Imagine what a different country this would be if Blair had put the political effort he invested in the Iraq War into political and electoral reform instead. If Labour take power again, they must not waste the chance to replace our unfair system and create lasting change.
If this is to happen, Starmer needs to begin work on it now, not in 2024. He needs to start explaining the case for change, not least to his own party, which retains a self-destructive obsession with first-past-the-post.
With a fair electoral system, with Labour prepared to work with other progressive parties, it's hard to see how the Tories could ever again dominate our politics. Labour might never win an absolute majority, but they would be more likely to sustain a share of power.
It would also permit something that has long needed to happen, but is electorally impossible under FTPT, namely for Labour to split into the 2 parties it really is: the Starmerite centrists and the Corbynite leftists. FPTP sustains Labour's endless civil war.
This is one of the reasons why I have no interest in engaging in Labour's civil war. It is a structural feature that cannot be resolved through argument.
I see people wasting their lives on this war, while failing to recognise that it's an artefact of our electoral system. It would be much better to combine (as some people in Labour have begun to do) to change the system.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

31 Jan
Three days ago, I asked @naomirwolf for peer-reviewed papers supporting her allegation of a "PCR test scandal". So far, she has produced only links to videos and unreviewed claims by notorious bullshit-mongers. My provisional conclusion is that the “scandal” is imaginary.
Thread/
Videos, petitions and polemics play a useful role in public life. But their arguments should be based on known facts or likelihoods, rather than invented or debunked claims.
It’s hard to express how irresponsible this is. We're in the grip of a global pandemic in which over 2m have died. One of the vectors of this disease is misinformation. People who believe C-19 is not dangerous or widespread are more likely to expose themselves and others to risk.
Read 5 tweets
29 Jan
The #HS2 protesters are heroes. HS2 is the Concorde of the 21st Century: a money-guzzling, carbon-pumping white elephant that - if it ever comes to fruition - will serve the rich at everyone else's expense.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
I suspect that as the business case for HS2 becomes ever more absurd, the project will eventually be abandoned, but not before many £bns have been spent, and more precious habitats destroyed. The protesters are speaking truths that even the government will one day have to hear.
From the beginning, you had to believe several impossible things to justify #HS2, as I explained here, when it was costed at a mere £25bn. Now you also have to believe that long distance business transport across the UK will return to pre-pandemic levels.
monbiot.com/2010/05/17/fas…
Read 4 tweets
28 Jan
If you begin with the belief that the pandemic is a fraud, you relieve yourself of the need to imagine an effective public health policy.
The "PCR test scandal" exists in some people's minds, but does not correspond to reality: covidfaq.co/Claim-91-of-Co…
It seems that once you fall down the rabbit hole, you keep falling. Naomi’s tweet has brought out a host of familiar atrocity deniers, climate science deniers, anti-vaxxers etc, who are now determined to prove that Covid-19 is not a dangerous or widespread disease.
Read 7 tweets
27 Jan
Help please. Recent paper says: "The feed of organic dairy cows incorporates a signif higher proportion of grazing (29.5% compared to 0.5%)". The study it refs isn't online.
Is it really true that only 0.5% of non-org dairy feed comes from grazing?
Peer reviewed papers only plse.
I've now found the referenced source. It's in German and 415pp, but as far as I can tell, searching for both Molkerei and Milchhandlung, it doesn't provide the stated figures. I'm intrigued though. econstor.eu/handle/10419/8…
Thank you Twitter! Two German speakers have now replied, pointing out that the Nature paper contains a mistake. The actual figure in the source ref is 5%, not 0.5%. Very helpful. I'll write to the authors.
Read 4 tweets
27 Jan
I argue that some lies about the pandemic are so dangerous that they should simply be banned. Why should we value the right to spread false information above the right to life?
This week’s column.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
I also discuss some pretty startling hypocrisy. The co-founder of the excellent Anti-Virus site is Sam Bowman (@s8mb). In his day job @ASI, he attacks public health messaging, in ways that happen to coincide with the interests of the tobacco industry, which, er, helps fund @ASI.
The Adam Smith Institute has also made statements about climate breakdown, malnutrition and other issues which are just as idiotic and unscientific as those Bowman rightly exposes on Anti-Virus. Good work on Covid, Sam, but physician, heal thyself.
Read 5 tweets
26 Jan
We should take air pollution as seriously as we take the pandemic. It causes a wide range of terrible conditions. But once again, the government fails to protect us.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
If anything, social norms, unchecked by either public information campaigns or law enforcement, are heading in the wrong direction.
I seldom used to see people sitting in their parked cars with the engines idling. Now it's everywhere.
It's madness. I see drivers looking at their phones with the engine running, wasting fuel and creating a cloud of toxic smoke. On my way home, 30 minutes later, they're still at it.
Perhaps they're texting their friends to complain about the cost of petrol.
Read 7 tweets

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