Monday, December 16, 2019
Get Brexit done! by michael roberts
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/12/13/get-brexit-done/
That was the campaign slogan of the incumbent Conservative government under PM Boris Johnson. And it was the message that won over a sufficient number of those Labour voters who had voted to the leave the EU in 2016 to back the Conservatives. One-third of Labour voters in the 2017 election wanted to leave the EU, mainly in the midlands and north of England, and in the small towns and communities that have few immigrants. They have accepted the claim that their poorer living conditions and public services were due to the EU, immigration and the 'elite' of the London and the south.
Britain is the most divided in Europe geographically. The election confirmed this ‘geography of discontent’, where rates of mortality vary more within Britain than in the majority of developed nations. The disposable income divide is larger than any comparable country and has increased over the past 10 years. The productivity divide is also larger than any comparable country.
The 'leave' view was stronger among those who are old enough to imagine the ‘good old days’ of English ‘supremacy’ when ‘we were in control’ before joining the EU in the 1970s. Once in the EU, we had the volatile 1970s and the crushing of manufacturing and industrial communities in the 1980s. The flood of Eastern European immigrants (actually mainly to the large cities) in the 2000s was the last straw.
In the ’remain capital’ of England, London, Labour’s vote held up as the ‘remain’ party, the Liberal Democrats, were squeezed down. The LDs did badly but still had a higher share of the vote (11%) than in 2017. The Conservative share of the vote rose only slightly from 2017 (42.3% to 43.6%), but Labour’s slumped from 40% in 2017 to 32%. So the opinion polls and the exit polls were very accurate. Indeed, the overall turnout was down from 69% in 2017 to 67%, particularly in the Brexit areas. Once again, the ‘no vote party’ was the largest.
This was clearly a Brexit election. The Labour party had the most radical left-wing programme since 1945. The social and economic manifesto of the left Labour leadership was actually quite popular. Labour’s campaign was excellent and the activist turnout to canvass and get the vote in was terrific. But in the end it made little difference. Brexit still dominated and the Labour vote was squeezed. Not every voter wanted to ‘get Brexit done’, but clearly sufficient of the 2016 'leave' voters had enough of delay and procrastination by former PM May and parliament and wanted the issue dealt with.
Usually, elections are won on what the state of the economy is. This election was generally different. But even so, the measure of ‘economic well-being’ index (based on a mix of the change in real disposable income and unemployment rate) suggested an improvement since former PM May lost her majority in 2017. The economy at the level of investment and output may have been stagnating, but the average UK household was feeling slightly better off since 2017, with full employment and slight improvement in real incomes. That helped the Johnson government.
What now? The government under Johnson will now move quickly to pass through parliament the legislation necessary for the UK to leave the EU by end of January at the latest. And then the more tortuous process of signing up a trade deal with the EU will begin. That is supposed to be completed by June 2020, unless the UK asks for an extension. Johnson will try to avoid that and he can now make all kinds of concessions to the EU in order to get a deal done without the fear of a backlash from ‘no deal’ Brexiters in his party, as he has a big enough majority to see them off.
With the Brexit issue likely to be out of the way by this time next year, the British economy, which has been on its knees (stagnation of GDP and investment) is likely to have a short pick-up. With ‘uncertainty’ over, foreign investment may return, house prices recover and with the labour market tightening, wages may even pick up. The Johnson government may even steal some of Labour’s proposals and boost public spending for a short period.
Longer term, the future of the British economy is dismal. All studies show that outside the EU, the British economy will grow slower in real terms than it would have done if it had remained an EU member. The degree of relative loss is estimated at between 4-10% of GDP over the next ten years, depending on the terms of the trade and labour deal with the EU. Also, it is still unclear how much damage there will be to the financial services sector in the City of London. But this is all relative; implying just 0.4-1% off the projected annual growth rate. So, for example, if the UK grew at 2% a year in the EU, it would now grow at about 1.5% a year.
And then there is the joker in the pack: the global economy. The major capitalist economies are growing at the slowest rate since the Great Recession. There may be a temporary truce in the ongoing trade war between the US and China, but it will break out again. And corporate profitability in the US, Europe and Japan is sliding, alongside rising corporate debt. The risk of a new world economic recession is at its highest since 2008. If a new global slump comes, then the mood of the British electorate may change sharply; and the Johnson government’s Brexit bubble will then be pricked.
That was the campaign slogan of the incumbent Conservative government under PM Boris Johnson. And it was the message that won over a sufficient number of those Labour voters who had voted to the leave the EU in 2016 to back the Conservatives. One-third of Labour voters in the 2017 election wanted to leave the EU, mainly in the midlands and north of England, and in the small towns and communities that have few immigrants. They have accepted the claim that their poorer living conditions and public services were due to the EU, immigration and the 'elite' of the London and the south.
