Mourning the Manchester attack

After the terrible events of Monday night, the British government has suspended the election and the country is left shaken. The army has been deployed to protect “key sites” as the UK goes on ‘critical alert’ fearing an imminent terror attack.

Around 1,000 troops are being dispatched across the country. Up to 3,800 are available. It’s an unnerving show of strength as if to ward-off what we all fear is hiding in the shadows.

It’s also a natural move for Theresa May, our beloved leader, who is known for her authoritarian tendencies. May slipped and fell in the polls after an embarrassing U-turn over her ‘dementia tax’.

This ‘critical alert’ is as much a response to a genuine threat as it is a political manoeuvre.

In other ways, the response to the attack in Manchester has been the usual mix of virulent anti-Muslim racism, on the one hand, and conspiracy theory, on the other. Even before the body count emerged, social media was filled with comments like: “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims”. And that’s a polite example. Meanwhile, the conspiracists have trotted the theory that Ariana Grande ‘sacrificed’ the crowd for the Illuminati.

Apparently, the world isn’t scary enough for some people. Islamic State has claimed credit for the attack (though direct IS involvement has not been verified). People calling for a new war with ISIS ought to consider the group’s eschatology. Islamic State wants a war with the West in order to expand and entrench its support across the Middle East and beyond. This was the same logic behind 9/11.

Sometimes I get the feeling that people will listen to anything other than inconvenient truths. The fact that the UK was never attacked by radical Islamists until it invaded Afghanistan in 2001 is unmentionable. Let alone the subsequent wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. This picture is less comforting if you’re looking for a reason to stay passive.

If we want to secure ourselves from suicide bombings, we should set limits on what the British government can do abroad. Stopping the killings, the torture and the occupations would be a good start. Yet if you raise such concerns you will be accused of being a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. All the more reason not to be cowed into blind support for Western foreign policy.

There is a line to walk in these dark times. It’s important that the families of victims have time to mourn and solidarity has to be extended to the victims, alive and dead. But this solidarity has to be meaningful. It would be a disservice to the victims to support a violent, racist response. The unity of struggle means solidarity between the victims of Manchester and the victims of state violence.

Not only should we seek a rational account of attacks like this, we must do so for the sake of the victims. Pretending that the suicide bombing was an insane and senseless act, or that the perpetrators was a monster from birth, is a way of denying that the killer had any agency in the first place. To deny an action is rational is to deny the individual has any responsibility.

Seeking an explanation is not the same as excusing or even mitigating this atrocious crime. Even still, we’re told we should be blind to American aggression against the Middle East. As if it was inconceivable that the deaths of one million Iraqis would mean anything in the first place. As if no one would feel a deep, burning sense of rage about the state of play in West Asia.

The fear of introspection is a reactionary force in our lives. It’s the reason why certain people loathe Freud and Marx in equal measure. They offer the most inconvenient insights into the world we live in. The left should play the same role in exposing the crimes of states. But the left shouldn’t forget its aims are based on moving people to take action. It’s not enough to have the right ideas and an audience of twelve.

The danger is that the anti-immigrant right has fought and won a great deal of sway over the debates around multiculturalism, Islam and freedom of movement. Things that were once taboo are now mainstream. The left has not been able to combat this rightward lurch. The arguments in favour of labour migration and diversity are barely made, let alone understood.

This is why it’s vital for leftists to not just ‘call out’ the enemy. The problem for the left is that there is a lack of positive vision about what we want to do about the threat of terrorism. The left is right to defend the rights of Muslims, as well as refugees and the cause of free movement more broadly. But the defensive game can only go so far.

This article was originally published at Souciant.

The French election: Defeating Le Pen

It’s been a while since Western liberals have been able to cheer a victory. Emmanuel Macron has given them what they needed. He has triumphed over Marine Le Pen with more than 66% of the vote behind him. After Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, the liberals feared that France would fall next as if politics were just a series of trending hashtags.

A vote for Macron was a vote for reassuring telltales. It wasn’t a vote for political substance. The man presents the same agenda as Hollande but clarified and purified. The extreme centre is back: $65 billion cuts every year, 120,000 less civil servants and corporation tax levelled to 25%. The idea that this is going to produce harmony in France is absurd. Yet that well-crafted illusion is exactly why the Macron platform has won.

Much like Obama’s team in 2008, the Macron campaign set out to create a blank slate for the popular imagination to project onto. Once this was achieved, Macron was able to unveil an austerity package and still expand outwards from his supporters in the media and the astroturfed crowds. Le Pen just provided a moral cover to his victory. And it was very apt of Obama to intervene on Macron’s side.

This is enough for the liberals who don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with Western society. So long as the European Union survives and technocrats remain in power, the system can destroy countless lives in the end of capital accumulation. The possibility of a recurring stand-off with right-wing nationalism is not something to worry about because it legitimates neoliberals like Macron in the end.

Ghosts of the Algerian War

The National Front’s success is not new. It became a permanent fixture in French political life in the 1980s. The immigration debate is dominated by the far-right and the French political centre dances to Marine Le Pen’s tune even if it doesn’t want to acknowledge it. The race problem in France has been transmuted into a Muslim problem, which has allowed the FN to monopolise identity politics in the country.

Macron may have won, but this election is the second time in 15 years that the far-right has come within shouting distance of the Elysee Palace. The last time was in 2002 when conservative President Jacques Chirac defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen with over 82.2% of the vote. The National Front leader won just 17.8% after politicians of the right and the left mobilised a ‘republican front’ against Le Pen. But the daughter is far stronger than the father.

