Blair, Iran and ‘rising fascism’
If one were to rank the world’s undemocratic governments on a scale of one to ten, Iran would surely exceed the median. There’s no question that Ahmadinejad & Co merit a rating of something like six or seven. Yet even on that basis, Blair’s attempt to draw an analogy between today and the ‘rising fascism’ [...]
The Liberal Democrat leadership contest and the left
The Liberal Democrats have long been a few inches to the left of New Labour. Or to perhaps express the matter more exactly, New Labour has long been a few inches to the right of the Lib Dems. These differences are largely nuances, of course. There are no disagreements of substance sufficient to rule out [...]
SWP: central committee justifies expulsions
This is how the central committee is justifying the expulsions of Rob Hoveman, Kevin Ovenden and Nick Wrack to the wider membership in this week’s ‘Party Notes’ bulletin: Party discipline Last weekend 3 SWP members – Rob Hoveman, Kevin Ovenden and Nick Wrack were expelled from the SWP. Kevin and Rob Kevin and Rob are [...]
SWP expulsions: democratic centralism in action
Democratic centralism in Britain has always operated on a hammer and anvil culture; the three men expelled from the Socialist Workers’ Party this weekend are only the latest victims. The number of serious socialists in Britain kicked out of small political parties they have loyally devoted themselves to building – simply for their temerity of [...]
SWP purges Respect cadre: results and prospects
Few long-time observers of the British far left will be in the least surprised that the Little Yagodas of the Socialist Workers’ Party central committee have purged the cadre most centrally involved in the last turn they themselves ordered the organisation to undertake. Read details of the expulsions of Nick Wrack, Rob Hoveman and Kevin [...]
Mutual building societies: part of a rational housing policy
All of the analysis I have seen of the Northern Rock debacle – without exception – has concentrated on the proximate causes, principally the US subprime crisis and the bank’s heavy dependence on wholesale markets. Yet nobody seems to have thought to ask how we have got to where we are.. Time was when building [...]
Gordon Brown and the exhaustion of the third way
Gordon Brown has yet to develop an eponymous –ism. The Great Clunking Fist’s very need to lift a handful of three chord policy tricks from the George Osborne songbook this week underlines that he has yet to come up with anything resembling a distinctive and coherent set of ideas of his own. Indeed, his priority [...]
Lionel Jospin and the French secret state
The Trotskyist pasts of such New Labour politicians as Stephen Byers, Alan Milburn and even chancellor Alistair Darling (allegedly, anyway) are all on public record. But would Britain’s secret state let a man or woman they knew to be a former deep entrist become prime minister without making sure the matter was leaked to the [...]
Kings of Mean
Leona Helmsley – the billionaire New York City hotel operator and real estate investor who died in August this year – once loftily pronounced to her housekeeper: ‘We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes’. She came to wish she never said that, when in 1989 her former maid quoted the two short [...]
Left and right, US style
In Britain, Labour prime minister Gordon Brown haughtily pronounces of striking Royal Mail employees: ‘I want these people back to work.’ ‘These people’, indeed. In the USA, Democrat presidential contender John Edwards has been on a United Auto Workers picket line in Detroit. Every Democrat runner is backing the dispute, That’s him pictured left, glad-handing [...]
