I wrote yesterday suggesting that Rebecca Long-Bailey got her approach to the Green New Deal right when launching her bid to be Labour leader in Tribune magazine. I am now writing to suggest that she got almost everything else wrong.
The reason is quite straightforward. What is apparent is that Long-Bailey has no clue about what people expect from a leader of the Opposition. In that regard she is, of course, the true heir to Corbyn. In a key line she said:
You're as likely to see me on a picket line as you are at the dispatch box, and you can trust me to fight the establishment tooth and nail.
Maybe she does not realise that being Leader of the Opposition is to be part of the establishment.
And maybe she does not realise that being Leader of the Opposition means you aspire to be prime minister. It does not get more establishment than that. And nothing she says and nothing she does will change that: this is the way liberal democracy works: there is, inevitably, a power structure. The purpose of democracy is to hold it to account. But she is aspiring to be part of it, whether she likes it or not.
I could analyse this further, but Andrew Purkis, whose work I much like, has done it already. As he has noted:
So what is the establishment against which we should be declaring war or fighting tooth and nail (quite violent expressions, even as metaphor)? For many of us, the British establishment includes prominently the royal family and all the Lords Lieutenants, the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England, the House of Lords, the senior judiciary, the leaders of our armed forces, the senior civil service and Foreign Office, the Captains of Industry, the Vice Chancellors of our universities — just to name a few.
He adds:
I assume Long Bailey means “establishment” in a different sense, which is those people who supposedly have a stranglehold on power and wealth in our society. The problem is that this sort of analysis is vague and contestable. Are bankers and financiers a monolith, is Industry a monolith, are the media a monolith, conspiring together with those with inherited wealth and privilege to increase inequality and feather their own nests at the expense of the people? Are all elites to be condemned as neo liberal and self-seeking, and the enemy, or is there variety within them? If there is no monolithic conspiracy, who are we supposed to be warring against, and who might be spared?
In this context I rather liked a letter in the FT this morning:
Bill Michael, chairman of KPMG, says he wants to stamp out the “corrosive” mentality that making large amounts of money trumps good behaviour (report, January 6).
“That mentality has existed for years across the whole market,” he says.
No it hasn't.
Mark Bogard Chief Executive, Family Building Society, Epsom, Surrey, UK
Bogard is right. Of course there are issues to address. Many of them. But crude stereotyping does not work. It ill becomes the Labour Party to go down this route.
As Andrew Purkis concluded:
I suspect most British electors are peaceable people who are not specially attracted by warlike metaphors. If we are being asked to sign up to tooth and nail warfare against a group or groups of our fellow citizens, even very fortunate and privileged ones, please can we be told more clearly who they are?
I might add, can we also know why we are at war, what the end goal is, how we will know when victory can be declared, and what will the real spoils be? Politicians are very bad at stating any of these for real wars. It seems that they are no better at it when seeking leadership. and the Green New Deal apart (which requires cooperative working, not war on the establishment, or it cannot happen in time) Long-Bailey offers no clear vision for her outcomes. It's all struggle, but no ends.
I admit this does not work for me.
I suspect it will not for many people.
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So glad you pointed this out. Her position is fundamentally confused and potentially incoherent. Another minus mark is her giving Corbyn a 10 out of 10 for leadership basically because he is a nice guy. It is possible to be a nice person and a terrible leader. This underlines her confused thinking in my view.
“there is, inevitably, a power structure. The purpose of democracy is to hold it to account.”
To be honest, I’m not convinced that we live in a democracy anymore. If you look at the number of different fronts the Electoral Reform Society is campaigning on, there may not be any single entirely undemocratic power structure, but there seems to be a many layered system, with each layer slightly limiting democracy in a different way, and that all added together prevents real power from going back to the people. It’s not just the wildly unfair electoral system and the successful use of misinformation campaigns. No matter what the opposition MPs do in parliament or scrutiny committees, the media don’t enable them hold the government to account in any meaningful way.
I think the left may have to start rebuilding again from the ground up. Mobilise the membership, not for knocking on doors and asking people to vote for those at the top, but for actively showing there’s a better way, getting into workplaces, organising community groups, helping people help each other out when things are difficult, direct social action to grow a movement. And while doing this, teaching people what is going on in politics so they can help hold the government to account themselves.
Strongly agree with most of this. I’ve only had a couple of chats with RLB so not trying to speak for her, but just to tentatively suggest there may be a point, just one that’s not easy to justify explicitly.
The struggle is the point, or more precisely, class struggle.