Many American and British far-righters wonder why ‘political correctness’ and multiculturalism have not permeated Southern Catholic Europe to the same extent that they have Protestant countries like the United Kingdom and the United States. And yet the level of diversity in France is greater than it is in the UK. For starters, France has the biggest Muslim population in Europe and the colonial legacy runs deep beneath the country’s race relations.

Not least because the French settler regime was defeated, but the ‘loss’ of French Algeria in a bloody conflict with the FLN led to outbreaks of political violence on the streets of Paris and ultimately hastened the demise of the Fourth Republic. It’s almost always forgotten that Vichy thug Maurice Papon had the cops attack a pro-independence march of Algerians in October 1961, killing an estimated 200 people and throwing their lifeless bodies into the Seine.

It’s also important to note that the Fifth Republic was founded during the May 1958 crisis, in which the French political class found itself at odds with the military establishment. General de Gaulle came out of retirement to draw up a new constitution with strong executive powers, all as part of the efforts to defend the French Empire. Yet in the end, it was de Gaulle who settled with the FLN and the narrative of ‘abandonment’ was confirmed for the French settlers.

Building Hegemony

Historically, the National Front has based itself in the south of France, where you find a great deal of racial resentment from the former settlers. The hardcore of the FN are originally the former soldiers from the Algerian war, including Jean-Marie Le Pen, as well as Vichy collaborators and even monarchist elements.

As a lieutenant in the Algerian war, Le Pen has been accused of participating in torture and extrajudicial killings. Many of his early political allies were members of the Secret Army Organisation (OAS), the dissident right-wing paramilitaries who waged a terrorist campaign to sabotage the Evian Accords. This past would help establish Le Pen as a leading neo-fascist.

A plethora of far-right groups emerged in the 1960s, Le Pen set out to unite these disparate groups into a single force capable of breaking through the media and the post-war consensus. When the National Front was founded, the party was just one among many: there was the New Order (ON) and the Party of New Forces (PFN). This fragmentation prevented any one group making electoral gains.

Much like how the British National Party came out of fierce empire loyalists, the FN emerged from the ranks of colonials who lived and fought in Algeria only to return to France once the war was lost. Fascism is what happens when imperialism comes home. Where John Tyndall would fail in Britain, Le Pen has succeeded in France. The FN outlived all of its major rivals and eventually became the dominant far-right party in the country.

The long march to 2002 began in the 1980s when the FN first made its breakthrough into the mainstream. In 1984, the FN won 10 seats in the European elections and in the cantonal elections of the following year the party won 8.7% of the vote. By the presidential election of 1988, Le Pen had expanded his base to 14.4% of the vote. This was how the FN became legitimate.

Containment

In the 1980s, Le Pen styled himself as an anti-Communist with neoliberal economic credentials and a pan-European vision. With the end of the Cold War, the FN had to adapt to a new terrain and took on economic populism as a new electoral strategy. The party began to refocus its racism against French Muslims after the Salman Rushdie fatwa.

In the last 25 years, the FN would adopt a new strategy for building on its early gains. Shifting from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, converting from pan-Europeanism and neoliberal reform to euroscepticism and protectionism. The collapse of the Communist Party and the failures of the Socialist Party opened up the ideological space for Le Pen to create a new base.

“There are two Front Nationals: one in the north of France which is anti-religious, very socialist, quite leftist; and one in the south, which accepts the euro, which is – economically speaking – liberal and Catholic,” Alain Minc, an adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy, has said. “The only thing which helps them to stick together is the prospect of winning one day.”

This is the challenge posed by Marine Le Pen today. If this coalition is to be broken, the French left has to build the alternative in northern France and reclaim working-class support and restrict the FN to its petit-bourgeois origins. That was the strength of Melenchon’s platform, which brought together the social and national with the political and economic. It might have been a winning ticket had the left not been so internally divided.

If Melenchon can’t capitalise on the gains he made in the presidential campaign and liberals sit back in complacency, the results of Macron’s austerity policies could be disastrous. Not only would Le Pen be able to grow her constituency further, but despair at the mainstream could lead to more abstentions. Le Pen got double the vote of her father, and once she reaches the 50% mark she’s in the winners’ league.

June’s parliamentary elections will be a crucial test. Unlike Macron’s En Marche!, the National Front is a real party, with far more experience getting out the vote, particularly when it comes to local elections. Given its growth in regional polling during the Hollande years, it’s not unlikely that Le Pen will eventually get what she so desperately wants. Pity the French for not doing enough to stop her.

This article was originally published by Souciant Magazine.

The French election: Macron or Le Pen

Like most elections these days, the French presidential election have been unpredictable. First, it looked like Sarkozy would make a comeback, then Fillon beat him to it only to be taken out by a corruption scandal. Meanwhile Hollande bowed out of the race, leaving Benoit Hamon and Jean-Luc Melenchon to fight over the left-wing vote. And then, there were two: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

Naturally, people were shocked that the far-right candidate got through. Just as they were shocked that Trump made it past the primaries, got nominated and took the White House. Some people have not been connecting the dots. Of course, this is partly down to distance. No one in France was surprised to see the National Front get past the first round. The truth is that the only certainty of this election was that Le Pen would make it to the second round. Everything else was up for grabs, or so it seemed for a while.

