austerity | Winds of Change

Global Finance and Greece

Banks want money. Debts are assets, but only when they are repaid, or at least repayable. That is why international banking hates Greece. They don’t want to come to an agreed to reduce debt, because it would stop being an asset. They need to see the money coming in, they need to destroy an economy in order to prevent other countries from daring to ask questions.

Surely its their money? If I had 100 million pounds and I leant people a billion, by creating money to lend out, would I be justified in chasing down these debts because its “my money”? Surely 1) it would be seen as bloody stupid on my behalf to lend money to people who haven’t got any to pay back, and 2) if I lend more than I actually have, what the Hell is going on?

But they need their money “back”! Those they lent this level of debt to obviously did not, and will not, and do not, have the money to pay it back – or else they would not have needed such a massive sum!

Syriza have shown that they understand international finance better than bankers do. They understand that Greece is not, and never will be, in a position to pay what they owe. They understand that austerity demands cuts to pay, to pensions and to benefits, but it does not tackle international corporations, and does not look to the dysfunction of a crony capitalism economy. What the ECB demands is cuts to what the state can affect and what the state can affect is not a fucked-up economy, made worse by international banks, but just benefits, pensions and pay. Bankers think this is fine, they can get money this way, but Syriza has fought to show that demands on the ordinary person do not, cannot and should never be the way to repay national debt.

But banks want money. One cannot even say they want “their” money. They want money they made up so as loan to people who did not have the ability to repay and they are ruthless and uncaring. As far as bankers are concerned, the people of Greece can be plunged into poverty, have their lives ruined, thier futures eradicated, as long as the banks get the money they want.

Global international finance is absolutely screwed. It no longer has a relationship to realities and is chasing money in a collapsing system, determined to hoover up as much as it can in a world where its logic no longer works.

Winds of Change
29th June 2015

The Wasteland of Austerity

Austerity, the ECB, bail outs, all of these are symptoms of an anti-civilisation agenda. Its about money, its about corporations, its about profit. Its anti-people, anti-progress, anti-civilisation. The ruling agenda is all about self at the ultimate expense of everyone else. It is the Tory end-game, the Thatcher endgame. It is way beyond Maggie’s wet dream. It is using the collapse of the industrial age to make massive profits for the few, to plunge the rest into hardship, to roll back a century and a half of reforms, to seize the assets of the world whilst they are vulnerable.

Globalisation is not bringing global prosperity, it is creating a chase game for the cheapest semi-developed production economy, abandoning those which get more developed in the chase to the bottom. China’s dominance is due to its fascist political structure (its hardly Communist now!), where the state holds down wages, provides incentives, and swallows up income to invest in raw materials overseas. Without this, China would be abandoned for even cheaper producers, but their leadership is canny, knows that by keeping the global production base it keeps its income, and that by state control it can win an international capitalist game.

Whilst global trade collapses into state monopolies, modern day carpet baggers move in to sweep up the remnants of the old system. State enterprises are sold off to the private sector, national industries are sold to overseas companies, which in turn sell shares to the nouveau rich, the Russians, the Chinese, the Arabs.

What is left behind is a wasteland of austerity.

Winds of Change
29th June 2015

Let’s Win This Battle Together

Owen Jones’ closing words at the anti-austerity march on Saturday resonate with me. It is vital that all those represented there, and other progressive forces, work together to win. As Tim Farron says winning is the priority, for without it there can be no change. But as Tim recognises, and as Jeremy Corbyn epitomises, ditching one’s principles for a short-term victory is not winning, it is surrendering. Winning is to be part of the long-term narrative.

What therefore does winning together entail?

It requires that the joint opposition epitomised by the march stays together, stays focused, stays in touch, reaches out further and grows, hopefully as the mainstream progressive parties elect leaders who will choose to stand united with the people on the front line.

It requires that grassroots organisations, campaigns and battles are co-ordinated, that nobody is left to fight their own battle, or that conversely nobody abandons the overall war to focus on their own problems, dividing the united front and doing the Tories’ job for them.

