Thread by @shaunjlawson

And now for a rather bleak thread. Something that's back playing on my mind now, just as it was in 2016 - when I first concluded it. Read on... if you dare.

In 2016, the weekend before the referendum, I very nearly wrote an article which had been sitting in my head for months. Its thesis would have been:

"Whatever happens on Thursday, whether Leave win or Remain win, everything is screwed. Forever".

Why was I thinking that?

1. Because it was obvious Leave would do horrendous damage to the economy and to social attitudes

2. Because it was obvious Remain would make no tangible positive difference, and that the EU was unreformable

3. Because it was obvious that the referendum had let loose a Pandora's Box which couldn't be closed back up afterwards

4. Because it was obvious that Remainers would be devastated and furious if they lost; as would Leavers if they won and the impossible wasn't delivered.

But it was about more than the referendum. A lot more. After all, Brexit only happened because of structural causes going back decades. And my thesis was: these causes could not and would never be remedied. Why was that?

1. Atomisation of modern work - which will only intensify even more. Goodbye secure jobs; hello, insecurity everywhere.

2. An ageing population: meaning ever more money for pensions. But where would it come from given:

3. Global corporate tax avoidance?

Point 3 means the following. Imagine if one country got tough on the tax avoiders. They'd simply up sticks to somewhere which doesn't. It's basic logic. Every developed country has to act in unity against them... but they don't, and they won't.

The atomisation of work - regarding which, the technological revolution means there's no going back - also makes it terrifyingly difficult to properly challenge employers and implement proper workers' rights.

Automation will be with us soon too. Try providing old style workers' rights in a world in which jobs will be vanishing left, right and centre. Only Universal Basic Income can remedy that - but imagine for a moment: the government in control of everyone's basic income. Scary.

Then, there's socialism itself. Why do perfectly reasonable people with no axe to grind say socialism cannot work in 2019? The answer's simple.

1. It cannot work in one country alone - for very similar reasons to those on tax avoidance. There'd be enormous capital flight.

2. And this is fundamental. Why did socialism/social democracy work across the West for a whole generation after the war - and why did it dramatically stop working in the 1970s?

The answer is Bretton Woods. Which all developed countries maintained... until the US blew it apart.

The collapse of Bretton Woods and dawn of monetarism/financialisation, with the dollar as the world's reserve currency, is what led to where we are now. A system in which it's essentially impossible to go against what the US does on a whole range of things.

So many of us always cite Scandinavia. What we all ignore is that Scandinavia ceased to be genuinely socialist a long time ago now - and parts of it (Denmark especially) are themselves anti-immigration and almost nativist.

Certainly, what they have is better than we have - though they also have very high taxes and very expensive countries. And in Norway's case, an oil reserve fund which we chose not to have.

How did Norway grow that fund? Only by making all sorts of disgusting investments in fossil fuels: not in their own country, but elsewhere. They're no example here at all. And every Scandinavian country treats non-EU migrants and refugees just as badly as we do.

Which brings me on to... immigration. The scale of which during this century will be astronomical. We've barely scratched the surface so far - yet look at how Western country after country have reacted. By pulling up the drawbridge and going nativist and Islamophobic.

If it's as bad as this already, what will it be like when climate change is taking far worse effect 20 or 30 years from now? I'll tell you how bad: nations will close their borders altogether.

And will climate change be reversed? Not. A. Chance. Because publics across the developed world will not vote for tax rises and anything that disturbs their ways of ease - and also because China and India say "how dare you deny us the chance to develop and grow like you did?"

China and India in particular (but plenty of other emerging economies too) are why Bretton Woods can't be repeated. Too many others demand a share of an ever-diminishing pie now. In a world in which as Europe slowly sinks, they grow. Not a process that can or should be stopped.

Don't get me wrong: extraordinary numbers of people in China, India, Brazil, South Africa and elsewhere are so dirt poor, it'd make you cry. But while capitalism stops delivering in the developed world, it's actually been delivering in the developing world as never before.

That's partly thanks to the internet; partly thanks to China continually ignoring global rules. Yes, the treatment of the Global South by the IMF, World Bank etc is absolutely disgusting. Yet these countries - the majority of of the world population! - continue to progress.

