Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Corbyn

The Realpolitik of Britain’s Interest in a LePen Victory

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On February 24, 2017

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Marine LePen continues to close the margins on a final round run-off. She’s still likely to lose, but it’s getting closer.

The odd thing here is that if Britain intends to Brexit, which it does, it would be very helpful to Britain if LePen won, because right now Brussels is determined to punish Britain severely for Brexit, so as to dissuade other possible rebels.

But LePen has said she wants Frexit, and if both France and England are leaving, it becomes quite hard to “punish” them, so long as they work together even slightly. That’s just too much of Europe, and especially Europe’s economy.

As I said in the past, I’d favor Brexit under a left-wing government, even minus the Euro, the binding agreements that are part of the EU make running a real left-wing government impossible, but under the Conservatives, it’s likely be a fiasco.

However the case for France is a lot stronger, because France isn’t winning under the Euro and hasn’t been for some time. France would be better out of the Euro. Again, it would be better that it be done by someone other than LePen, but the left has emasculated itself in these debates by refusing to be for nationalism, and thus ceding the anti-EU argument mostly to the right. (There are some exceptions.)

Frankly, the entire south of Europe should leave the Euro (though not necessarily the EU), and so should France. It just is not in their interest to stay, at least not if “interest” means “the interests of most of the population.”

It is a pity that people like LaPen and Farrage are the people filled with passionate conviction, while most of the left swings in the wind pathetically, and the only major left-wing leader of conviction, Corbyn, has polls leaving him far, far behind the Conservative party. (Though I consider that more an indictment of Britons than Corbyn.)

If the good people won’t do the right thing, it falls to the bad people to do the right thing in so much the wrong way that it may turn out to be the wrong thing.

This, by the way, is true as much of the EU as of leaving the EU. The EU and the Euro in particular were set up to force people into neoliberal policy. This was a betrayal of the spirit of the EU, which was about preventing war, not about impoverishing people. The technocrats are so convinced they are right that no amount of real world evidence of failure can convince them otherwise.

And so the right-wing rises. And Europeans are embracing them more and more.

Create an intolerable present with a clearly intolerable future and people will take a winger on very unpleasant people for even a slight chance to change things.

So it is, and so it shall be–if our elites don’t start changing, or we don’t change our elites.

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The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

The Lies at the Heart of Our Dying Order

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On December 16, 2016

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One should understand why people have lost trust in experts, the media, and politicians.

It is not difficult, it is the same reason people lost faith in Soviet Communism: Promises were made that turned out to be lies, those promises were not kept.

Soviet Communism was supposed to lead to a cornucopia and a withering away of the state. Instead it lead to a police state and a huge drought of consumer goods, and often enough, even food. Communism failed to meet its core promises.

The world order we live in was born in 1979 or 1980, with Thatcher and Reagan. It made a few core promises:

  • If the rich have more money, they will create more jobs.
  • Lower taxes will lead to more prosperity.
  • Increases in housing and stock market prices will increase prosperity for everyone.
  • Trade deals and globalization will make everyone better off.

The above core promises all turned out to be lies. It’s that simple. For the last 40-odd years, most of the population experienced either stagnation or decline.

Understand clearly: By 1979, people had lost faith in the post-WWII order. They were willing to try something new.
That “new” order has now betrayed too many people, and it is falling. It will continue to fail. We are in the twilight of neoliberalism (a longer article on that topic is forthcoming).

This is the reason why people are going for “fake news.” This is why people are willing to listen to demagogues. This is why people don’t trust the press–and why should they? The press has lied to them repeatedly, it is the original fake news. This is why people don’t listen when hundreds of economists say Brexit is bad–why should they? Most economists missed the housing bubble.

Neoliberalism has discredited everyone who bought in to it. Who didn’t buy into it? Well, the hard left and what people are now calling the “alt-right.”

So people are turning in those directions, though more to the right. Because people are ideologically and identity driven, and most are not intellectuals, what they look for are signifiers that someone is not like the people who screwed them, who lied to them for 40 years.

Trump does not talk like those people. Farrage does not talk like those people. On the left, Corbyn does not talk like those people and, to a large extent, neither did Sanders.

And so, people are turning to people who don’t parse like the “typical” elite. Many of those people are also selling them a bill of goods (Trump, to a large extent), or are nasty pieces of work (Trump, Alt-Right). To a lot of people, however, that doesn’t matter: They can’t take the pain any more. They are assured a long decline and they will take a flyer on anyone who might shake things up.

