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25 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Brexit is the outcome of a civil war within capitalism. The stuff about foreigners and sovereignty and blue passports was just a smokescreen for some extremely determined economic interests. And we are mere collateral damage. My column:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
"We will get out there and we will become incredibly successful because we will be insecure again. And insecurity is fantastic."
Peter Hargreaves (a billionaire who donated £3.2m to the Leave campaign).
The Pollution Paradox explains a lot about the state we're in:

The more damaging the enterprise, the more money it must spend on politics to ensure it’s not regulated out of existence. As a result, politics comes to be dominated by the most harmful companies and oligarchs.
The persistent trick of modern politics – that appears to fool us repeatedly – is to disguise economic and political interests as cultural movements.
That's how Brexit was won.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

George Monbiot Profile picture
23 Nov
A few thoughts about vaccination.
1. Once a vaccine against Covid-19 which has received regulatory approval is offered to you, please accept it. It will help protect you and other people. Getting vaccinated is a pro-social act.
Thread/
2. There could be some risks associated with it. But once it has received full approval, we can be pretty confident that any risks of vaccination will be much lower than the risks of not vaccinating: namely allowing a pandemic that kills people and ruins lives to keep raging.
3. Everything we do is risky to some extent. Even doing nothing (sitting at home all day without exercise is really bad for your health). But you will almost certainly face higher risks travelling to the clinic to get your injection then you will face from the injection itself.
Read 7 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
20 Nov
1. As another deadline for a deal with the EU sails by, there is still no sense of urgency from the UK government. It’s letting the clock run down towards the no-deal Brexit it wants. But why?
Because Brexit can best be understood as a civil war within capitalism.
Thread/
2. The point of it was best summarised by Steve Bannon: “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” If you create enough chaos, regulations cannot be enforced, tax evaders go unpunished, and the restraints on the most brutal and exploitative forms of capitalism fall away.
3. Broadly speaking, there are two main types of capitalist enterprise. One seeks an accommodation with the administrative state, and benefits from stability, predictability and regulations that exclude dirtier and rougher competitors. It can live with a thin form of democracy.
Read 18 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
19 Nov
Having come to the party 6 months late, @BBCNews now claims to have "revealed" the PPE scandal. No acknowledgement of those (@GoodLawProject, @openDemocracy, @BylineTimes, some of us at @guardian) who've spent all this time banging our heads against the wall of media indifference
In reality, the PPE scandal reveals a massive failure of journalism, by the BBC and other mainstream outlets. They ignored it until it became unignorable.
And they STILL aren't covering a equally outrageous (and probably more lethal) parallel scandal: the replacement of trained clinicians with call centre workers, and the wastage of £12bn, caused by the government's outsourcing of contact tracing.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Read 5 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
18 Nov
A few words about what led to today’s column.
I’m writing a book about feeding the world without destroying the planet.
Some of the shocking things I’ve discovered prompted me to think about strategic food reserves. So I thought I’d asked the government about ours.
Thread/
I was startled to discover that we don’t have any. This made me think about January 1. Then it occurred to me to look into warehouse capacity.
In other words, it came from a deep dive into an issue that's not in the news, as most of my columns do.
I know this might sound strange, but I feel it’s essential that at least some journalists have as little to do with the media as possible. If you’re embedded in the media’s world, it is hard to see past it to the gigantic issues it doesn’t cover.
Read 6 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
18 Nov
This statement is bone-chilling.
The government “is not responsible for the supply of food and drink to the population in an emergency”.
What the hell is government for, if not for this?
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
The Tories have always had a thing about food. It brings out their most punitive instincts. Food is closely linked to their Malthusian mindset. If the poor starve, they have no one to blame but themselves, even if they’re paid starvation wages.
monbiot.com/2015/06/23/cur…
Thread/
After all, they can just go and forage in a bin. Or grow their own food on all the land they don’t have. Or hunt a deer in one of the places they’re not allowed into. Why *can’t* they fend for themselves?
Read 9 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
17 Nov
This week’s column covers yet another massive scandal, with horrendous implications: this time involving warehousing for post-Brexit food supplies. It’s likely to affect us all
With apologies for my ongoing contribution to national average blood pressure
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Warehouse capacity in the UK might not sound like the most thrilling topic for a column. But you *really* need to know about it. Please read and share the article. Time is running out, and we urgently need action to avert what could be a total disaster.
Thanks.
Food traders will have to build reserves, now and in December, to cover the likely shortfall in January. This means warehouse capacity. One minor hitch: there isn’t any. “The situation will quickly become critical.”
Read 4 tweets

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