Now we’re told that the French establishment will mobilise a republican front united behind Macron in order to stop Marine Le Pen. This was how the French political class stopped Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002. The Socialist Party and the Republicans put aside their differences to ensure the conservative Jacques Chirac won a handsome victory of 82%. It didn’t amount to much because Chirac was fantastically shit, and the National Front continued to grow towards its current stature.

Today the polls suggest Le Pen will get around 40% of the vote and Macron will come out with 60%. Fifteen years ago, the FN got less than 20% and the Republicans secured over 80%. Although it looks unlikely right now, it may not be too far in the future before we see France elect a fascist head of state. No doubt this will come after another re-run of 2002, where the left and the right gather behind one mediocre centrist in hope of stopping the brownshirts. But for now, the name of that mediocre centrist is Macron.

The politics of a void

Much like Obama in 2008, Macron has been successful by posing as a blank slate for voters to project their hopes and dreams onto. Yet the rise of Macron is a part of the decline of the Socialist Party. It is no insignificant fact that the leading presidential candidate was a member of the PS and a part of the Hollande government until fairly recently. Indeed, Macron was the Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs under Manuel Valls.

What we will probably end up calling ‘Macronism’ is set to be another variation on Third Way politics. We know what to expect from Macron because we’ve seen it all before with Clinton, Blair and Schroeder. There are some differences of tone, of course. In his most noteworthy rally, Macron just screams at his audience like his nuts are caught on something metallic. By contrast, Blair felt the hand of history on his genitalia and spoke like a fervent preacher.

This time the Third Way comes with an astroturfed ‘movement’ and a candidate styled as an ‘outsider’ despite having all the credentials of an insider. The conditions did not favour a mainstream candidate, so it was necessary for the centre ground to reassert itself outside the mainstream. En Marche! (‘On the Move!’) was launched as a neither-left-nor-right platform with anti-establishment rhetoric. The purpose was always to deepen the neoliberal project of past governments. Except Macron says he will deliver where they all failed.

‘Macronomics’, as we will probably talk about it in the future, consists of tax cuts for the rich and a smaller state bound by an even smaller corset. Austerity is the name of the game, except not for capital. Macron promises to slash the budget by €60 billion and cut 120,000 jobs in the civil service. He wants greater integration within the EU and wants to sign up to CETA – the Euro-Canadian free trade deal. It is a fantasy for Nineties liberals.

Unfortunately for Macron, the Nineties ended a while ago and the situation today is very different. Not only is French society as volatile as ever, the world has seen a populist tide sweep away mainstream governments. There is a crisis of European social democracy, where only the far-right stand to gain until the radical left can rebuild itself and find the strategy it needs. But this also means that the Macron government can be challenged. The game is not over just yet.

The extreme centre is back

At last, the liberal commentariat has found its man: a millionaire stockbroker with an astroturfed mass of support. Mainstream European opinion long ago coalesced around Macron, he is supposedly the guy who can save the centre ground and restore the Franco-German alliance. The hope is that the populist zeitgeist can be vanquished, and the clocks turned back, in just one vote. The illusion is that President Macron will change much for the better.

Without a united front the French left was divided between Hamon and Melenchon, leaving a space open for Macron to reach the second round. Of course, I do think everyone should hold their nose and vote against Le Pen. However, the problem is that a negative vote is not enough in politics. Macron stands for a style of social and economic liberalism that is rapidly going out of date all over the world. And, in the end, the Macron programme will likely leave Le Pen and the FN in a much stronger position.

The good news is that La France Insoumise (France Defiant), the movement formed around Melenchon, might well be the basis for a new left-wing party and an offensive against the centre ground and the far-right. All the French left can do is try to build the alternative their country desperately needs. But, for the time being, you can expect more racism, more violence and an even more precarious existence for the working class. And that’s with the liberals in power.

This article was originally published by Souciant Magazine.

The French election: Melenchon's Moment

The rise of Jean-Luc Melenchon has caught the international media off guard. After ignoring the man for months, the English-speaking press is suddenly obliged to analyse the chances of the most viable left-wing candidate. Even the Anglophone left has been caught out here.

As always the English left is divided over its own concerns and strategy. Some see Melenchon as the only option in a race where the mainstream candidates are faltering. Others are suspicious of Melenchon’s platform and, in classical sectarian style, demand more purity of socialist convictions.

In short, the English left doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind about Melenchon, but this doesn’t matter if Melenchon makes it to the second round. The French people will decide.

Nevertheless, it’s worth exploring the reasons behind this division. It appears that the English left is looking at France in terms of the crises it faces at home. Brexit has polarised the left and the questions of nationhood rests at the core of this. For better or worse, Melenchon remains stubbornly committed to the idea of the nation-state. And this draws suspicion from some quarters of the left.

Unsubmissive France

A part of this is cultural, the English left is wary of all nationalisms. This is understandable given the history of flag-waving in the British Isles. It’s not like red patriotism has ever taken hold in England. A left-wing civic nationalism has emerged in Scotland and Wales, yet English nationalism remains trapped by potent forms of ethnic and cultural chauvinism.

It is possible to appeal to patriotism in the French context given that the nation-state itself was the creation of the 1789 revolution. The dark side of French history – the empire, slavery, the civilising missions in Africa, and the capitulation to fascism – are conveniently dropped; but this mythmaking is necessary to every form of patriotism. Whether or not it is a good thing is separate from its effectuality.

