Not Extinction, But Rebellion

We all knew that Extinction Rebellion would not last a winter. The contrast with the miners could not be starker. Anne Scargill never deployed "You've got a small willy" as a killer line, not even against people who were no less tiresome than Andrew Tate. Nor would anyone have hailed her witty repartee if she had. Even allowing for the fact that English is her second language, as in any case it scarcely is to young Scandinavians, Greta Thunberg is one of the most inarticulate 19-year-old NEETs that I have ever come across.

The XR tweenies of all ages are used to being agreed with, but even they can see how unpopular both their tactics and their cause have become. We have all seen through the ease with which they have been able to stage ostentatious stunts "against" heavily guarded corporate buildings and arms of the State. Net zero is government policy, and transnational capital is the beneficiary of that, for which it therefore lobbies as hard as possible. Real protesters are not escorted and fed by the Police. In fact, real protest is now illegal in and of itself.

It is January now, so the winter is about to begin in earnest. As we shiver, let us ponder who was authorising the bombing of Russia and Belarus with weapons that could not be used without American permission and participation. Whose interest does that serve? Meanwhile, the dominoes from the war in Ukraine continue to fall in all directions, as the Venezuelan Opposition votes to stop indulging the comical fantasises of Juan Guaidó, as Jair Bolsonaro flees to the United States, as Zimbabwe adopts the policy that led to the American-backed coup in Peru by banning lithium exports in order to concentrate on domestic development, as France and the Wagner Group go to war with each other for control of Mali and of the Central African Republic, as the 20-year-old feminist arguments are revived to try and take us back into war in Afghanistan, as strategic countries queue up to apply for membership of BRICS, as Taiwan extends conscription, as the ghastly regime in Myanmar sentences the ghastly Aung San Suu Kyi to a further seven years in prison, as the dangerously lunatic People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran attempts a Colour Revolution against an Iranian regime that for all its monstrosity is still better than the one that has just taken power in Israel, as the United Nations General Assembly votes by 87 to 26 with 53 abstentions to refer the Occupation of the Palestinian Territories to the International Court of Justice, and so on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

For all their talk of globalisation, few people in the Government, and no one on or around the Opposition frontbench, understand how these things are connected. Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.