Scotland is the key to the entire next 10 years of British politics... 1/ The SNP is approaching a decision point - if there's a pro indy majority at Holyrood in May, there's a clear legal justification for #Indyref2newstatesman.com/politics/scotl…
2/ ... but there comes a point where it's either a giant string-along, without any intent to go for independence, or you stop talking about it and do it... but get real about the actual route... newstatesman.com/politics/scotl…
3/ The White Paper and the Growth Commission are from a different era. With Debt/GDP at 100%, 17% deficit, even on v favourable terms you don't achieve NZ/Denmark style capitalism without *class struggle*... that's the grand illusion of nationalism newstatesman.com/politics/scotl…
4/ I stand on the old Leninist/Wilsonian principle - the right of nations to self-determination: Scotland should have the right to a no-penalty exit from the UK. Period. newstatesman.com/politics/scotl…
5/ ... but there's an abject lack of realism about what independence means. EU membership means you can't attack wealth/power/privilege... Greece tried and it was a secure member already... newstatesman.com/politics/scotl…
6/ ... monetary vassal status to the Bank of England? Good luck with that at a time the Tories want to pour investment into the English Midlands, while Scotland is returning Trident to England... newstatesman.com/politics/scotl…
7/ The Labour and Tory attempts to deal with this are pathetic. Offer full federalism now, and a UK constitutional convention or stop wasting airtime. See @robertshrimsley in the FT... ft.com/content/edc5bd…
8/ The rising Scottish generations are mesmerised by independence and EU membership, for progressive reasons. The only way that's not going to lead to indy is if the rest of the UK adapts to that... ft.com/content/edc5bd…
9/ The English/Welsh left rightly sees that if the progressive Scottish working class does not want to be in the same polity as us, our strategy has to change completely... the Progressive Alliance will become the baseline, no more party sectarianism... ft.com/content/edc5bd…
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Vaccine minister @nadhimzahawi "doesn't want to speculate" why Britain has one of the worst Covid death rates in the world... and wants to wait for an inquiry. I'd rather take action based on knowledge not ignorance 1/ what we know...
2/ Johnson resisted scientific lockdown advice from the beginning, determined not to let Covid get in the way of Brexit... see Greenwich speech 3/2/20...
3/ Privatised test and trace was a fiasco... PPE shortages were avoidable... ministers dumped the pandemic into the care home sector... and Tories kept the airports open while other countries shut them down...
The Chartwells/Compass free school meals package scandal is a teachable moment about capitalism. 1/ Why do so many families need free school meals? Because real wages have stagnated while profits soared...
2/ Why packages and not vouchers? Because the big outsourcers like Compass *lobbied the government* against vouchers, claiming they could use their scale to provide cheaper food...
3/ Here's the business model in a single graphic. Buy food as cheap as possible. Achieve growth by replacing/acquiring smaller, higher-quality providers, hire the cheapest possible labour...("we focus relentlessly on costs")... but it's not done to make huge bottom line profits
From his well paid column in a highly circulated right-wing tabloid, Peter Hitchens "fears for his freedom of speech". As I'm the target of the bile today, let's be clear... nobody wants to censor the Mail on Sunday... dailymail.co.uk/debate/article…
... but we do have the right to lobby Twitter/Facebook/Youtube and the advertisers to label disinformation, deprioritise it in the algorithm and demonetise grifters making money from science denial...
... if you don't understand the relationship between the fascists and conspiraloons and their mainstream media enablers, read Arendt...
1/ I predicted the Trump coup but not its form. I thought the militias/PBs would turn out to disrupt and suppress voting... now I understand why they didn't: the Trump strategists thought they would win Georgia/Arizona and contest the postal voting... this has implications...
2/ The Trumpers also understood better than the left that there was an anti-BLM/anti-socialist backlash building among minorities - eg Texas Rio Grande, parts of NY State... and their turnout numbers looked good...
3/ Once they decided to try to invalidate/overturn the result, the key was whether the GOP right would go along with it. Until this week they did. That's what rallied a fairly beleaguered and confused plebeian mass base: they were lost once SCOTUS ruled against Texas....
A short thread on the Nazi/Trump parallels, drawn from research from How To Stop Fascism (see bio): 1/ The modern far right grows from the same ideological rootstock as Hitler/Mussolini - Nietzsche, Sorel, Chamberlain - it's the same crap... but...
2/ In the immediate aftermath of WW1 the German far right was splintered, with the biggest action - not words - being perpetrated by the Freikorps, first against the Spartakist uprising (exactly 102 years ago), then Baltic States...
3/ ... then the Bavarian Soviet. So when Hitlers NSDAP took off it was as a magnet for all paramilitaries, militias, aristocratic fascists etc... but there still remained Trump-style authoritarian conservatives, some even "populist"...
Trump backs down - on transition, on prosecuting MAGA rioters, on links to far right. Why? Because a felony was committed somewhere in the chain of command that led to the security failures at Capitol, and it will be traceable 1/ And everyone is resigning...
2/ Politically - in terms of mainstream politics - this is now a damage limitation exercise for the Trump family and the inner circle. He can pardon himself but not them. In terms of mass politics however...
3/ As I pointed out yesterday, fascists need Sorelian myths: the Storm/Kraken was a Sorelian myth and it fell apart between the SCOTUS judgement and 6 January... now they need a new Sorelian myth...