Friday 31 October 2008

PCS calls on Government to avoid strike action

THE NATIONAL Executive Committee of the Public and Commercial Services Union , last week agreed the first stages of a programme of national industrial action across civil and public services over the Government’s public sector pay cap. The union urged the Government to come to the negotiating table to avoid damaging industrial action and review its public sector pay cap of two per cent, which is resulting in pay cuts and pay freezes for some of the lowest paid in the public sector.
If there is no movement from the government then industrial action will begin with a one-day civil service and public sector strike throughout Britain on 10th November, hitting passports, Jobcentres, Tax Credits, immigration and customs, as well as driving licences, coastguards, driving tests and museums.
“There is a three-week opportunity to avoid damaging industrial action, where the government can pay heed to the Bank of England’s warning on the economic consequences that the squeeze on wages is having.” Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary said.
The one-day strike, which will be followed by an overtime ban throughout the civil service, comes as civil and public servants across the country face mounting pressure on their finances as a result of the Government’s public sector pay cap.
With one in five in the civil service earning less than £15,000 and thousands earning just above the minimum wage, the Government’s policy of capping public sector pay has hit some of the lowest paid in the public sector the hardest.
In October, at least six Government departments and agencies, including coastguards and the Office for National Statistics, had to give emergency pay rises to lift earnings above the new national minimum wage rate.
The NEC also agreed outline plans for sustained and targeted industrial action that would stretch into next year in the different sectors of the civil service.
The NEC will meet after the one-day strike on 10th November to discuss dates for the sector by sector action, should there be no breakthrough with the Government.
Unlike other parts of the public sector, civil servants are doubly disadvantaged because “progression” (moving from the minimum to the maximum of the pay range) is included in the government’s pay cap along with cost of living increases. Hence there is less money available to fund basic pay awards.
This year has already seen pay strikes hit jobcentres, passports, immigration and coastguards across Britain, as well as strikes in the Scottish courts service, museums and sportscotland.
PCS members have also co-ordinated their industrial action over pay with other public sector unions, including NUT, UCU and Unison.
Commenting, Mark Serwotka said: “The everyday things we take for granted from passports and getting back into work, through to tax credits, coastguards and securing our borders are delivered by hardworking civil and public servants.
“Giving these people pay rises that take their wages to just 13 or 25 pence above the national minimum wage is unsustainable when you face double digit rises in food, fuel and housing costs.
“There is a three week opportunity to avoid damaging industrial action, where the government can pay heed to the Bank of England’s warning on the economic consequences that the squeeze on wages is having.
“The Government has the opportunity to recognise that its own workforce is doubly disadvantaged by a punitive pay system, that sees coastguards receiving special pay rises because the minimum wage has gone up and nearly half of jobcentre workers receiving no pay rise whatsoever this year.”

Saturday 25 October 2008

No need for a crystal ball

WHILE Gordon Brown and the rest of the leaders of the European Union try to steady the capitalist markets with a tranche of bank bail-outs, even the most bullish economists are at last conceding that the imperialist world is facing a slump of 1929 proportions. The media pundits are dusting down Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money but you don’t need a crystal ball to see that the Government is going to put the main burden of the crisis on the backs of those who can least afford it – the working class.
Lord Mandelson’s move to “review” and almost certainly freeze proposed new family-friendly flexible working rights shows which way the wind is blowing and it will blow even harder if the labour movement doesn’t move quickly to mobilise mass resistance to further attacks on employment rights.
The Labour Government has taken some comfort from a recent report that shows that the gap between rich and poor in Britain has decreased since 2000. According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) measures of poverty and income inequality in Britain have fallen faster than in any of the world’s richest and most developed capitalist states.
Income poverty fell from 10 to eight per cent between the mid-90s and 2005 and the poverty level in Britain is well below the OECD average for the first time since the 1980s. The number of children living in poverty fell from 14 to 10 per cent between the mid-90s and 2005 - the second largest fall, behind Italy, during this period. But child poverty rates are still above levels recorded in the mid-1970s and 80s.
But the report, from an international organisation set up in 1948 to help administer US imperialism’s Marshall Aid, says Britain still has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the developed world. It also points out that the gap between higher and lower incomes widened by 20 per cent since 1985 and that the gap between rich and poor is still greater in Britain than in three quarters of the other OECD countries which are mainly from Europe but include Turkey, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, south Korea and the United States.
While billions upon billions are being forked out to keep the capitalist banking system afloat the media pundits tell us that we should expect to pay for it in more cuts to public services, job losses and pay cuts. Brown & Co say they are acting to safeguard what they call the national interest through state intervention and the nationalisation of some banks. They try to pass off pre-planned immense expenditure on weapons of mass destruction as job-saving projects and they claim that there is no alternative to their half-baked conversion to the theories of John Maynard Keynes – a Liberal bourgeois economist who became the guru for “Old Labour” central planning.
But there are alternatives. The first is to renationalise everything that was privatised from 1979 and then plough back the mega-profits of those corporations, like British Telecom, to subsidise the health service, pensions and welfare and revive what’s left of British manufacturing. The second is to force the rich to disgorge all of the immense sums of money they have made through tax breaks and kick-backs over the past 30 years. They’ve got plenty. They can well afford it.