What cannot be disputed is that Melenchon’s charismatic appeals to French history and culture have gripped the imagination of many people. He has successfully married a left social democratic project to la patrie. The French left may be divided over strategy and candidates, but it’s clear who stands the best chance of subsuming all left forces under one umbrella in time for the second round: Benoit Hamon and Philippe Poutou were never going to play this role.

Not only does Melenchon have the edge because of his red patriotism, he has the Front de Gauche (The Left Front) – a coalition of the Left Party (his own creation), the French Communist Party and rogue elements of the New Anticapitalist Party and the Socialist Party. This bloc has allowed Melenchon supporters to move freely outside the French ruling class and the European establishment.

It’s why Melenchon has been able to build France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France) as a Podemos-style left populist insurgency. This has granted Melenchon a great deal of credibility. The fusion of grassroots and social media activism created the basis for his candidacy to finally breakthrough into the mainstream. It sets an example for the wider European left about how to advance against all the odds.

Questions of nationhood

At the same time, there is a lot of disinformation going around. We’re told Melenchon is pro-Assad and pro-Putin because he opposes NATO in Ukraine and Western involvement in Syria. We’re told Melenchon is “soft” on racism and “hard” on immigrants. I can’t disperse all the claims here, but I will look at the debate around immigration – which is a vital one in the election.

As I understand it, Melenchon has argued for a ‘regularisation’ of illegal migrants in France so as to document and officialise migration. This seems like a good alternative to what Marine Le Pen wants, namely a racist police state based on the state of emergency. However, it is also true that the officialisation of migrants is a pre-condition for whether or not they are deported or granted residency. This is where the debate begins.

There is an ongoing debate about freedom of movement on the left. A traditional social democratic position would be that the flow of migrant labour has to be controlled under capitalist conditions because it serves as a reserve army of labour. In effect, the migrants provide cheap labour and in turn threaten the wages of workers in the host country. This is until the migrant workers can be unionised and brought into the labour movement.

The opposing view is that the free movement of labour is a progressive step forwards for the working class because it prevents the illegal status of migrant labour. After all, the existence of illegal workers is conducive to greater exploitation, not a barrier to low wages and falling standards of living. So if you want to stop wages from being undermined, you ought to throw out the possibility for illegal migration. Thus, free movement has a great deal of support on the radical left.

This is how the opening up of borders can allow for working class unity and an equal playing field. The answer to wage competition on that equal playing field is not to erect barriers, but to extend solidarity through trade unions. Yet there remains a contingent of left support for restricting immigration, and this has to be accounted for and understood. The Melenchon platform is not free from the more old-fashioned centre-left arguments about the necessity of migration controls. But it’s not inherently anti-migrant.

You can disagree with the line that border controls and workers’ rights are compatible, however, it is hardly in the same platform as the Le Pen position. After all the Front National wants to abolish dual nationality and force French Africans and Arabs to choose (at least until they can be deported back to their ancestral lands) whether they are really French or not. Make no mistake about it: the FN is still fighting for an ethnically pure France, whether Le Pen admits it or not.

Down with the centre!

It still looks like the battle will be between Melenchon, Le Pen and Macron. Faced with this three-way split, the French electorate has a real choice for perhaps the first time in decades. The hope of Melenchon supporters is that Macron can be knocked out in the first round. If Melenchon and Le Pen both make it to the second round, the French may just get to make the kind of decision which was denied to the American people in 2016.

It could be the battle of outsiders that should have taken place between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Yet liberal centrists placed their bets on Emmanuel Macron and the alleged ‘safeness’ of his candidacy. Many American liberals believed the same about Hillary Clinton. They thought it was impossible for a self-described socialist to win against a populist outsider. They were so arrogant as to believe Trump could not win, and the flaws of Clinton were dwarfed by his vulgarity.

The French election is even more volatile. At first, it looked like Francois Fillon would be the main challenger to Marine Le Pen, but he has since been blown out of the water by a corruption scandal. The Socialist Party never stood a chance thanks to the unspeakable mediocrity of the Hollande government. Then the party base surprised everyone by picking Hamon. And then Macron emerged as a serious contender.

Suddenly, the liberal commentariat had found its man: a millionaire stockbroker with an astroturfed mass of support. Mainstream European liberal opinion began to coalesce around Macron, as the guy who can save the centre ground and restore the Franco-German compact. The populist zeitgeist could be defeated once and for all. But the possibility that it might be too late escapes their minds.

Almost everywhere you look the centre ground is in crisis. The time for moderation and compromise is not today; there is no gradualist strategy for fending off Le Pen indefinitely. Instead, the only sensible choice is to take the consensus with both hands and throw it to the ground shattering it into a million pieces. It’s only with Melenchon that France and Europe have a chance.

This article was originally published by Souciant Magazine.

What does Corbyn have to lose?

For a long time, I thought that the Conservative government was a weak regime depending on a slight majority in Parliament. This starting point was necessary to proceed on the assumption that the Labour Party stands a chance of winning in 2020. Particularly as Jeremy Corbyn and his left-wing supporters are trying to turn the party around from Blairism. However, the new terrain of Brexit shows 2020 is far from a certain defeat for the Tories.

What I failed to take into account: The Conservatives could well expand their majority by swallowing up the UKIP vote. The Tory majority, the smallest since 1974, counts on just 24.6% of the eligible electorate, which translates to 36% of the vote under our antiquated electoral system. Note UKIP counted for 12% of the vote in 2015 - that's 4 million votes. So Theresa May is going for a full-blooded Brexit because she thinks she can steal back these right-wing voters.

