Is punishing migrants genuinely worth your own human rights?

By Daviemoo

In the last few days alone, Sunak’s government has passed the Rwanda bill, ready to send flights of migrants to a country with almost no housing stock on the verge of war with the Congo at the same time as passing even more measures to punish those on “benefits”, stating that he will remove payment from those who have been out of work for a certain amount of time.
How will any of these moves help our lives improve? The answer is- they won’t. But too many British people will be swayed by another layer of varnish dumped on the cracked walls of our political existence to ask themselves how punishing others uplifts us.

When it comes to Rwanda, Sunak is right that the boats need to stop; not because every boat is heaving with rapists ready to attack British women or with people ready to make a life on benefits. Because it’s clear that the UK’s asylum system cannot handle the numbers or the methods. Rather than focus on a workable strategy like opening processing centres in key countries and making the long awaited safe routes that multiple MPs have failed to describe including ex Home Secretary Suella Braverman at a select committee hearing and as the government ignores widespread alarm about the state of- and safety of Rwanda in terms of migrant safety. Even this morning the news reports that five migrants are feared dead off the coast of Calais, using this as the perfect rationale to push the scheme. But nobody ever seems to be able to answer the crucial questions.

Previously, Sunak and Braverman have spoken of how the Rwanda bill will “break the funding model of people smugglers”. But think logically: the boats will still fill with people who may possibly be sent to Rwanda after arriving. How will that stop people smugglers from being paid? It doesn’t. Because Sunak, because Braverman, think throwing money into the burning pit of racist ideologue is a solution. They don’t want numbers to go down, they want angry, stupid people to be satisfied by an expensive, unworkable plan that doesn’t even address the issue.

But what is the wider problem of this ideological shrapnel grenade of a policy?
Sunak will soon face his first legal challenge from the ECHR. Sunak will use this legal challenge as a lynchpin to further press for removal from the ECHR’s purview: Whilst this isn’t good for those whose rights are abused who have come to the UK from abroad, we as citizens will still be protected by the human rights act- but notice that this, too, is under attack. Truss herself has recently spoken of wanting to tear up the human rights act, and abolish the high court- meaning the government cannot be challenged by its’ own people, essentially beholden only to its own rules.

Let’s look at exactly what the ECHR protects, shall we? Let’s decide which rights we’re fine to forego shall we?

  1. The Right to life
    The right to live. Shall we forego the right to live, in the name of stopping those boats?
    Priti Patel once made an argument that the ECHR would thwart attempts to bring back the death penalty- despite the death penalty literally being offered as a loophole in the very ruling of the ECHR to protect the right to life.
  2. Prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
    Ah yes, who needs protection from torture, inhuman or degrading treatments or punishments! We know the tories aren’t the type of people to enact cruel and unusual punishments against their own citizens… right?
  3. Prohibition of slavery and forced labour
    Did you know that next to Albanians, British People are the most at risk of modern slavery in the UK? And as that’s the case, does it seem wise to abolish the protection of this right?
  4. Right to liberty and security
    Liberty- freedom… Remember that one of the most famous American quotes of all time is “give me liberty or give me death”. People literally died for the right to liberty.
  5. Right to a fair trial
    Who needs fair trial, eh?! Who needs a fair trial, under a government who has been found to breach the law multiple times.
  6. No punishment without law
    Punish the innocent to get to the guilty does seem to be in vogue with Brits
  7. Right to respect for private and family life
    Did you know Tory MP Own Paterson is taking the government to the ECHR over his breach of privacy during the scandal of him taking money from a company who lobbied him for bigger covid contracts? Weird how they like the court when it can help them, isn’t it?
  8. Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion
    FREE SPEECH! Unless you say something we don’t like, then we want to take away your right to say it- right?
  9. Freedom of expression
    An addition to above- but who needs to express themselves in a country where if you behave perfectly you don’t get punished! What a normal way of thinking.
  10. Freedom of assembly and association
    I’d argue that this one is already heavily under assault… the UK’s ridiculous anti protest laws were meant to challenge this one, in the hopes we’d bring cases and the tories could start the association process of “foreign courts meddling”.
  11. Right to marry and right to found a family
    Imagine if this right was denied you… is that a life worth living?
  12. Right to an effective remedy
    Who needs that! I prefer ineffective remedies.
  13. Prohibition of discrimination
    Imagine how upset gammon would be if their human right to the prohibition of discrimination went? You can be racist if you want now- but imagine what can be said and done back to you…
  14. Protection of property
    Seems like we might want this? No? Not an important right?
  15. Right to education
    I wish more of our red foreheaded British fellows would use this one to be honest
  16. Right to free elections
    I mean who needs free elections? The government are so trustworthy!

    All too often, Brexit defenders will state that we need to make our own laws and decisions: but who is doing that? A loud, slack jawed minority who hold the tories in populist thrall. They don’t care about how much our bills are, how restricted our rights, how bad our living conditions, how strangled our NHS- provided they see blood from others. The ones who rail for hours and days and weeks against transgender people, migrants, people off work with mental health conditions, people with different coloured skin or accents from other countries. I haven’t made a single law based decision in years and those I’ve tried to make, I’ve lost. I’m led to believe my views aren’t popular… which ones? Green policy? That’s popular across the entire political spectrum. Wealth tax? Only rich people and indoctrinated poor people are against that. The permanent enshrining of basic human rights in a constitution? What absolute idiots would be against that!?

    We live in a world where the worst examples of humanity are used as justification to punish an innocent majority, and more and more people seem to accept this framing. We just have to send migrants to Rwanda because some of them are bad horrible people- never mind the fact that there was never a safe route for them to come, so how can you be angry at people for not taking an option they don’t have?! Being angry at people for coming to the country you say is great is insane. And the weirdest part of it is, attacking their human rights is obviously a foolish argument because they are human rights- and you are a human!
    Think of it this way; if we decide the worst of us don’t deserve human rights, all it takes is enough people to decide the not so bad of us don’t, then the okay but not perfect people… Removing human rights is out of the question because it is always, always a slippery slope. There but for the grace of fate goes you: and imagine what the tories- or, dare I say it, a Starmer government, would do with dissenters when not bound by layers of human rights protections.

    One answer to this is in fact to constitutionalise our rights- but is now the time to ask? Do we really want Sunak- Truss- Braverman- Starmer- Tice to be deciding which of our valuable rights to be constitutionalised? I sure don’t.

    We’re in a mess, led as always by the people we’re chained to- the most unaware of us. And I don’t even blame the unaware. When you’re living in a country where your daily experience is to worry about paying your bills, worry about that lump under your arm, worry about your kids eating enough… why would you give a shit about some weird leftist on the internet giving you dire warnings about your human rights?
    Some of the worst regimes in history happened alongside peoples’ very pedestrian, day to day lives. They shopped, went to the doctors, got married, received medical treatment under the Nazis. We’re literally watching Israelis throw mini dance parties to disrupt aid trucks from getting to the starving civilians in Gaza.
    This is what we’re fostering: we’re seeding the ground ready for our government to commit horrendous atrocities, as the peons who couldn’t even conceptualise fighting back will throng the streets, still wondering about their own lives in the face of the sanctioned horrors happening around them.

    All too often we’re told we’re catastrophising- I remember being told I was catastrophising about austerity, catastrophising about the police, crime, courts & sentencing bill that has gutted protest rights, catastrophising about our gutted protest rights, about our ability to vote. It’s harder than it’s been in living memory to protest, it’s harder to take industrial action, it’s harder to simply vote as Rees-Mogg airily talks on stage about gerrymandering and how it backfired on them… We aren’t catastrophising when we’re in the middle of the crash- as the glass and metal screams, shatters and twists around us.

    All too often history seems to reflect a peoples who stood around watching horrors unfold, only to scratch their heads and ask “how on earth did that happen?”
    How did Nazi Germany come to pass? How are the GOP so radical in America that they’re talking about the “end of democracy”? The answer is- not enough people gave a shit and stopped it. The UK’s government has failed its citizens for years and its reaction is not to get better at the job, it’s to make its citizens quieter. The signs are there- exactly how many klaxons need to sound, before British people panic?

    Benefits? Hardly

    The truth is, our mindset doesn’t help. How many of us have grown up in homes where we’re told that suffering is moral, that it’s righteous to work yourself to death, that it’s lazy to rest? And how macro can that mindset go to? It’s righteous to forego human rights, because if we’re good little robots, why do we need them? It’s why when it comes to HELPING OUR OWN, the usual refrain we hear when people who don’t want to help migrants. Better to help our own, they say as they cheer through punitive benefits sanctions ushered in by Sunak to gut people’s ability to take time to recover from mental health issues.
    As a person who had a breakdown in 2016 who took three months off work and ended up so broken I couldn’t even buy milk at Tescos briefly, I can assure you that HELPING OUR OWN doesn’t start by forcing them to work when they feel like they can’t even talk to another person.

    Even the name of Benefits is ironic- what’s the benefit of? Public payment for not working.

    The irony is when you’re a leftist people assume you want everyone to be able to claim everything when the fact is, I’d love if we could practically abolish benefits because the country works well enough for us that we don’t need benefits to top up low salaries so people can afford to live; I don’t want there to be a cap on child benefits because I want people to be able to afford to have and raise kids without benefits at all. Crazy right? Benefits are not a benefit, they’re a stipend and they pay back into the very system that lends them out: that £50 a benefits claimant spends on a haircut pays that hairdresser’s hourly rate, pays the rent for the salon… it’s a big circle. We do nothing about the rich, punish the poor, punish the migrants and things just keep getting worse! How odd. Must be the trans people- or those uppety women with all those lovely reproductive rights- bet if we took those away people would fall in line.

    How did we become so foolish, so naive? And where does it end. Nowhere good, I fear.

    Dangerous times are ahead, and oozing ever closer- and the question to ask is: what will we do about it?


    A personal update from politically enraged

    By Daviemoo

    The last eighteen months have been absolutely ridiculous.

    In November ’22 I caught covid which wasn’t a big deal as these things go – I work from home, I had a support network so I just hunkered down and let the disease work it’s way out and through. A few months later I went to the doctor for a cough that wouldn’t go away and the X ray I had revealed I had masses in my lung.
    As I have a family history riddled with cancer, I was pretty petrified as you can imagine.

    More tests, including a CT scan, an MRI and a vivisection of my lung tissue later not to mention more blood tests than you can shake a fist full of beef jerky at they concluded I had sarcoidosis. Sarc comes in many flavours and mine is “semi serious” because I have infiltration in the lung, along with swollen lymph nodes. I’ve struggled this last year with exhaustion and all manner of other weird little symptoms that, whenever I’m sick, bring me to ask “is this sarc” first.

    Towards the late end of 2023 I was managing my sarc pretty well- work out but not too hard, sleep but not too little or much, eat but not too unhealthily… I was doing ok.

    Then in December I ended up with what I’m referring to as “mystery illness palooza 3000”.

    I thought I was going to die in early January where it felt like I was suffocating if I lay down, and I was regularly coughing so hard it was making me physically sick. This went on for all of January, as doctors kept dismissing me and telling me to wait, all of February as I was referred for a chest X ray I was told was “clear” only to find out later it wasn’t actually, and most of march. In late March I started to feel more myself at last, but I still had to be referred to an ENT because something was wrong with my throat now- my voice has changed and doesn’t act like it always has. I ended up visiting a very nice ENT who confirmed I have a vocal polyp- yesterday I had an MRI to scan this to confirm I don’t have cancer- hopefully that’ll be normal but I have to wait 2 weeks for the joys of that.
    I was also re-referred to my sarc doctor because the hospital missed that my lymph nodes are enlarged because of sarc and that means it’s getting worse.

    Then I caught a little cold, no big deal! Annoying but fine. Recovered… and then I caught covid again. Whilst it hasn’t been anything like the debilitating experience of my first infection where I genuinely did nothing but sleep for a week, it has been crap to say the least.

    I am fed up. The last year and a half has been a constant struggle with health. I suspect sarc is dragging on my immune system somehow and so I’m more vulnerable to illnesses than ever.

    I want to work harder to produce more decent content- but I can’t. I can’t focus enough to read, I can’t finish articles in a timely manner, I’m sick of sitting in front of my phone when I look and feel shitty 24/7, I can’t speak for a long time without my voice being weird, I’m constantly exhausted.

    I’m really trying but putting on a front is bullshit when you’re struggling this much and this constantly. So forgive me if I take a step back for a while folks. There are plenty of amazing people out there who will give you all manner of info and journalistic intrepitude. I need a rest. Check out No Justice on stream, or Turn Left on YouTube, look at any manner of the fantastic hard working people who put out well done content every day, week, month about the government’s fuckery: goattmeal, Aid Thompsin, ChampagneSocialist, All the people that spend all their time doing this work to hold our crap leaders to some type of account.

    Ya boi needs a rest.

    I feel like I’m letting people down, because I know a lot of people like what I do- but I’ve not been well enough to do it properly and I can see that in how I make content. I’ll still be writing when I want to but for the moment I need to focus on getting back to some semblance of healthy because I just cant keep living like I’m going from sickness to sickness.

    Wish me luck and no doubt speak to everyone down the line ❤

    Politically Fucking Exhausted Disease Boye- AKA Daviemoo

    This isn’t about Rayner’s taxes- it’s about the British people, and what we’re willing to accept.

    By Daviemoo

    Governmental corruption should be rooted out wherever it lies, however big or small it is- but British voters don’t seem to grasp that simple point, electing instead to overlook an acceptable level of dodgy behaviour if their team do it- and that’s why we’re in such a mess!

    First of all, it wouldn’t shock me if the press ends up reporting that the Rayner scandal is nothing, a dead duck, a ridiculous diversion from more tory idiocy- it wouldn’t be the first time.
    Lets not forget Harry Cole publicly moistening himself over the idea that Starmer would go if he was found to have broken the law during lockdown despite practically nuzzling up to Johnson, a man who broke the law repeatedly and flagrantly. So it wouldn’t even mildly surprise me if the Rayner stuff turns out to be arrant nonsense. But it’s bigger than that. The story you think it’s about? it’s not about that.

    The tories are bad. I could sit here and rattle off a dozen reasons in less than a minute to explain why they don’t deserve to be in power- in fact, I often do. And I could make the same arguments that people I genuinely admire are making right now, about how if Angela Rayner did wriggle out of a bit of tax it’s not really comparable to the millions we’re accustomed to the tories dodging, between shooting PPE contracts down the throats of their donors- but it isn’t about the scale of tax ducking, it’s purely about the purity of governance we should- must, in fact, expect our leaders to abide by.

    I was told yesterday that we ‘should expect this from politicians, they’re all corrupt’.
    What a sad indictment of our politics that people in the UK believe this: that all our politicians are bad and we just have to hope they’re less bad when they’re in power. What’s the point in voting, in protesting, in fighting for better if all of our politicians truly are of a piece?
    I happen to think it’s normal to aim for better politics, better politicians. better behaviour: is that wrong? Should we give up on fighting for better because the same is inevitable and worse is the only alternative? I fear that’s the way many brits think, happy to overlook lesser scandals because at least it’s not the greater kind. And there’s also the convenient overlooking of the element of self fulfilling prophecy this fits into… There reason we don’t get better is that we don’t ask and fight for better and we accept mediocre, so what incentive is there to offer better? I feel like collectively we just expect better politicians to manifest from nothing, not realising that we have to hold them to high standards before they’ll rise to them.