There’s a view that in order to be healthily engaged in politics, people need a division into ‘us’ & ‘them’ . ( See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/20/the-death-of-consensus-how-conflict-came-back-to-politics ) With the shortages working class people have been experiencing thanks to austerity, & in the absence of clear class struggle (JC’s kinder gentler politics not really doing it.) many voters were receptive to the ‘native v immigrants’ message.
This is something I’ve seen first hand. I did almost 100 hours of door knocking for Labour in the run up to Dec 12, and had several voters telling me that despite being lifelong Labour supporters, they weren’t voteing Labour this time due to JC’s stance on immigrants. (OK most didn’t but it as bluntly as that, but they said they weren’t voting Labour this time, & of the issues they spoke about, disapproval to JC / approval to Boris re immigrants was the only anti Labour issue they seemed passionate about.)
So there is some method in the apparent madness of some Labour activists wanting more explicit class warfare than we had even with JC.
I hope the pendulum soon swings back in favour of cooperation, & RLB starts using more precise language, especially not in painting the entire establishment as the enemy.
As structured this is 1848 proletariat / bourgeoisie stuff
It does not work now
But maybe I just show I am not a Marxist
Anti-economic migration is the issue that stands out for me after talking to many voters who didn’t have a very good education, for whatever reason, and therefore struggled to do more joined-up thinking on Brexit. There clearly was an issue here that needed sorting out if voters were to be persuaded to stay in the EU. Corbyn’s faction never developed a clear policy on how to tackle this mostly I believe because it was lukewarm towards membership of the EU.
Yeah the 10/10 comment shows naivety of the highest order although she was clearly trying to appease the Momentum powerbrokers…the comment looks particularly bad given that the Met have just made 6 arrests in relation to Labour anti semitism..crazy for anyone to deny there is racist elements within the Party..Corbyn either didn’t see it or obviously handled it disastrously
“…the comment looks particularly bad given that the Met have just made 6 arrests in relation to Labour anti semitism”
“Just made” ?
-Sources please. From what I see inferred in the media, three of these arrests actually refer to those announced last March all of whom were then disciplined and thrown out the Labour party. Only five submissions in total have been made to the CPS who have yet to decide if they even have a case.
Labour membership is open to the public and stands at about half a million: even if all five cases were to be actioned and result in a guilty verdict, that would make Labours antisemitic member “problem” at most one in 100,000. If three of those have already been thrown out, one in 250000. The statistical insignificance of this suggests that, au contraire, Labour are as a party, pretty repellent to antisemites.
– I’m no fan on Labour nor of Long-Bailey btw: just tired of this continued antisemitism smearing based on what I suspect is mere media rubbish.
I looked for it after posting that and could not find it
I think Jason’s source is “The Sun” :
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10695638/police-make-six-arrests-over-labour-anti-semitism-claims-and-consider-charges/
-The title is clearly angled to lead the public into believing that there have been six new arrests, yet the body text actually suggests they are talking about arrests in total. “Just made…” “New arrests…” etc doesn’t appear.
“Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick revealed today they have made six arrests, and the files are now with the CPS to consider charging…”
Likewise here:
https://www.cityam.com/six-people-arrested-in-connection-to-labour-antisemitism-claims/
-where it states that these files were actually submitted to the CPS September last year.
Thanks
Ken Waldron,
I generally agree. I have generally found it hard to locate any significant substance to attach to well-publicised anti-semitism smears. The story is always bigger than the reality and if it keeps up it will potentially create anti-semitism by way of backlash and resentment.
BTW the arrest story mentioned above is here (see below) and the Met Commissioner says that prosecutions may or may not follow:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/labour-antisemitism-arrest-charge-investigation-police-cps-a9274841.html
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/six-arrests-labour-antisemitism-a4329191.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-51035022
https://news.sky.com/story/cps-considering-charges-in-labour-antisemitism-investigation-11903630
I agree wholeheartedly with your critique, but I would like to enter one caveat and then attempt to extend the critique on a more constructive basis.
First, the caveat. Ms. Long-Bailey is seeking to attract the support of the Labour party members who elected Mr. Corbyn and who retain an apparently undying allegiance to what he stood for. She is simply reprising the campaigning language he used – and continues to use. She is not speaking to the electorate at large; she is speaking to the infinitesmally small (when measured as a percentage of the total electorate) selectorate that is the Labour party membership, supporters and affiliates. This is a selectocracy; it is not a democracy. Just because the winner secures a majority of those in this selectocracy who express a preference does not make it “democratic”. When it comes to voting on any issue or candidate, the term “democratic” should be applied only when all eligible voters in the nation or in specific administrative regions are entitled to vote. Whether or not using this selectorate is the best way of choosing the leader of the Labour party is a matter for another day. But it is the way the Labour party has currently chosen and Ms. Long-Bailey and the other candidates are compelled to play the game.