PCS back strike action

A PROLONGED programme of industrial action, hitting civil and public services across Britain moved a step closer last Friday, as PCS members backed strike action in a dispute over the Government’s two per cent public sector pay cap.
Fifty-four per cent of those taking part in the ballot backed union plans for industrial action, which includes national civil service wide strikes, targeted strike action and overtime bans.
“Pay freezes and real term pay cuts are simply not sustainable when you are earning a pittance and experiencing double digit rises in food, fuel and housing costs. Bailing out bankers should not be at the expense of those who deliver public services or those who rely on them.” Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, declared.
The union’s national executive committee (NEC) is meeting on Thursday 23rd October to finalise plans and decide on dates for the programme of industrial action which could stretch over the coming months. An announcement confirming these plans will be made on 23rd October.
The ballot result comes as civil and public servants across Britain face mounting pressure on their finances as a result of the government’s public sector pay cap.
With a quarter of the civil service earning less than £16,500 and thousands earning just above the minimum wage, the Government’s policy of capping public sector pay has hit some of the lowest paid in the public sector the hardest, leading to real terms pay cuts and pay freezes.
Pay in the civil service is worse than other parts of the public sector because “progression” (moving from the minimum to the maximum of the pay range) is included in the Government’s pay cap. Hence there is less money available to fund basic pay awards.
This year has already seen pay strikes hit jobcentres, passports, immigration and coastguards across Britain, as well as strikes in the Scottish courts service, museums and Sportscotland.
PCS members have also co-ordinated their industrial action over pay with other public sector unions, including NUT, UCU and Unison.
Commenting, Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, said: “The hardworking people who keep this country running, from passports, immigration and justice, to coastguards, tax and jobcentres, face increasing financial hardship because of the Government’s public sector pay cap.
“Pay freezes and real term pay cuts are simply not sustainable when you are earning a pittance and experiencing double digit rises in food, fuel and housing costs.
“Bailing out bankers should not be at the expense of those who deliver public services or those who rely on them.
“Members feel betrayed and this ballot result illustrates that they are prepared to stand up for fair pay. The union’s NEC will be meeting next week to take forward that result and finalise plans for a programme of industrial action.
“The Government have a window of opportunity to avert industrial action and to recognise that their public sector pay cap is compounding the financial misery of hardworking families in these unstable economic times.”

Tax office cuts protest

SEVERAL hundred PCS members attended a protest meeting in Bradford against the planned closure of local tax offices last Friday.
The campaign against the cuts has attracted cross-party support from MPs including Marsha Singh, MP for Bradford West, Shadow Treasury spokesperson David Gauke MP, Shadow Treasury spokesman, Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, and Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman.
PCS, which represents 1,200 people in the Bradford area, highlighted its opposition to the planned closure of 200 offices by HM Revenue and Customs with the loss of around 25,000 jobs. The cutbacks are part of a move to axe 100,000 civil service posts announced in 2006 by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The union says that about 100 remaining jobs are threatened in local offices earmarked for closure by 2011. They include Crown House and Hockney House in Shipley, Worth House, Keighley, Cavendish House, Skipton, Century House, Pudsey, and Empire House in Dewsbury.
PCS Bradford and District president Trudy Bates said: “Job cuts and office closures don’t make sense. A recent report produced by the TUC estimated the UK tax gap at £25 billion, or £1,000 a year for everyone at work in the UK.
“HMRC claims to have saved tax payers £105 million last year through job cuts whilst spending £106 million on private consultants. Office closures are bad for businesses and the communities of West Yorkshire.”

