Tag Archives: Jeremy Corbyn

Resistance isn’t futile: it is crucial

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As I watched this historic victory for the Conservative party unfold, I felt a mixture of emotions: disbelief, incredulity and anger, soon overcome by a wave of despondency. Sitting here in a cold dimly lit room in the early hours it was easy to become hopeless, imagining oneself alone and in minority.

Yet, despite romping home with a thumping Parliamentary majority the Tories don’t have a majority of the electorate. They were backed by a minority of electors across the UK (43.6%). They won in England and Wales because of our first-past the-post election system. A majority of the country still oppose their policies. That point should be remembered.

The platform the Labour Party stood on was a progressive one that made sense and seems to have been well received. However, its changed Brexit stance was unpopular in its northern heartlands. 

What have we learnt?

My initial takeaways from this are the following:

  • This ‘Brexit’ election was a freak and those in Labour heartlands who voted Tory this time around will regret their actions when they realise they’ve been conned by Boris Johnson, one of smartest, most deceitful politicians in British electoral history. (Disraeli, eat your heart out).
  • The Labour right wing will try and reverse the progressive moves made under Corbyn. This must be resisted. Labour didn’t lose because its social, economic and climate change policies were unpopular. It lost because a large chunk of voters in its traditional heartlands in England & Wales didn’t like its Brexit stance.
  • Scotland has spoken out as clearly as England & Wales: it wants the SNP and to have an independence referendum. That has to be respected. All progressive people should support this wish as Boris Johnson will try and avoid doing so. Indeed supporting the right of Scotland to have a democratic independence referendum is a touchstone for every progressive. Scottish resistance in the event of the Tories refusing to allow an Independence Referendum should be fully supported.
  • We must change the electoral system to some form of Proportional Representation, as the current system isn’t fair. I’d be saying that even if Labour had won a majority.
  • Re. climate change, I doubt Boris Johnson will do what needs to be done. Time is short, so mass civil peaceful disobedience has to be one means to push for change in the future. Again, progressives should fully support these actions.
  • We need to develop our own media to communicate progressive ideas to the masses. BBCNews and the mainstream media is effectively controlled by the establishment. It was able to effectively influence this election.

Remain is now dead for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That has to be accepted. But resistance to the policies that penalise the poor, increase division and racism in our society should be resolutely opposed.

This morning Labour is down as are the Greens and Lib Dems, but never out. Millions are relying on Jeremy Corbyn and his successor to continue to resist the forces of oppression and neo-liberal economic policies as they fight against climate change.

Resistance isn’t futile, it’s crucial if we are to get progressive change. That’s what enabled people to win the vote from the grasping hands of the establishment.

This is a battle lost but the fight for a fairer, more environmentally-friendly world must continue if we are to win the war.

Jeremy Corbyn

I am sure Jeremy Corbyn knows that much better than me.

Personally, I’d like to say thank you to him for staying the course and putting up with an unprecedented vilification campaign. He’s the reason I rejoined the Labour Party after disillusionment over the the Iraq War. He is a wise man.

Remember, resistance isn’t futile: it is crucial. We must keep fighting for what we know to be right. 

Good luck.

Lies, damned lies and Corbyn as a beacon of hope

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There’s no doubt that the US Fed should be trying to normalise interest rates. However, as only very few commentators have pointed out, it can’t. The financial sector in whose real interests it runs policy are dependent on ‘accommodative’ monetary policy: whether that continued low interest rates or quantitative easing.

They are clamouring for the Fed to hold off, joined by the IMF and World Bank.

That isn’t to say that a token (0.25%) rate rise is totally inconceivable. However, whatever the Fed does isn’t going to stop a ‘deflationary bust’ as Soc Gen analyst Albert Edwards and Professor Steve Keen have been forecasting for quite a while now.

The big lie

The biggest lie that is generally believed (by journalists, commentators and the public) is that the Fed, Bank of England, European Central Bank run policy based on what is good for the economy as a whole. They don’t. They run in for the benefit of their financial sector; banks, hedge funds etc. The ‘1% mafia’ or ‘political-financial ‘complex.

It is a point made very well by economist Michael Hudson in the following video when talking about the US economy and recent stock market volatility.

Of course, this is all going to end in tears as soon as the penny drops. The question for the Fed is: how can it avoid that penny dropping and keep the Ponzi scheme running, despite the lack of a real recovery in the US economy. Any token rate rise needs to be set in this context.

Evidence

As John Williams’ Shadowstats has written, the real unemployment rate in the US is roughly 23% but has been calculated in such a way to define it in such a way that many long term unemployed workers drop out. Moreover, in his his latest newsletter he points out that real monthly median US incomes are still below the 2009 headline trough of the formal 2007 recession.

His explanation is that: “Discussed frequently here, actual U.S. economic activity has not recovered from its collapse into 2009; it is not recovering, and it is not about to recover. Despite all the gimmicked and upside-biased GDP reporting, underlying economic reality is weak enough to have begun to surface in recent, downside headline reporting.”

Among other factors hurting economic activity, US consumers remain constrained by currently intractable liquidity woes, which prevent sustainable real or inflation-adjusted growth in personal consumption and residential investment, areas that account for more than 70% of broad, domestic economic activity.”

This conclusion vindicates Professor Steve Keen’s analysis years ago that the US/UK recoveries would be hampered by high levels of private debt, leading to a Japan like scenario.

To avoid this stagnation Steve Keen recommended only last year that goverments should be: “Writing off much of the private debt, and changing laws relating to mortgages and share ownership would be a good start. A certain amount of debt-financed investment and consumption is actually desirable in a growing economy, but while debt levels are as high as they are now thanks to the Ponzi Schemes of the last four decades, that debt-financed investment and consumption will be weak. They should also realise that a government deficit is a sensible policy most of the time in a growing economy.”

With the election of Jeremy Corby as leader of the Labour Party, there now seems to be a realistic possibility that the voters of England will be able to hear the truth about what has been going on before the next election from a party that stands a chance of being elected through our present electoral system. (Although, they won’t get much help from much of the mainstream media).

Learn more

I’ve found the works of Professor Steve Keen, Mitch Feierstein and Michael Hudson invaluable in gaining a better understanding of what is really going on. Sadly, you won’t (yet!) see any of the them interviewed at length on prime time UK television.