Britain is the most divided in Europe geographically. The election confirmed this ‘geography of discontent’, where rates of mortality vary more within Britain than in the majority of developed nations. The disposable income divide is larger than any comparable country and has increased over the past 10 years. The productivity divide is also larger than any comparable country.
The 'leave' view was stronger among those who are old enough to imagine the ‘good old days’ of English ‘supremacy’ when ‘we were in control’ before joining the EU in the 1970s. Once in the EU, we had the volatile 1970s and the crushing of manufacturing and industrial communities in the 1980s. The flood of Eastern European immigrants (actually mainly to the large cities) in the 2000s was the last straw.
In the ’remain capital’ of England, London, Labour’s vote held up as the ‘remain’ party, the Liberal Democrats, were squeezed down. The LDs did badly but still had a higher share of the vote (11%) than in 2017. The Conservative share of the vote rose only slightly from 2017 (42.3% to 43.6%), but Labour’s slumped from 40% in 2017 to 32%. So the opinion polls and the exit polls were very accurate. Indeed, the overall turnout was down from 69% in 2017 to 67%, particularly in the Brexit areas. Once again, the ‘no vote party’ was the largest.
This was clearly a Brexit election. The Labour party had the most radical left-wing programme since 1945. The social and economic manifesto of the left Labour leadership was actually quite popular. Labour’s campaign was excellent and the activist turnout to canvass and get the vote in was terrific. But in the end it made little difference. Brexit still dominated and the Labour vote was squeezed. Not every voter wanted to ‘get Brexit done’, but clearly sufficient of the 2016 'leave' voters had enough of delay and procrastination by former PM May and parliament and wanted the issue dealt with.
Usually, elections are won on what the state of the economy is. This election was generally different. But even so, the measure of ‘economic well-being’ index (based on a mix of the change in real disposable income and unemployment rate) suggested an improvement since former PM May lost her majority in 2017. The economy at the level of investment and output may have been stagnating, but the average UK household was feeling slightly better off since 2017, with full employment and slight improvement in real incomes. That helped the Johnson government.
What now? The government under Johnson will now move quickly to pass through parliament the legislation necessary for the UK to leave the EU by end of January at the latest. And then the more tortuous process of signing up a trade deal with the EU will begin. That is supposed to be completed by June 2020, unless the UK asks for an extension. Johnson will try to avoid that and he can now make all kinds of concessions to the EU in order to get a deal done without the fear of a backlash from ‘no deal’ Brexiters in his party, as he has a big enough majority to see them off.
With the Brexit issue likely to be out of the way by this time next year, the British economy, which has been on its knees (stagnation of GDP and investment) is likely to have a short pick-up. With ‘uncertainty’ over, foreign investment may return, house prices recover and with the labour market tightening, wages may even pick up. The Johnson government may even steal some of Labour’s proposals and boost public spending for a short period.
Longer term, the future of the British economy is dismal. All studies show that outside the EU, the British economy will grow slower in real terms than it would have done if it had remained an EU member. The degree of relative loss is estimated at between 4-10% of GDP over the next ten years, depending on the terms of the trade and labour deal with the EU. Also, it is still unclear how much damage there will be to the financial services sector in the City of London. But this is all relative; implying just 0.4-1% off the projected annual growth rate. So, for example, if the UK grew at 2% a year in the EU, it would now grow at about 1.5% a year.
And then there is the joker in the pack: the global economy. The major capitalist economies are growing at the slowest rate since the Great Recession. There may be a temporary truce in the ongoing trade war between the US and China, but it will break out again. And corporate profitability in the US, Europe and Japan is sliding, alongside rising corporate debt. The risk of a new world economic recession is at its highest since 2008. If a new global slump comes, then the mood of the British electorate may change sharply; and the Johnson government’s Brexit bubble will then be pricked.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Someone Interfered In The UK Election, And It Wasn’t Russia
by Caitlin Johnstone
Ladies and gentlemen I have here at my fingertips indisputable proof that egregious election meddling took place in the United Kingdom on Thursday.
Before you get all excited, no, it wasn't the Russians. It wasn't the Chinese, the Iranians, Cobra Command or the Legion of Doom. I'm not going to get any Rachel Maddow-sized paychecks for revealing this evidence to you, nor am I going to draw in millions of credulous viewers waiting with bated breath for a bombshell revelation of an international conspiracy that will invalidate the results of the election.
In fact, hardly anyone will even care.