    People are so keen to see the back of the conservatives they’re willing to accept these lesser scandals as a price… but how do we get to greater scandal? Did the tories lurch into power immediately committing horrendous page 1 scandal after page 1 scandal, or did it ratchet up over time, starting with smaller stories that people sighed and tutted over but then normalised? Did it grow, over and over, getting bigger, deeper every time, as the tories realised they wouldn’t- couldn’t be- held to account by the public because of their majority and their perceived patriotism as they drove the country into worse standards with every decision.

    Corruption begins as rot- a small, practically unnoticeable dot.
    When it is noticed, sometimes it’s just a patch and you need to address it aggressively and quickly to stop the spread and propagation of more- that makes sense, no? You wouldn’t just ignore rot in your house, right? But sometimes, that dot is the tip of the iceberg as it were- the rot you see is the waving arm of the torso stuck deep beneath, and it has seeped so deeply into the woodwork that the whole thing needs to go.
    If we allow smaller transgression from an incumbent government and don’t mete out justice now, who is to say the problem won’t grow- or hasn’t already, little to our knowledge?
    This isn’t about Labour, or red team or even individual politicians so much as the level of corruption we’re willing to accept.
    If we are to accept that our politicians are corrupt and there’s a certain level that comes with the job, are we going to do anything to discourage its propagation? Will we fight for a permanent oversight committee who constantly scrutinises government members’ behaviour?
    The answer is no. Brits are seemingly so desperate to get rid of the conservatives that not only are they willing to overlook or forgive the sort of corruption we’re sick of seeing from the tories, but actively won’t safeguard against it out of fear that the tories will somehow win.

    I often speak of the legacy of fear the tories have left us with- our spirits so broken that many of us are willing to accept watery governance as a solution to 14 years of tory stupidity. I feel sorry for people that broken down, but it’s also irritating to watch white liberal people constantly whine about how they won’t survive another term of tories as if white liberal people are those who suffer most. You will survive. You’ll be miserable, it won’t be easy- but, survive? Stop being so polemic, of course you’ll survive. Others won’t, but they don’t get heard over you.
    I have sympathy- we’re all more miserable under the conservatives. But now is the time for us to harden our skins and fight for more, not accept less. We don’t need a government who comes in and “steadies the ship”- we need to sail out of the choppy water! We don’t need a government who is going to do a bit of dodgy tax stuff: we need a government who would never even contemplate it. But who is asking for that? Not the people on the internet enthusiastically talking about how we don’t need to focus on one instance of a labour MP possibly doing something bad- they’re saying they’re ok with that because the other side is worse, when the message our politicians should hear is none of you should do this shit. Are they? It doesn’t matter whether Rayner has or hasn’t done it – it matters that people are willing to accept that sort of behaviour as priced in to removing the tories, setting out an intangible level of government misbehaviour we’ll accept without laying out the terms to each other. Are we going to have a collective countrywide sit-down to discuss the cutoff levels for what corruption we’re ok with and what we aren’t ok with? No, because admitting you’re ok with some corruption is something the liberal voter base of the current Labour Party won’t do- they won’t admit it but they sure will do it, wink wink nudge nudge don’t mention the war, Basil.

    The thing is, there’s unassailable logic in the argument: the tories are dreadful, evil, corrupt, bad at governance: There is no argument there. But again, the tories didn’t start out with the level of corruption they’re at now- it’s a cumulative effect, where more and more dodgy stuff is done and written off as the limits of what’s acceptable are tested. What is our limit? What’s the cutoff point where we say “actually no, that’s too far”- look at all the Tory scandal and corruption and incompetence we’ve rolled over for- are we really starting this merry go round over again, to see what limits of labour malfeasance the public will eagerly devour? If the tories got us this far labour has miles of road to walk where people might be disgruntled but they’ll overlook it, because at least it’s not those nasty tories– but it’s still bad.

    People will accuse me of having double standards for focusing on Rayner in this article when I’m one of the few who doesn’t have double standards here- I don’t think anyone should be doing this- hell, id don’t even believe Rayner did and until there’s proof the jury is out- the key difference, though, is that I’m not going to overlook corruption because my team is doing it. (I’m also not on either of the teams in play here so…) What’s so frustrating is that this is absolutely not about being on labour or tory teams- this is about us, and what we deserve. You know the cheesy phrase “you accept the love you think you deserve”? It might not be as sexy sounding but “you accept the governance you think you deserve” should be daubed on every wall in the UK to remind us that we’re tacitly condoning painting over the rot in our walls instead of fishing it out.

    The UK is in a dire state after fourteen years of the tories fattening their pockets at our expense. Houses are harder to buy, the NHS is practically nonfunctional, we’re all struggling massively to get by to varying degrees be it running our businesses, dealing with our new post covid realities.
    We don’t need de-escalation and to start being thankful for smaller episodes of government dodginess- we need no government dodginess- a single minded drive to drag us out of where we are. And we aren’t fighting for it, clinging instead to the proverbial buoy in the water, glad to have found that to cling to but mysteriously not looking for the nearest bit of land to flee to.

    In some ways I feel sorry for us, collectively. We’ve been so beaten down by 14 years of tory basement dwelling that we’re thanking the people who are loosening our chains and giving us a fresh bedpan- not realising we’re still being kept in the same conditions. We need, we must aim for, real change and a move forward away from the chaos we’ve been steeped in for years. That starts with holding everyone to account equally. Chuck the tories who dodge taxes worth millions out of their jobs, punish them legally- Sunak, Zahawi, hell even Lord Sugar and his meek whingeing about a billion pound tax bill he feels he shouldn’t have to settle because he had a title thrust upon him. But don’t overlook the lesser transgressions of your incumbents either: that’s that inconvenient rot starting again, beginning way down at the foundation and working its way up to the heart of our politics all over again from another direction.
    We must demand better or all we’ll ever get is the shoddy workmanship of politicians who know they can get away with whatever they want, all added to the tab of “at least they’re not the tories”. We let the tories turn the country rotten: are we willing to begin all over again with the next government, or will we accept that same sweet scent of rot because at least this time we chose to overlook it’s beginnings? Because this time the bad guys lost, replaced with people doing the exact type of things they were doing before they turned into moustache twirling cartoon villains? It’s like watching history repeat as people queue up to cheer for change, and it’s driving me insane.

    No, the left is not ‘enabling’ the Tories

    By Curtis Daly

    With Owen Jones and many other figures on the left abandoning Labour, the attack on the left has intensified.

    So many times I have heard the phrase “Tory enabler” for simply stating opinions and criticisms of the current Labour leadership. But does publicly denouncing Keir Starmer, and even supporting smaller parties mean that many of us on the left are dooming Britain to another five years of a Tory government? The answer is no.

    On the 11th of January 2020, the then Labour leadership hopeful, Keir Starmer, uttered the words: “We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document, the radicalism and the hope that that inspired across the country was real”. This was a bid to convince the membership that he was firmly on the left.

    Fast forward four years, and Keir Starmer as Labour leader is a completely different person. The Ten Pledges he made to the membership have all been dropped, and instead of retaining the left-wing domestic policies of the Corbyn era, the front bench has been talking up austerity and tax cuts for the rich.

    Rachel Reeves, who is the current shadow chancellor, has copied the Tories’ policies and rhetoric on the economy; dropping Labour’s core ideology of redistribution in favour of improving people’s lives by ‘growing the economy’.

    Under the umbrella of ‘growing the economy’, Labour has shifted toward tax cuts (including for the very rich), ‘opening the floodgates to NHS privatisation’ and continuing to rely on the private sector, which includes our public services. The only big policy that planned to kickstart much-needed investment via the state was Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan – yet it was dropped, as with every other pledge.

    “FPTP means there’s only one choice: Labour or the Tories”

    It is certainly true that our voting system is undemocratic, and yes, there can only be either a Labour or a Conservative government.

    But many on the ‘progressive’ side of our politics have been open about ‘tactical voting’ for years. Dubbed the ‘progressive alliance’, a high-profile campaign that urged people to vote for Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, where they stood the best chance of defeating the Tories.

    However, many proponents of the ‘progressive alliance’ were so infuriated with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (especially on Brexit), that they opted to support smaller parties regardless of whether they stood a chance – it was a rebellion against Corbyn’s leadership. Today, it seems many are far more outraged that we deploy the same tactic under Keir Starmer, with even those who refused to vote Labour last time screaming “secret Tory!”. You have to ask whether these people possess any capacity for introspection.

    As of today, the Labour Party is enjoying an astronomical lead over the Conservatives. Polling has shown that Labour is ahead by twenty or even thirty percentage points which puts them on course for a historic landslide victory. The truth is, Labour is going to win and the Tories can’t do anything about it.

    This is a very unique opportunity where we can vote with our conscience without the risk of allowing the Conservatives to win another term. We haven’t been in this scenario for decades, so we should seize the moment. The goal for us on the left isn’t for the Tories to win as some claim, but neither is it the goal to give carte blanche to a very right-wing Labour Party either.

    Voting Green or Independent is the tactical vote

    If you like green policies, if you like public ownership, and if you support PR, I can guarantee you, this won’t happen under a Labour majority government. But leverage is the key, voting elsewhere signals to the Party that abandoning any semblance of progressive politics has its downsides.

    For me personally, I would like to see a hung parliament where Labour is propped up by smaller progressive parties. I too would like to see PR, but we won’t be getting that with a party that can win a landslide with FPTP. What incentive would Labour have to implement PR, which would give power away to smaller parties? The answer: there is no incentive. But if Starmer is deprived of a majority, the Lib Dems and the Greens (as well as left-wing independents) can demand PR if he seeks to govern, and this can also be the case for many other progressive policies.

    Keir Starmer is uniquely right-wing

    Often we are charged with the ‘purity’ label, if we don’t back Labour in its current form, we are accused of throwing our toys out of the pram. This isn’t about purity; rather, this is about rejecting a very right-wing Labour Party. It’s not too much to ask for a so-called center-left Party to invest in the economy, stick to strong climate policies, pledge to improve public services and not support the genocide of the Palestinian people.

    Instead, we have a party that talks about kicking sick people off benefits – thanks to Liz Kendal’s recent intervention – shadow cabinet members such as David Lammy praising Margaret Thatcher, and the leader himself openly saying on LBC that Israel “has a right” to cut off power and water to the Palestinian people – which is a war crime. I would have thought these reasonable objections would be met with good-faith discussions, but instead the response has been to label anyone vaguely critical of Starmer as ‘hard-left’.

    Jeremy Corbyn – whatever you think about him – is not hard-left; his leadership was not hard-left and his policies were not hard-left. Yet, Starmer supporters have always maintained this idea that Corbyn and his supporters were ‘entryists’ into the Labour Party, and it is in fact Keir Starmer who represents ‘traditional Labour values’.

    In 1945, Clement Atlee’s government created the NHS, the welfare state and engaged in a large state program of building houses. The Labour Prime Minister even nationalised a fifth of the economy! The idea that Keir Starmer’s politics is closer to Clement Atlee than Jeremy Corbyn’s, does not come close to the realms of reality. Corbyn’s economic policy was to build one million new houses a year with 500,000 of them being council houses, an end to privatisation, increase taxes on the wealthy and a clean break from neoliberalism.

    This isn’t about rejecting a Labour Party that isn’t ‘pure’ enough; this is about rejecting a Labour Party that has become identical to the Tories. I hate Tory ideology and I hate Tory policies, so if I see Labour moving closer to that, then I’m going to hate that too.

    Voters should be able to sway Labour from the outside, forcing them to be a better Party in government. Given where the Tories are at, I can confidently say we can support the Greens or independent candidates (including some Labour MPs) without fear of a Tory election victory.

    So far from being a ‘Tory enabler’, this is about using the little power we have to try and change the country for the better.

    Be worried, Sir Keir- it isn’t just lefties who are concerned about your leadership any more

    By Daviemoo

    Yesterday, I went to return some books to the library as the Saturday of easter weekend is the only time the library is open. As it was a British “nice day” for March I decided to wear my customary “Anti Tory” top (which I got from SadGirlStudios on Instagram, for those who wonder).
    Normally I get the odd glance, smirk or frown when I wear this top but nobody has ever actually spoken to me about it- until yesterday, when I had a conversation I think should alarm Starmer and his loyalists.

    There I was, holographic anti tory slogan on display, wondering if I should have fizzy water or a coffee. Whilst I was queuing a very nice man and his wife stopped me to ask “do many people argue with you about that”? He pointed at my top and I smiled and said “you’d be surprised to be honest”. He said “surely at this point nobody sane can be backing them”. I laughed and said “again, it’d shock you, some people will defend anything”. We smiled at each other, then he paused and said conspiratorially, “mind you… Labour don’t seem to be much better these days, do they”. I shook my head, quietly surprised that this conversation I was told never happened in real life and was just a figment of my chronically social media addled brain was playing out in real terms.

    “Seems so” I said, stating that I was disappointed with Labour myself. He and his wife agreed readily and then we all went our separate ways.

    It should probably bring concern to labour loyalists that this discourse about labour not really making themselves distinct from conservatives is spreading to daily discourse. I have tons of political discussion and when it comes to the ant farm tunnelling that is internet discourse I of course hold prudence, sure that just because a few people agree with me about my revulsion for labour’s direction doesn’t mean that’s a wide sentiment. But it seems that as that fateful election looms closer, public opinion is souring on Labour.
    Of course the usual white knights of Starmer will ride to their defence and give me the usual storied repeats of why it just HAS to be this way. It doesn’t, and I’m tired of people who call themselves politically savvy and literate trying to repeat defunct talking points.

    For many, Labour’s pathetic stance on Palestine has been a bone of contention for months. The usual response to this was originally to repeat the Israeli state spin that’s been so roundly debunked that the famed purveyor of it, Elon Levy is currently scrolling LinkedIn to find a role where he won’t profoundly embarrass Netanyahu by lying on the internet and being easily called out for it by politicians like Alicia Kearns. My personal favourite response to mass dissatisfaction with Labour’s take on Israel is to metaphorically ball up and start snivelling “but Labour aren’t even in power yet”.
    If nothing labour says matters until they’re in power, it’s no wonder we have a party offering poor take, position and promise on so many of the key areas of the UK state who still seem to embody the largest pool of support.
    Labour’s stances on Palestine, NHS funding & resolving the wait list, their stances on tax, green energy, infrastructure & economic reform and more have been woeful- supply side reform and private investment or enmeshing public entities with private capital, again. Where have we seen this before?
    Waiting until it’s too late to encourage a change in stance to something better that will also be effective is ridiculous! It’s the same trite nonsense as “you haven’t seen a manifesto yet”. By that logic I haven’t seen the tory one so maybe I should just let them say any old guff because ItS NoT In A MaNiFeStO. I’m judging them by their actions and telling you I find them wanting.
    I have by the way read what apparently is Reform UK’s prospectus- it reads like Elmo’s “how to really finish the job of gutting the UK”, where the sweet red puppet has decided to offer tax cuts but promise economic growth, with one stitched paw knowing nothing about what the other is doing.