If the Corbynistas are to succeed, the Labour leadership needs to refocus its policy initiatives around a few key areas, adopt a permanent campaigning style to remobilise the base, a voter registration drive and, perhaps most importantly, reshape the media debate. This is vital if Labour is to answer the questions facing the country. In short, Labour's only hope is to increase voter turnout (which is easier said than done) to thwart Tory incursions and expand into enemy territory.

Stoke and Copeland

This is why the by-elections are not simply reflective of future prospects. For starters, the victory in Stoke was partly based on a low turnout and yet Labour came out on top: the Tory-UKIP vote fell by 4,000 votes, but remained split in the end. So the first-past-the-post system favoured Gareth Snell's Blue Labour campaign to rescue English nationalism from the racists. In other words, this win was not an unambiguous one. Though it is possible to rebuild the party's Stoke base over time, it just depends on what happens over the next three years.

That being said, it was great to see Paul Nuttall knocked back on his ass. It wasn't just because Nuttall lied about Hillsborough though, more importantly UKIP has lost its raison d'etre since Leave won the referendum. Still, Paul Nuttall was thick enough to believe the bogus media narrative that the Northern working class vote was more UKIP than Labour. The UKIP base has always been a strange right-wing coalition: one part Tory lite, one part fascist, one part libertarian fruitcake. This is a multi-class bloc, but the working class element are unlikely to come from the Labour base.

At the same time, the real triumph of Nigel Farage may be that the Conservatives are taking up UKIP's nationalist agenda. The May government has made it clear it is going for a hard Brexit and that it is open to restricting immigration, even at the detriment to economic growth and stability. Farage has already won without ever coming close to real power. The electioneers around May will have calculated that the party can survive the social fallout, while Labour remains divided and weak.

By opting for a hard Brexit, Theresa May has successfully neutered the UKIP threat to her party. UKIP was only gaining in Labour seats because it was subsuming the right-wing opposition vote under one umbrella. If the Tories had been more focused on Stoke they might have eaten through Nuttall's base and squeezed Labour's majority even further. But the Conservative leadership decided to focus on the easy target. This brings us to Copeland.

There's no doubt about it, the loss of Copeland was a serious blow. It revealed three factors: 1) the Conservatives were able to swallow up UKIP, while the Labour vote was squeezed on two fronts by 2) the Tories over Sellafield and 3) the Lib Dems over Brexit. The lack of a clear message on nuclear power cost Labour the jobs vote, whereas Corbyn's three line whip on Article 50 cost the party support among Remain voters. The latter factor may be far more important in the end, compared to the more localised nuclear issue.

None of this takes place in a vacuum, the Labour Party is in historic decline because the Blair years cost the party 5 million voters. The New Labour strategy of taking the working class vote for granted, as it chased after middle class families, has cost the party dearly. This is why the 2010 and 2015 elections were lost. It's partly why Scotland was lost. Despite the flaws of the Corbyn leadership, the Blairites and Brownites lack an alternative. A return to New Labour is not possible in a world where the combined Tory-UKIP vote stands at 48%. But a nationalist turn won't cut it either.

Corbyn's Promise

The promise of Corbynism to reverse this trend has not yet been realised. I put this down to a lack of political strategy and coherence on policy and message, as well as the overwhelmingly hostility of the media and the efforts of Blairites to undermine Corbyn. The illusion is that Corbyn is the fundamental problem for Labour, when it was clear that the Brown government lost power and Ed Miliband lost Scotland. Putting a David Miliband or a Dan Jarvis in Corbyn's place will not change the reasons why Labour is in a losing streak.

It's not about your jawline or what suit you wear. The bid to transform Labour is still real for as long as there is no alternative to the radical left in the party. But it takes work to repair 40 years of damage. Some pessimists would argue it is hopeless. If Labour is unsalvageable, then Corbyn may go down with the ship - taking the blame for decades of rot. Even still, I think it would only ensure the collapse of the party to turn back now. It's not about Corbyn, it's about what kind of country we want to live in. The old phrase "socialism or barbarism" is more than rhetorical now.

Bizarrely, Conservative Lord Finkelstein has offered some recommendations in his Times column. Far from arguing for retreat in the hope of saving face (as Owen Jones has done), Danny Finkelstein suggests the only hope for Corbyn is to instigate a new antagonism within the Labour Party to change it forever:

"[Corbyn's] only hope must be as a subversive challenger, relentlessly organising to take over the party and talking about his efforts to do so. He should come out with huge, earth-shaking radical left-wing policies and not care that Yvette Cooper and I both think that they are bonkers. He should skip prime minister's questions in order to attend protest rallies. He should organise to deselect critics and win selection contests for his people."

Finkelstein is not alone, but it's interesting to hear this from a prominent right-wing journalist. Another writer, Benjamin Mercer, has taken to the pages of The National Student to make the case for far-reaching democratic reform within the Labour Party. This is surely the best case for Corbynism, and the best hope of the Labour left:

"Much as the franchise has been expanded for the leadership elections, so it must be expanded at the level of the CLPs. power should be transferred downwards from the General and Executive Committees to the grassroots. Participation should be made easier and the decisions should be made by a committee of the whole membership, not merely a clique of the same. Every member of the CLP must have the right to become its MP, and the membership should be ballotted before every election - or by-election - in order to choose the party's candidate. This should end the practice of 'parachuting' supposedly orthodox candidates into allegedly safe seats. No more Hunts in Stoke. labour Party MPs will be accountable, first and foremost, to their constituencies and not to the leadership, the PLP or the NEC. Re-selection at every election will ensure that this remains the case."

