The Radical Change That People Seek

Yes, the Financial Times. Yes, a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, a former Treasury Minister under David Cameron, and the man who coined the BRIC acronym. And yes, as good as an endorsement of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. 

Serious economists have preferred Corbyn to all available alternatives since the summer of 2015. And now, even the one who was Commercial Secretary to the Treasury at that time is saying so. In the Financial Times. 

Jim O’Neill writes: 

Among executives it is fashionable to say that if you think Brexit is bad enough, wait until you see what happens when the markets focus on the risk of a Labour government. 

While I have concerns about the overall fiscal framework of the opposition’s policies, I am not overly concerned by some aspects of a prospective Jeremy Corbyn administration. 

Indeed, in at least six policy areas, which Mr Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell are treating as priorities, businesses and the government need to catch up. 

Dealing with Brexit is obviously the most pressing task facing Theresa May’s government. 

But it remains a matter of grave concern that the UK prime minister has virtually no time for anything else, including the few ideas that the previous Conservative government introduced, such as devolving powers and responsibilities to the urban regions. 

The Northern Powerhouse and Midlands Engine schemes now receive almost no attention. 

The first area on which Labour sees clearly is Britain’s productivity crisis. For all the apparent self-inflicted damage caused by Brexit, improving wage growth will be considerably more challenging. 

The largest estimate for the decline in real gross domestic product following a hard Brexit is about 11 per cent over 15 years. 

Stark as this sounds, it is still less than the accumulated 15-20 per cent decline stemming from weaker productivity since the 2008 financial crisis. 

While some of Labour’s ideas, such as imposing a productivity mandate on the Bank of England, are unconventional, their readiness to explore new ways of shaking up the status quo is admirable. 

Second is the orthodox belief that lower corporation tax will magically boost investment spending. This is not just a failure of imagination. It is also not backed up by the post-2008 data. 

In theory, cutting corporation tax should lead to more investment. And from the 1980s through to 2000, the evidence appeared to back this up. 

But that was in the days of more rigid labour markets, and a world in which companies could not shift their domicile to minimise taxes. 

Modern company structures and practices suggest that the historical forms of corporate taxation are no longer sustainable. 

We need a tax overhaul to link government revenues to business revenues in the country of sale. Or, at a minimum, we should stop cutting corporation tax to increase profits with little societal gain. 

Here again, Labour is on the mark. 

Third, risking large amounts of money on fixed investment no longer appears attractive. It was once assumed that, when unemployment fell below a certain level, wage growth would accelerate. 

Yet in an era of flexible labour markets, it has not happened. Reintroducing the unionised pay cartels of the 1970s is not sensible. Shifting the cost and risk of wages, however, is an appropriate thing for governments to do. 

Fourth, businesses need to rediscover profit with purpose. Often modern enterprises are driven solely by the aim of maximising sales revenues, with price/earnings ratios massaged by chipping away at fixed costs in the interests of enhancing quarterly earnings. 

And of course executive remuneration is directly linked to this. It often has very little connection with investment risk or productivity.

Businesses are seemingly unaware of or indifferent to the consequences of reported profits continuing to rise. Chief executives need to realise that rising profits are, at some point, supposed to make markets more competitive and greater benefits for employees. 

Changes to risk-versus-return incentives are needed, and Mr McDonnell is right to explore them. Why not make it less easy for companies to make profits if they are not creating future economic value? 

The Labour party plans to nationalise railways and utilities. That may be a step too far. But we need more from these industries that most people have no choice but to depend on. 

All they are asking for is that their daily commuter train arrives on time or that their water supply is affordable. 

Yes, government monopolies were wasteful and inefficient in the bad old days. But that does not make today’s market failures acceptable. 

Finally, there is the housing crisis. It is hard not to think that the market is broken. The decline in social housing has greatly contributed to the growth of the low-income rental market. 

Yet conventional approaches to remedying the problem focus on boosting home ownership, even when this requires a large subsidy, such as the help-to-buy scheme. 

Surely we need a market where owning a home is more affordable and in which social housing no longer carries with it a stigma? 

As with the other challenges of our time, the government likes to brandish solutions (and Mrs May’s pledge on Wednesday of £2bn for new social homes was certainly welcome), but it rarely explores how to tackle the core supply and demand issues. 

There are undoubtedly other serious policy challenges. 

And it continues to surprise me that the jolt of Brexit has not woken up businesses and those in the centre ground of politics to do more than merely try to reverse the result of the 2016 referendum and keep Britain inside the EU. 

Dealing with the UK’s deep-seated economic problems requires sustained thinking and attention, not just occasional lip service. 

The Labour party has stepped into the vacuum left by the government and appears to be offering the radical change that people seek.

The problem, alas, is with very many Labour MPs. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

The Deep State vs. Jeremy Corbyn

T.J. Coles writes:

In light of the recent rehash of old allegations against the late Labour Party leader, Michael Foot (that he was a Soviet spy), it is perhaps worth looking at the so-called security services’ efforts to surveil, intimidate, and disrupt the activities of the left wing of the Labour Party, particularly where its current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is concerned. 

The security services mentioned in this article include Special Branch, MI5, and MI6. But they also include those in the USA, particularly the CIA. 

The late Labour PM, Harold Wilson, was accused of being both paranoid and senile for believing that MI5 were plotting against him. But the evidence shows that MI5 did open a file on Wilson while he was still an MP. 