Friday 17 October 2008

PCS backs Palestine lobby

PCS is calling on all supporters and progressives to support a lobby of Parliament on Wednesday 19th November.
The lobby will mark the United Nations international day of solidarity for the Palestinian people. It is being organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Council for Arab-British Understanding and Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the event will take place from 2-6pm in Room W3 of the House of Commons.
Campaigners, including PCS, will be lobbying MPs on issues including ending Israeli occupation, ending the blockade of Gaza, Israeli settlements, Palestinian self-determination and the EU-Israel trade agreement.
This lobby is taking place at a critical time. Ensure that your MP hears your views – contact them straight away and ask to meet them on the afternoon of 19th November.
Campaign website or contact PSC – telephone 020 7700 6192/ email info@palestinecampaign.org

Seize control of the banks!

by Daphne Liddle

THE STOCK markets are falling again in London and New York after rallying for just three days.
The new policies of governments buying shares in banks to rescue them and putting up billions and trillions of pounds/dollars/euros to guarantee depositors’ money seemed to be working for a little while. Governments heaved sighs of relief; Armageddon had been postponed and Prime Minister Brown had come out of it like a banking super-hero who had, by pointing the way forward, delivered capitalism from its self-inflicted wounds.
But they had underestimated the greed and arrogance of the banking shareholders. After the Government had used billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to rescue them, the banks reported that the terms and conditions that Prime Minister Brown had imposed were deterring shareholders.
The bankers criticised the Government for its decision to stop dividends being paid out and asking banks to resume lending and called on Gordon Brown to water down the terms and conditions of the bail out in line with the package unveiled by George Bush.
Bush and his Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had followed Brown’s example and taken a £250 billion stake in vulnerable American banks, apologising as they did so.
The semi-nationalisation is totally contrary to their free-market dogma. “This is not what we ever wanted to do,” said Paulson, “but there is a lack of confidence in our financial system.” friendlier
But Bush set friendlier terms for the bankers on Wall Street than Brown had done. The American taxpayers must foot the bill but Bush has no intention of imposing the sort of conditions that would defend their interests.
Bush’s rescue package was announced after the weekend’s meeting in Washington of G7 finance ministers and banking chiefs from the US, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The 15 heads of the Euro Group, plus Gordon Brown, met immediately afterwards in Paris.
Once again the leaders of the rising economic powers: China, India, Russia, Venezuela, South Africa and so on were excluded.
The G7 powers agreed a five-point plan involving colossal sums of money but without setting precise figures or estimates. They pledged to prevent any bank going to the wall and to guarantee that financial institutions have access to liquidity and capital through the governments buying shares in the banks.
Even while the rest of the stock markets were enjoying a brief recovery, shares in the banks RBS, HBOS and Lloyds TSB were still falling.
Then on Wednesday the National Audit Office released figures showing that unemployment is rising steeply and the enormity of the coming recession swept away all remaining confidence on the London stock exchange and the FTSE started to nosedive again. similar fears
Wall Street was also falling amid similar fears of the coming recession. And many of the speculators who bought two days previously with prices at rock bottom were selling again to pocket a profit.
The problem with the G7 rescue plan is that it sends a signal to speculators that they can freely start runs on any bank or financial institution they like and the taxpayers are sure to bail them out.
It leaves the governments hostage to spend every pound and dollar they can scrape together – and the speculators will not stop until all the coffers are empty. As Peter Schwarz, writing in Global Research put it: “Governments have literally handed over the keys to their treasuries to the banks. The massive redistribution of wealth from the working layers of the population to the rich elite during the last three decades is to be continued and accelerated in the course of the current financial crisis.”
This is the madness of capitalism. The media is blaming the banking chiefs for their reckless lending and lack of control over recent years. But if any banker had refused to chase the easy profits that behaviour yielded and insisted on a more sober and cautious approach, they would have been sacked.
It is a system in which the greediest and most venal always rise to the top.
This is why semi-nationalisation cannot work; it must be full-nationalisation with full government control and democratic accountability.
The billions that have been stashed away by the profiteers during the last three decades must be taxed at the highest possible rate to return the stolen wealth to the workers who created it.