Up until now Jeremy Corbyn has stuck to a centrist style of leadership. However, the Labour coalition of liberals, social democrats and socialists, may just be too broad for the new situation. The broad church approach has been a recipe for incoherence on policy and a lack of strategy on the media. If Corbynism is to succeed, the party has to be transformed in the long-term and that requires thinking beyond 2020. A surrender or a retreat would just offset this process of democratic reform.

If the experiment ends with Corbyn stepping down in 2020, the opening for transforming Labour into a mass democratic party would be lost. This would close the space for a radical leadership. Not only would it mean that the left would not be able to contest the elections in 2025 and 2030, it would mean Labour would fall back into the hands of the extreme centre. Contrary to Blairite illusions, the party would resume its lacklustre performance under Ed Miliband, or, worse, try to stake out a position as the party for English nationalism under the guise of Blue Labour. Either way, Labour is dead meat.

This article was originally written for Souciant on March 3, 2017.

Corbyn Coup: Jeremy Fights Back!

The coup against Jeremy Corbyn has now fully transmuted into a leadership election. But the key challengers are unlikely to win over the membership: whether it is lacklustre Angela Eagle, or the mediocre Owen Smith. Corbyn is officially on the ballot, albeit with new barriers to his supporters. Sadly the contest may take until September to conclude, while the Conservative government is busy regrouping.

Things are moving very quickly. Not long ago, there was a great deal of anxiety over the NEC vote on whether or not to allow Corbyn to remain on the ballot paper. Many feared Labour would deny the incumbent the right to defend his position from Angela Eagle. The Blairites are cynical enough to take this decision. It would have been a transparent move to overthrow the leader and close the democratic opening within the party. But we shouldn't forget this almost happened.

Much like the no-confidence motion, the NEC held the ballot in secret. The point being to embolden the anti-Corbyn vote, as it had done with the no-confidence motion. This same method allowed 80% of the PLP to fall into line with the Blairite coup. Yet even with the secret ballot, the Corbyn camp won the NEC vote by a modest margin (18:14) and now NEC elections may see the balance of votes turn in the Left's favour.

However, the NEC rammed through new measures, once Corbyn and his allies were out of the room, to deny 128,000 members the right to vote and suspend all branch meetings until after the election. This should not surprise anyone. The Labour Party has a long tradition of rigging its internal contests for the sake of 'unity' and 'stability'. Democracy and contestation is a threat to this Tammany Hall system.

The enemy revealed

First, Angela Eagle emerged to take on Corbyn, but now Owen Smith has entered the field. Smith represents a division in the anti-Corbyn faction, where Eagle is not seen as necessarily the best candidate to take on the leader. He is now positioning himself to be the single challenger to face Jeremy Corbyn. He has called for a second EU referendum, appealing to the liberal europhiles so easily disenchanted with Corbynism. It's an appeal to the muesli belt.

Overall, the Smith campaign looks like a serious bid for power. The Pontypridd MP vows to refocus efforts on inequality. He has proposed a £200 billion investment programme to build housing, colleges, hospitals and improve existing infrastructure. Smith was self-aware enough to outmatch Stephen Crabb's call for a £100 billion plan. He's even pledged to bring in a war powers act to ensure no future government can take the country to war without parliamentary support.

This coming from a man, who was not in Parliament to vote for the Iraq war, surely strengthens his bid for the leadership. But it's not entirely accurate to say Smith is anti-war. In the past, Owen Smith has expressed support for the occupation of Iraq on Eustonite grounds – going as far as to compare the conflict to the Spanish civil war. This was long before Hilary Benn used the same analogy to support the invasion of Syria.

Meanwhile the Eagle campaign has been markedly lukewarm. So far Angela Eagle has succeeded in winning over sympathy with questionable claims of intimidation by leftists. Her debut was spoiled by Theresa May's victory after Andrea Leadsom pulled out of the Tory leadership race. The journalists rushed out of the room to cover the real news. But even when Eagle gets airtime, she fails to inspire. It looks like a kamikaze candidacy.

The aim is victory through destruction. The Blairites and the 'soft left' are trying to use Angela Eagle as a front to slam the Labour leadership. The election will be dragged out over the summer to guarantee maximum damage. The Labour Right would prefer to see Corbyn fail than see him challenge the Tory government. This is just as the government is largely rudderless. A united opposition could have serious impact right now.

Perilous terrain

Faced with Smith, the Corbyn camp has returned to its own take on quantitative easing. John McDonnell has laid out plans for a national investment bank and £500 billion programme for infrastructure. It would be coupled with regional banks to increase the level of investment to the North and the Midlands. This not only tops Smith's position, it is a return to Corbynomics – a radical mix of heterodox Keynesian and post-socialist economic policies.

If Corbyn combines a well thought out platform with a social media strategy and grass-roots organising, the leader should be able to win with a landslide. Victory has to be total here, or it will embolden the anti-Corbyn faction to draw their knives later. It's not just a matter of having the right ideas and decency. The extreme centrists want to recapture the party leadership, and they are willing to ruin its electoral chances to do so.

Not surprisingly, Jeremy Corbyn has fallen back on tried and tested social media networks. This allows Corbyn to connect with his base in a much more direct way than his competitors. It does have limits, though it is the best option. The real battle is how Corbyn can assert influence in the media and reach a mass audience. He recently gave a pretty relaxed interview to the BBC in Finsbury Park. But the press is still overwhelmingly hostile to the Left.