Their population sizes mean we cannot compete. So work is outsourced there. More secure jobs are lost at home. The public react by voting for Brexit or Trump - but it just carries on as before, because it's not reversible.

And of course, many of these emerging economies have no safety net worth the name... while ageing Europe faces ever increasing pension and healthcare bills. Meaning, of course, governments will inevitably slash the welfare state. Britain's not alone in that at all.

What's the best that can be done in Europe - and in more relative terms, the US too? Managed decline. But no government will ever tell its people that: so the Tories find something to blame (immigrants, the poor etc) - and Labour do too (the rigged system, bankers, the rich).

In that sense, almost the entirety of politics in the West now is about distracting the people from the inevitable. Decline relative to the rest of the world cannot be stopped (only delayed through counter-productive tariffs); climate change cannot be stopped either.

This means the pain experienced by so many right now will only get worse. Not only did Western capitalism peak before 2008; in a sense, the whole world did. Now, it's increasingly every country for itself, with resource entropy on the horizon too.

Why did I never write the article? Essentially because there was so much to discuss, I kinda overwhelmed myself. And why, more than that, was I ultimately comfortable with Labour's direction of travel and attempted renewal of socialism?

Because given that nothing works and nothing can work, Labour might as well offer something that at least tries to put people first. And it really didn't have a choice given the number of communities and voters who'd already been abandoned.

All the above is why British politics have been such a never-ending shitshow since mid-2016. It's not just Brexit; it's EVERYTHING. Just as it's why there's practically no great leaders anywhere in the world any more. Just as it's why democracy is in trouble across the West.

Because when the public sees the system no longer working, it gets angry. It cries out for help. Cowardly, cynical politicians lie and provide easy answers... which when implemented, only make things WORSE. The public gets even angrier. Division grows. The tenor becomes poisonous

And slowly, once prosperous, tolerant, pluralistic societies slide first towards nativism/nationalism, then into fascism itself. Democracy cannot deliver or even survive without prosperity; without progress.

Look at the euro. Look at what it's done. Look at neoliberalism: governments can't counter its effects because global corporations have all the power. And without prosperity, countries cannot integrate immigrants... so ghettoisation happens instead, along with rising racism.

People in working class communities see their lives getting worse day by day. Services are worse. Housing is worse. Schools are worse. Hospitals are worse. All are overwhelmed by demand. And with nobody explaining any of the above to them, they lash out: at immigrants.

Look at this survey from only the other day. Islamophobia isn't only rife among Tory members; it's rampant among Tory voters. Including, I dare suggest, their newly accrued ones too.

buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/co…

And also in that survey: notice the first sign of a backlash on the left against Jewish people too. All a consequence of the disgusting campaign of lies we've just lived through. I can't say I didn't repeatedly warn this would happen... and lo and behold, it's started to do so.

But the real reason Islamophobia is so rampant is because of lack of investment. Investment which can't be delivered to the level required because tax avoidance means the tax base isn't high enough. And if interest rates ever start rising, heaven help the entire West.

I did warn you this thread would be bleak! None of what was going through my mind in 2016 has been resolved. None of it. In that sense, nothing that's happened in British politics since has surprised me. It's a shitshow because every single underlying factor is shit.

The right has no answers; only lies.

The centre has no answers; only cliches and cynicism.

The left has no answers; only hope. But hope will always trump fear a million times over, so I'll always be on the left.

And I also cannot put into words how much I admire people like Aaron Bastani, Grace Blakeley or Paul Mason: all of whom have the vision to try and re-imagine the future. A very, very different future. Trying to find the answer to our current Gramsci-esque dilemma.

It's just that with climate change already here (and remember, the effects of what we're doing right now will only be seen 20-30 years from now, and none of the science even looks at the impact of feedback loops), that answer's going to come too late.

Too late.

And given that, what can any of us do? Make the best of it. Live as fulfilling lives as we can; help others as much as we can; keep fighting for something better. But the situation I've set out above isn't going to change. The tide will overwhelm us all in the end.

/FIN