Trump says these awful things but he is only following an established narrative.

Liberals are to blame for the rise of Trump as much as moderate conservatives. Liberals in America have failed to stand up to Islamophobia and have been paying lip service to it whenever we talk about "criticising Islam". This is the dog whistle for being hostile to people who follow a minority religion and (usually) belong to a minority ethnic group. By not standing up to the dog whistle, or using it themselves, liberal Americans have aided Trump in turning it into an actual whistle.

Lack of moderate conservative opposition to Islamophobia, as well as exploiting this view, has allowed the conversation to be dictated by the far right. In many ways the the different candidates in the primary stage of the American presidential race are the different parties that would exist in any other country. Like in France, America has rounds of elections to narrow the field to two candidates who represent two political ideologies. Usually this ends up as being the moderate left and the moderate right, but occasionally (as in 2002 in France) a candidate from the far right makes it to the final round.

Trump represented the far right in this race and currently he is winning. Anyone who is a moderate conservative needs to think about how they have allowed this climate of Islamophobia to grow and how they have exploited it for their own ends until it was used by Trump to make moderate conservative voices irrelevant in this election. Moderates have no decent response to Trump's Islamophobia so they have been swept away by it.

A climate of Islamophobia has helped Trump get as far as he has, but this is not the only thing contributing to his success. Trump's followers are mainly white and working class, a demographic with problems that American politics has failed to tackle.

Liberal middle class Americans do not care about the loss of living standards of poor white people. Liberal Americans have other political objectives, such as defending Obama's healthcare program and tackling the massive racism in America. These are noble aims, but there is a real lack of interest in dealing with the problems of the white working class.

This failure to engage with the white working class is because the left does not want to ignore problems of race at this critical time for race relations and there are concerns about undercurrents of racism in poor white people’s politics. If liberal middle class America were willing to engage with the problems of white working class America then they might find that their political complaints are not rooted in racism but in the way they have been marginalised.

The moderate conservatives are also to blame for ignoring the problems faced by white class Americans. The moderate right has not tackled the problem of poor white people because it involves criticising capitalism, which they are not prepared to do. Conservative support for neo-liberalism on both sides of the Atlantic has created a ticking time bomb of ground down white working class people whose lives have been destroyed by prevailing economic thought. Poor white people were hit hard by the financial crash, de-industrialisation and globalisation. They have lost jobs and income. In Britain, poor white people are the lowest performing ethnic group in educational attainment. Now the white working class want answers that the moderate right do not have for them.

Bernie Sanders does appeal to some of the white working class in America, but the Hillary Clinton campaign does not fully appreciate how bad the fall in living standards of poor whites is. In many ways Clinton's politics is as bad as the moderate conservatives, she is not willing to criticise neo-liberalism and prefers platitudes about making America whole again. The left is generally focused on Clinton and their hopes that she will be the figure that unites America. She maybe that person that can span the growing left/right divide to win the presidential election, but she will not help poor white people. A vote for Clinton is a vote to kick this can down the road and hope that the problem will be dealt with in the future. It is a vote for the vague hope that the far right cannot mobilise this anger for electoral success.

Let me be clear here: I do not think that Trump cares about or will help white working class Americans. However he is willing to engage with these victims, which liberals and moderate conservatives are ignoring. Trump is a used car salesman, he will tell you everything you want to hear until he has his hand in your wallet and you drive off his lot with an overpriced, terrible car that you cannot claim a refund on. To help white working class America we must first stop Trump and to stop Trump we must understand his success, even if it involves asking painful question about how the American left has conducted itself.

It is very hard to say that would happen if Trump were actually elected president, partly because Trump has not mentioned many actual policies he intends to intact. I can imagine that it will be worse than George W. Bush's time in office, which is frightening enough. Liberals and moderate conservatives need to act together to defeat Trump, but as I said, this can only be done by understanding what has brought us to this juncture.

Trump will probably lose to Clinton because he frightens people too much, which is the only hope to cling to right now. Although we were told that he would never win the nomination and that looks likely. America needs to tackle the problems of Islamophobia and the loss of living standards by the white working class before someone comes along who is even more awful than Trump. If you think this will never happen then, I will refer you to all the moderate conservatives who said that Donald Trump will never be the Republican candidate for president.