The main problem is not the right-wing press, but the lack of a left-wing press. The Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the New Statesman have led the herd of independent minds. This herd includes liberals and leftists who take issue with Corbyn's idealism. Even the Daily Mirror, the only Labour red-top newspaper, called for Corbyn to let the coup plotters win. So there is no progressive commentariat backing the Labour leader.

The Corbyn leadership faces the difficulty of getting the word out in a hostile media environment. At the same time, the party is locked into a crisis which predates the last nine months and goes back to the compromises of Blairism and even before. The redistribution of power and wealth was always offset to secure gains within the system. Now there is the real struggle to transform the party in order to change the country.

This article was originally published at Souciant.

The 2015 General Election.

I covered the election cycle for Souciant. My first article focused on Ed Miliband and what he represents for the centre-left and for the Labour Party.

The early signs of the Miliband leadership were not promising. He shirked from making promises early on, apparently to avoid commitments he couldn’t fulfil, probably to avert any infighting. Labour veterans will remember, with no nostalgia, the splits in the 1980s, which ruptured the party’s electoral chances, consigning it to the wilderness for the best part of two decades. So long as the party remains united, it can back neoliberal policies. 

In this regard, sectarianism has its virtues over unity. As Leo Panitch has emphasised, it might be necessary to divide ranks, and prompt a full-blown confrontation, in order to rescue the official social democratic party from its own rightward drift. Contestation can lead to progressive outcomes, but plenty of people prefer to play the safe game holding onto a scintilla of hope. The last battle for the life and soul of the Labour Party was fought in the 1980s. 

The post-war Labour Party has consistently sought to buttress the system and avoid the redistribution of wealth and power. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the plan was to secure ever-rising living standards through adjustments to income and jobs policy, as well as an inflationary monetary approach, to make the pie appear bigger for everyone. Then in the 1990s New Labour promised it could do this by further compromise and, ultimately, by heaping greater debt onto people. 

Likewise, Miliband promises to tweak the system just enough to placate the incorrigible masses. He tries to make the right noises about taxes, health care, jobs and housing, but ultimately falls short. We’re told he’s the official left candidate, and yet he talks about ‘responsible’ capitalism. The days of Bevan and Attlee are long gone. These may be the end times for the centre-left.

I wrote these words for an article, the Death of the Centre-Left, published on March 31. For the election I looked at almost every major party, with the exceptions of Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems, with particular attention paid to the Green Party, Labour, UKIP and the Conservatives. Here's my take on the 2015 election:
The Anti-Cameron - On the significance of the SNP as an alternative to the Whitehall consensus and what it means for those of us on the left-of-centre.
The New Ted Heath - A historical look at Cameron's Conservative Party and how it reached this peculiarly modern manifestation of right-wing politics.
These Greens Are Different - A critical, yet sympathetic, look at the Green Party, their social programme and what has gone wrong for them on the campaign trail.
White Identity Politics - A comparison of UKIP and the DUP in historical terms of colonial and racial oppression, specifically how the oppression of the Irish helped to constitute the white identity to which UKIP now appeals.
Small was Beautiful - A look at the strangely reactionary history of the Green Party, how they came to be and why they are left-wing today.
Dead Labour - Again, a critical look at Labour and precisely the history of its infighting and how it produced the current political impasse.
Early 90s Flashback - Looking back to the 'surprise' victory of 1992 in terms of the Conservative majority won and secured by David Cameron. What lessons can we draw from this?

Why UKIP needs defectors.

I’ve already articulated my view that the ‘successes’ of UKIP have been overstated by the press. Perhaps this is out of boredom with the mediocrity of conventional politics and not out of a closeted sympathy with right-wing populism. Time will tell, I suppose.

The results of new research support my claim. It seems that the UK Independence Party will struggle come election time to capitalise on the small gains it has achieved. I say ‘small gains’ because it still controls no councils and none of its candidates have won a seat in Parliament. Many of you will be shocked to read this because Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell now represent UKIP in Parliament. But it’s still the case because these men defected. The rank and file of UKIP remains outside Westminster and in Brussels.

You might wonder why we shouldn’t take Reckless and Carswell seriously? Well, it’s a lot easier for establishment candidates to jump ship than for outsiders to break into the mainstream. It wasn’t so long ago that Roger Helmer lost his bid for a seat in the House of Commons. The truth is that they need more defectors. As my fellow blogger Josh Catto put it on Facebook:

I think of all post-war defections that led to by-elections, only Bruce Douglas-Mann lost his seat. But his case is instructive. He defected from the SDP to Labour, called a by-election for 1982 in Mitcham and Morden (my own constituency), and lost to the Tories in the middle of the Falklands. Otherwise, it is a pretty fail safe strategy.

So Carswell and Reckless are called opportunistic by their opponents for doing it. But that's the job of politicians not in your party - to oppose what you do. They would get far more flack if they hadn't stood down for re-election. But they're also looking at the SDP example. Douglas-Mann probably would have won if it hadn't been during the Falklands. And standing down for re-election allows them to have a bit more of a base for the general election. Certainly it gives them time to prepare and re-jig their database and phone banks etc.

But already Ashcroft polling shows Reckless would probably just miss out on keeping Rochester. Carswell will probably hang on to Clacton. Maybe Farage in Thanet, and I can see them picking up Grimsby from Labour. Perhaps Rotherham as well. I will also be very interested to see if Carswell takes over after 2015. If so, expect to see him target Lib Dem libertarians like Laws and Browne.