Saturday 11 October 2008

Still Going Down

THE BROWN government is holding crisis meetings to hammer out a package of economic reforms as the slump deepens while finance ministers throughout the capitalist world are scrabbling around trying to prop up an international banking system that’s on the verge of meltdown. There’s panic in the chancelleries of Europe.
Franco-German imperialism is trying to get European Union agreement for an EU-wide billion euro bank bail-out.The Irish government has effectively guaranteed its entire banking system for two years while our northern neighbour, Iceland, hopes to stave off “national bankruptcy” only through a four billion euro loan from Russia.
Though the American $700 billion “bail-out” package got through Congress last week it did nothing to halt the slide in the markets, while the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley at home has only accelerated the big business demand for state intervention throughout the banking sector.
The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, says he’s willing to take some “pretty big steps” to help stabilise the markets. But the only measures the Government’s taken so far has been to replace the old Economic Development Committee with a “National Economic Council” headed by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet Ministers and to recall Peter Mandelson from the European Commission to take up a seat in the Brown Cabinet.
Mandelson’s appointment reflects a shift towards the pro-European Union elements within the ruling class but it has more to do with Gordon Brown’s need to get consensus amongst the Labour’s right-wing in the long run-up to the next election.
Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury quotes Marx and his number two, the Archbishop of York, condemns the speculators as “asset strippers and bank robbers” and the Pope says the global financial crisis shows the futility of money and ambition. Benedict XV1 says that “the only solid reality is the word of God” and, no doubt, his answer to the crisis is prayers. But praying isn’t going to help the unemployed, the homeless and the destitute.
Nor can Brown’s half-hearted social Keynesianism, like the nationalisation of ailing banks, solve the crisis. The ruling class intend to put the entire burden of the capitalist crisis on the backs of working people. We have to ensure that they don’t.
The trade union movement has a crucial role to play in mobilising to set an immediate working-class agenda for the Labour Government. The state welfare system and the public sector must be restored, pensions and benefits guaranteed and homelessness eradicated through the building of mass council estates at affordable rents. And the rich must be forced to disgorge some of their wealth to pay for it.
Social-democratic reforms like those which Labour’s Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan governments pioneered from 1945 to 1979 defended the living standards of the millions of working people who put Labour in power in 1945, 1964 and 1974. But only socialism can emancipate the working class.
The year after the 1929 Great Slump Stalin said: “If capitalism could adapt production not to the obtaining of the utmost profit but to the systematic improvement of the material conditions of the masses of the people, and if it could turn profits not to the satisfaction of the whims of the parasitic classes, not to perfecting the methods of exploitation, not to the export of capital, but to the systematic improvement of the material conditions of the workers and peasants, then there would be no crises. But then capitalism would not be capitalism. To abolish crises it is necessary to abolish capitalism”.
How true those words are today.