There are clear distinctions among and between campaigning to lead a party that aspires to govern, campaigning when leading a party that aspires to govern and actually governing. Ms Long-Bailey and the other candidates are at the first stage. And though they may be granted some licence due to the particular rules of the game they are playing, they cannot, and should not, underestimate the impact of their pronouncements on the only electorate that matters – the public at large.
It is in this context I agree with your critique. But I feel compelled to echo the title of the late Christopher Hitchins’s final collection of essays: “And yet”. No aspiring leader of the Labour party can ignore the damaging impacts of the current mutation of capitalism on so many people or fail to propose redress and remedies. But the challenges lie in defining the nature and causes of these damaging impacts and in coming up with credible redress and remedies. And it is here that Ms Long-Bailey fails. And she fails on both counts.
Conflict between individuals and various interest groups will always exist in society and in an economy. Most of the work of government involves resolving these conflicts in a manner that both protects or advances the public interest and secures popular consent. There is no guarantee that these objectives will be achieved simultaneously, but governments continuously have to make these judgements, since the extent of popular consent is tested only periodically.
When addressing the damaging impacts of the current mutation of capitalism, those governing or those aspiring to govern cannot, and should not, attribute guilt universally to all those who are perceived to be benefitting from the current arrangements. That is what Ms Long-Bailey appears to be doing. It may be an attempt to secure some pseudo-Marxist credibility. But it is simply wrong-headed. The task of those aspiring to govern is to ensure that there is a sufficiently robust and resourced due process (that is independent of the political government process) to identify the wrongs and put them to right. Most of the institutions and agencies in terms of the Competition and Markets Authority, Financial Conduct Authority, the sectoral economic regulators and many others are in place. But most have been suborned to some extent or other by successive governments or by those they are mandated to regulate and fail to function effectively in the public interest. It would not take very much other than political will to make them work effectively.
The insights of the late Mancur Olson (Google him) on collective action can be applied to consumer protection, workers’ rights and public spending and taxation. His insights were too readily dismissed while the current mutation of capitalism went from strength to strength, but they retain their validity. They can easily be applied to reform the current institutional arrangements so that they facilitate an equitable and efficiently functioning mixed economy. This provides a way forward. The apparent desire of so many Labour party members to supplant capitalism and market mechanisms (and to which it seems Ms Long-Bailey subscribes) will lead to a dead end in this country.
Thanks
I apologise for going on at such length, but my greatest fear at the moment is that whoever wins this contest will end up making commitments to the current membership of the Labour party to which the membership will hold them. And this will render Labour unelectable indefinitely. An electable Labour party as a credible government-in-waiting is in everyone’s interests – whether they realise it or not.
Even a cursory analysis of the votes cast in general elections in the recent past indicates that electoral support for those who believe in supplanting capitalism and market mechanisms has never been much larger than the current membership of the Labour party. And it appears that many of those with these convictions are now members and supporters of the Labour party. But all most people who support Labour or would support Labour want is a more equitable and efficient functioning of the mixed economy. Previously, the membership of the Labour party reflected this position. But not now. That is the peril of relying on a selectocracy to determine the identity of the PM-in-waiting.
Hi Richard,
Totally in agreement on RLB here. I supported Corbyn during his tenure as leader, but after this election I’m worried any further talk of fighting and insurgent forces and radicalism will further alienate vast swathes of the electorate.
One of the things Labour almost managed to get during the campaign was that, when compared to the rest of the world, many of their policies weren’t actually radical, and were actually common sense. I think this had the chance to calm the nerves of voters worried about Labour, but it was drowned out by policy overload and radical rhetoric.
Definitely something for Labour’s left candidates to keep in mind going into this overlong leadership contest.
You are – in formal terms – correct, of course, but the vacuous nature of her Tribune article is much worse than this empty rhetorical flourish. It is plain, that like the ‘Scottish’ Labour Party before her, she just does not ‘get’ what has happened to Labour electorally.