The feat of securing a seat for an outsider candidate was achieved in 2010 when Caroline Lucas won Brighton for the Green Party. The Greens are growing rapidly, procuring many supporters from the long-suffering ranks of the Labour Party. The EU elections demonstrated that there is serious disaffection out there. The Conservatives and Lib Dems lost 10% between themselves, while the BNP lost 7% of its vote. UKIP boosted its vote by 10%, while the Greens came in at 8%. What we need is left-wing populism.     

The fourth party is a fourth problem.

The meteoric rise of UKIP and its charismatic leading man has been an irresistable subject for the British press and its insatiable desire for spectacle. It must be the fag in Nigel's hand, the twinkle in his eye, the mischevious grin, the accent of deepest, darkest Kent... Yet the full picture demonstrates quite well that the key to UKIP's success is in the mainstream.

It was only a few months ago that UKIP candidate Roger Helmer was easily defeated by mainstream candidates. It isn’t insignificant that it took an establishment candidate to secure the Party’s presence in Parliament. Douglas Carswell still stands as the kind of man UKIP sucks up in vast quantities. He stands opposed to universal healthcare and regulations on private enterprise. He wrote the Plan with fellow-traveling libertarian Daniel Hannan. It’s a free-market hymnbook for decentralisation and deregulation.

This is consistent with the reality of Farage’s success. The leap from 13 MEPs to 24 MEPs took five years, but the European elections only draw out 33.8% of the electorate. That’s half of the usual turnout in UK general elections. The entrance points are to be found in the weak spots of the Westminster consensus. Under these conditions the fringe parties can have greater influence.

UKIP gained 27.5% of the vote and outmatched Labour by a little over 2%. So that’s about 9.3% of the electorate. The Conservatives lost 4% of the vote, just as the Lib Dems lost 6% and were overtaken by the Greens at 8%. The vote for the BNP fell by 7%. Against this backdrop, it’s easy to see why UKIP bolstered its vote by over 10%. If you take the local elections, the Farage party lost 5% of the vote, but picked up 160 seats and gained no councils.

See the rest of this article at Souciant.

Libya slips into a new civil war

In the midst of the ongoing civil strife, Libya’s Parliament fled to Tobruk in August and now resides aboard the Elyros, a Greek car ferry, on the eastern coast of Libya. Tobruk is a stronghold for the coalition of forces behind Operation Dignity, a counter-terror offensive launched in May by General Khalifa Haftar. Since the offensive was launched there has been sporadic fighting and instability as nationalist forces collided with Islamist militias in Benghazi.

The Islamist takeover of Tripoli and Benghazi may be understood as a reaction to this campaign. In July, Ansar al-Sharia declared an Islamic emirate in Benghazi, while fighting continues in Tripoli. Major foreign powers such as the US, the UK and France have withdrawn their diplomatic staff from the country. All of less than three years since the Libyan uprising turned into a revolution and then a civil war in which NATO intervened on the side of the Benghazi rebels.

An important factor could be the fear of a repeat of General Sisi’s coup in Egypt last year. The Sisi government has set out to repress the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt and similarly the secular nationalists of Libya oppose the influence of the MB in their country. General Haftar has attempted to overthrow civilian rule on more than one occasion in the recent past. As such, the possibility of a coup in Libya is not at all far-fetched given the country’s history and the fragility of its civil institutions.

Libya’s body politic is dislocated as the General National Council (GNC) was disbanded last month in favour of the Council of Deputies, the latter being dominated by liberals and federalists, the former remaining predominantly Islamist. The GNC has continued to act as a power centre in spite of the fact that it has been officially disbanded and lacks UN recognition. The elections to the Council of Deputies left Islamists isolated and this may be an important factor leading up to their takeover of Tripoli.

Voter turnout in the Council of Deputies election in July 2014 came to just 18%, down from 60% turnout in the 2012 elections. "I didn't bother to register this time around, and that should tell you everything," said Mohammed Abu Baker, a Libyan student. "My friends were killed in the revolution, we paid in blood for this democracy, but what was the result of the election?"

In early August, Libya appointed its sixth post-Gadaffi head of state, Aguila Saleh Issa, and by the end of the month Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani resigned in a bid to quell the power struggle. The recognised legislative body of Libya moved its proceedings to Tobruk as it became untenable to remain within reach of the Islamists. Meanwhile the GNC claims its own President Nouri Abusahmain and Prime Minister Omar al-Hasi. Neither claims are recognised internationally, but the centre of power remains contested.

Last week, Sheikh Sadiq al-Ghariani, the Grand Mufti of Libya, fled the UK amidst accusations that he had influenced the Islamist takeover of Tripoli International Airport from his home in Devon via his website. He had been appointed Grand Mufti in 2011 for the religious support he had lent to the revolution against the Gaddafi regime. He has since taken the side of the Islamist militias, in particular the Libya Dawn coalition, against the civilian government and competing factions.

This seems to signify a common problem facing the Maghreb in particular and the Arab world more generally. Arab nationalism has ceased to be the leading political force, leaving the ground clear for alternatives such as political Islam. The revolutionary wave of 2011 has as yet brought little in the way of new politics to the region, instead creating a vacuum where nationalism once was. Now that vacuum has opened the door for another civil war.

This article was originally published at The World Weekly on September 11, 2014.