It requires the progressive political parties to work together at a national level, to put aside their own pride, their own interests and work for the common good. We saw arguably the inverse of this in Northern Ireland where the Ulster Unionists and DUP agreed electoral pacts to see off progressive MPs from the Alliance Party and Sinn Fein. But this shows that it can work, and does work.

All progressive parties must commit to a pledge to introduce Proportional Representation as soon as they are in a position to do so. Tim Farron has said that if he is elected leader of the Liberal Democrats, then PR as a law will be an essential prequisite to entering any future coalition – not a referendum, not a commitment to look into it, but a pledge to table it as one of the first major pieces of legislation. All parties need to agree this.

Point 3. in my opinion is a vital component of 4. and after stating them above, they need to be expanded upon as a unity. Labour has been the largest progressive party in the United Kingdom since the 1920s and it still holds that position, and some within the party will argue that electoral pacts and proportional representation are unnecessary encumberances, and that Labour will always poll well enough to be a major force.

But 2015’s General Election shows that a political party with one quarter of the total electorate’s support, at something like 36% of the votes cast, can win an absolute majority and whilst Labour is the second party in parliament, it is part of a fractured opposition that is watching the Tories destroy the welfare state.

Maybe Labour can win again sometime under FPTP like how in 1997 they came back from 3 defeats, but the country does not have another ten years to wait for them to get their act together. Labour does not represent its MPs, nor does it even represent its members – what Labour has always respresented is the working man, though you would not this if you listened to the leadership campaigns of some of its contenders.

Electoral pacts are the only solution to ensure that the progressive forces win at the next election, whenever that may be. Winning THAT election has never been more vital for the country. Labour must swallow its pride and stand some PPCs down against Liberal Democrats, Greens, Plaid and even the SNP, if they will live up to their belief in PR and reciprocate.

In turn, the Lib Dems must stand down candidates against Labour, against the Greens and against Plaid where that is needed. The Greens must stand down candidates against Labour, the Lib Dems and Plaid, and Plaid must stand down candidates against Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens where that is a necessary option.

One is not looking to change the face of the system, but to swing key marginals in a progressive direction. Where the Liberal Democrats pose the strongest challenge to a Tory incumbent then the other progressive parties must stand their candidates down. This is going to be a challenge, not least because in the wake of #GE2015 the parties are going to need to look at recent polling data, not exclusively the vote in May 2015 where the Lib Dems, in coalition, saw their vote collapse.

There are easily enough seats available for Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens, Plaid and the Alliance Party to pick up enough to overturn a Tory majority in Westminster. What they must do is dare, and having dared what they must then do is stick to their promises. Labour especially needs a leader who puts decency at the heart of what he does, and that man is Jeremy Corbyn.

Winds of Change

Anti Austerity March in London

Though I could not be there, I fully support the unified front against Austerity, and followed closely the march and the speeches made. It was good to see a wide spectrum attending – trade unions, political parties, Socialist Worker, Charlotte Church, Owen Jones, Russell Brand, activists, local groups, and ordinary people.

As a Liberal Democrat I was somewhat concerned I could discern neither a party presence nor any known figure from the party. From Labour, we had Jeremy Corbyn, from the Greens an official contingent featuring both Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas, and from Sinn Fein, Martin McGuinness was present.

To a degree, a broad popular movement does not rely on its political party support, but on grassroots movements, but for national representation, and for hope of change it is vital that the political parties are there.

Owen Jones made a strong and powerful speech, and it is this which I wish to blog on, whilst acknowledging interviews that @ChunkyMark (Artist Taxi Driver) did with Charlotte Church, and with Sheila Coleman of UNITE.

Owen spoke about the rights we enjoy today, rights which were not gifted to us by the benevolence of those in power but were won by the struggle and sacrifice of the people. This is a key point – a single march probably won’t achieve anything, but the continuum has always been towards more rights, better conditions, whether it was the early trade unionists fighting for the rights and dignity of the working people, or the chartists fight for democracy, the sufragettes for equal votes, or the marches for equal rights for LGBT people.