Tuesday 7 October 2008

New Worker editorials on the current global financial crisis

The next step on the ladder

THE UNITED STATES Congress last Monday night voted to reject the $700 billion rescue package that had been worked out between Republican and Democrat leaders for the economic crisis. It sent the Wall Street stock exchange into freefall, losing a record total of 777.7 points in one day and sending stocks and shares crashing around the globe. The US Federal Reserve tried in vain to shore up share prices by injecting billions of dollars but soon gave up when shares continued to plummet anyway.
The Congress men and women voted narrowly against the package after pleading from George W Bush and most of those voting against were Republicans. They ignored Bush’s desperate please and dire warnings of the collapse of capitalism because they face a Congressional election in a few weeks and the proposal to give away billions of taxpayers’ money to failed bankers and fat cats is deeply unpopular among the American people.
Many of the die-hard American Republicans really believe in the capitalists’ mantra that there should never be any government intervention in the free market and that financial crises are nature’s way of wiping out the inefficient and less profitable. They believe the crash should be allowed to run its course unhindered. They believe any kind of state intervention – or democratically accountable control of the economy is covert socialism.
But they ignore the social and political consequences of the crash: the middle classes will lose their savings and pensions and face an old age of poverty while the working class will face millions of job losses, cuts in welfare and face dire poverty, hunger and homelessness. And in America these conditions already affect hundreds of thousands; the crash will multiply the numbers in dire poverty many times over.
The American people are already disillusioned with their government; after Iraq and the “weapons of mass destruction” they do not believe George Bush when he cries “wolf!” anymore.
The leaders of world capitalism fear the political chaos that could be unleashed and most of all they fear that the workers will turn leftwards. They are beset by contradictions; if they take over the failing banks to rescue them from collapse they are in effect nationalising them – a real step on the way to socialism. As Lenin pointed out in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It: “For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly…. State monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism; the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs,” (September 1917). Lenin did, of course, point out elsewhere that the political preparation for socialism required the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus and its replacement with a working class state apparatus. But there is some substance to the fears of the die-hard free-market Republicans
The leaders of world capitalism could reduce interest rates to encourage lending and spending again. But that would be to repeat the policies that led to this collapse. The problem with all policies based on debt is that eventually is all has to be repaid – with interest. The borrowers must have a realistic prospect of being able to pay it back.
Or they could let the chaos take its course, leading to economic and political instability and even world war.
Chaos is fertile; it could, given the correct political leadership from the left, result in a massive swing towards socialism; or without that leadership it could result in fascism.
Capitalism is destroying itself because the capitalists can no longer trust each other. This crisis is thrusting forward the monopolisation process to a point where surviving banks and/or IT companies will be so big they will effectively be the state – all administration of the state will be privatised to these giants and the democratic structures will shrink into barely relevant rubber stamps like the European Parliament. We could soon be living under state monopoly capitalism. Our job is to be ready to push it forward to socialism and not let it go backwards to fascism.

October 3rd 2008


To be or not to be…


WHEN THE GOING got tough back in the 1960s Labour leader Harold Wilson famously said that a week is a long time in politics. Well Brown’s Labour government has 20 months to play with until the next general election. But if Labour doesn’t radically change its direction it will face crushing defeat at the polls at the hands of the Tories. Unfortunately this message has barely sunk through to Labour Party conference in Manchester this week, least of all to the New Labour leadership who still imagine that they can weather the storm of the current capitalist crisis by pursuing the same Thatcherite policies that have alienated millions of workers who make up much of Labour’s core vote.
Sure we heard union calls inside the hall for the taxing of the rich and the renationalisation of the energy companies but nothing will come of it unless the unions link their demands to the financial support they give the Labour Party to keep it afloat.
The two issues are linked. The Tory offensive against the working class began when they returned to office in 1979 and it has largely continued under New Labour since 1997. The state and public sector was privatised. Collective bargaining was severely curtailed and vital services like the Health Service, public transport and local amenities have all become seriously underfunded.
Working people who can remember the 1970s look back nostalgically to the days of free medical treatment, affordable council housing, dole money as a right, pensions linked to average earnings, controlled transport fares and energy costs and a domestic rating system that didn’t crucify working class homeowners. It was paid for by the profitable sections of the public sector and through progressive income tax.
We must mobilise the class in its own defence to fight for the restoration of state welfare to at least the levels existing in 1979. This demand can easily be met by returning to the income tax levels that existed in 1979 and returning the privatised corporations to state control. We must make the rich pay for them by disgorging a fraction of the wealth they extort from the working class every year.
This can only be done by building fighting, militant trade unions with leaderships determined to fight to defend their members interests against the employer and willing to use their immense financial bargaining and constitutional power within the Labour Party to ensure that a future Labour government carries out the wishes of those it was established to represent.
At the fringe meetings the left social-democratic and Trotskyist “alternatives” are scrabbling around for yet another platform to challenge Labour at the next election. Some sects still seek the Holy Grail of the “correct line” which will miraculously win over millions of workers if only it is repeated again and again and again. Others believe that left unity can be built around a left social-democratic platform that specifically excludes the Labour Party and its affiliated trade unions.
They call for social-democratic reforms while campaigning against the only mass force capable of implementing reform, the Labour Party itself. They foster the illusion that there is a left electoral alternative to Labour when the reality is that the only alternative, in the current situation, is a Tory or a Liberal Democrat government.
None of them wonder why Labour lost London or why the Tories have a 20 per cent lead in the opinion polls. None of them ask why past attempts like the Socialist Alliance, Respect and the Scottish Socialist Party have all failed.
A Labour government, with the yet unbroken links with the Labour Party, the trade unions and the co-operative movement, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The NCP’s strategy is for working class unity and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right-wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party such as the Labour Representation Committee and the unions.
At the same time we must build the revolutionary party and campaign for revolutionary change. Social democracy remains social democracy whatever trend is dominant within it. It has never led to socialism. Our Party’s strategy is the only way to fight for the communist alternative within the working class of England, Scotland and Wales. We want day-to-day reforms and they can only be achieved by the main reformist, social democratic party in Britain, the Labour Party. We want revolution and that can only be achieved through the leadership of the communist party.