Hardly anyone will care because this election interference has been happening right out in the open, and was perfectly legal. And nobody will suffer any consequences for it.
The centrists and mainstream media outlets are responsible for the right wing win in the UK. They spent all their time bashing and smearing Jeremy Corbyn bc they will always prioritize smashing the left, even if it means allying with the far right. Shameful.
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) December 13, 2019
Nobody will suffer any consequences for interfering in the UK election because the ones doing the interfering were extremely powerful, and that's who the system is built to serve.
As of this writing British exit polls are indicating a landslide victory for the Tories. Numerous other factors went into this result, including most notably a Labour Party ambivalently straddling an irreconcilable divide on the issue of Brexit, but it is also undeniable that the election was affected by a political smear campaign that was entirely unprecedented in scale and vitriol in the history of western democracy. This smear campaign was driven by billionaire-controlled media outlets, along with intelligence and military agencies, as well as state media like the BBC.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been described as the most smeared politician in history, and this is a fair description. Journalist Matt Kennard recently compiled documentation of dozens of incidents in which former and current spooks and military officials collaborated with plutocratic media institutions to portray Corbyn as a threat to national security. Journalistic accountability advocates like Media Lens and Jonathan Cook have been working for years to compile evidence of the mass media's attempts to paint Corbyn as everything from a terrorist sympathizer to a Communist to a Russian asset to an IRA supporter to a closet antisemite. Just the other day The Grayzone documented how establishment narrative manager Ben Nimmo was enlisted to unilaterally target Corbyn with a fact-free Russiagate-style conspiracy theory in the lead-up to the election, a psyop that was uncritically circulated by both right-wing outlets like The Telegraph as well as ostensibly "left"-wing outlets like The Guardian.
Just as Corbyn's advocacy for the many over the plutocratic few saw him targeted by billionaire media outlets, his view of Palestinians as human beings saw him targeted by the imperialist Israel lobby as exposed in the Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby. For a mountain of links refuting the bogus antisemitism smear directed at Corbyn, a lifelong opponent of antisemitism, check out the deluge of responses to this query I made on Twitter the other day.
This interference continued right up into the day before the election, with the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg flagrantly violating election rules by reporting that early postal votes had been illegally tallied and results were "looking very grim for Labour".
There was extreme election interference in the #UKElection. It didn't come from the Russians. It didn't come from the Chinese. It came from the billionaire class and its political/media lackeys. And it was perfectly legal.
— Caitlin Johnstone
(@caitoz) December 12, 2019
The historically unprecedented smear campaign that was directed at Corbyn from the right, the far-right, and from within his own party had an effect. Of course it did. If you say this today on social media you'll get a ton of comments telling you you're wrong, telling you every vote against Labour was exclusively due to the British people not wanting to live in a Marxist dystopia, telling you it was exclusively because of Brexit, totally denying any possibility that the years of deceitful mass media narrative management that British consciousness was pummelled with day in and day out prior to the election had any impact whatsoever upon its results.
Right. Sure guys. Persistent campaigns to deliberately manipulate people's minds using mass media has no effect on their decisions at all. I guess that's why that whole "advertising" fad never made any money.
I am not claiming here that the billions of dollars worth of free mass media reporting that was devoted to smearing Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party had a greater effect on the election results than Brexit and other strategic stumbles in the party. I'm just saying that it definitely had a much greater effect than the few thousand dollars Russian nationals spent on social media memes in the US, which the American political/media class has been relentlessly shrieking about for three years. To deny that a media smear campaign the size and scope of that directed at Corbyn had an effect is the same as denying that advertising, a trillion-dollar industry, has an effect.
Which means that plutocrats and government agencies indisputably interfered in the British election, to an exponentially greater extent than anything the Russians are even alleged to have done. Yet according to British law it was perfectly legal, and according to British society it was perfectly acceptable. It's perfectly legal and acceptable for powerful individuals to have a vastly greater influence on a purportedly democratic election than any of the ordinary individuals voting in it.
A free and healthy society would not work this way. A free and healthy society would view all forms of manipulation as taboo and unacceptable. A free and healthy society would not allow the will of members of one small elite class to carry more weight than the will of anyone else. A free and healthy society would give everyone an equal voice at the table, and look after everyone's concerns. It certainly wouldn't tolerate a few individuals who already have far too much abusing their power and wealth to obtain even more.
Ladies and gentlemen I have here at my fingertips indisputable proof that egregious election meddling took place in the United Kingdom on Thursday.