Her claims include…. “We’ve also, at times, been too close to the establishment we are meant to be taking on — whether …… joining forces with David Cameron in the Better Together campaign in 2014 or turning our focus inwards on parliamentary manoeuvring for the last year.”…. and also …. “Labour’s path to victory lies in reuniting all our heartlands, from the communities that voted to leave in the North and Midlands, to those in Scotland who abandoned Labour in 2015….. ” She also avers…. ” while our heartlands are diverse, there is a common cause that underlies the rejection of our party from Durham to Dundee: people across these islands are sick of the British state’s distant and undemocratic institutions.” …. and she continues …. “My vision of a democratic, decarbonised economy alongside a new democracy that hands power and wealth back to ordinary people ….. can unite all of Labour’s heartlands, from our young, diverse strongholds in English cities to Scotland, Wales, and de-industrialised areas in the Midlands and North.”
Where to begin? She apparently despises last year’s “parliamentary manoeuvring” but doesn’t seem to recognise that “parliamentary manoeuvring” is what the main Opposition party is supposed to do – but do it successfully – in order to hold a government to account. Voters don’t despise that – they despise the Labour Party for failing to do that job effectively. She fails completely to see that “joining forces with David Cameron in the Better Together campaign in 2014” simply cannot – and very visibly did not – belong with any realisation that “people across these islands are sick of the British state’s distant and undemocratic institutions.” The contradictions run throughout all she says and they are fundamental and – to all except the core of her party – painfully obvious.
Then there is her repeated deployment of the Labour phantom of “all our heartlands”. In Scotland – there are none; none at all. The only Labour MP is kept afloat by Tory and LibDem votes and a propensity for Unionist stunts, right down to wearing a suit made of Union Jacks. In England’s cities there remain a mix of desperate younger, pro-European voters and BAME and progressive voters, and hopeful emergent professionals – a very large percentage of whom are in London where they rely, in some measure, on exactly the imbalances of investment and attention which she hopes to win the authority to reform. Labour does not have “heartlands” in anything like the sense she claims – not any more.
Shockingly – given that their opponent was, and remains, the most mendacious PM ever and one who heads a party which has been brazenly dishonest in manipulating its route to power – it is Labour that has a gaping chasm of trust at its feet. That abyss has already claimed her party north of the Border and Long-Bailey’s confused article shows that she is now approaching it with gaze averted – while proffering her supporters a blindfold of illusions.
Just a footnote to my earlier post. Matters have just got – predictably – even worse.
Long-Bailey’s team is to be run by Jon Lansman and her comms outfit by Matt Zarb-Cousin; Momentum and Corbyn’s spokesman in blinkered harness. Meanwhile, even as Keir Starmer – surely the only sane possible choice – gains the support of Unison, it is reported that last night he also used the same “heartlands” mythos while talking to the PLP, not only of the North but even of “winning back Scotland”. Perhaps Liza Nandy was right, last night…. ““if we do not change course we will die and we will deserve to”. Unfortunately, they risk taking most of the best of southern Britain down with them.
As yet another Old Etonian becomes PM it doesn’t seem all that remarkable to find that an aspiring opposition leader should seek to distinguish herself from “the Establishment”. I’m not as yet a fan of Rebecca Long-Bailey but I am going to play the Devil’s Advocate and take her side on this one.
The salient questions here seem to be 1. what is “the establishment”? and 2. is the opposition leader not inherently part of it?
As to the first question “the establishment” in the UK is primarily represented by the royal family, the aristocracy, the C of E, the BoE, Whitehall, the “public schools”, their old boys network, the City, the CBI, the corporate lobbyist networks, corporate mainstream media (arguably) and, no doubt, something else that I’ve forgotten to mention.
The common link here is that they are all institutions that exercise unelected power (well, power that no one in the general public ever voted for). That is what makes them, collectively, The Establishment (as opposed to a democratic institution). Which brings us to the 2nd question and if we accept my definition above, then the opposition leader, who IS elected need, not be “part of the establishment”.
Now, having all said that, I will admit the idea of a non-establishment politician can sound like a contradiction in terms but the idea has, nonetheless, become well established (sorry) in recent years and it is largely a product of US politics.
On the Republican side, a non-establishment politician is allegedly one that draws grassroots support from the internet and public rallies, has no connections to the old party institutions, big vested interests that offshore American jobs or Wall St in particular. This is how the Tea Party, and Trump’s base see themselves. Its largely crap of course. The Tea party’s Ted Cruz (for example) basically works for the Koch Brothers and Trump has four Goldman Sachs investment bankers in his cabinet, but, that’s the basic idea anyway.
