Top Trump?

March 12, 2016 by Leave a comment

In the immediate aftermath of Super Tuesday it looked like the GOP establishment was facing three equally unappealing options; a) let Trump have the nomination and back him in the general election, b) let Trump have the nomination, but back a rival “Real Republican” candidate, or c) deny Trump the nomination through convention shenanigans, undoubtedly provoking him into an independent run. It’s difficult to imagine any of these scenarios ending unhappily for the Democrats.

Events since then have muddied the waters a little though. Cruz did well enough in the subsequent polls to strengthen his claim to be the leading “Stop Trump” candidate, and, unless Rubio and Kasich pull out something special in Florida and Ohio respectively, it might soon be a two horse race. Simultaneously, the chaos and violence lurking under the surface of the Trump campaign has been bubbling up enough to give his less ardent supporters some doubts about his Presidential caliber, and the long-predicted ebbing of his fortunes may finally start to materialise. It could be close enough come July that a brokered convention, which right now appears a bigger affront to democracy than even the GOP could stomach, might be more palatable.

Still, the eventual candidate, be he the unlikable Senator or the unlikable businessman, will be faced with the challenge of pivoting towards the middle ground where elections are won and lost, without alienating the Republican base. This task, which proved well beyond McCain and Romney, has become significantly harder in the last eight years as the wingnuts have taken over the grassroots of the party, so, even if outright civil war is avoided, a Republican win in November looks unlikely.

On the Democratic side, the maths still seems to favour Hillary, Bernie’s surprise victory in Michigan notwithstanding, so, barring some unforseen disaster, there should be a Clinton in the White House again before too long. I was in Times Square the night Bill was first elected – it might be time to plan another visit…

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Contrasting fortunes

February 29, 2016 by Leave a comment

So, we’ve had four rounds of voting, a couple more debates, and Super Tuesday is almost upon us. Are things any clearer in the race for the White House?

On the Democratic side, it is looking as though Bernie Sanders’ wave of momentum has crashed upon the rocks of southern demographics, and it’s not clear how his campaign will recover. His narrow focus on economic issues may resonate with young white liberals, but the broader Democratic electorate seems more receptive to Hillary Clinton’s more nuanced message. This is a shame, because Bernie has the better platform, but he may have to be content with pulling Hillary a bit to the left. Hillary, even with her faults, is still a progressive and accomplished candidate, and there seems little doubt that the party will unite behind her if and when she secures the nomination.

As for the GOP, where does one start? The party establishment’s policy of pandering to wingnut Tea Partiers has come back to bite them on the ass, and it looks like they are going to be stuck with a candidate woefully unelectable, even by their own recent standards, who may drag the whole slate down to defeat.

The entire primary process has descended into embarrassing farce for the Republicans – while Bernie and Hillary debate their differences like serious, grown up politicians, the nation has watched Trump, Rubio and Cruz trade invective like overgrown toddlers. Little wonder that the GOP hierarchy are rumoured to have already written off the Presidency to focus on the Congressional contests.

Hanging over everything is the newly vacant seat on the Supreme Court, and the knowledge that the next President will have the chance to appoint a Justice who may swing the court for years to come. It will be interesting to see if the Republicans hold to their obstructionist line over the summer, or decide to try to make a deal with the current President rather than taking their chances with President Clinton.

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Iowa revisited

February 1, 2016 by Leave a comment

Remarkably enough SLS has been around long enough to cover three US Presidential elections, so, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, I feel obliged to issue some sort of forecast of the outcome.

Back in 2008 we were rooting for Hillary Clinton, not that our endorsement did her much good. This time round I have to say that, on policy, I’m leaning towards Bernie Sanders, who I think may win in Iowa and New Hampshire, though I can’t see past Clinton for the nomination.

On the Republican side it looks like Trump is going to make the early running, but I think Rubio will be the eventual candidate. The GOP race seems academic though, since I cannot imagine the Democrats losing the general election.

Whatever happens I’m hoping that the excitement of the caucuses and primaries will rekindle my enthusiasm for blogging, for a while at least.

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Seriously though, don’t bomb Syria

December 2, 2015 by Leave a comment

As I write the debate in the House of Commons on the Syrian question is drawing to a close, and it looks like limited military action is going to be approved, though with a substantial bloc of opposition. To be fair, this outcome probably does represent the mood of the country; polls have shown a modest majority in support of bombing.

What’s interesting is that the doubters aren’t confined to usual left-leaning peaceniks; there are plenty of conservative voices questioning the wisdom of wading even further into a complex foreign conflict, with goals that are unclear and outcomes that are far from certain. Even on the left the opposition doesn’t stem entirely, or even mainly, from a pacifist outlook – pretty much everyone wants to see the back of ISIS – but rather from a conviction that the strategy proposed will only make things worse.