Before you get all excited, no, it wasn't the Russians. It wasn't the Chinese, the Iranians, Cobra Command or the Legion of Doom. I'm not going to get any Rachel Maddow-sized paychecks for revealing this evidence to you, nor am I going to draw in millions of credulous viewers waiting with bated breath for a bombshell revelation of an international conspiracy that will invalidate the results of the election.
In fact, hardly anyone will even care.
Hardly anyone will care because this election interference has been happening right out in the open, and was perfectly legal. And nobody will suffer any consequences for it.
The centrists and mainstream media outlets are responsible for the right wing win in the UK. They spent all their time bashing and smearing Jeremy Corbyn bc they will always prioritize smashing the left, even if it means allying with the far right. Shameful.
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) December 13, 2019
Nobody will suffer any consequences for interfering in the UK election because the ones doing the interfering were extremely powerful, and that's who the system is built to serve.
As of this writing British exit polls are indicating a landslide victory for the Tories. Numerous other factors went into this result, including most notably a Labour Party ambivalently straddling an irreconcilable divide on the issue of Brexit, but it is also undeniable that the election was affected by a political smear campaign that was entirely unprecedented in scale and vitriol in the history of western democracy. This smear campaign was driven by billionaire-controlled media outlets, along with intelligence and military agencies, as well as state media like the BBC.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been described as the most smeared politician in history, and this is a fair description. Journalist Matt Kennard recently compiled documentation of dozens of incidents in which former and current spooks and military officials collaborated with plutocratic media institutions to portray Corbyn as a threat to national security. Journalistic accountability advocates like Media Lens and Jonathan Cook have been working for years to compile evidence of the mass media's attempts to paint Corbyn as everything from a terrorist sympathizer to a Communist to a Russian asset to an IRA supporter to a closet antisemite. Just the other day The Grayzone documented how establishment narrative manager Ben Nimmo was enlisted to unilaterally target Corbyn with a fact-free Russiagate-style conspiracy theory in the lead-up to the election, a psyop that was uncritically circulated by both right-wing outlets like The Telegraph as well as ostensibly "left"-wing outlets like The Guardian.
Just as Corbyn's advocacy for the many over the plutocratic few saw him targeted by billionaire media outlets, his view of Palestinians as human beings saw him targeted by the imperialist Israel lobby as exposed in the Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby. For a mountain of links refuting the bogus antisemitism smear directed at Corbyn, a lifelong opponent of antisemitism, check out the deluge of responses to this query I made on Twitter the other day.
This interference continued right up into the day before the election, with the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg flagrantly violating election rules by reporting that early postal votes had been illegally tallied and results were "looking very grim for Labour".
There was extreme election interference in the #UKElection. It didn't come from the Russians. It didn't come from the Chinese. It came from the billionaire class and its political/media lackeys. And it was perfectly legal.
— Caitlin Johnstone
(@caitoz) December 12, 2019The historically unprecedented smear campaign that was directed at Corbyn from the right, the far-right, and from within his own party had an effect. Of course it did. If you say this today on social media you'll get a ton of comments telling you you're wrong, telling you every vote against Labour was exclusively due to the British people not wanting to live in a Marxist dystopia, telling you it was exclusively because of Brexit, totally denying any possibility that the years of deceitful mass media narrative management that British consciousness was pummelled with day in and day out prior to the election had any impact whatsoever upon its results.
Right. Sure guys. Persistent campaigns to deliberately manipulate people's minds using mass media has no effect on their decisions at all. I guess that's why that whole "advertising" fad never made any money.
I am not claiming here that the billions of dollars worth of free mass media reporting that was devoted to smearing Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party had a greater effect on the election results than Brexit and other strategic stumbles in the party. I'm just saying that it definitely had a much greater effect than the few thousand dollars Russian nationals spent on social media memes in the US, which the American political/media class has been relentlessly shrieking about for three years. To deny that a media smear campaign the size and scope of that directed at Corbyn had an effect is the same as denying that advertising, a trillion-dollar industry, has an effect.
Which means that plutocrats and government agencies indisputably interfered in the British election, to an exponentially greater extent than anything the Russians are even alleged to have done. Yet according to British law it was perfectly legal, and according to British society it was perfectly acceptable. It's perfectly legal and acceptable for powerful individuals to have a vastly greater influence on a purportedly democratic election than any of the ordinary individuals voting in it.
A free and healthy society would not work this way. A free and healthy society would view all forms of manipulation as taboo and unacceptable. A free and healthy society would not allow the will of members of one small elite class to carry more weight than the will of anyone else. A free and healthy society would give everyone an equal voice at the table, and look after everyone's concerns. It certainly wouldn't tolerate a few individuals who already have far too much abusing their power and wealth to obtain even more.
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