    People too readily assume I am pulling for one of the parties opposed to labour- I’m actually pretty set on joining the greens, and as much as people will decry that as perpetuating FPTP I have nothing but scorn for people who seem to think being part of the winning team is good even when they bankrupt most of the reasons why they should win in order to get there- not to mention, engaging in the fantasism of brexiters, thinking they’ll be able to change labour for the better by enabling Starmer’s cabal by supporting him unabated and pretending you’ll turn into an activist post election.
    Ultimately, even today I found a video of an ex member of the party who worked internally talking about her experiences of corruption under Starmer- from dropshipping favoured candidates and suspending those with credulity to the local electorate and even questions of the closed door vote counting done to choose candidates, it’s all well for people to look to the Forde report (which I reread two weeks ago) to point at the obvious ineffectual nature of a party torn apart by two warring factions, but to posit that an improvement is ruthless silencing of leftists in the party by the right of labour is absolutely comical.

    The question people need to ask is as simple as this: if Labour have moved to the right – which if you don’t agree they have there’s very little point in us discussing this- exactly how beneficial is their win for us?

    We’re told to be pragmatic, so let’s do that. If labour’s intent to allow private entities greater use of NHS facilities and increase what I would call unseemly practices like insourcing to upscale staffing shortages, rather than make the NHS better through funding and targeted campaigns to attract talent, it’s just allowing the NHS to lean on a private service that then is all which stabilises it- no moves to bring the NHS up to demand whilst, or without, this private entity investment, means the NHS becomes unable to stand on its own and will fail.
    In terms of labour playing into the rhetoric of tories on queer people and small boats crossings, it’s doing exactly what Phil Moorhouse of Labour social implied in his recent video about Rachel Reeves perpetuating the nonsense of country budgets being similar to household budgets. The line seemed to be “Reeves has to say this stuff because other people said it first, so she’s not responsible for the lies she’s saying- she’s just continuing it”- which has all the exculpatory flavour of “I didn’t murder him, I just held up an axe and let him run into it til he was fricasseed”.
    When it comes to green investment- which an enormous number of polls indicate people want, Labour have more than halved their intent to upscale green investment, which ties us further to the fossil fuels which we can easily link back to some of the unseemly actions of politics we see now- including their maddening stance on Palestine. It’s clear that western powers hope that having a stronghold of sorts in Israel ensures energy security. Trying to move us away from dependency on fossil fuels would mean an overdue ceasing of deference to regimes like Saudi Arabia whose human rights records are appalling, all so we can purchase the oil that’s burning the world. Refusing to invest in these vital initiatives is a flat refusal to create jobs, stimulate the economy and start to move us away from the fossil fuel reliance that ensures future generations will pay for our lassitude in innovation. Support for Israel seems less bent on the belief in Zionism and more on strategic need to ensure safety in the Suez and in our steady exchange of unfathomable capital for fossil fuels.

    The point here, is that many who have fiercely clung to Labour as the salve to cool the wounds of tories are starting to zoom out and question what we’ve been cautioning all along- perhaps the time is ripe to think about what comes after the election, because the idea that we’re in a state of emergency that will end on day one of a new primacy is simply not useful thinking- whilst it’s vital we purge the poison of tories, replacing it with more poison does little. And the fact that more are becoming truly aware of how much danger uncritical backing of Labour is putting us in should terrify the avatars of Starmer’s leadership.

    It is natural for the Labour Party to veer slightly left or right in ideology. The never ending irony is that many will state that the Starmer cabal’s actions are necessitated by Corbyn’s dragging the party to the unelectable left. Odd then, how the same people asking for pragmatism and gentle, small shifts in national politics also seem to cheer an extreme turnabout of party rhetoric?
    Is it moderation we need or an extreme change? Seems odd to push for both and not one specifically.
    The problem isn’t a general realignment of labour with center right voters- it’s the determined and ongoing refusal to adhere to the broad church rhetoric we’ve heard for so long.

    Here’s the rub- perhaps I’m talking nonsense and the UK is actually just a conservative country that likes the Starmer rhetoric. It doesn’t seem to based on polling of what matters to the electorate, nor the party members considering their utter flippancy over PR or voter reform, or commitment to repealing the tories ridiculous voter ID law that reports stated were tantamount to totalitarian silencing of the electorate.
    I don’t believe the UK is conservative- I believe the UK’s populace is forced into indenture under the guise of democracy. We don’t want supply side reform if it means suffering more austerity, whether in or out of the EU we want better ties to smoothen trade and give the economy a much needed boost, people want green investment, people want a move away from culture war guff and an unequivocal calling out of Israel’s disgusting war crimes, people want PR- are we being offered this, or are we being proselytised to by a Labour Party convinced by old Blairites that they know better in the face of the taciturn base currently poised to lubricate the doorway for labour to squeeze into power. that doorway narrows every time Labour refuse to offer these reforms and refuse to fall back into the very important order we need to restore- that politicians are public servants, that parties are consolidations of public will. We are not here to have our politics cut out and pasted to us by a party- we are here to form or coalesce around a party which offers us a vision of better- be it ways to bring long neglected private utilities back to public control, either through stealth, competition or legislation. We are not here to let labour offer us static instead of policy that will remediate our suffering under the conservatives. And it’s not just the tofu cultivating lefties amongst us who think so now- for even labour supporters are voicing their displeasure, however late that may be coming.

    So many times now I’ve written articles just like this that I feel like I’m going insane, chiding and appealing to and reaching out to labour’s supporters either enthusiastic or coquettish, begging for reason to be seen. Labour is not part of your identity- it is a party, which should be in thrall to its members: Starmer is rumoured to have tilted the scales, removed the oversight and taken away the democracy from within, and whilst you may want to look at Corbyn and blame him, the end result is backing a party which refuses to play by the rules of plurality it has loudly claimed to abide by publicly for years. The time is beyond perfect to muddy the waters, demand more and better- every poll indicates a towering lead for a Labour government. Threatening to dent that unless they offer you something isn’t political realism- it’s weakness. Time to get strong.

    Privatisation is f**king stupid

    By Daviemoo

    This week has seen the revival of the clip of Thatcher speaking of her intent to privatise utilities, with footage of her at the despatch box in no.10 broadcast to the nation as we’re reading of more investors fleeing the prospect of backing infrastructure devlopment for companies like Thames Water without extortionate price raises for customers. At this point, with a sackful of evidence on why privatisation is nonsense a simple internet search away, we have to ask- will anyone be brave enough to do what’s needed and take our utilities back from the criminal cabals profiteering from them?

    I did some maths the other day, to see just how obscene the price raises being proposed by Thames Water & blocked by the water regulator, OfWat, actually are.
    According to estimates, the standard water bill for Thames Water customers sits at an already exorbitant £456.
    A forty percent price hike would mean an extra £182.40, bringing standard bills to a frankly mind blowing £638.40- higher than my rent when I lived in a studio flat in North East Leeds (that was £550).

    As aggravating as this is, it’s not even the disgusting price hike that’s the root issue- remember how I’ve often spoken of symptoms of the disease when we talk politics? This is another symptom, malign as it is. The disease starts with privatisation.
    Thatcher declared that selling off our public utilities would allow for the potential- key word there- of much greater investment, by providing competition for things like infrastructure projects and seemingly believed that people paying money to private entities who depended upon our money for survival would create a necessity to keep utilities in good nick, as it were, lest we… what? Adept as I might be at decoding the start of Thatcherite stupidity, I’m immediately lost. Go to a competitor? For water? How would that even work? Naturally I’m not asking for answers from Thatcher or the evidently ever expanding group who believe in her religion-cum-policy like Starmer, Reeves and Lammy.

    Privatisation was seen as a way to increase investment and ensure that utilities would be taken care of by companies whose lifeblood runs alongside our water in the same creaking pipes, as they would have to keep up to works and modernisation, lest they haemorrhage support and lose contracts, or some other such illusory twaddle that’s never happened.
    Instead, here we are forty years later with water infrastructure that’s kept operating by companies who seem staunchly prepared to refuse to invest at every turn, whilst investors threaten to defund them unless they circumvent the edict of OfWat to crushingly raise prices of customers who have no choice but to depend on them.

    This very week a libertarian from one of the think tanks derailing sense from British policy came at Grace Blakeley, whose new book talks about how capitalism actively strangles innovation to create monopolistic control of our privatised utilities, manufacturing consent at every turn. Said libertarian quite literally made Blakeley’s point for her, but as with most who define themselves libertarian, missed it entirely. But we don’t need a (no doubt brilliant but still) book from Blakeley or anyone else to make the case that capitalism is anti innovative- our utilities are a monolithic dossier of proof to this fact.
    Private utilities are utterly at the whim of the companies who administrate them- in July 2022, Thames Water spent considerable time creating a lengthy document to send to their customers letting them know that whilst there had been hardship, they were doing the work!
    However, anyone who actually took the time to read the document would see that it was a transparent attempt by Thames Water executives to slip on the Emperor’s Clothes to hide the naked neglect of the water utility they were in charge of. CEOs spoke of their excitement to “get the basics right” at the start of the second year of their project to begin works to increase investment in the water infrastructure of the region, whilst on another page another senior staff member declared that they were “doing well” but needed “ongoing investment” to meet their goals.

    Now, anyone who understands, even passingly, the level of issue the UK has with its water infrastructure would know all of this to be an attempt to humanise CEOs whose guidance of the company was… shall we say, lacking, and this truly came to bear in September 2023.

    In this month, OfWat released a document declaring that water companies, and specifically the top nine in the UK, were holding back on spending a collective £1.7 billion of investment capital- Thames Water were rumoured to be holding on to £373 million, whilst others like Yorkshire Water were said to be holding back even more- £493 million. This unspent capital, when looking at the level of investment needed to stabilise water supply and undertake vital works, is actually quite small- for example, Thames Water are eager to modernise two water treatment plans in the periphery of London to increase and stabilise supply, and that project alone is said to be expected to cost £400 million. And yet- this is unspent capital we’re discussing, rumoured to be sat in the vaults of these companies and doing no good whilst there: but why?

    With 2025 fast approaching, a time which brings a new investment cycle for these companies, we should be concerned on multiple levels, but where to even begin dear reader?

    Firstly, let us focus on the bill increase.
    The simplistic would believe that this precipitous raise in bill prices would be to pay for the works to better the infrastructure- after all, if the average bills of 8.3 million people go up by £182.40 a month, this means new revenue of £1,513,920,000- one billion, five hundred and thirteen million, nine hundred and twenty thousand pounds. But no- the companies are seeking investment capital- aka investors to pay them the money now, with a promise to repay them using the proceeds from the bill hike. Ludicrous that the prices have to go up to pay for money they need- and if the rationale is that the work is so vital it must be done now, not following the collection of this higher bill money… why wasn’t it already done?

    This is the true evil of privatisation laid bare- the gallingly expensive work hasn’t happened, not because the UK has suffered a cataclysm and needs to be modernised, but simply, modernisation has fallen by the wayside because CEOs, shareholders and more have utterly scraped bare the coffers of the companies we’re forced to rely on and investment projects have simply not been addressed.
    How many shareholder dividends paid out into the pockets of the rich using money that should have been spent on new pipes, expansion projects or repairs during the last forty years? How many CEOs appointed at -according to their own information- £2.3 million a year salary -not mentioning huge bonuses?

    Of course, £400 million on modernising water infrastructure is an enormous figure next to what could then comparatively seem the small sum of. £2.3 million a year- but Thames Water, according to standard figures doesn’t employ millions of people- it employs around 5,500 people and the standard average salaries are said to range from between £23,500 to £76,000 for jobs from administrative staff to testing and project specialists.

    Their revenue is said to be £2.6 billion and the rise in bills would add another potential billion to that revenue, meaning the company does do well in terms of bottom line- even if every standard staff member was paid the top “normative” salary of £76,000, that would equal £418,000,000 -four hundred and eighteen million- so just over the level of investment needed to bring these water plants up to scratch apparently.

    Naturally a lot of capital will be invested into repair works or standard expansion and more- but just how much money that customers pay in bills actually goes to works needed to ensure supply keeps meeting demand, that flood risks are negated and more? Let’s not forget that in the UK right now we have what I readily feel able to call a crisis, where our waters are utterly filthy- my home city of Leeds has some of the most turgid, dirty waters in the country with the river running through the city consistently one of the dirtiest in the nation.

    When it comes to investor payout etc, one understands why those with an interest in being, rather than eating, the rich would balk at the idea that perhaps this money they’re paid back for paying into the company counts to us as ill gotten gains- but look at the status quo that is the UK’s current utilities. Can we really justify paying out shareholders for utilities that are not fit for purpose and woefully outdated?

    It’s said that Thames Water still operates in large part on Victorian plumbing- plumbing well over 100 years old. The scale of investment would not be so dizzying had this investment been taking place at pace throughout the reign of the privatised companies. And yet- it did not, and now we sit with customers told they must bear the brunt of bill raises, the proceeds of which wont even pay for the works– but will reward the already wealthy for fronting up the cash that’s so urgent it was never asked for from customers and apparently languishes, untouched, in the accounts of these privatised companies.

    Thatcher reviled state intervention in what she saw as failing industries- one has to wonder whether the “Iron Lady” would refuse to invest in the companies she foisted on us, seeing the state of their dereliction of duty? No doubt she would waiver if it meant the rich could benefit from public money again- and one has to wonder if this volte face is upcoming under the next government- after all, the tories have left their remit of Thatcher enthusiasm to Starmer under their radicalism.

    Labour have been earnestly pushing the need for supply side reform for a long time- and if you wonder what that is, it’s a sanitised way of saying taking money away from public expenditure to prop up the companies who have failed to do their job all along. Need a new playground or your roads fixing? Sorry, we austeritied that money away to pay it to Thames Water so they can do all that work they failed to do in the last almost HALF A CENTURY. It seems that the tories refuse to do anything about this further budding crisis because they know their time is short, and Labour’s policy on it seems to be to throw money into the never sated maw of privatised companies- again. Isn’t the definition of madness doing things over and over again and expecting different results?
    I’d say maybe it’s time to call the mental health services on both sides of the front bench- unfortunately, mental health investment is at an all time low as a tory minister tells us that “mental health culture” has gone too far!

    How do we fix it

    Bravery.
    We need a brave government who sets a quota for these companies to improve services by investing existing capital and showing an open ledger on where spend goes, and if these companies don’t take on these projects transparently, and reach strict goals set by the government within x amount of time, the government spends that time preparing to take on the workload of these companies who default to the government, and bring these utilities back into supply- capitalists cannot decry unfairness because they were given a deadline and a chance to upscale on supply to continue the contract and this ongoing oversight provides the rationale people as foolish as Thatcher thought would exist by necessity, to push these companies to meet the supposed high standards that come with capitalist entities running vital utility.
    The irony would be- of course the companies would meet those deadlines! They wouldn’t want to let go of the money, and so suddenly, much like the tories stumbling across the well hidden money tree the second a friend needs a contract to be paid for, the long awaited improvements would come to bear- proving that these companies can do the work when properly motivated… and if they failed, common ownership would dictate fairer control of the companies all over again.

