Thread by @RichardJMurphy

It took time for the fear and threat of WW2 to make it apparent that when peace came nothing would be the same again. We have less time to appreciate this with regard to the war in Ukraine. Everything has changed. Will our politicians realise and deliver the policies needed?

I am not talking rearming, although that will happen. Nor am I talking about reprisals. Instead I am talking about defending real democracy and freedom, so under threat in the UK and USA right now.

I am talking about purging corruption in all is forms, onshore and offshore, because both are desperately needed, most especially in the UK where the City has turned corruption into just another product to sell.

But most of all I am talking about an end to the attack on the state which has been the hallmark of recent politics, and which has allowed the power of corrupt money to influence government for too long not just in Russia but in the US and UK as well.

And with that end of the attack on the state I am talking about reviving the state’s role in providing the essential support to those in need, which the kleptocrats so hate.

I am also saying we must appreciate that to defend the ideas that should differentiate us from tyranny we have to talk about state intervention - to beat climate change, to build the new energy supplies we need, and to provide the good livelihoods that are so urgently required.

This requires that we revive the notion of the public good - which the state can deliver for us all.

And what all this means is that the talk of austerity that the Tories will be rolling out soon as they argue that to pay for more tanks we must face cuts in education, health, social care and so much else must be resisted at every turn. That will be the language of defeat.

Austerity is the talk of the kleptocrats who fund the Tory narrative that has undermined us, made us a centre of money laundering, and pushed us well on the way to losing our freedoms and democracy.

If we are to change everything to preserve democracy, which is the lesson the war in Ukraine must teach us, then there has to be a fight to re-establish a plural, respectful, diverse, representative democracy in the UK that is free from corruption.

This is not a battle of left versus right. This is a battle of freedom and democracy against oppression, both political and economic. That is why everything has to change. That almost lost idea of the liberal democracy has to survive this war, or the kleptocrats will have won.

The question everyone with concern for democracy has to ask now is how can we join together, despite our differences, to beat the kleptocrat thinking that led to Putin, Trump, Brexit (paid for with Russian money) and the progressive denials of our freedom.

Are we up that challenge? Can we make a stand that requires less courage than brave people in Kyiv are demonstrating, but as much determination that we must now demand what we truly believe in? I hope so. I have to hope.