September 26th 2008

A $450 trillion black hole

Last Monday the giant American investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy after finding itself without funds to continue operating. It first announced its troubles a week ago and hoped to find a buyer to bail it out. The Bank of America and the British bank, Barclays, were interested but pulled out when they learned that the American government was not prepared to use its Federal Reserve to write off most of Lehman Brothers’ debts – leaving Lehman to collapse.
The Bank of America did however move to buy out Merrill Lynch, another of the top five US investment banks that was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. That makes three out of the top five firms – Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and, last March, Behr Stearns – either crashed or removed from the private sector. And the giant AIG insurance firm is also in deep trouble and seeking a $40 billion loan from the Federal Reserve.
Finance “experts” have estimated there is a $450 trillion black hole in total in and around Wall Street as bad debts pile up and each crash tears a hole in its neighbours.
The Federal Reserve – effectively the US taxpayer – has done some huge bailing out in the last two weeks, after it rescued (nationalised) the two giant mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae just over a week ago. We could almost believe it’s a dream socialist agenda – the commanding heights of the global economy being taken into public ownership. Alas the US taxpayers will be footing the bill but are not going to get much control in return.
They, along with workers all around the globe, are going to suffer loss of pensions as stock markets tumble, unemployment, personal bankruptcy and homelessness. The value of wages is falling as food and fuel prices rocket.
The banks, that a short while ago were complaining about state regulations and taxes, are now blaming the US government for failing to regulate properly and begging for taxpayers’ money. They are also blaming each other for “lowering standards”, taking risks and behaving like predators. But that is the essence of capitalism. Each one of those banks is hoping to be one of the tiny few that survive the storm to eat up those that have fallen. That is the process of monopolisation.
So many of the “financial experts” being interviewed are expressing shock and surprise while we Marxists know these crashes are an integral part of the capitalist process.
This will cast a shadow over the US presidential election, which is looking more and more like a very close race. The Republican candidate, Senator John McCain represents the most reactionary circles within the American ruling class while the Democrat, Barack Obama, is a liberal bourgeois who hopes to garner working class support with promises of welfare reform and a less aggressive policy abroad. Whoever wins, the American people will face a prolonged period of suffering from the outfall of this capitalist crisis.
The Bush administration has left the US militarily weakened, politically isolated and in deep economic trouble. It’s puppets like Sakashvili, Musharraf and Yushchenko are falling while those it has threatened, like Kim Jong Il, Chavez, Morales and Mugabe are prevailing.
Dick Cheney has urged Bush to treat the whole world as the enemy of the US and now that the US is visibly weakened those “enemies” are uniting to ensure the US gets no chance to regain its broken global powers and threaten them again.
None of this is good news for Gordon Brown as he faces efforts from the right-wing of his own party to unseat him in the run-up to the next general election. He has proved to be a disastrous and dithering Prime Minister from any point of view but changing the leader without changing the policies would be futile – and none of the current batch of Blairite challengers has even mentioned policies.
A leadership contest could only be of value if it leads to a real debate on policies and a massive shift to more pro-working class policies. Any other path and the Labour government seems doomed to defeat at the next election. If that happens, in the current global economic climate, we can look forward to extreme anti-working class measures from the Tories, now with greater powers of repression from the growth of the surveillance state and the draconian “anti-terror” laws. We must fight tooth and nail to prevent that.

September 19th 2008