    But we don’t have a brave government, or a brave incumbent. The sinuous shift of labour policy has seen a paucity of policy to do with common ownership or even stricter regulation on utilities, and many will caution us to wait for the manifesto. One can hope that Labour take the yawning lead they’ve taken over the tories and turn it into policy that truly benefits us- but it seems that labour’s move into the vacated space of 2010 Tory policy will prevent them from touching that sort of policy that truly addresses the root of the issue, and so we’re left with the hope that lobbying can bring. I hope we’re all settled in for a long fight to make sure that the sorely needed policy requirements that would redress the issues with our utilities are actually fixed.

    The time for being bullied by end stage capitalist entities is over- if they cannot match the need our utilities demand, then they must go… and that starts with manifestos, talk, promise and action from a government unafraid to wrench our utilities back into our hands from those who have clutched the coin purses for too long.

    In terms of wider aspiration for utilities, one has to steady the ship first, don’t we? We need to find a way to have supply meet demand, however that may be. Longer term plans hinge on exactly how we want to administrate utilities in the future- though conservative voters rarely pull for public ownership, even the shifted base that labour have attracted during their pre-election appeal to the proletariat has bolstered general support for common ownership. Starmer has repeatedly claimed that public ownership is out of the bounds in terms of expense- which is why we need to cleverly legislate around these demands, stating that if these utility companies do not meet expectation of infrastructure modernisation, they can be disentangled through defaulting, as a dereliction of the duty they were charged with when they fattened the Thatcher government’s coffers by buying them in the first place.

    Additionally the UK need to reckon at last with their decision to Brexit: though it’s clear no fundamental decisions will be made under Starmer about re-entry to the EU especially as the EU has categorically stated there will be no fundamental deal renegotiation until the allotted deadline, our politicians are going to have to get tough on Brussels too- pushing for parity on import export to allow chemical refinement to recommence at previous levels to stop our waters being polluted en masse- and hopefully bringing us back into alignment with long standing clean waters regulation we left behind as we left the EU. However this takes place, be it realignment with the single market and customs union or base level reassessment of our own laws around water purity etc, it is vital that we lead on this thinking of the common good of the UK citizenry and the country.

    In areas of contention like this, the key phrase is that, in compromise, usually nobody walks away happy, but everyone walks away satisfied: the UK must find a way to make harmony with the EU by making concessions if those concessions mean an alleviation to pollution and the scourge of monopolism.

    But ultimately, this starts and ends with us, the proletariat- for too long, from before my birth to this very day, we have been swallowed by a seething mass of fellows all too eager to accept poor conditions of everything from food on shelves to bill prices to our own vital utilities. No more can we continue to be the “austerity is necessary” fools of the 2010 era when the case for whether the Tory measures succeeded or failed was adjourned because the judge drank from the taps and got legionnaires’. No matter who takes governance this year, the time has long since passed for us to begin to demand, not a stop to chaos and dereliction, but more, and better. The bravery of a government to stand up for its people starts with the people standing up for themselves. If we want better, we have to ask for it, demand it, push for it- not capitulate to the “realism” of a repeat of austerity to reinflate, not bankers this time, but companies who have failed at every level to meet the basic promise of capitalism- to meet base demand with quality supply.

    Are you sure this is what you want to vote for

    By Daviemoo

    Many people are set to vote labour in as a landslide in the no doubt shortly coming election- and my concern isn’t that Labour are going to win, which is a foregone conclusion- it’s for the wave of disappointment that will consume many who think they’re voting for the chain- breaking changes we need, when they’re voting for a party who just can’t stop praising Margaret Thatcher. All I ask, and all people like me ask, is the briefest consideration that perhaps this version of labour led by Starmer isn’t the golden goose to lift us out of where we are, but a party who sold itself off like a public entity going private, in order to assure a victory that will mean scant change in a country that desperately needs it- and if you find yourself thinking that yes, that is the answer, you don’t have to abandon your party- you just have to gird your loins for a fight.

    Fighting off the inherited legacy of a man who seemingly enjoys oppositional moaning has been quite frustrating, to say the very least. People really do seem to believe people like myself enjoy the bitter taste of loss, but it’s not that we’re masochists, we just have higher standards than what appears to be most in the country.
    I’m desperate to see a vivacious government take over in the UK, a government who isn’t afraid to tax assets and use that money to fund infrastructure projects to help the UK modernise, a government who isn’t afraid to nurture the NHS by strictly sanctioning private initiatives and attracting NHS staff back to their roles, and by changing education to enable more young people to aim for those vital jobs.

    Most of all, I’m absolutely desperate to see a chancellor appear who doesn’t seem wedded to the ideology of forty years ago- supply side reform keeps being brought into the conversation and every time it does my stomach lurches with dismay. Why must we keep going back to the same old ideas of economics that have led us down this dark path? Reeves seems to be setting out her vision for HashTag Thatcherism, low tax- free market deregulation for the economy which she hopes will boost the country out of the financial cul de sac we-re in.
    But how did that go in the 80s? Were there two financial crashes? Did even healthy businesses shutter because they couldn’t survive in a market the prime minister refused to intervene in because she believed small government, even as it decimated livelihoods? If Reeves truly believes in the policies she’s saying, she’s gone Thatcherite- something she’s hovering on the verge of admitting herself considering she stated she joined labour to fight back against Thatcherite fiscal policy… and yet she praised Thatcher in her recent speech to a room full of fiscal experts, followed swiftly by her colleague David Lammy who called Thatcher a visionary– this is mere months after Starmer also praised her. For some reason, instead of looking forward to new ideas, new pathways, our incumbent government is staring back lovingly over their shoulder at the political legacy of the woman who made it impossible to buy a house, sold our public services and caused two fiscal- what did the tories call the recent recession? “Fiscal events”? What exactly are you opposing when you embrace the ideology of the enemy?

    Ultimately it’s been plain to see for a long time that Labour are wedded to appealing across the aisles to dissatisfied tory voters who would otherwise seep to reform or off into apathy.
    I think, after fourteen years of their elected choices making a complete hash of the country in terms of economy, infrastructure, justice, equality, health, education… we might be quite happy to watch them go. We’re also told that progressives are too quick to cut the yoke that binds, but many progressives still grimly hang on to labour even as the ranks swell with those who believe the tories were great until Johnson, overlooking the fiscal decimation of Cameron, the paralysis of May, and the party’s willingness to sell itself to a man who used an MP’s brutal murder to shore up support for his horrendous policy.
    But no, labour seem to believe these poor voters need a new vision in an old party to offer them what the tories promised and failed to deliver on. I could go through the old promises of Starmer as incumbent leader, calling Corbyn a friend and stating that his manifesto was a foundational document of the party and how quickly that fell apart, or the promise the party are putting out now, but this is always met with the same tired refrain, wait for a manifesto– and yet when a manifesto comes and we’re dissatisfied, what then? The people who repeat this line seem to understand little of politics, or understand their own duplicity- or perhaps understand it too well.

    In terms of fiscal policy, Reeves seems geared to repeat the anti interventionist policy that underscored 80s fiscal writings, seems interested in upselling investment into people even as she rolls back on the most vital personal investment we have at our fingertips. Green spend would vitalise the economy, opening up many new sector based jobs which would boost the economy and finally make the UK begin to take climate change seriously, instead of frowning at events we flew to on private planes. But Reeves struck down that policy, shortly before confirming that labour’s plans on taxation of the rich would be watered down hopelessly. And their flagship non-dom abolishment was half-inched by Hunt, no doubt because it was actually a sensible policy and that the tories, visionless and culture war ridden as they are (not to mention led by Hunt who was a stupendously bad health sec), had no plans of their own.
    If Reeves is using supply side reform as a moniker for repetition, instead of genuine person based investment via education and a reaffirming of commitment to the UK’s obligations, we should be concerned- concerned, too, By Starmer and Reeves’ recent meeting with big business heads at an event where it was said that Starmer was “reassuring big business that his plans to shore up on workers’ rights won’t interfere in their bottom line”. Because after fourteen years of being abused by the government and by proxy dodgy employers, what we, the people, really care about is big business’ income. Is this the same big business like British Gas, BP and half the energy suppliers in the UK who have torn money away from us in droves over the last two years, talking about difficult times yet posting record profits– we’re all in it together of course, unless you’re a CEO who makes £615,000 a year and earned a hefty bonus to boot.
    Is it the companies who hire their workers on exploitative contracts like zero hours or fire and rehire? Are we really coddling businesses who make huge sums of money by exploiting a beleaguered public, or who make profit by paying workers horrendously low salaries, whilst giving upper management bonuses in six and seven figures? But lets’ not forget that this is the party who big business claims is now their party – is it for us to intuit that they are then no longer the party of workers? Or are they somehow the party of both- of the businesses who exploit us, and the party of the exploited workers? What an unlikely marriage in this broad church labour self describes.
    It is also the party who welcomes Conservative voters even if this means they bleed their own former support, and by doing so ties itself to the wont of the base they are meant to oppose.
    A broad church indeed- but the socialists can wait outside apparently, unless they want to rub shoulders with those who have wrecked the country.

    The usual refrain from labour loyalists galore is to wait for a manifesto. But with enough people willing to cheer on whatever that manifesto comprises and tell us it’s good and to vote for it, it’s a useless chorus with a predictable refrain- because when a manifesto comes, that’s it. If you don’t like it, what then? The entire point of politics is to steer parties before an election, before a manifesto. But the UK has a legacy of fear of the people we keep letting take power. The tories had a huge vote share in 2019 but more people voted for parties that leaned more to the left of them than for them- our division over which style of leftism, be it more radical or more pragmatic, meant the tories were shoved over the line. In a country with PR, the tories would have had a large share of parliament but would have been in opposition. As it happens we ended up with an eighty seat majority swollen fat by the ranks of opportunists who joined the tories to steer us on course for the disastrous brexit we’ve suffered through.
    I don’t know if its fear of the tories winning again- every time I’ve talked to the labour adherents I’m met with iterations of the phrase “I won’t live through another tory term” as though the relatively affluent and successful white cisgender and heterosexual are truly the tories most maligned victims. And those same people will turn around to those who actually meaningfully suffer under tory policy and lambaste them for not supporting a Labour Party who has left them in the cold. Starmer only deals with transphobia when he can pull an outraged face at PMQs whilst airily waving through plans to remove rights from trans patients in the NHS. He only deals with racism when he can make a buck off it, silencing the actual victim. He refuses to call out our complicity in mass murder abroad, and his MPs like Emily Thornberry can sit on TV and give Israel the airy right to self defence even when their self defence comes with the lofty price tag of over 30,000 dead people and famine, only to turn around and say she thinks Labour are more abused than the tories over their stance- yes, Ms. Thornberry, because some still think you’re a party worth pursuing to push for decency: when that stops, understand you’ve finally reached the barrel scraped level of the Conservatives who we know don’t care about decency so we don’t try. You’re closer than you think…

    Cooper’s plans for immigration seem to be a tamer, more law compliant version of Rwanda- labour were rumoured recently to be discussing sending detainees to a country that is compliant with protective laws around refugees rather than Rwanda, because labour seem to think that it’s the Rwanda part of the Rwanda scheme people take issue with. I don’t like the Rwanda scheme because it’s inhumane to send people abroad when they seek refuge here, yes- but it is also a dead duck policy, one that simply will not fly. The cry from the tories- and no doubt labour- is that it will “break the funding model of people smugglers”. Yes, I’m sure the exhausted refugees whose only experience with iPhones is mining the cobalt that makes them work, will definitely be ken to the policy where a small group of them will be shipped away to another country as a putoff to people smugglers who will simply… take their money and let them be shipped off. It is embarrassing that we’re so ideologically welded to cruelty that our government and our opposition don’t see the painful logical fallacy, and to boot are aiming cruel policy at people who are so desperate for refuge they’ll chance drowning in the storm tossed seas to get here- no doubt the roulette spin chance of a flight to another country will stop ’em… I despair.

    The thing is, there are upsides to electing labour. I’m no fool. The EU is already promising to work constructively with a labour government on lessening the issues of the tory brexit deal, they will still the endless ranting of ECHR removal and we’ll have a government less mired in corruption and cronyism- we hope. Of course there are positives. But crumbs look delectable to the starving, so let’s not pretend it’s a four course meal on offer from Starmer et al.
    I’ve no doubt that labour policy will slow down problems we’re currently facing. I’ve said this so many times I feel like I’m on repeat. But it’s not slowdowns and delays we need- the UK is, and will continue to be, in a poor state. We have to deal with the issues at hand, because if we don’t, they will either continue to be a lesion which hurts us, or will worsen and take more down- be it poverty conditions the UK have watched explode in the last 10 years or radicalisation towards the misogynistic manosphere where men can blame women for everything from not being attractive to their financial disadvantagement. Ignoring these glaring issues is allowing its propogation- have any government ministers promised to tackle the very real threat of misogyny in our society or are we all too focused on talking about specific people’s gender? The tories failed to illegalise misogyny- will Labour? Or are they too afraid to do so, whilst confirming beyond doubt that misogyny isn’t “when a transgender person exists”?

    As I said at the beginning, it’s tiring to fight off the relentless attack that people like myself enjoy being in opposition. I hunger for a government able to tackle the problems we have- our inability to buy property, to save, to travel the country without taking out a small loan or selling grandma’s china first. I’m desperate for a chancellor whose plans include real terms reinvestment into the country’s dusty, rusty infrastructure, new plans to make public transport cheaper and who will invest into a sector that will only grow if the government waters it- green energy & security. I want a health secretary who is going to work constructively to build a compliance framework around insourcing companies who are currently working, poorly regulated and highly compensated, to deal with the NHS’ waiting lists- a home secretary who understands that many of us aren’t perturbed or loyal to imaginary borders around our isles, only concerned that we give due care to those we’re charged to look after whilst also being strictly practical on issues of safety for everyone- we the people, and those who seek refuge here. Most of all I want a man who stands to be prime minister who is more than just “not Rishi/Liz/Boris/Truss/Cameron” or whichever other ghoul comes rising from the dark to snatch at the country’s purse. I want a prime minister who stands for and with the vast swathes of the disadvantaged, and who fights to ensure our lives are better, safer, easier, healthier. Not a man who hides in the basement of a London complex, giving speeches to big business about how he’s got their backs.

    Is that too much to ask?

    I understand why people are so desperate to adhere to their vision of labour as saviour from the tory mess. That’s not the battle I’m fighting. The battle I’m concerned about is longer and more insidious in nature. If we don’t have a government in who fully disbelieves in the project that is conservatism then the problems of conservatism will not be dismantled, only tinkered with and tickled by a party whose current voter base is driven by those people and who seems to believe that it is necessary to continue the decades long conservative project which has arguably only blighted the UK.

    So this isn’t the same tired battle of telling people “Labour bad!”, but a genuine appeal to labour voters to ask whether they can and will fight for better, rather than primly settling into the acceptance that perhaps, perhaps, labour can and should offer better and if so, what they will do to fight for it. Watching labour defenders fight to pretend that labour is offering distinction in its vision is frankly embarrassing when it comes to smart people- enterprising political pundits defending Reeves propagating the lie of “household economics is the same as country economics” because ‘everyone’s told that lie’ is insane. Labour is currently one of the largest political parties in Europe, and has the resources and nous to build a platform of education on how economy, health, wealth, law works. Younger people being given access to common sense political knowledge in bite size chunks would revolutionise political discourse & offer engagement to those overlooked for too long. But clearly it’s better to defend a party who is repeating the same old mistakes again than chide them on their sleight of hand, staunchly refuse their distasteful stances and overlook the uncomfortable negatives they are endorsing.