Lying is bad policy. It may get you what you want in the short run, or even the medium run, but it destroys the very basis of your power and legitimacy. Lying is what neoliberal politicians, journalists (yes, yes they are neoliberal), and their experts have done to themselves and they destroyed both their own power and legitimacy and that of the order they supported. No one with sense trusts them: If you trust these people, you have no sense, it is definitional. I always laugh when some idiot says, “But 90 percent of economists think X is bad.”
FAIL. They also missed the housing bubble. They lied or were “mistaken” about trade deals. Their opinion means nothing.

All this screaming about fake news is something I will take seriously when the New York Times, who helped sell the Iraq war based on “fake news,” is listed as fake.
The current order has very little credibility left, and they are losing more and more. Look at all the poll failures: Somehow, the polls almost always get it wrong against insurgents, not for them.
No, neoliberalism is dying, and its defenders are discredited, and both things deserve to be the case. That does not mean its death-throes will be pleasant (they won’t be) or that what replaces it will be better, just that it has run its course.

Those who supported it took their rewards: The top tier got filthy, stinking rich, their courtiers received good jobs and money, even as both disappeared for their victims. They will have to be satisfied with that, because posterity will be absolutely scathing to them, as it is to the generation leading up to World War I.
Lie repeatedly, fail to keep your promises, and things like Trump and Brexit will be the result. It is that simple.

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Labour National Executive Votes Corbyn is on the Ballot and Purges Members

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On July 12, 2016

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Jeremy CorbynSo, both sides got something.  Corbyn is on the ballot, but all members for the last six months are not eligible to vote, and those members who could vote before under the 3 pound membership (most of whom signed up to help Corbyn), must sign up for the 25 pound membership during a 48 hour window.

There can be no question that the NEC membership ruling hurts Corbyn, and badly, but labour unions are still for him, and I suspect he’s still the frontrunner.

The rebel MPs may still take the question of whether Corbyn is on the ballot to the courts.

I have been covering the Corbyn situation as closely as I have because it is important, very important. Corbyn is a modestly radical socialist, and if he winds up changing the Labour party in his image, it becomes an important anti-neoliberal force in one of the world’s most important countries.  This is the potentially the first serious, English speaking world, crack in the “you may choose from neoliberal party A or neoliberal party B” facade in my adult lifetime.

It matters, because as long as we can only choose neoliberalism, we cannot get off the train to hell.

Note that Corbyn, for example, believes in workplace democracy.  He is quite a bit more to the left than Bernie Sanders was.

Update-in case you’re British. Unite: https://t.co/IPBlltKdBw

labour Vote

Update 2: Turns out to be even more sleazy than I realized.

Labour Meeting pic


Corbyn may take this to the courts, himself, since the Labour website people were signing up on as members said they would have a vote for leader.

I do not know if the NEC can be recalled to change this.

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What the UK Labour Party Leadership Rules Actually Say About Nominating a Leader

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On July 11, 2016

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Angela Eagle has launched her leadership challenge against Jeremy Corbyn.

The plan is to keep Corbyn off the ballot. The rebels claim he needs to be nominated, his camp claims the leader does not need to be nominated.

Here are the rules:(pdf)

2.
Election of leader and deputy leader
A.
The leader and deputy leader shall be elected separately in accordance with rule C below,unless rule E below applies.
B.
Nomination
i.
In the case of a vacancy for leader or deputy leader, each nomination must be supported by 12.5 per cent of the Commons members of the PLP. Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void.
ii.
Where there is no vacancy, nominations may be sought by potential challengers each year prior to the annual session of party conference. In this case any nomination must be supported by 20 percent of the Commons members of the PLP.
Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void.

Those who wish to suggest that the rebels are correct, or that the law could easily be read either way, tend to quote only one part:

In this case any nomination must be supported by 20 percent of the Commons members of the PLP.

Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void.

This section later seems key to the “not on ballot” argument.

Valid nominations shall be printed in the final agenda for party conference, together with the names of the nominating organisations and Commons members ofthe PLP supporting the nominations. In the case of a vacancy under E below this information shall be included with the documentation circulated with any ballot.

This suggests that everyone must be nominated in order to go on the ballot.

The first section clearly implies that only challengers need nominations. The second section, however, speaks of nominees being printed.

I am given to understand that those who drafted the regulations say that the intent was for the leader to automatically be on the ballot.

There is a strong argument that, legally, Corbyn, in the name of fairness, should be excluded from the ballot. You may read it here.

In any case, it seems clear that this will go to the courts. I am not sanguine, but we shall see.

I would suspect, if Corbyn is not on the ballot, that we may see some very bitter battles as members attempt to de-select and re-select MPs. There is also a real chance of the party splitting (as there is if Corbyn is on the ballot). The Conservative party will do very well out of this, but clearly it is most important to rebel MPs to keep the party as a neo-conservative party, not to oppose the Conservative party. (As it happens, I think they’re right. The Conservatives will do mostly what they would do, just somewhat more of it.)

The game continues.

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