Full house at Bristol University for the Bristol Inclusive Economy Network event with Ted Howard of @DemocracyCollab on Community Wealth Building and the emerging potential for a “Bristol Model”. #democraticeconomy#communitywealthbuilding
Ted highlights the irony of a new movement for a democratic economy in the UK and USA, given the role that our two countries played in the conceptualisation, rollout, and development of the neoliberal order. Calls for fundamental systemic change of our political economy.
Panel discussion following Ted Howard’s remarks with speakers from the University of Bristol and local new economy actors from the West of England on prospects for political-economic system change locally. #communitywealthbuilding#democraticeconomy
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This piece inadvertently reveals the fundamental problem with Starmer, a total lack of human empathy. The fact he’s gone through loss and difficulty in his own life is processed entirely narcissistically, and does not become a means of humanizing those his policies will impact.
All this woe-is-me stuff, it’s entirely self-inflicted. He got a stonking majority through pure luck and by default—the lowest vote of *any* majority government—but he didn’t have to squander it by being a nasty evil authoritarian little prick. That, that was purely his choice.
Also, note the firebombing of his house by young Ukrainian male models is treated as an act of nature in this piece, not something extraordinary requiring an explanation.
One of the most unforgivable things about Starmer and his Labour Right faction—and a big part of why we find ourselves where we are today with a despised government having boxed itself into a corner—is the stupidity of the conversation on the economy they’ve imposed on everybody.
Far too many people who should have known better went along with all that. Household budgets, maxed out credit cards, black holes, magic growth fairy and much more idiocy besides. At one point they even rhetorically abolished the notion of any conflict between capital and labour!
Well—to use their own stupid household analogy—those bills have now come due politically. And they have left themselves with literally no place to go. Their imminent collapse is borne of their own spectacular hubris and short-sightedness, a downfall entirely of their own making.
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day One:
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Day Two:
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
The Labour Right has misjudged the function of the right-wing media, which is to distract from any challenge to wealth and power. For a time they were united in destroying the Labour left. But now—material conditions remaining what they are—the focus will be Starmer’s government.
The assumption was that, so long as Starmerite policy doesn’t challenge vested interests, they would be allowed to continue as before. But in the absence of bread someone must be recruited into the circus, and now they’re it.
Of course, the fact that they are so venal and corrupt means that it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. After years of politics on easy mode, they are suddenly in the firing line. And the polls show how well they are handling it.
A thread with a few eve-of-poll thoughts about the politics of this British general election and where it is likely to leave those of us committed to transformative political-economic change both ideologically and as a practical necessity. 🧵👇🏼
So ends the most delusional general election campaign in modern British history.
The vote seems largely a foregone conclusion, with a collapsing Conservative Party barely capable of going through the motions, able to summon only enough energy to place a few insider bets on their own impending demise.
The idea that the problem with Starmer is insufficient ‘boldness,’ rather than that he has the wrong policies in the wrong interests, is a failure of analysis and understanding that will become apparent very quickly. His commitments aren’t right but insufficient, they are wrong!
Starmer’s positions are:
-Privatisation
-Financialisation
-Derisking
-Authoritarian policing
-Atlanticist foreign policy
-Austerity
-Trickle-down economics
-Growth
-Constitutional status quo/unionism
-British nationalism
-Purge the left
There is nothing in this programme that most of the Conservative Party of the past 14 years couldn’t agree with. The remarkable thing is selling it (again!) to most of the Labour Party.