    Labour can, and should be, better for us all. But they fail to meet that basic threshold in my eyes. Too many are clinging to them as they let us down, out of terror of more three word sloganeering from tories, and by allowing the standards of politics to decline whilst loudly denying it’s happening at every juncture, we’re creating a new landscape of poor politics where parties proselytise to we the people what we want, how we feel, what we believe, and if we refuse to take this medicine, we’re labelled “tory enablers” and disregarded.

    I, and those like me, don’t want labour to lose- we want them to win and be good. This is not a radical cause, not a shocking way of thinking nor is it indoctrination or champagne socialism. It is not student politics to expect better from our representatives, not lofty idealism to want more from our chance to remove the corrupt tories, nor is it pragmatism to allow a party formed by workers and wrapped intrinsically around the labour movement to abandon those core tenets in order to win. We can win with a better platform than the one labour have rolled out, and fighting for that is not a lost cause.

    Four Years

    By Daviemoo

    Four years ago today, my mother lost her life after a protracted battle with cancer. It felt a lot like a light went out in the world that day. It doesn’t matter that she wasn’t particularly well known on a grand scale- she was my mum and I cared for her deeply. Her death and the circumstances around it led me to where I am now in politics. The NHS was already overburdened going into 2020. Her chemo had been delayed and missed so many times, she was left waiting for painkillers and buscopan as her body was shutting down- the entire experience was horrific. And I envy those people who tell you their loved one passed peacefully. My mum was tenacious and clung to life even as it sought to kick her out- I knew she’d go that way, fierce and full of pride. But it imprinted on me exactly how unfair circumstances were for your average person. I miss her every day, but I thank her a lot for the lessons she taught me both in life and in death.

    Ironically my mother would probably be somewhat frustrated by how I’ve turned out. A lefty she was not- kind and decent in many ways but certainly not a fan of how I am now- and yet I feel like she’d be proud of me for eking out the living and the life I have after losing her and for understanding the world and all of it’s problems as I do now.

    Every day I relive the horrors I saw in that hospital room and I use that as fuel to push me in writing about, talking about, learning about politics and where it’s flaws are so I can push for better for us all. My mother wasn’t a perfect person- nobody is- but she taught me a lot of the fundamentals of how to be decent and I keep building on that every day, and I hope that stands as a monument to her. I hope if she was here today she’d be proud of the man she raised and the things I’m trying to do to make the world a little bit better.
    Thank you to her, for doing her best with me, and I hope what she did, and what I do, means her legacy far outlives me, this blog and more and makes this very strange world a bit better, at least.

    How much good do you have to do with a racist’s money before you cancel it out?

    By Daviemoo

    This week, it was revealed that one of the Tory’s key donors- a man who has donated what is now revealed to be fifteen million pounds to the party- has spouted vitriolic racism and sexism against a black woman who sits on the opposing benches.
    The Tories, true to their nature, have refused to return money steeped in racism. One has to wonder how much good you need to do with a racist man’s money to cancel it out, to wash off those stains- or indeed if it is indelible, if every single pound carries that defect; especially as the man himself has already had the pay    off for his pay in to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds of government contracts. If it was not yet clear enough how transparently undemocratic it is that a man can throw money at the government and be rewarded with lucrative business along with putting a price on his disgusting racism, perhaps this incident will serve as a reminder many of us scarcely need.

    I think we all know the Tories don’t care about racism. A party full of ne-er-do-wells, the Tories aren’t a horrific government because they’re racially diverse. If anything i think we’re all uncomfortable with saying it plainly- some in the Tories have climbed high by throwing people in their own groups under the bus: from Badenoch scorning women by disregarding well founded research on the positive impact on women when granted the possibility for leave during periods or menopause, to the Tories’ only transgender MP who has said nothing about their disgusting anti trans and anti queer stances- to the endless queue of Tories of colour queuing up to divert or equivocate over the blatant racism- and yes, it is racism in my considered opinion- of Lee Anderson.
    Accusing a Muslim mayor of giving control of London to “jihadis” is not just a slip of the tongue, it is inflammatory language which paints a target on Sadiq Khan’s back: and yet, notice that the Tories engage in the double standards they so love to wave accusations of at other people- Braverman said much the same in print, but hasn’t been questioned on it- I hardly wonder why.
    The Tories are a racist party and they’re enabled to be so by the cowardice and opportunism from within. One of their gay MP’s, Scott Benton is finally gone after being caught lobbying on camera- at least he wasn’t caught up in a sex scandal like the senate Twink in the US last year or one of his tractor masturbation fellows- the more radical in the party would no doubt use to further push the anti queer sentiment they have openly admitted is a game plan to court votes.

    Taking money from a racist sullies your hands and this week we’ve seen MP’s and pundits across every spectrum of humanity alike say “what he said was/was not racist/ was racially insensitive and was/was not sexist/anti woman/ steeped in misogynoir- but he’s apologised and we should all move on”. Why do they want us to move on? Because they don’t want us to scrutinise. They don’t want us to ask the question: is there a price for racism? What price is there on racism? How much can you say whilst associated with the tories before they have to return that fifteen million?
    No doubt that’s what the already racist in the party and out are thinking. The hypocrisy of kicking out Anderson whilst counting wads of cash from a donor who did the same thing and ignoring Braverman’s caustic ranting is precisely why the Tories can’t govern: they can’t even get their own adherence to social norms or understanding of them right. As a queer person, I can’t imagine working in a party funded by a virulent homophobe who said a gay person makes you “want to hate all gay people” and “should be shot”. Can you? Think of your own marginalisation if you are of that group- and ask yourself what your terms of engagement are. It took me a long time but i left a job because a fellow manager hurled homophobic abuse at me in front of others. I couldn’t forgive the MD for ignoring it because he made her money.
    Everyone has their own limits: exactly what are the limits for a Tory MP to say that they can’t stay in a party this fractious, fractured, hypocritical…

    Usually, I stay out of this type of talk- people of colour should lead on talk about issues pertaining to racism. But the ongoing blatancy of the hypocrisies of that party hurts my head. How many times now have we watched them point out the lack of diversity on the labour benches, crowing uselessly about how different their benches look- how often have we heard them talk about how diverse they are- as they make everything worse? If anything, the multitude of gender, sex, sexuality, age, skin colours on the Tory benches make the worst case for multiculturalism there is. Fourteen years of unabated chaotic government under an increasingly diverse bench- diverse because opportunists hijacked the party under the brexit banner, and here we are. It wasn’t talent which swelled out the ranks of the party- it was naked, singular xenophobia and an opportunity to absorb wealth.
    And that’s why I hate that party so much- they’re unfairly casting aspersions on one of the UK’s truest strengths.

    Diversity is amazing. Creations with diversity borne in mind touch more people, educate more people. Diverse organisations serve their audiences better and are better equipped to grow into new markets.
    Diverse mindsets make you smarter, more open to growth.
    Diversity should be celebrated. The Tories are diverse because some people are willing to forsake basic decency and take money from the grubby hands of racists because they lack morals- and that doesn’t relate to their skin colour, sexuality, gender, religion, age.. it relates to an intrinsic lack of goodness, and every person who remains on those benches is similarly tarnished, their pockets bulging with pounds straight from the sweaty hands of a man who was caught being unashamedly racist, and can’t even bring himself to call what he said racist- just rude: because Hester believes what he says.
    Because the Tories don’t care what he said. Their mission isn’t to make the country better, so why would they care if they’re payrolled by the worst amongst us? They don’t plan to use that money to try and cancel any of that out, make a dent in it, change things. They don’t care about the weighty attachments, the implications, the damage. They care about their own welfare. So what if they take stained money? Their hands are already dripping.

    Additionally, Michael Gove this week revealed his plans to ensure that “extremism” is made a useless term in the UK, declaring that harmless ideologies are cause to report individuals to the UK’s already antiquated anti-terror scheme. Apparently anyone who stands against a government who has, for fourteen years, brought the country into international disrepute, a government who has wasted unfathomable sums of our tax money, a government filled to bursting with opportunists, taking lucrative second jobs whilst ignoring their first and most important one- the job of serving our interests, a government who has frayed at the delicate ropes of the public’s freedom, a party rocked by scandals of drug use, paedophilia, sexism, islamophobia, a party whose last leader blames a nonexistent queer lobby for her actions crashing the economy beyond short term repair, and now a party who we find out, utterly unsurprised, is funded by racism- apparently, standing against that is extremism: how ironic! Being sensible is extreme- who thought we’d see the day. Mind you this is the same Michael Gove who said the UK is “tired of experts”. He seems to be right, but we’re tired of amateur politicians too, and there’s not one person in the shell of their party who doesn’t aptly fit that description, merely by association with their rotten, vapid collective.

    I am transparent in my dissatisfaction with the current iteration of Labour but when I’m told they’ll make things worse I have to wonder how wilfully blind those speakers are. What will be made worse? The state of governance as reported by the media? Really?! Worse than this? Worse than the corruption, scandal, the embarrassment, the paralysis, the public rows, the disorganisation? Labour’s plans for the country are not up to par in my view- their plans seem unambitious and that lassitude will not bridge the ever widening gaps through which citizens fall to extremism- the real extremism, not Michael Gove’s Colombian dandruff driven fantasies of it.
    But even I suspect they won’t be as unrelentingly embarrassing, frustrating, scandal and corruption-ridden as this: and if the argument is that they sincerely believe labour will be worse- worse than all of that- perhaps we should simply close down- shut- abandon ship- strip out the assets and hold a fire sale of the entire UK and leave for greener shores. The only thing holding this country together is a collective fervour to see the back of these charlatans. If what comes after is indeed worse, I suspect sting rays will be riding the sunken ruins of the London eye before 2030.

    When it comes to it, how the Tories can sit on benches opposite Diane Abbott and look her in the eye is beyond me, but I long ago stopped trying to work out what it must be like to be so amoral as to be associated with a party with their record.
    Not one of them will flinch when they meet the eyes of the woman their millionaire donor abused- because the damage they cause, however glaringly in their face or in shadowy corners around the periphery of the country- is not even usually intentional, is not often even a direct objective- it is simply a side effect of a party bloated with individuals interested purely and singularly on absorbing wealth, resource and prestige from everyone else; if others suffer so they can make good- so be it.

    When it comes to those who still support the party, I fear the conserv in conservative is starting to creak. Those who want to avoid tarnish with the label of racism at worst and racism enablement at least will no doubt flee further from the party. Those who do not are a marvel- a chasm with no base, a barrel whose bottom was scraped away long ago. I said once long ago that I don’t necessarily hate Tory voters, just their party’s trashing of the country and the ignorance of their politics- this is no longer true. I hate the people who continue to abide by the Tories rude legacy, at cost to all of us.
    Those people exist in a social stratum where confirming their unbreaking diffidence to the party will not damage them. One wonders what else will be revealed about the party before another election, and whether we have finally reached the deepest, murkiest depths of conservative embarrassment. Sunak has ruled out an upcoming election in May- perhaps there is another racist to placate or to forgive as you accept their fools’ gold- another scandal to weather at the cost of your party’s name- another mistake to minimise as innocent people country-wide deal with the repercussions.
    The conservatives have long ago abandoned any stage show they used to perform to demonstrate they care about running the country. They are collectively more concerned about lecturing us on how we should behave as their standards slip further and further into obsolescence.
    And sadly, we are a country addicted to the drama of a government who humiliates us publicly, a nation of people who have decided the price we pay under this rogue group who have ruined our collective rights, health, wealth, security, future. We won’t fight back, because we haven’t already. The tories know it, and until the last day of office they will abuse us as they have, embarrass us as they do and diminish us as they will. So as I sit here and write this piece, I can say I relish the day we say goodbye to them, knowing that until that day comes we will see more Frank Hesters, more scandal, leaks, corruption, more abuse, more dereliction of duty, defection, more country-ruining paralysis as the Tories melt down and take us with them into the mire they themselves have created.
    May we have a future after this, where our government doesn’t keep the lights on by accepting capital from racists.

    “Extremism” is not “when you’re unhappy with a failing system and its creators”

    By Daviemoo

    In America, the US government passed a bipartisan bill declaring that TikTok should be banned, citing national security concerns for citizen data. This, coming from a government that is allowing a man who tried to pull off an insurrection to run for president. This from a government who is ignoring the will of its people to continue to fund, aid and deny a genocide we can watch from those same phones they’re so afraid we’re vulnerable on. How coincidental.
    Meanwhile in the UK, the government has unveiled new plans to call socialists, communists etc extremists- essentially making those who speak out against their failed regime extremists. If extremism is wishing to remove our responsibility for mass murder abroad, and if extremism is speaking out against a government who has ruined the lives of every generation following their own- then I guess we’re all extremists.

    Michael Gove vacillated on an LBC interview this week when asked whether Gaza was under occupation. You could see the cocaine-softened wheels turning in his head as he played with delicate phrasing to avoid upsetting the Israeli state- for how dare we suggest that the well documented mass slaughter they’ve been performing on innocent bystanders as a response to Hamas’ terror attack as occupation, as genocide, as mass slaughter, as wrong. But when do we ever see a government minister in the UK not performing this delicate dance of wording. Well, ironically from Michael Gove again, for once strong of speech as he unveiled the plans to label movements like communism, socialism and “anti government sentiment” as extremism.

    It may sound like weaponised incompetence, but I fail to see how being unhappy with the state of affairs in the UK counts in any way toward the lofty label of “extremism”. From hospitals unable to treat patients in time due to chronic understaffing even with locum agency help ready, to schools at threat of falling in on our children’s’ heads- from working for 15 years and still not having enough saved to be able to purchase property to watching the government superfund a police force which is regularly in the press for another racism, sexism, homophobia scandal. From the government being caught out and exposed for lying to the public about their actions during lockdown to Paterson scandals to over 50 of our elected representatives being investigated for sexual misconduct, from Benton’s own lobbying scandal to defections to sordid parties due to racism and islamophobia, to more racism scandals as a donor who pays the government 10 million pounds and is rewarded to the tune of 200 million pounds of government contracts- being dissatisfied with this, being angry about this, being fed up of it- is not extremism… it is sanity.

    For years now we have watched as surface level culture war nonsense is dragged into the public eye- this week, the government banned puberty blockers from being issued to children: do you think there is a huge, terrifying number of children being given these drugs? The number is 83. But do they deal with the rising costs of living? Of companies making record profits from their horrendously inflated prices? Do they deal with the undriveable roads, the strangled industries? No. It’s more important to pander to the very stupid and loud in this county than make living here possible. Small government is their moniker, yet it’s harder to exercise our rights to vote, to strike, to protest. How small is a government who prevents you from exercising your basic rights?

    These government bans and crackdowns and laws and legislations, from protest blocking to superfunding the police to redefining extremism is ludicrous. If they want to crack down on extremism they could block the hard right who were tussling with the police in November and did so all throughout the lockdowns implemented to save us from dire illness and crashing the healthcare system entirely. It is a controlled response to their fear of our mass organising.