Marchers today can rightly be proud at the heritage they now embody, but it is a heritage not just under threat, not just under attack, but one which is facing imminent eradication at the hands of the rich.

IT IS NOT FOR US TO ALLOW MANY OF THE THINGS THAT OUR ANCESTORS FOUGHT FOR AT SUCH COST AND SACRIFICE TO BE STRIPPED AWAY BY A GOVERNMENT OF THE RICH, BY THE RICH AND FOR THE RICH

As Owen said, and as Charlotte Church and Sheila Coleman also said in their interviews with Mark McGowan, the march is not an end but a beginning, it is a start, where we must go into our communities and organise. We have to reach out to people who have not been reached out, and we have to engage them, because it is their rights, not just those of the people on the march which are being destroyed. It is vital not to just “talk to ourselves” but to spread the message, create local activism, and work together.

LET’S STAY TOGETHER, LET’S FIGHT TOGETHER, LET’S WIN THIS BATTLE TOGETHER

I think that’s how Owen ended his speech. If it wasn’t, then it may just as well have been. It was the key aspect of his message, and it is resonates.

The first part – let’s stay together. This is key. Owen showed how the politics of the rich is to set the ordinary person against each other, to convince them that the reason they are losing their rights is because someone else is stealing them. Its the foreigners stealing our jobs! This is absolute nonsense, but it suits the establishment to promote this message to divide the opposition, and by dividing them to rule them.

Let’s fight together – if the various cross-party organisations do not come together to work in unison, then the force of concerted action is lost, as the action becomes divided between many smaller organisations, smaller marches, smaller protests. Grassroots works from bottom up – the local issue will then coalesce with other local issues, to become a regional force, and so on up. But the danger of opposition is that each group can go off on their own, forget about the unity of opposition, fight their own local battles without seeing the larger national picture. It is beholden on the organisers to make sure that these battles form part of a unified opposition to so-called austerity, and to the Tory agenda.

Let’s win this battle together – I am a strong believer both in Proportional Representation and in electoral pacts to achieve the progressive majority under First Past The Post that will allow PR to be passed. With the progressive parties all fighting each other, the vote will be split, the chances of winning will be diminished. Just looking at the Liberal Democrats, there are a dozen seats that could have been won if the other progressive parties had left the field open. The same is true for Labour, for the Greens, and for the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and Sinn Fein (both of whom suffered from the electoral pact between the Ulster Unionists and the DUP, to prove the point).

I will write more on that latter point, but togetherness is vital for victory, and every progressive party needs a leader who is open to working with other parties to achieve this end. Tim Farron is this for the Liberal Democrats and Jeremy Corbyn is this for Labour.

Winds of Change
22nd June 2015

What is Austerity?

Austerity is an illusion. Countries carry high levels of national debt. A country’s economy is a complex beast, it bears little resemblance to a household budget. It is locked into a completely different relationship of power, of debt, and of income.

Austerity is an ideological attack on the poor. The logical countermeasures to deal with a debt in an emergency are to slash a huge budgetary commitment, or to increase the highest gaining tax to get more.

The illogical way is the way that the Tories have adopted is to try to adopt a systemic change for the most widespread low-yield gains. If you can get one hit of a million by taxing one man, or a million hits of one pound by hitting a million people, the Tories will do the latter.

But if we are talking a billion, we are avoiding taxing a thousand millionaires in order to try to hit one million poor people for ten pounds each. And so it escalates.

This is not economics. It is systemic ideological abuse of the poor.

Not only this, but in simple economic terms if a million poor people spend a tenner it will be in their locality, their own town, their own local economy, and it will boost profits, employment and opportunity in that area.

If a thousand millionaires spend a million it is likely to be overseas, on high value goods that Britain does not manufacture. Even if we import them, it is a much reduced fraction that goes to jobs in the UK and thus the local economy.

