This quote comes from Heather Cox's 'Letters from an American' this morning:
Yesterday was a good day for democracy. Americans turned out to defend our principles from those who denied our right to choose our own leaders. There was little violence, the election appears to have gone smoothly, and there are few claims of “fraud.” As I write tonight, control of the House and Senate is still not clear, but some outlines are now visible.
Usually, the party in power loses a significant number of congressional seats and state seats in the first midterm after it takes the presidency. Today, President Joe Biden spoke to reporters and noted that the Democrats had the best midterm elections for governors since 1986 and lost fewer House seats than they have in any Democratic president's first midterm in 40 years.
I think this is extraordinary, and incredibly welcome. The evidence is very clear that an ageing and not very popular President can win despite the economic downturn in the US precisely because the far-right alternative is so bad.
Let me also be clear: the fact that the Republicans can still gain seats is still worrying. But there are three obvious trends that are not helping them.
One is that early voting by the young is boosting the Democrat vote. You can see why the Tories are making it so hard for the young to vote here.
Second, the attack on abortion rights is galvanising some to vote against their Republican inclinations: it is possible for a party to go too far against human rights. Labour and Tories should take note: both are actively denying rights here in the UK.
Third, Trump is a liability. Is there an equivalent here? Of course there is: it is Brexit and all that went with it. The straightforward lies that underpinned Trump's appeal were seen here in the Brexit campaign.
Why does all this matter? I would suggest that it is because unless we can maintain functioning democracies little else is possible in the US, the UK, and way beyond, and everywhere functioning democracies are at risk. I do not see the issues as separate: I think that they are intimately related.
The mid-terms in the US are an indication that people are not willing to tolerate the far-right in the numbers conventional polling forecasts suggest likely. I take that as a sign of hope.
However, and this is a big condition, those rejecting the right must have a viable alternative to vote for. And that is why I am so concerned about the rightward movement of Labour and its refusal to embrace PR, which with other issues denies so many a viable electoral choice in what remains a two-party system, whether we like it or not.
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I commented on a comment on Crace’s piece in the Guardian – the first commentator had started with “Starmer was a human rights lawyer, a distinguished one” – I begged to differ given Starmer’s negative input to Julian Assange’s situation and his support of the spy cops bill – my comment has not been published – not even as this comment has been removed.
Seems the Guardian does not allow negative comments about Starmer’s actions.
Interesting
AliB:
1. The Guardian comment you replied to was published less than 30 minutes before the BTL comments were closed at 10 pm. Your reply may have been lost in the shut-down.
2. The G doesn’t usually censor pre-publication – though just one or two certain obscenities never make it through.
3. There may be a content filter because the G takes its responsibilities as a *publisher* seriously, but it doesn’t sound as if your comment contained slander, libel or anything pertaining to matters currently “sub judice”.
4. Have you been banned (for a period) for a prior post?
My money’s on (1).
To answer your points:
1. The comment section was still open-either it is open or it is closed, and 3 other comments on the original one which were not there when I replied were posted.
2. There were no obscenities in my response
3. I don’t believe there was anything libellous in what I wrote.
4. I have never been banned.
It appears to be good news from the USA, in particular the reversal suffered by would-be Fascist dictator Donald Trump, but my attention was also caught by the vast under-reporting in this country ( and possibly the US? ) of remarks by Putin’s favourite thug Yevgeny Prigozhin, made on the day before the US mid-terms
Asked about Russian interference in US elections Prigozhin said “we have interfered, we are interfering and we will interfere.”
Apart from the Guardian it got hardly a mention in the UK media.
Given the desperate attempts by Johnson, the Tory party and the UK security services to cover up Russian interference, specifically in Brexit and more generally in UK politics, surely a strong case for opening a new Parliamentary investigation.
Certainly, something that all UK opposition parties need to be pushing for before the next General election.
“Third, Trump is a liability. Is there an equivalent here? Of course there is: it is Brexit and all that went with it. The straightforward lies that underpinned Trump’s appeal were seen here in the Brexit campaign”.
The problem is, Brexit is a Taboo subect for Party politics. It is not taboo in Scotland, but here the Unionist Parties function as one on Brexit; a factual political coalition that in Scotland dare not speak its name, but operates politically as a uniform, generalised, incoherently over-the-top, rage-fuelled, hatred-inspiring anti-SNP hysteria, egged on by the media.