On the Democrat side Bernie Sanders exemplifies the non-establishment politician, takes no corporate cash but nonetheless raises more money than any other presidential candidate (through millions of small donations). He attracts bigger rally crowds than anyone on either side, sits as an Independent in the Senate and the Democrat National Committee hate him. Alexandria Occassio-Cortez is the other prize example and no one can deny her mastery of grassroots politics.
Meanwhile back in the UK the very idea of a non-establishment Tory would be ridiculous but UKIP and Farage think of themselves as non-establishment. On the Labour side Momentum and the Corbynistas would do so as well.
Are they justified? I don’t know but I do know that the idea of the non-establishment candidate is out there and widely accepted. Disagree with it if you will but don’t misunderstand it
The term The Establishment does not work then
As Andrew POurkis says, she needs to say what she means and stop using slogans
Well she probably does and she probably won’t become leader anyway.
As for The Establishment it is a unity among old institutions that exercise unelected power and have at least one common interest (in preserving unelected power).
Labour isn’t working. Tough on Crime: Tough on the Causes of Crime. Take Back Control. Get Brexit Done.
Alas, I suspect there’s a role for slogans. Alas too the left has been rather poor at them. I’m not a RLB fan, but if she thought there was a role for them, that would be a start.
Re. my previous comment, so as not to be misunderstood I’ll make a clarification. I agree that big “warlike” postures can be off-putting and inappropriate. In order to work they reqiure big occasions (the right occassions) and personalities with big charisma. Long-Bailey doesn’t have any of that going for her. On the other hand Purkis’ sensitivities do have something of the cardigan-wearing Anglican about them. A bit too precious and tediously middle class.
@Marco Fante,
I take your point about Andrew Purkis, but there are quite a few of us cardigan-wearing Anglicans (both practising and lapsed) in all constituencies in the country and we share an enormous amount with those from the Methodist, Non-Conformist and Recusant traditions. And most of us vote. (If our deemed middle class behaviours, preferences, dislikes and world views are perceived as tedious, it may have something to do with the eye of the beholder.) The days of the CoE being the Tory party at prayer are long gone.
What you will find is that many of us support the effective delivery of well-resourced public services accompanied by equitable taxation to maintain a stable, well-functioning mixed economy. We also support adequately resourced and empowered economic institutions to govern the activities of the private sector and market mechanisms. We don’t particulary like revolutionary change. It isn’t required. The resources are available and the institutional arrangements exist to tackle the challenges this society and economy face. It needs nothing more than political will to reverse the wilful and unnecesary cuts in public spending implemented by previous governments and then to increase resources and extend institutional arrangements as required. And we certainly don’t like swathes of the economy being expropriated and run by partisan activists claiming a tenuous and unfounded democratic mandate to do so.
The Labour party has a choice. It can go down the quasi-Marxist, class struggle route or it can present itself as an alternative government capable of delivering a much more equitable and efficienctly functioning mixed economy. The choice should be a no-brainer. But those who favour the former path control the party institutionally and have huge support among members.
I thought that there might be a response to my previous comment and I thought that someone might effectively suggest that cardigan-wearing Anglicans also vote and are worthy of consideration. That’s fair enough.
The main problem with your argument though is that it finished with the old false dichotomy proposition by saying that the Labour has two choices. It actually has a multitude of choices as we all do and always have done.
I would also be wary of characterising ideas or conditions that were quite normal in the 1950s and 60s as being radical or Marxist. They weren’t then and they wouldn’t be now.
Marco Fante,
The past is a different country. Although mention of Blair’s name makes so many people spit, the Clinton/Blair/Schöder attempt at crafting a Third Way that sought to deliver both social justice and economic efficiency retains some relevance. It failed to provide a durable template because it was crushed and suborned by the forces of mis-named neo-liberalism as this regime reached peak hubris. Labour was forced to deliver genuine social democratic policies stealthily and under the radar. But current leadership/deputy leadership candidates such as Jess Phillips and Angela Rayner attest to the beneficial impact some of these policies had on their lives.
Neo-liberalism was a vicious backlash against the statist social democracy of the ’50s and 60’s which broke down in the ’70s. Again, during this era the Soviet Union was able to project some limited semblance of credibility as an alternative political and economic system and the existence of mass-membership communist parties in many European countries compelled the capitalists to concede a larger share of income to workers than they otherwise would. That world has long gone.
I suspect we’ll have to agree to disagree.
The “Third Way” you’ve got to be kidding.