It would seem logical to wait until a better plan has been formulated, or at least to give less destructive options like diplomacy a bit more time to succeed. Unfortunately inaction isn’t an option our politicians feel comfortable embracing, which only reflects the anxiety prevalent in society at large; our inability to tolerate uncertainty and risk. Faced with a bad situation we want Something To Be Done, even if history tells us that it might be better to step back and let the belligerent parties sort things out themselves.

We in the West seem to think we have some special insight into conflict resolution, that we can engineer a solution that is beyond our erstwhile colonial subjects, but the evidence suggests that they would get along a lot better without our assistance, and the peace we bring is only the peace of the grave.

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Don’t bomb Syria

November 30, 2015 by Leave a comment

It’s looking increasingly likely that British jets will soon be flying bombing sorties over Syria, a mission so senseless that even its proponents have largely avoided trying to make any coherent argument for it. We are invited to stand in solidarity with our French cousins, in the hope that our natural horror at the recent events in Paris will stop us asking awkward questions about why a strategy that so obviously failed in Iraq and Libya should be expected to work this time around.

It’s ironic that the almost unlimited access to information enjoyed by the digitally privileged of the developed world, which one might expect to arm citizens with the knowledge needed to stop this nonsense, appears rather to be paralyzing our critical faculties. The flood of text and images on various social media that invariably follows tragedies like Paris may feel intensely meaningful on a personal level, but, lacking wider context, it cannot guide a rational response. Instead it just seems to make us vulnerable to the fear-mongering of demagogues, of varying degrees of subtlety.

Perhaps I’m too pessimistic – there is plenty of opposition to this course of action, both online and in the real world, and our leaders’ drive towards a wider war may not yet be unstoppable, if we keep up the protests, and try to think about what is happening rather than just succumbing to a desire for instant reaction.

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Underdogs have their day

September 14, 2015 by Leave a comment

No question about what was the big political story this weekend; Jeremy Corbyn’s triumph in the Labour leadership contest. That he would win hadn’t been in serious doubt for a while, but the margin of his victory was crushing, and has given him a clear mandate to reinvent the party along centre-left lines.

To some extent this is less surprising than it seems; in a European context the UK has been out of step over the last 20 years in having both main parties on the centre-right, and a leftward shift for Labour is really just a reversion to a longer-term status quo.

What is uncertain though is the effect that two decades of right-wing consensus has had on the outlook of the general electorate. The view among what can be broadly termed the political elite, which includes the newly-deposed Labour Party hierarchy, is that the ideas espoused by Corbyn and his allies, particularly on economic issues, may play well with existing Labour supporters, but leave the bulk of the population cold, rendering the party unelectable. The counter-argument is that there is a hidden majority in the country, currently alienated from mainstream politics, who have been waiting for someone like Corbyn to articulate a progressive agenda that they can support, and who will sweep a rejuvenated Labour to power. The last election produced some evidence for both positions; the SNP did well in Scotland by mobilising voters around a programme of limited social democracy, but the Conservatives did win overall with an unrepentant pro-austerity manifesto.

Time will tell I guess. The first electoral test for Corbyn’s Labour will be the Scottish Parliament poll next year, assuming they make it that far without splitting, but that campaign will be beset by all sorts of local issues, so it may be hard to draw many firm conclusions from the outcome. The local elections in England and Wales might be a better indicator of how far the Corbyn revolution can extend.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, there are signs that Bernie Sanders may be poised to pull off a similar upset. That seems like more of a long shot though, so I’m sticking with my prediction of Hillary Clinton for the nomination. Still, it’s looking more interesting than it did a few months ago. The real entertainment is in the Republican contest of course, but I can’t see that being more than a sideshow.

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Long to reign over us

September 9, 2015 by Leave a comment

Around 5.30 this evening Queen Elizabeth II became the United Kingdom’s longest-reigning monarch, beating the 63-and-a-bit years managed by her great-great-grandmother Victoria. She shows no signs of flagging, so the second Elizabethan age is likely to run for a while longer, much to the chagrin of republicans like myself.

It’s easy to view British royalty as a quaint and essentially harmless anachronism, given that Elizabeth has largely refrained from directly interfering in politics, and the country is effectively a typical bourgeois democratic republic, but I think that underestimates the extent to which the institution of the monarchy underpins the conservative structure of our political culture. There is a big psychological difference between being a subject and being a citizen, and the deference to authority that is inherent in a monarchical system is a major barrier to progressive change.

Generations have grown up seeing Elizabeth on the throne as a fact of life, and her longevity has meant that the patent ridiculousness of choosing a head of state by bloodline hasn’t been a live political issue in recent years. Even queens are mortal though, and some day the country will have to consider whether the royal charade should go on. I can’t believe that the succession, when it comes, will be a smooth one; surely reason will prevail and Elizabeth will go down in history as not only our longest-serving monarch, but also our last one.