    Slowly but surely an ill defined movement has coalesced from the misery in which we all find ourselves. This movement is not named, it has no head or heads because it is so far reaching and egalitarian. So many of us are fed up of society as it shakily stands, tired of struggling to make ends meet, tired of having our welfare threatened by those stirred to extreme modes of thinking by government and press idiocy. As I’ve said numerous times, no trans people or immigrants are ruining our lives- it’s the corrupt charlatans who’ve been driving things for our whole lives, enriching themselves using the cracks in the foundations of our governance whilst pointing their soiled fingers of blame at everyone else. And too many of us are so deeply indoctrinated that we believe it, we think all it takes is a surface level sweep towards a new government and that’ll be job done. The problem is that our politicians are in it up to their necks, immersed in the swamp of corruption that our modes of governance quietly fell to at some point and that we all, until we really looked- missed.

    Government is a vital aspect of all of our lives. They control law, tax, projects for how the country should develop, they mandate education, structure healthcare… are they sucessful? In whatever country you’re reading this from, are they doing a good job? A good enough job? Politicians are public servants and the public is exhausted, battered, bruised from years of financial crush, from unprecedented world events, from so many different things all at once- and our politicians are banning us speaking out about this feeling of ennui, this sense of dislocation from what is right, what is moral, what is necessary for a fair, open society built on solid foundation. They bar social media apps and call us terrorists- rather than working to improve the lives their decisions have blighted.

    These moves the governments are making are a shoring up against the movement we’re all in to various degrees as it begins to coalesce, an attempt to break those threads. But it is too late. Those threads aren’t made in the wires and bytes of the net. They aren’t made in the strings of data that head to our phones or computers through the wifi of our homes. It’s in our DNA. We’re all fed up- we all want change. And this isn’t something our governments can drain out of us under counter terror indoctrination or by barring us from watching HD videos of innocent people starving. If anything trying to stop us seeing it makes it worse- their authoritarianism is writ large in their determined blinkering of our ability to see it. They- and I mean our supposed representatives, our MPs, our congresspeople- they work together to prevent us from this uprising and by doing so they seal it’s happening.

    The other name for MP’s, Members of Parliament, is “civil servants”. We are the people they are meant to serve, they work for us- we pay their salaries, we elect them, we ask- tell- them to represent us- and now they repay this by trying to blinker us, or call our discomfort with their poor work extremism.

    I accept your label cheerfully- for it if it is extreme to be uncomfortable in this world as it stands, then that I may be, but I see it as the only sane response to this insane world.
    I created this blog to speak out against a corrupt government- and as long as I am able I will speak out against every single person who would rather force us into a scold’s bridle than deal with our dissatisfaction with a society that fails at every juncture to function as a just one should.

    Short termist policy is going to ruin the UK- when does it end?

    I try to avoid bringing up Margaret Thatcher when I talk about politics, mostly because I have a physical dislike of the woman and the policies she typified. But it’s undeniable that her policies were revolutionary in the worst sense of the word: her fiscal policies were the start of a steepening wealth divide in the UK, her abiding dislike of U turning even when her policies caused a longer, deeper recession, and the fiscal squeezing to deal with inflation before the days of initiatives like quantitative easing, changed the face of the UK. No longer a nation of industry, we became part of the wealth and services sector. But her most insidious legacy is the continuation of short termist fiscal policy which hurts the already suffering. Anyone familiar with this type of fiscal policy groaned when the Tories kept winning elections over the last fourteen years- but are we set to see a continuation of this under Labour, with Reeves’ fiscal determinism set to repeat the mistakes of the past?

    Quantitative easing was the strangest creation of the 2008 financial crash: banks creating money to buy bonds was meant to ease economic pressures and reduce the length of time we were in recession. 40% of quantitative easing funds created were taken up by the top 10% of wealthy Britons, though. Even though QE caused a surge in asset value like houses which benefited those who borrowed around the 2009 period, the true wealth was absorbed by those who didn’t need the easement of issues caused by recession. It seemed that this, again, was another monetary exercise which led to the rich of the UK benefiting from disaster capitalism- in some cases, no doubt from the irresponsibility of their own endorsement of loose banker rules.
    In 2016, the brexit referendum caused a run on the pound with predatory British firms like those owned by Crispin Blunt and even our own government- Jacob Rees-Mogg prominent amongst them, benefiting from the financial slowdown as the world markets lost confidence in a nation determined to tear itself out of long established free trade agreements. One could argue that quantitative easing went on too long in both periods, actually causing its own set of problems. There’s also an overreliance on it as the new default method to solve market uncertainty.

    Reeves seems to be gearing up to repeat an argument so well worn that pages are beginning to drop from the script: that the economic failure of the preceding government prevents investment, that fiscal austerity is the sensible choice.
    Austerity was wrong in 2008 in response to a bankers’ crash and it’s the wrong choice now. Labour setting out this sensible framework of fiscal squeeze is another eyeroll inducing moment we should be striving to avoid even as we run headlong into it.

    The UK has lagged behind other markets for years now, because in 2008 along with every other economy- hence the conveniently forgotten “global” in front of the crash- we faced a global financial catastrophe on the scale of a possible new depression. QE was the salve, with a package of financial cuts introduced by Osborne which felt and still feels like some sort of finger wagging punishment for ever moving away from Tories- more of a punishment for choosing Blair than a sensible method to ease the financial instabilities we faced.

    We’re told constantly that the Tories are the party of fiscal responsibility. When I was born in 1987 I’d just managed to miss the damage of Thatcher’s commitment to fiscal austerity and adherence to policy which ballooned what could have been a milder recession. I dodged seeing the highest unemployment in decades, managed to swerve most of it though no doubt I’d have been happy to be taken to marches against the poll taxes…
    I was born in a northern town, watching the reverberations of our once thriving industries being torn down as our locales fought for new identities without the long standing businesses that brought micro economies to much of the north which was lost without them. Even thriving businesses were sent into insolvency by Thatcherite fiscal policies- it wasn’t even about survival of the fittest, it was about throttling inflation out even at the cost of welfare, about shrinking the welfare state even as people relied on it.
    We now stand at the cusp of yet another round of fiscal bullying meant to rip money away from public infrastructure investment and give the government more money to steady the illusory ship that is the UK.

    All too often we’re given the ridiculous parity between country finance and household finance. The problem is, people are trained to take politicians words at face value. When Reeves tells us her mother taught her to balance the books at the kitchen table, she was talking about the home, where once you run out of money you are trapped so you must be smart with money to avoid this undesirable outcome. The UK is a sovereign currency- we cannot run out of money. Yes, overproduction can lead to runaway inflation, yes you can use QE to attack that, yes that can cause problems with interest rates. The point, though, is that this reductive nonsense parroted by anyone near the wheels of power is a misdirection- and all the parties with stakes in leadership do it. Reform’s fiscal policies would quite literally melt the UK’s economy down overnight: they promise to sever payment promises to foreign banks which would “free up” money, forgetting that if the UK refuse to pay its’ debts government borrowing would become impossible and foreign investment would drop off in a matter of days. The conservatives fiscal policy is explained simply: they want to shove every pound they can touch into their own pockets, those outside the elite circle be damned and damned more if we complain.

    Labour will be the the UK’s next government. We’re told endlessly by Labour adherents that they must move into this pale ghost of Tories in order to win. And people accept these ridiculous, weak, visionless fiscal policies instead of demanding a revitalisation of the country’s infrastructure after sixteen years of continual spending aversion.

    Part of the 28 billion pound initiative towards green policy labour has cut focuses on insulating millions of homes. Not only would this drive down bills for working people, allowing them to be more fiscally responsible by spending money elsewhere or saving, upsizing etc, it would ease the usage of climate change inducing services- refusing to do this, stalling it again is irresponsible not just because climate scientists are protesting about our actual mass deaths but because the continual abandonment of policy to directly help people spend less on utilities we need is a further capitulation to the idea that we can’t attack problems at their root source: not to mention these companies have had a longtime run on our pockets; minor windfall taxes haven’t prevented some energy companies from gaining fifty percent increases in revenue. When it comes to public ownership we’re told it’s too expensive- whilst being asked to pay increased bill costs to foot the costs of, for example, water companies building better water infrastructure. The same companies Thatcher privatised who took insane profit and gave it to rich foreign nationals want more of our money to fix the infrastructure they’ve been in charge of since the 80s… something just doesn’t seem right there.

    We’re told that Reeves’ rules are non negotiable, and this of course is meant to be a throwback to the “strong and stable” governance line that signified May’s tumultuous primacy. I see it as a bullish overcommitment to outdated fiscal rules which imperil the welfare of people unlucky enough to be born working class in the wrong decade and prioritise the riches of those who already have more than most of us can accrue in a lifetime.

    I see financial disaster on the cards again, whoever takes control of the country’s purse strings after the election this year.

    When I started to learn about economy more in the middle of last year one of the first lessons I understood was that refusing to invest in public spending as Reeves threatens to continue is one way to ensure a country mires itself in its own mess, refusing to develop new methods of revenue. It’s such high irony that it’s not just the conservatives who claim to care about British people who have brought about these circumstances of marked wealth inequality, and a Labour who have picked up the discarded clown outfit of the Tory crime syndicate and begun to don it who threaten its continuation.

    I’m tired of being negative about labour, forecasting doom like an uglier Cassandra but at this point, I’m tired of watching the UK continually gulp down a humble pie we never asked for. The population at large do not deserve to suffer punitive fiscal policy over and over and over because of some abiding commitment to the idea that suffering leads to greatness: this is labour resting on the confidence that the UK’s population will believe that we’re an irresponsible nation who must pay the price for things we often have no say in.

    If we don’t enter a period where the UK can spend the incredibly high taxes we’re under on new methods of growing the economy, then leverage that into better services, incentives to help people grow their own personal wealth and income security, we will not drag ourselves from the mud we’re currently sinking into.

    Most of all, though, it’s absolutely ridiculous that, everywhere we turn, be it the insane Tories, the obviously foolish radical Reform and the incumbents of labour, we’re told that fiscal policy that punishes us is good, responsible, the right thing to do. My kingdom for a government who doesn’t think that advertising it’s contempt for working people’s welfare and pitches our suffering as advancement.

    Galloway’s win should teach Labour the price of alienating your own base

    By Daviemoo

    Galloway’s movement might not be cohesive enough to present a threat to Labour taking government in the next election- though some would question that based on this win – but it is an opportunity to stare into a political future just over the horizon, and to reflect accordingly. The question is: is Starmer’s team capable of the sort of deep introspection that will help them learn from this?

    The results in Rochdale today don’t please me. Whilst I think Galloway is an incisive talker and a man who sticks with his convictions for better or worse, I don’t like him personally, or- broadly, politically.

    When Batley & Spen were holding by-elections I remember Galloway and Laurence Fox all headed to my old constituency to harangue each other. Both of them put out rhetoric that annoyed me. Fox held a “free speech” rally to defend a teacher who showed images of the prophet Muhammad which is widely known to be deeply offensive to Muslim people. Quick lesson: free speech is to show images which are known to be offensive, and free speech is to face criticism and recompense for it.
    Galloway, whilst campaigning for the seat, stated that he did not want “children to be taught about anal sex”- this is a widely shared conspiracy theory that the far right use to demonise LGBT+ content in the curriculum. Teaching children factually that some other children may have two mothers or two fathers, as was confirmed by a local Labour representative about the school’s curriculum, is not comparable to speaking about sex acts, and to know Galloway pushed this conspiracism didn’t surprise me. It fits into the wider slant of our political epoch that LGBT+ people cannot escape sexualisation by cishet people just by existence, and to know Galloway pushes this as a fervent belief doesn’t shock me.
    He’d also previously undertaken an interview with Benjamin Cohen of Pink News and at the end confirmed that he thinks gay people choose our ‘lifestyle’. Whilst I liked Galloway’s elaboration that it doesn’t matter whether you choose it or not, it’s worthy of respect and self determination, this basic lack of understanding about the biological reality of queer existence throws up flags- the same way people use the words “biological reality” as a dogwhistle against queer people. Trans, gay, bi people’s reality biologically is what we present to you. No candidate should stand in parliament and claim anything otherwise as it’s simply fiction.

    It’s not to say I don’t think Galloway is a hundred percent wrong in all of his utterances- I think his stolid defence of Palestine and criticism of the Israeli state has been correct often, if not always: after all, mere days before his election we heard of what is now being called “The Flour Massacre” as we read with horror, reports of well armed IDF soldiers slaughtering over 150 emaciated Palestinians desperate for food because, as the starving people began to swarm towards the scant supplies, the armed, armoured soldiers “felt scared”.

    But this is the thing: this isn’t really about George Galloway and his hats and suits and strong Scottish brogue: Galloway is just the shibboleth. This is about a wider political and social dissatisfaction with the UK political stratum. Whether you’re a disaffected center left Muslim person who feels like Labour are too terrified of the ghosts of antisemitism under the previous leader or a queer person leaning socialist, people are unhappy enough with Labour’s current rhetoric that protest electing a candidate like Galloway isn’t a fringe radical idea any more- it’s happening.

    Naturally, Labour loyalists will be quick to blame those groups for not conforming to the party line, but it takes almost stupendous, neck breaking positioning to ignore the ongoing rhetoric that has led us here: from Starmer saying he gives “uncritical support” to Israel even as we were reading reports of collective punishment to saying he “hadn’t had time” to watch footage of unarmed Palestinian men being gunned down and even a paucity of comment on the massacre mentioned above, to condoning Streetings plans to kick trans women off the imaginary women’s wards we keep hearing about or writing paywalled articles in The Telegraph exhorting people still hoping for Corbyn-esque policy to “use the door”, Starmer himself along with members of his party have directly pushed lines which have alienated traditional Labour voters. Doing so has, of course, swollen the ranks of the party with non-traditional Labour voters, with the side effects meaning that in order to win and stay popular, Labour have committed themselves to a long term sway towards that brand of politics, permanently disadvantaging those who would have previously stood with the party.

    I’m the first to say in a cynical way I think what Starmer has done is clever, if distasteful. He’s dragged enough voters into an intransigent loyalty to win. But the unrelenting short sightedness of those who have stuck with labour through thick and thin is an odd sort of viewpoint to speak to. As I pointed out recently, stating you’ve been a lifelong labour voter when the party has veered from center to left to center again shows what some would call pragmatism, whereas I call it a lack of independent political philosophy. I go where the policy is good or where the harm is least- and despite being told this is student politics, a weak position, “privileged”, I hold it because I must.