The net gain may be equal, but the net drain is massively disproportionate. This is expecially true if you consider geographic considerations – these thousand millionaires would be mostly in London, then in other big cities. Taxing them would be a tiny tiny percentage of the economic life of London, a minute fraction of other big cities, not least because as I said the majority throughput on their expenditure would go overseas.

Compare this to the million poor people. If a thousand of them live in one small town, and the government takes a tenner away from each of them, then you have reduced that town’s revenues by ten thousand pounds. Almost all their income was being spent locally, so the net loss is local. Local businesses with diminished takings, local employment stagnating or reduced, local opportunities diminished.

A singularly ideological choice. To destroy local economies where people do not vote Tory rather than to tax one thousandth of the number of rich people who donate money to the Tories. This is not just an ideological attack on the poor. This is corruption at the highest possible level. Punish the poor to spare the rich donor.

It is not just unjust and self-serving, it is not just economically insane, but it is morally evil and it is something that all opposition parties have an absolute moral obligation to stand up against.

Winds of Change
17th June 2015

Left Unity

Unity of the Left

I have committed my political allegiance to the Liberal Democrats but this is on the basis that they will renounce the policies of austerity, will move away from if not apologise for policies that they voted for under the coalition, that they will embrace a broad spread of issues to campaign on, from the Human Rights Act to the EU Referendum, from fighting immigration laws to campaigning to legalise soft drugs.

More than this, I wholeheartedly believe that the only way to defeat the evils of the Tory monster that has been unleashed on this country is for the left to unite behind these causes. The Greens, Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru, the SNP, the SDLP and the Labour Party if it remains a left-wing party are natural allies in all of these fights.

UKIP as a populist party are also an ally of convenience on some of them, and the major right wing parties, the Tories and the DUP all contain individuals with a conscience, and with common sense, with an understanding that today’s Tory policies are destructive, divisive and dumb.

Left-unity is the only entity that will force any vote into the area of doubt, where Cameron has to rely on those of his party who have hearts, souls and brains. It is the only approach that will lead to a government defeat.

Labour or the SNP abandoning left unity is a disaster, but both have already indicated that there are battles which they will immediately abstain from. This is absolutely disgraceful.

The SNP is no longer a party of protest or of representation, with 50+ MPs it is a party of national opposition and it has a moral obligation to act as such a party for the whole UK

Labour under its caretaker leader has already abandoned two major fights for no reason. It has come out in favour of an EU Referendum, despite the fact that such a referendum is under Tory rules, will only have the choices of worse or really bloody bad, not OK or better. And it now supports an arbitrary benefits cap even lower than the one existing now which it voted against! The caretaker regime is taking the party wildly to the right, preparing the way for a new right-wing leader who will abandon the cause of left-unity.

Tactical considerations that a Tory victory in England could mean a chance for Scotland, or that abandonment of principles on one issue can allow a better focus on others just play into Tory hands. Conceding ground to fight makes no sense when the enemy has more forces than you do. Only a unified stand from all of the opposition parties can defeat the enemy. If you don’t want to defeat the enemy, get the hell out of politics!

The Liberal Democrats should fight on all of these grounds and welcome support from all-comers. No more shall shallow considerations matter. This is the only war that matters – defeating the Tories on as many of its policies as possible. This will take organisation, demonstrations, campaigns and protests. Sinn Fein is as capable in these areas as anyone, no matter that its MPs won’t take up their seats or vote, their MPs work hard for their communities and energise them. Left unity means working with your allies of conscience and this means burying the ancient hatchet. It also means accepting that the votes that the Greens or Plaid Cymru got in former Lib Dem constituencies were not the cause of the defeat of the incumbents, rather on the one hand a symptom of disillusion, and on the other hand a strong affirmation of left unity.

I would be proud to stand alongside Tim Farron, Dennis Skinner, Martin McGuinness, Caroline Lucas, Mhairi Black, or Leanne Wood on any demonstration or protest march. All of these are left figures with a conscience, with beliefs, with a heart. That may be uncomfortable reading, it may be a reorientation of the past, but this is 2015 and the enemy have won, we have to unite to defeat them.

Winds of Change
29th May 2015