How absurd is the Brexit farce? Lord Wolfson (CEO, Next), a Brexiter, has accepted it isn’t working on immigration. He wants companies to have the privilege; the privilege of bringing in foreign labour for a small fee (tax). He makes it sound simple. Simple? It literally privatises immigration. Wolfson does not explain what happens to the immigrant if the employer chooses to sack or make redundant the labour? Are they entitled to stay in the UK? Or must they leave? The traffickers may see a business opportunity in the anbiguities this will throw up. Think this one through; I don’t think Wolfson has, beyond his own company’s immediate interests; and there you have Brexit, and private enterprise given the keys to government, in a nutshell.
We are supposed to have Parliament and Government to see the ‘bigger picture’; but not in this Parliament, not in this FPTP Party system: not in this Brexit.
Agreed
I heard Wolfson as well this morning on the radio – it sounded like exploitation to me to be honest – state backed as well.
As for America – it could have been worse. I’ve no idea what the Floridian mentality is that votes in a Republican governor there. They get too much sunshine its seems. Every republican I’ve seen is repulsive. For me it’s not over. There is still a lot of money waiting to be spent between now and next national election.
Human trafficking is the 21st century equivalent of the 18th century golden age of smuggling. Entrepreneurial opportunists benefitting from punitive government regulation and burdensome bureaucracy. Small government for the opportunists, large government for everyone else. Britain has a huge coast line it is simpler impractical to monitor it all. Are we to suffer from “illegal immigration” for centuries?
People have come to the UK for centuries. If climate change gets much worse, the tide of people fleeing ecological disaster will become unstoppable.
It is not illegal to come to the UK to claim asylum, under international law, at least. It may be so under domestic law now, but I’d argue that the penalties in s.40 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 breach the UK’s international obligations if we penalise someone who is genuinely fleeing persecution.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/36/section/40/enacted
Article 14(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” There is no suggestion that a person must seek asylum in the first “safe” country.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
Article 31(1) of the 1951 Refugee Convention says: “The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.”
https://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10
But it is clear from the commentary (see page 219) that “The term ‘coming directly’ refers, of course, to persons who have come directly from their country of origin or a country where their life or freedom was threatened, but also the persons who have been in an intermediary country for a short time without having received asylum there.”
In the preceding Travaux préparatoires (page 215) there is a powerful and sobering contribution from the High Commissioner for Refugees – I think that must be Gerrit Jan van Heuven Goedhart – who mentioned his own experience – he left the Netherlands on account of persecution in 1944, hid in Belgium for five days, and then moved to France, Spain and Gibraltar. “He considered that it would be very unfortunate if a refugee in similar circumstances was penalized for not having proceeded direct to the country of asylum.”
https://www.unhcr.org/uk/protection/travaux/4ca34be29/refugee-convention-1951-travaux-preparatoires-analysed-commentary-dr-paul.html
Thanks
“There is no suggestion that a person must seek asylum in the first ‘safe’ country.”
The reason the British Government arbitrarily chooses to insist that the refugee must accept the first safe country they arrive in (whether the receiving country could realistically absorb the influx) is simple. There is no prospect that the migratory movement of humanity under the pressure of flood, famine, exploitation or genocide through climate disaster or war (let me think, now: isn’t ‘when the herd movers. it moves’ the fashionable tag?), is ever going to land first in Britain. That is why it is the maxim of Britain’s cynical, Conservative Party anti-immigration approach to refugees; and brings suitably unsuitable people like Braverman or Williamson into power to execute the appalling and obviously indefensible policy.
The British prefer to see Europe as the front-line, and Britain self-selecting as the arbiter of justice for everyone else. We have been doing it (or more recently trying to do it, grubbily just without being ‘found out’), for three hundred years.
Outrageous by Wolfson but what we have come to expect from brexiters
I think it is important to look back at Wolfson’s 2016 comments on Brexit just a few weeks after the vote, and his position really hasn’t changed.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-next-immigration-idUKKCN0ZU24T
Simon Wolfson, chief executive of fashion group Next, told the BBC he wanted the government to gain “some control” over levels of immigration but added: “Any move to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands would be very dangerous for the economy.”
Asked if voters would not feel betrayed if immigration does not fall over time, he replied: “I voted Leave and I certainly won’t feel betrayed if immigration is not brought down to tens of thousands. I think it would be very dangerous to bring immigration down to those levels – you only have to go into any hospital in the United Kingdom to see how important immigrants are.”
Wolfson added: “People want control of their borders but they don’t necessarily want all immigration to stop.”
He was amazingly naive then, and now
Agreed – like most BREXITers, Wolfson ignored the austerity effect driving the vote – but to claim some sort of innocence about it all when one only has to look back at the rhetoric at the time being used is total bollocks as far as I am concerned.
Have just been reading ‘The Starmer Project’. Not much good to say about him, but how do we get him out, and will his replacement be any better? We have to get PR.