Your attempt at trying to distinguish Blair and Clinton from neo-liberalism is remarkable. They are all synonymous. Poverty and inequality in the UK actually increased under Blair’s regime.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/poverty-levels-have-grown-under-labour-104362.html
As for Mr Clinton, I could go on at length but mercifully I won’t. Suffice to say that his iconic moment came in 1999 when his administration took an active role in the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act thus bowing to the Wall St. lobby and accelerating the drive toward Global Financial Crisis. No true Democrat would have done that.
https://robertreich.org/post/124114229225
https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/bill_clinton_the_republicans_m.php
So what was it that “broke down in the ’70s”? Bretton Woods and Nixon’s grip on the gold standard? Unsustainably cheap oil and the shock of OPEC crisis? All I said was that there was nothing Marxist or radical about conditions that were considered to be normal in the 50’s and 60’s. And all that you’ve said is that they are in the past – well your Blairite, New Labour, New Democrat world is in the past as well and no one is going to be heading back there. Not in the UK or anywhere else.
@Marco Fante,
I agree there’s no going back; we have to keep moving forward. But the value of exploring the past as another country lies in learning lessons that may be of value going forward. And we all have a propensity to focus on lessons that validate our own preconceptions and prejudices about how we should move forward.
I also agree that the Clinton/Blair/Schöder attempts to “triangulate” in the face of the burgeoning neo-liberal regime were totally counter-productive and disastrous. It was they and their apparatchiks who drove millions of voters who traditionally supported a social democratic organisation of the mixed economy in to the arms of those advancing illiberal economic nationalism. In Britain and the US, the right and centre-right have been able to fold the supporters of illiberal economic nationalism in to election-winning coalitions. But in the more long-established advanced economies in Europe, the right and centre-right have, so far, resisted that temptation and kept the illiberal economic nationalist factions at arm’s-length. Can social democratic parties encourage these voters to return and make inroads in to what remains of the centrist voting bloc? It is possible, but statist democratic socialism combined with gross-roots activism claiming a tenuous democratic mandate is unlikely to succeed.
At a global level authoritarian mercantilist regimes are in the ascendancy and apparently intractable conflicts continue, particularly in South West Asia. Much of this can be attributed to the greatest failure of, first, Clinton and then Blair in failing to push for a thorough restructuring of the United Nations following the collapse of the Soviet Union and prior to the inevitable rise of China and India – compounded by the subsequent trashing of the UN by Blair and Bush Jnr. We are now reaping what they sowed.
I have long ago reached the conclusion that the word “Establishment”, and also its close cousin “The Elite”, is utterly as drained of any real meaning as “Fascist”, “Marxist” and other similar terms of abuse used by those on the political right and the political left as schoolchildren might shout “Yah Boo Sucks”. Ms Long Bailey has used the word exhibiting that same vacuity that characterised Mr Farage, a public school educated city trader, when he brayed on about the elite, and when the Tory journalists utterly unfamiliiar with and ignorant of Das Kapital, labelled Mr Corbyn a Marxist.
Warren Buffett: ““There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Now just because somebody as rich and famous as the “sage of Omaha” says it doesn’t make it true. On the other hand TRUK noted in 2007 the Mr Buffett complained that he paid less tax (as a %age) than most of his employees such as his receptionist. What has changed in 13 years – the rich have got more tax cuts and have increased their wealth, while receptionists, cleaners, nurses have got poorer (relatively), homelessness is still with us, food banks are everywhere, the Unions continue to be largely impotent, public services and infrastructure used by the 90% crumble while those for the 10% prosper liars and cheats run the country, UK and USA, and our leaders prepare for the next war. And recent events show that Chomsky’s naming of the US as a terrorist state is still true. As an Iranian UK Citizen said to me today, in Spanish campsite, “what are sanctions that kill children because they can’t get medicine, if they are not terrorism?”
Thank goodness “class warfare” is no longer an appropriate term. Or maybe I’m just totally pissed off.
What the Labour contenders could do is cut out the slogans, the cliches, the inane, banal rhetoric and spell out all the appalling policies and decisions taken by governments since Thatcher, including Blair/Brown, that in another age might have been called “class warfare”, and how they intend to fix them.
[…] noted my disagreement with the rhetoric and tone of Rebecca Long-Bailey with regard to fighting the establishment […]
Richard
I’m curious as to what happened in the few days between you signing a letter in the papers saying that Corbyn “deserved” to be Prime Minister and your condemnation of him after the election.
I have been critical of Corbyn since 2016
I endorsed a manifesto