I'm in Glasgow for a COP26 event - the vibe is: the whole thing's been taken over by the Davos types - governments who achieved stuff at Paris now seem swamped by corporate interests... 1/
2/ Really notable the split between lawmakers - MPs, mayors, governors - and governments: governments now v wary of the anti-net zero backlash, lawmakers under pressure from youth activists ...
3/ What's tragic is v little of what's going on is driven by the science anymore - the science says: take rapid, radical and immediate action ... even a lot of activists with one foot inside the tent now drawn into "what's politically possible"...
4/ Also if this is the "rules based global order" at work it is shambolic - every major player is engaged in deflection / transference - doing minor stuff vigorously and avoiding big stuff ...
5/ neither the U.K. Govt nor the Scottish Govt has really made this into a mass popular shop window event - for all the global Britain rhetoric, everyone knows Johnson is about to pull the plug on A16 and start a trade war with Europe...
6/ meanwhile - and I hate to be the one to raise it - Glasgow is still plagued by extreme poverty and social injustice. Its all being politely ignored by COP but the multigenerational social catastrophe inflicted by neoliberalism never seems to end ✊🏼
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If Johnson does get dumped by the Tories, how much of "spend and borrow to stay popular in Mansfield" would survive? There is no significant liberal Tory wing, but a coalition of austerians/authoritarians likely... so once again the Govt changes without an election 1/...
2/ One real fissure inside the Tories is over Chinese/Russian oligarchic money and control... numerous RUSI/RIIA types want an end to foreign manipulation of our politics and a stronger European defence focus - and so does Labour... so "Global Britain" probly gets ditched ...
3/ ... and for the Tory right Net Zero is the new EU... would a "f*** net zero" candidate emerge? They would have significant support in the tabloids if they did...
Thoughts on London COP26 demo 1/ About 50k ppl; a lot of them young BUT... no large school-age contingents ....
2/ Green Party presence more significant than *official* Labour presence. There were Labour branches, momentum and many unions but Labour itself did zero and had zero impact ....
3/ COP26 mobilised the London radical salariat ... never at any moment would it have kicked off ... but it was big and dedicated: significant groups of ethnic and national minorities, precarious workers ... also lot of children ...
3/ I think @DantonsHead gets it right here - the left would commit more to the microeconomics of social justice and economic power 👇🏽
4/ And fiscally Labour has yet to bite the bullet: we need big redistribution via taxation (forget the MMT cranks) on top of big borrowing to invest in zero net carbon...
The @Dominic2306 brain dump about Starmer/Nandy contains some interesting stuff, herewith translated into Labourese ... 1/ Labour has no strategy because it has no surveillance function and a flawed decision making process. He's right. That's been said to every LOTO since Ed M...
2/ Labour fails because it cannot act/decide at speed; it understands the importance of mass but not energy - there is no instinct to get opponents offbalance...as per Boyd/OODA loops etc etc...
3/ In Dom's brain, where 500k Labour members are just cannon fodder, the leadership would focus relentlessly on crime, anti-trans stuff and go relentlessly for swing voters. That's exactly what Labour's own focus groups also say...
The Govt Net Zero Strategy is a pile of 💩 1/ Because there is no project plan to achieve ZNC - only "scenarios" and "ambitions" - so it's not a strategy ... and here's why ... newstatesman.com/comment/2021/1…
2/ HMT treats carbon as if it was merely "pollution" inside a stable system, which a market can price... but it is the destabilisation of a complex ecosystem *by the market itself* (aka capitalism) newstatesman.com/comment/2021/1…
3/ Treasury understands ZNC cannot be achieved through a market system without high inequality, energy insecurity and fiscal instability... so it's at war with the commitment... newstatesman.com/comment/2021/1…
UK government's "net zero" plan is a pathetic, criminal evasion of responsibility. By rejecting borrowing and placing the whole burden of investment on private sector, @RishiSunak guarantees failure...
... there is no radical modal change in energy consumption. The investment figure is way less than promised by @RachelReevesMP - this is the planet being destroyed by public school-to-Oxbridge-to-HMT assholes right before your eyes...
... Sunak's plan issued in the knowledge that the Tory voting base don't give a **** about future generations, the planet, global south weather catastrophes... but a progressive majority in the UK does...