    It is another forced binary which simply does not need to be: Starmer could offer pragmatic policy based on appealing to a “broad church”, something that a Labour loyalist told my aquaintance Politi_Cal outside a recent labour conference.
    Policies based on spend- to- grow would appeal to a huge extant base of voters, policies based on highlighting the truth of schooling & an honest discourse around queer existence would take much heat out of the arguments across the UK- but the upper echelons of the party feel entitled to dictate to those able to stick by labour how they should feel- if you’re trans, hold your nose and stand next to those women with T shirts sloganeering you as a pervert and if you’re muslim, sorry about your Palestinian family members but consider how you might feel if the tories win again. Labour’s recent endorsement of James Cleverly’s plans to even further garrotte protest rights in the UK tell you all you need to know about how labour feel about being spoken back to as they monologue at you over the “will of the people”. When it comes to personal beliefs and religion or personal identity, this idea that one group has the right to exhibit control over another is insane: as a staunch atheist, I don’t want to strip people’s religions away, I want them to keep it to themselves- pray, worship, be spiritually full- but don’t use your religion as an excuse to tell me how I can live my life. If seeing me holding hands in public bothers you, understand how I feel about the preachers both Muslim and Christian who sit on the Main Street of my city every weekend exhorting people to join their religion. If knowing I have gay sex bothers you, think about your lord god and not what I do with my own body. No party is pushing true pragmatism- Labour seems unrelentingly bent towards diffidence of Israel’s actions, the tories too though they have also positively exploded with islamophobia on top of their other keening bigotries. Where are the parties who say you’re as free to pray and worship as queers are to live in peace? Nowhere, because sensible compromise met a gasping death at the hands of populism, and now in the space looms a fedora sporting shadow…

    Galloway’s win represents a deep rooted frustration with the political establishment: it’s overreach, it’s corruption and the never ending insistence that we must settle settle settle.
    The tories have driven the country into utter chaos, crowing the entire time about the success of a brexit that’s mutilated GDP, the quick response to a pandemic that killed 240,000 people because of Sunak’s desperation to reopen restaurants, the tolerant nation where trans teens are being stabbed as the PM mocks their existence in parliament and in private, the safe nation where police are systemically corrupt, the clever nation with a news channel facing thirteen simultaneous Ofcom investigations.
    Labour’s lassitude is resting purely on “the tories are so bad that people will vote for us no matter what”, and this logic fails universally. In the US, 140,000 voters for Democratic primaries chose not Joe Biden, sitting president. They could have united us all under a banner of “the tories going is step one” and presented a brave vision of a Britain united under the idea of cohesive civil liberties, a strong vision of long term plans to take all utilities back to public ownership, plans to cut tax spend on useless projects whilst superfunding the NHS for recruitment and repair, offering the young the chance to study specialist schemes which led them into shortage medical jobs at cut rate to fill the gaps. Instead we’re given the sensible concessions which will fix nothing, but will cover them with the watery gloss of “at least it’s not the tories”.

    People are tired of being told their votes are in an iron grasp, simply because of a paucity of options and the dismissive attitude and derision- not just of the party, but of Labour loyalists- only reaffirms to those with qualms that Labour is a party who will squeeze your vote out of you through your own sheer desperation, not coaxing it from you by offering better- and it’s paving the way for Galloway style figures to wreak havoc.
    Labour’s insistence that their Rochdale candidate was antisemitic even as a dossier of evidence that Israel is committing horrendous crimes against humanity grows was essentially handing Galloway license to win: will this be a lesson for Starmer and the upper echelons of the party? Or will their stoic line of “it’s us or the tories” still hold even in the face of this proof that people might just be sick of both of them? They’re predicted a landslide majority of something like over 100 seats, so I suspect they’ll make light of the larger threat Galloway’s win presents- and ignoring this threat creates a silo filled with the hissing gas of discontented voices which will- not might- eventually ignite, setting Starmer’s vision ablaze.

    Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation is a dark mirror America needs to peer into

    By Daviemoo

    The immediacy of watching a US service member douse himself in gasoline & lighting himself on fire over aiding genocide is a stark reminder that some would sooner die than be part of the horrors our nations inflict on other civilians the world over, and it should make us ask questions about how invested in continuing our imperial legacy we truly are. The flames are a light which allows us to scrutinise our tangential roles in the actions of our nation and to allow us to introspect one vital question: is this us?

    It takes a lot to bother me. I grew up in the days where people would send you a link claiming it was YouTube when it was actually a gore video. I used to want to be a pathologist, so dead bodies and gore just don’t impact on me that much and most of all, once you’ve sat in a room and watched your loved one slowly die in front of you, racked with pain you cannot prevent and losing all dignity, you are touched by a horror nothing else can really exceed. So the fact that I can still hear Aaron Bushnell screaming “Free Palestine” as fire engulfs his body should let you know how harrowing it was to see. Nor did I see it purposefully: I didn’t know what I was watching until a few seconds into the video.
    My concern is that the message is being lost amid peoples’ predictable reactions to the idiotic policemen who pointed their guns at a man who was already dead.

    Bushnell sacrificed his life because he’d rather have lit himself on fire than help his nation flatten Palestinian homes, starve more Palestinian babies, shoot more unarmed Palestinian civilians as they walk up the street waving white flags. Many across the internet are stating that nobody of sound mind would self immolate, ignoring the disturbingly rich history of self immolation as an extreme form of protest. One of the most important images in all of human history is of a monk self immolating to protest the mistreatment of Buddhists under Catholicism and its control of their state. Perhaps it does take insanity to do so- one would then argue that whatever drives you to that point may be the true issue and it is this which needs to be dealt with- but as always, people trained to ignorance will stare at the effect before the cause.
    But Bushnell was clear in his preamble that he wanted to make this point; that whatever he did to himself, Palestinians are suffering more.

    Of course many across the internet have had a visceral reaction to this, declaring that now it’s gone too far. Now a US service member has died burning in front of a foreign embassy suddenly some distant line we didn’t know existed has been crossed.
    I wonder if they’ve somehow been insulated from the images coming from Gaza every day.
    Particular images that have stuck with me: a father carrying his very small child’s body down a road thronged by exhausted people forced to flee their homes. He begs the camera to explain how his tiny three year old child was hamas, why he deserved to die this way.
    Rows of feet stuck out from under a collapsed building, the bodies flattened by falling rubble. One set of toes is painted a light red colour. The rest are small- children’s feet.
    Body parts in the street being gathered up in plastic bags so people have something to bury, whole roads painted red with blood, a small, legless body hanging from a wall.
    These are images that long preceded Bushnell’s act, and they should not be less horrifying. But for some reason, the image of a white man in military regalia burning is more horrifying than the bodies of brown children. People have had access to all of the atrocities being perpetrated and yet they ignore, they rationalise, they dehumanise.

    People across the spectrum of western media and politics have equivocated loudly that the horrors being foisted upon those in Palestine are deserved because of October 7th- a horrendous act that should not have happened. But the constancy of the false equation behind “I understand why this happened” and “I condone it” prevents any actual helpful discussion from coming about.
    I think October 7th was horrendous. I think the article I read about Palestinians dying in the West Bank on October 6th was horrendous. I think the siege of Gaza was and is horrendous. I think what Nazis did- and do- to jewish people is evil, and I think what Israel is doing to Palestinians is evil too.

    It’s confusing to watch people feign an inability to juggle these ideas as though they contradict. It’s also confusing to watch these western media personalities give monstrous talks on television that in my view legitimise the acts “the other side” commits.
    Watching Julia Hartley-Brewer say she doesn’t like the sound of ethnic cleansing but perhaps Palestinians should be encouraged to go elsewhere… Imagine being so debased as to make that statement and believe that you are a decent human, and to be confused as to why the people you’re talking about might viscerally hate you. No doubt if 1.1 million Palestinians were resettled to Julia’s hometown she’d be furious.

    Watching western leaders mumble and stumble and equivocate on violence is unreal. These are the people I’m meant to put my safety and my life into the hands of? The people who seem to believe the easiest solution is to explode people? People who are seemingly incapable of understanding that if you mercilessly oppress people they might just attack back, people who pretend the response is the crime and not the preceding oppression? If I wanted stupid people as leaders I’d… well, have voted for them.
    As a queer person, watching our bodies be elevated as human shields against criticism against decimation of the region… You think it’s a binary choice of us as rainbow people or them? Especially in the face of the anti queer uprisings across the west: the lesson at present seems to be, be glad you’re not a faggot in Palestine because they’d kill you, we just want to make sure you can’t marry who you want, adopt children, be open publicly about your life, be safe at home… Apparently there’s an acceptable, nice, sanitised level of Western homophobia we should wear like a blanket because in other regions people have it worse.
    If we went to Palestine right now we wouldn’t die because we’re queer- we’d die because the entire region is being destroyed with bombs provided by our leaders.
    Does it mean I’m ok with the mistreatment of queer people? No. Does it mean I think everyone deserves death indiscriminate? Also no. Queer bodies die just the same, and that’s what we’re condoning right now. I also don’t think queer life has a premium over non-queer life. We’re all alive, we all deserve to live and if we transgress with violence against others because of their ethnicity, sexuality, gender, religion- then we deserve punishment. But bombing and bullets are not punishment. They are execution, and it’s okay for people not to want to take part in that.

    I don’t understand how people can make statements like the ones we’ve seen: “they’re all rats, inhuman, evil, they’re all terrorists, all involved, nobody is innocent”- and be surprised when we’re met with violence, in the same way that when civil rights movements have gotten violent people have been shocked, as though it’s all safe chats about who can do what where based on some imagined human contract that leans the way of a few humans and away from many others and not the dispassionate discussion about which humans have supremacy over others.
    The idea that hamas are good is ridiculous- I’ve read about human rights abuses under hamas. But this isn’t about placating them, it’s about destroying the reason behind their necessitation- and that’s not in the cards for Palestinians. They can’t self liberate when you’re shelling them every day. It’s up to them to decide who runs their state and if they don’t need to be overlooked by people pushing for a radical agenda because the agenda doesn’t make sense because equality is theirs to have, why would they vote for it?
    Denying that is the reason for this violence, whether you want to accept that or not. And again we have to state: understanding, accepting the rationale is not condoning. There is nuance here people constantly shirk in order to offer offence instead of answers.

    Of course people will disingenuously read this as “capitulate to terrorism” because simplistics is the defence of the purposely ignorant. This isn’t about capitulation to extremism, it is about an honest assessment of the situation. The Israeli state does not have the right to obliterate civilians to make themselves feel safe. If the price of civilian safety on one side is civilian slaughter on the other, is it not natural to understand that that situation is not sustainable or ethical?
    Capitulation is not what’s on the cards- a human assessment of basic ethics, unburdened by religion or skin hue bias, points that violence will be reciprocated always and that intervention is required by those not under the heady influence of ideology- religious or secular. This isn’t about who supports gay people or where genealogy originates, it’s about human life and it’s innate value, a value that should not be denoted by where you were born, your skin, the language you learn- and right now, it is.

    Bushnell’s sacrifice is meant to elevate the plight of Palestinian people who are starving, dying of wounds and sickness, or of being obliterated by weapons our taxes are paying for. It’s meant to show you the visceral horror of what is being perpetrated in our names, with our silent assent. In the UK people beadily eye the gauzy distance, knowing that somewhere within a general election looms, and whilst we wait for that election, Palestinians die.
    In the US, democrats condemn in the strongest terms and do nothing as president Biden gears up to send more weapons and money to the region, hailing Israel as a true democracy in the Middle East when Israel defies democracy not only by having a vastly unpopular prime minister and a hard right cabinet who was implemented because of successive failed elections and deals cut to form government, but simply by being a theocracy- you cannot have democracy under a religious framework because already there are terms to access the society- following the state’s religion. Of course, secular jewish people who simply relate to their ethnicity exist in the region and yet still must observe practice; it’s hard to have democracy in a secular nation, never mind one that compels religion as the price for equity.

    Most of all though, the violence that’s been done to the region is legitimising, whether we like it or not, recompense down the line.
    If you think the west has seen terror before, imagine what happens when people whose entire lives, generations, families, businesses, homes, loved ones are evaporated before their eyes as overly painted glass eyed TV presenters wax lyrical on where they should be caged or if it’s ok to have wiped their families out are roaming the world. Cause, again, will go ignored because the effect will be civilian casualties as the Sunaks, the Starmers, the Bidens, the Trumps, the politicians, the political chat show hosts put their hands on their chests and condemn violence in the strongest terms, safe from the violence they condone and even stir- but those terms neatly cutting out their role in its creation, skirting around the acknowledgement: when you teach a man to fish, he feeds himself. When you teach your country that a man is evil because he was born an Arab in an Arab nation, how can you be surprised when the horrors your speech normalises against his people come back to you in the form of violence?

    Aaron Bushnell would rather have set himself on fire and died, screaming for the freedom of a people being mercilessly slaughtered because of state sponsored oppression than continue to be complicit. It is truly terrible that he felt this was an option, and worse still that people are sanitising it, ignoring it and finding ways to dodge acknowledgement. And whilst I hope more people don’t come to the dark conclusion that this is the only way to be heard and to remove ourselves from complicity, I fear we’re merely at the threshold of what these atrocities will prompt in people.

    Remember Aaron Bushnell as a man who died for his convictions, remember what that sacrifice was about- a reluctance to bloody his hands- and remember that this is what people are being driven to to escape complicity in this violence. Whilst it’s a useful symbol to look at the police officers pointing guns at the burnt corpse of a decent man and understand that it typifies our western body politic all too well, do not forget the message he was writing with his own lifeblood: that innocent people are suffering all day every day because of a tangled web of events that precede most of us, but which can only be brought to a halt by our visceral, unending cries for an end to it.

    Defeated, confused, irritated- must be a day in British politics

    By Daviemoo

    Yesterday afternoon, prominent leftist RMT leader Mick Lynch was quoted in the UK Guardian as stating that leftists in the UK need to “grow up a bit” and accept that Starmer is the most likely to win and that we should accept that. This morning, the RMT – along with Lynch- are quoted as confirming that they would back Jeremy Corbyn in the upcoming general election, should he decide to run a political campaign. And yet I’m told wait for manifestos and hope and pray that Starmer isn’t like he’s saying he is and all of that wishy washy garbage from everyone else.
    I cannot be the only one who is fed up of the inconsistency of leftists in the UK on these points.     I can’t even enjoy the public sacking and humiliation of disgusting bigoted fool 30p Lee Anderson…

    I certainly appreciate Mick Lynch as a figure many on the left came to revere, for his straight talking and absolutely unparalleled knowledge on the issues of British workers and the failings of the Tories, plus being a sensible voice for more socialist values in modern Britain. I didn’t agree with everything he said- as a lexiter, Lynch has made clear he thinks brexit was the right thing done handled badly- and yet I do admire a brexiteer who understands the actual nuts of the issue and lexiters seem to have a more solid grasp on the issues with our EU membership and of our leaving. We don’t agree about leaving (yet- more on that further down) but we do agree it was mismanaged horrendously. But it’s on these perceived inconsistencies that I get absolutely frustrated with British leftists.

    Firstly I don’t think any of us are under any illusions on Starmer. He is going to win. There is no doubt in my mind that he will. My frustration is in peoples continual dual threaded responses to people like me, telling me Labour absolutely need my vote, and when i respond that they do nothing to draw it but not be on the conservatives team, I’m immediately told my vote doesn’t matter. In further leftists spaces this isn’t the issue so much as this inconsistent line. Stick to your leftist values but vote Labour and don’t be angry but stand for what you believe.

    I’ve tried as hard as I can to eke out a space in labour. I’ve asked for my views to be affirmed, argued for them, demanded they be respected, threatened to withdraw support based on the treatment of the issues. Finally I elected to do as Starmer himself requested in the article he wrote in the Telegraph requesting that leftists who “still believed in the project of Corbynism” use the door.
    I don’t want to not stand with our best chance of beating the Tories, nor am I one of the doomsayers who think that Labour will immediately be as bad as the Tories. If you want my more hopeful thoughts, i think Labour will do a lot to diffuse the issues we face. But I do not see any proof from their actions, their promises (the ones they stick to…) etc that they will actually attack the problems at their root and stop them from hurting people who then fall to the radical streams of thought that give people an enemy to attack, even in the face of the common sense of the Tories being responsible. I see Labour as a gateway to the worrying scenario America faces- Joe Biden whose leadership hardly inspires or fascism.