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Further thoughts on the Greek situation

July 18, 2015 by Leave a comment

I’ve sat down a few times this week intending to write something about what’s happening in Greece, but the situation has been so fluid it’s been hard to make much sense of it. Things do seem to have settled into some sort of pattern over the last couple of days though, so I’ll hazard some thoughts.

My suspicion that the Germans would stick to a hard line seems to have been right; what was more surprising was the speed with which the Syriza government caved in. Their capitulation has been met with bewilderment and not a little anger in left-wing circles, coming as it did only a few days after they had received a strong mandate from Greek workers in the referendum.

Accusations of selling-out are a little unfair I think; Tsipras and those around him seem to have expected the Germans to back down, and, when it became obvious that that wasn’t going to happen, to have calculated that it was better to remain in power, and try to offset the worst of the austerity, rather than walk away. There is some logic in this position, though, given that they have just signed away a big chunk of sovereignty, the scope for resistance may be limited.

Where Syriza can be criticicised is for allowing themselves to be boxed into such a position. They seem to have drastically underestimated the extent to which the Germans would be prepared to sacrifice their economic interests to maintain their political power. From what I have read of accounts of the negotiations it sounds as if the Greeks approached them like an academic debate, in which cold logic would win out, rather than the vicious political street fight that the Germans engaged in.

It is hard to understand why this was so; Syriza may be a broad coalition, but plenty of their senior members are experienced activists who should have seen this coming. There are reports that some in the Left Block of the party were arguing that more preparations should be made for the possibility of an exit from the Euro, but very few practical steps to this end seem to have been taken.

As things stand it is looking like a defeat for the left, but all is not lost. There will certainly be a realignment of anti-austerity forces, and while the bailout agreement has been passed by the Greek parliament it it far from clear that the Tsipras government will be able to push through the most unpopular provisions, given the level of politicisation and mobilisation of the Greek working class. There are splits emerging in the Troika too; the IMF, which is more interested in getting at least some of its money back than preserving German hegemony in Europe, may force Berlin to accept some write-off of the debt.

There are also some signs that pan-European solidarity with the Greeks may be stirring, most crucially in Germany. Even in the UK, which is always a bit detached from these things, there have been demonstrations and collections of cash for food banks and free clinics in Greece. This may not significantly alter the course of events, but might alleviate at least some of the pain.

If we have learned one thing from the last two weeks though, it’s that this crisis is far from settled, and there will undoubtedly be more unexpected developments before we can say that it is over.

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Post-oxi

July 7, 2015 by Leave a comment

So the Greeks held their collective nerve and voted No on Sunday; now we wait to see whether Germany will follow through on the threat to throw Greece out of the Euro, and perhaps out of the EU altogether.

On the face of it, it makes no economic sense to take such drastic action over what, in the grand scheme of things, are relatively small sums of money, but this has always been as much a political crisis as an economic one, and, in political terms, allowing popular democracy to win out over neoliberal discipline is a much bigger threat to Europe’s rulers than even the worst shocks that might follow a Grexit from the Euro.

So my money (euro, not drachma) is on Merkel sticking to her hard line. Whatever happens, difficult times ahead for Greece.

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Oxi

July 4, 2015 by Leave a comment

I’ve been involved in a lot of political activity over the years, but, being honest, I have to admit that most of it has been, if not exactly inconsequential, then marginal at best. A few minor victories here, some setbacks there, nothing that will trouble the historians. I don’t mean this dismissively; progress has always come in countless tiny increments, and some occasional leaps, and it’s usually only with the benefit of hindsight that we can tell what is significant.

That said, I have often found myself daydreaming about what it would have been like to have been around when things were really going down – Russia in 1917, Spain in 1936, Cuba in 1953, Chile in 1973; when the struggle reached a point of crisis and irrevocable choices had to be made. In the accounts I have read of such times life certainly seems to take on an intensity unmatched in my own more pedestrian experience, but often at a considerable personal cost to those involved. On balance I guess I’m glad to have lived, so far at least, in a relatively quiet period.

Of course no one really gets to choose the circumstances they live through, and people can find themselves making history without ever having sought out that responsibility. Such is the fate of the population of Greece, who go to the polls tomorrow to choose between two visions of their future, and perhaps of the future of Europe.

I wouldn’t presume, from my position of comfort in Northern Europe, to fully understand the pressures that will weigh on the Greeks as they cast their ballots, but if I were there I would be voting No. It’s far from certain that a rejection of the EU austerity plan will give Syriza the leverage they need to negotiate a better deal, but accepting a continuation of the disastrous program of the last few years will surely condemn the Greek working class to inescapable poverty.

What I have heard about the political engagement of Greek workers is encouraging, and I am hopeful that they will back Syriza in sufficient numbers to deliver a victory, though it looks like it will be close. Whatever the outcome, something has started – the long, difficult process of turning Europe away from its current course. It’s a task that will require united action across the whole continent, but the movement in Greece could be the inspiration those of us who have thus far lagged behind need to get our act together.

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