    I really do think America will fall to Trumpism this year. And i think, given America’s position in global influence, it means dark times for all of us. But I also think that situation isn’t unique. People America wide are so defeated by the paltry choices that they’re failing to show up for democrats because they don’t see them as effectual and that is paving the way for Trump’s undebatable radicalism. We’re watching people so disaffected by politics they’re refusing to vote against their own utter, inescapable misery again.
    I can see that utter disenfranchisement heading here under Starmer vs- who knows, Braverman, Badenoch… Tice?
    Perhaps I’m wrong. I find myself really hoping i am lately. It’s weird to have a deep and abiding fascination with geopolitics and to pray I’m wrong constantly. My vision of the future is disturbingly dark. But I can’t see this ending any other way. I’m told that labour absolutely have to become this moderated iteration to win, my politics are leftist and that I can’t be annoyed by not being offered the politics I believe in. I’ve spent two days being called “student politics” by a labour supporter too scared to show his own face.
    Yes, if you are so reductive, labour is the better choice. Even if you aren’t reductive yes they will do things that will lessen some issues.

    But listening to key left figures constantly arguing for moderation is driving me insane. This moderation approach doesn’t solve the very issue that’s leading to the radicalism of crazy Tories and Trump supporters. How is not pushing for better politics further from their insanity solving things? It’s a long game, yes, this I grasp- but what does skipping our turn solve?
    I don’t understand what anybody in the main sphere actually wants.

    Here I am, a leftist who wants leftism who is told I cant have it and that I have to pick from two options I don’t like and complaining about it is wrong, then people who feel the same as me argue the same mind numbing fucking point; that we just have to settle. If you want to settle then settle but this avoidance of the plethora of views outside the forced binary is absolutely headache inducing. If you want me to vote down the ticket for a party who just won’t fulfil the hopes i have, do you also expect my silence? That’d be why the right are so comfortable ironically throwing the fascism label at liberals, I guess- because liberals don’t say it but they want your abiding loyalty, your vote, and if they can’t compel it through the worst case scenario argument and force you to be quiet about your feelings they’ll just besmirch you as equal to the right wing fools who want to vote for everyone’s misery including their own. Why ever did i call my blog politically enraged- because politics is absolutely enraging.

    On the whole brexit debacle, I’m currently asking myself if we might have actually accidentally lucked out by leaving the union when it’s increasingly likely that hard right and even far right populists seem to be taking hold of the bloc in many countries. If the EU does become swallowed by Le Pens, Melonis and more perhaps we’re better off not mucking in with them. So when people I often agree with on big issues sometimes shock me with a curveball I can manage. But watching this flippancy about the long term repercussions of giving in to this eternal capitulation to less leftist politics play out through the minds of prominent UK politics figures really is eating my brain. I don’t want to continuously whinge about the options on the table, but it’s how i feel and the determination of others to shut it down is exhausting. I’ll be dragged to the polls in this country kicking and screaming at this point, because i don’t see the options given as pointful. If you don’t agree that’s your right. I hope I’m wrong- because if I’m not, we’re merely at the threshold of suffering to come, and all because people see leftism as an impossibility in a country that rolls over for the right at every single turn, creating their own self fulfilling prophecy and venting their rage at those of us concerned enough to raise the alarm.

    I’m fed up of arguing with Labour loyalists

    By Daviemoo

    “The Tories are bad” is the “I condemn hamas” of my daily political talks these days. Yes, the Tories are bad, yes i hate them, yes I want to see them gone. I feel like I have to spend half my time clarifying that yes, it is, through the miracle of thought, possible to dislike both the vile Tories, whose policies have led us to utter ruination- and the iteration of Labour who stands opposed.
    The continual castigation of critical examination of labour on action, policy and position is frankly fucking exhausting, and I’ve had enough of it.

    My issues with Labour are usually written off as a dislike of Starmer personally, or a love for the previous labour leader. Neither is true- though it is true I don’t like Starmer, I see this as an irrelevance. It’s possible for me to dislike someone personally but think their politics or policies are of use. This is not my sentiment. There is a bizarre refrain I often hear when i talk about my qualms with labour’s positions on social issues, that I’m not allowed to vote with my morals because the stakes are so dire; an ironic sentiment given people take my dislike of labour’s current iteration as some imagined personal slight against them as Bad People Who Are Doing Bad Things And Are Bad.

    I do not see labour voters as awful people who are doing terrible things- rather I see them as uneasily ignoring the weight of what their vote is condoning, and imploring them to understand that if they truly don’t like what’s on offer from the party but are voting for them to change their direction, they have their work cut out for them- and that’s fine, but to ask yourself if you’re really ready for that fight?

    A vote for a party who has moderated to the right of where it was, is a party who seeks your vote in it’s current iteration. Voting for it is a conscious ascent of that move and a condoning of it. Parties do not appear, suddenly, in power like a mushroom pops up after rain. Labour has spent determined years moving to the position it now occupies, a position certainly on the left of the extreme Tories, but in a space i do not like or support- not because of the tedious insults of Starmer or an abiding loyalty, but because their policies concern me. Rachel Reeves’ fiscal policy is reminiscent of the same “cut spend to fix things” nonsense that typified Cameron, and yet also manages to touch on Liz Truss’ appeal to “growing the size of the pie” and yet never once explaining exactly what will be done with the larger pie. Someone proposing that as chancellor they will grow the economy is the same as a firefighter explaining that they will, indeed, put out fires. Yes, of course you’re going to do that, it’s what your job entails- what are you doing to do with that growth- that’s an answer nobody ever gives a satisfactory answer to. What does Reeves plan to do to grow the economy by cutting money from expenditure into the country to shore up on and modernise its aged out infrastructure? We’ve already been suffering under austerity for years. Continuing that in any way will prolong a stagnation of public spending which curtails development into new revenue streams the country can use to bolster the economy- this is literally the logic of savvy business people: sometimes you gotta spend money to make money…

    When it comes to Streeting and his NHS plans, my concern is as simple as this:
    The NHS is struggling. Alleviating that burden by passing the work to an external entities is a capitulation to an NHS in struggle that can only be fixed with this infiltration: when the NHS’ load is lifted, it loses the ability to further bargain for better pay deals or contracts for workers, because they are less relevant because the work is being done by external parties. And all these parties need do do is fall just short of target to continue their vampiric relevance and avoid punishment- too many still wait to be seen to lose their service, not enough exist to legitimise taking them off supply. Additionally, further legitimisation of private work in healthcare will attract doctors, nurses, ODPs, therapists- workers who could, and should, be working for an NHS that treats them properly.
    Private companies do not deal with the root issues- poor working conditions for medical staff, underfunding in key areas and creaking archaic structure, and the reluctance of modernity in education which allows us to train our youth into the jobs currently running short of staff. Without a large scale tandem approach to plug the shortage in staffing, attracting the young into these roles and helping them educate into them, and attractive working conditions, the NHS will die- Streeting’s plans are just another route to that grisly end. In fact his is not the worst- the Tories plans are to cover their eyes and Richard Tice’s plans would allow disaster capitalism to utterly flourish as the NHS noisily gives its death rattle. But rest assured reader, Streeting’s plans aren’t good.

    On immigration, I feel like many UK residents don’t understand that legal net migration creates jobs just by happening- the more people here, the more jobs to service our cafes, hospitals, cinemas, more cause to build, to spend… immigration helps the economy, and yet no amount of LOOK AT THE FUCKING FIGURES convince people that the problem is a badly run system that exacerbates its’ own issues so the government has a shadowy figure to blame. We don’t know specifics yet but labour recently speculated on sending refugees to a nice, safe country, not Rwanda, as if the problem is the locale and flora or fauna and not the abdication of our moral duty to protect people who seek aid on our shores- especially if they flee from countries who fell apart because of our regional meddling. I recently saw Julia Hartley-Brewer state that “ethnic cleansing doesn’t sound nice but maybe Palestinians should be encouraged to go elsewhere”. If it was here, Julia, I’m sure you’d be the first to pop a vein publicly but i doubt someone as painfully, achingly, embarrassingly hypocritical about every position she holds could see the irony in her statement. Labour could understand what experts like Colin Yeo have said for years which is that regional migrant processing centres and international agreements would allow us to process refugees whilst ensuring safety, which would then allow us to firm up on detaining boat landings- there’s no reason to cross that way unless you won’t succeed at application, so clearly nobody but the more scurrilous will do it. Additionally- put migration in the hands of locals. When visa sponsorship is needed for a job, let it fall to local governance to give assent or not. A faster, more devolved say in what jobs are filled where and with whom.

    Additionally labour’s fray joining efforts to placate anti queer people whilst still appealing to LGBT+ people an allies has been an education, to say the least. To watch queer people reluctantly sigh and vote for a party who says “we don’t hate you but we’re happy to let the extremists chat about your rights, body, call you a paedophile and entertain a gentle erosion of your rights instead of just tearing them up tomorrow”, or watch allies rationalise their support for this has been absolutely soul crushing. It’s an abject lesson that some peoples’ rights are ok to discuss but not others. Imagine how many progressive allies would brook a discussion about the legitimacy of Andrew Tate’s views on women? I’d hope none, but at this point I’ve been shocked at what supposed allies will accept.

    But to raise these issues and to state things are wrong brings only ire.
    Labour support right now seems to come pre packaged, cracked from stiff plastic to reveal a well worn script I’ve heard over and over: I see you don’t agree with me- I guess you’re a bad guy who likes the Tories.

    I hate the Tories viscerally. Some of them make me fear for my own pacifism. But to think that labour is a neat, perfect solution is cripplingly short sighted.
    I used to be able to cope with this, believing the words of Labour supporters who told me they understood and they’d be right with me on day one of the new administration, fighting to make labour better. But I’ve realised that politics itself dissuades this.
    As I said above, labour have spent years making clear their platform: a return to the type of governance that lets you get on with it and seeks not to really interfere, no big changes, steady the ship. This is the platform they’re promising they’ll enact when they win the next election.
    To not do this means they are a bad government. To vote for a platform you don’t like, hoping they won’t do it is absolutely illogical. I’ve no doubt some surface changes can be pushed through but if a party offers a specific platform, not doing that means they’re not good… It’s why even Tory loyalists hate them, because they’ve failed to even do what their own supporters want. Why would labour getting in on a platform they don’t do be a winning strategy? They’d simply haemorrhage the votes they obtained offering these promises, and then be mandated to do them lest they lose down the line.

    My issues have now grown beyond the simplistic banter of which party sucks more- the political lifestream of the UK is polluted.
    I’m told daily that if i don’t; vote labour i help the Tories, that I have no choice (quoting from today) and that if I don’t vote labour, like it or not, like them or not, like their policies or not, the Tories win and then extremism.
    And this is the system you want me to agree to partake in? A system where my choice is someone i hate whose platform i don’t believe will help us or extremists?
    That is quite literally the worst argument for anything I’ve ever seen.
    I’m told it’s grown up to accept this: no it isn’t. It’s pathetic to think “misery no matter what” is a good choice for us, for our youth, our children, for people moving here with hope in their eyes.
    And this is my issue. I grew up reading books about how brave we were, how industrious, that we wouldn’t take things lying down. And yet every day I look out of my window at a country prostrated before a system that rapes our choices from us in our eyesight, a country that tells us choose the least bad option, the option that makes you gag the least and either be happy or be quiet.
    I’m told that complaining about the “better” option is damaging, dangerous, makes me a bad guy.
    I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told religious people that aversion to questioning their beliefs is deeply troubling. Same with politics.

    I often get harassed by “longtime labour voters” lecturing me for my fair weather support as if the entire point of politics is for parties to try and win our vote through policy, promise and action. I think it’s ludicrous to weld your entire political ideology to the whim of a party who changes over time. I’ve developed my own understanding of what I want and want to see, and that doesn’t evaporate when a party decides it’s more productive to appeal to its antipathy.
    Frankly I think it’s pathetic to look at a nation of people who allow their politics to dictated to them by the party’s direction and line.

    So many people will tell me they want better, more progressive politics but are doing nothing, not one thing to fight for it, and are in fact voting with a party who has moved away from it. Labour will not look at a huge majority which voted for their platform and decide to not do it- they will take it as assent that they should do it. Because that is how politics works: you offer it, people vote for it, you do it. Yes, we- you- stand a chance of changing labour by degrees. But if you want better politics, the time to ask for it is not after meekly handing them a victory with a frown on your face. It’s before- it’s by demanding what you want as the price for your vote. You are worth it- and yet me telling people this- that you’re worth fighting for, your vote is worth fighting for, changing for, offering things for- is met with hatred! From the very people I’m telling are worth more.

    I often say I could be wrong, because I refuse to be an egotist who is convinced they know everything- i could be wrong. But i don’t believe I am, and I’m fighting for what I want to see from politics. I tell my local MP how I feel, i protest, I sign everything I can, i take part in direct action. And for the temerity of standing in my conviction, labour voters tell me I am betraying them. As many of them vote for a platform they dislike. It’s Stockholm syndrome and I wish i knew the cure, knew how to make people see that what is on offer from any of the parties who stand a chance of winning is rubbish. That we’re a country beaten down by COVID, brexit, recession, Tories- and we don’t deserve more punishment. We deserve better than that. And for my efforts I am told I’m childish.

    Labour voters never explain why their case is the better one- why i should stand with them even in the face of my concerns ,or alleviate them. My withdrawal form their circle is proof that I’m a bad guy and they don’t need to appeal to me, even as their party lays down with the dog who gave us the fleas of fourteen years of Tory governance which has led us to abject chaos.

    I am tired of it. I don’t want to fight with people. I don’t, despite my combativeness. I just want us to all be treated with respect, with dignity, to have politics that doesn’t make us compromise or ignore, make us look at our trans friends, the women in our lives, the gay men we love, the people of colour we care for and uneasily confirm that we’re voting for the people who need their vote to win but who offer them nothing. I don’t want to watch more remain voters rationalise how it’s actually smart to vote for a party confirming they’ll do nothing to fix the issues of the EU beyond legislative pruning. I don’t want any of it. I hate where we are and I am tired.

    We do not deserve this brand of politics which endorses pain for us all no matter what, nor do we deserve to be told it is adult, it is preferential, it is acceptable- it is the right path to capitulate and watch as the people whose dedication to conservatism has made our country so broken are appealed to yet again, given what they want again, even as it’s painful to us all to experience. What a cycle we are trapped in, what a poor state of affairs where we’re gearing up for another five years, another decade, another lifetime til we see the pale spectre of the politics we want appear in the distance. But of course. It’s for the next generation to do, it’s for someone else to do, at some other time. We want it- but not if we have to do it. Is this truly the brave British I’ve been hearing about my whole life? They do say don’t meet your heroes. I’ve met the brave British. There’s nothing brave about us, if we accept lacklustre politics that gives in to the worst of us to win.