The CIA vs. Corbyn 

A now-declassified CIA report dated May 1983, when Foot was leader of Labour, cites the Party’s then-commitment to trade “protectionism,” withdrawal from the European Economic Community (later EU), and even the dismantling of Trident. 

Consequently, “a majority government headed by Labor [sic] would pose the most serious threat to US interests.” 

The Labour Party “roundly criticizes US policy in the Third World, particularly in Latin America, and calls for ... improv[ing] relations with other socialist regimes.” 

A year later, Corbyn had come to the attention of the CIA as a Labour MP (for Islington North). He was critical of the US invasion of Grenada, which had taken place in the previous year.

In 1979, says the Spectator, Corbyn “went to Grenada with dignitaries of the Islington race relations and  feminist industry, to see and admire the Revo[lution].” 

Corbyn participated in a fact-finding mission, which claimed that most Grenadian working class people supported the revolution. 

In 1983, the US invaded to restore a political system favourable to its elite interests. 

A year later, the CIA noted the publication of a book written about the revolution in which, it says, the findings of Corbyn are quoted. 

Keeping in mind the CIA’s concerns over anti-US foreign policy within the Labour Party, particularly with regards to the former’s Latin America policy, another CIA report from 1986 notes Corbyn’s support for the Salvadorian union, FENASTRAS. 

Notably, Corbyn’s name is mentioned explicitly, compared to foreign “union members” who are not named. 

At this point, the CIA record on Corbyn dries up, so we’ll have to wait until more files are opened. 

Let’s now turn to the UK. 

MI5 vs. Corbyn and Labour 

After World War 2, many Labour MPs, including the anti-“communist” PM Clement Attlee, helped to expand MI5. 

One of the consequences was that MI5 used its expanded resources to spy on and infiltrate so-called far-left groups, including many which joined the Labour Party throughout the 1960s and ‘80s—the so-called “entryists.” 

Labour MPs John Stonehouse, Bernard Floud, and Will Owen were spied on by MI5 from the 1960s-80s. 

MI5 spied on Joan Ruddock MP in the 1980s, supposedly due to her work with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. 

MI5 also spied on Dave Nellist MP, supposedly on account of his association with the “hard left” group, Militant. 

Ex-MI5 director Stella Rimington claimed that Corbyn’s now advisors were also monitored by MI5 for being “communists” in the 1980s (when Rimington was part of an MI5 unit targeting miners and unions). 

Rimington refused to specify but claimed that many are now part of Momentum. 

The Daily Mail which reported on Rimington’s comments speculates that Jon Lansman, Andrew Murray, and Seamus Milne were the likely targets. 

Then-Labour MP Ken Livingstone claims that the French court case concerning the extradition of MI5 whistle-blower-turned-delusionist, David Shayler, revealed that MI5 kept a file on Livingstone because of his association with the Northern Ireland republican party, Sinn Féin. 

Livingstone also claims that when he became PM, MI5 handed their file on him to Tony Blair. 

As for Corbyn, a source told the Telegraph that in the early-1990s, MI5 opened a file on him, again allegedly due to his associations with Sinn Féin. 

Special Branch vs. Corbyn and Labour 

From 1990 to 2001, one Peter Francis worked undercover for Special Branch. 

Francis blew the whistle and exposed Special Branch’s surveilling of numerous Labour MPs in the 1990s. 

“Francis saw a special branch file on not only me,” said Peter Hain MP, but on other Labour MPs and Cabinet Ministers, including Corbyn, Diane Abbott, Tony Benn, Bernie Grant, Harriet Harman, Ken Livingstone, Joan Ruddock, Dennis Skinner, and Jack Straw. 

Hain said that Special Branch

had a file on people like me, dating back 40 years to anti-apartheid and Anti-Nazi League activist days, because we were seen through a cold war prism as ‘subversive’. Even though we vigorously opposed Stalinism, that did not stop us being lumped together with Moscow sympathisers.

Corbyn said:

I was put under surveillance for a long time because I campaigned on human rights issues and was involved in justice campaigns ... I want to know who ordered the spying higher up, and whether there was any co-operation between the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and MI5.

Known as “the hairies” because of their long hair and beards, the SDS was established in the 1960s to infiltrate and subvert the counterculture. 

The SDS operated well into the ‘90s, spying on the Lawrence family, and others, following the murder of Stephen. 

Undercover officer, Peter Francis, worked for Bob Lambert, the same undercover operative later exposed as an informant and provocateur who targeted numerous social justice groups. 

Corbyn told the Islington Tribune (3 April 2015, dead link):

I worked with Bob Lambert [still undercover] around Finsbury Park Mosque, he was good in that [counter-extremism] role. Later I was interested in his book at the time and I was involved in the launch. But for all I know he could have had me under surveillance.

The Ministry of Defence vs. Corbyn 

A senior Ministry of Defence general, who reportedly served in Northern Ireland, told the Sunday Times in 2015: “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it,” namely Corbyn becoming PM, shrinking the MoD, withdrawing from NATO, and dismantling Trident.

The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.

In February 2017, allegations were made that Corbyn was spying on Thatcher for Soviet Czechoslovakia in 1986. 

The Czech STB intelligence archives were examined and the allegations debunked. Former MI6 head, Richard Dearlove, claimed: “discussions I have had with friends close to the current Czech intelligence community [suggest otherwise],” that Corbyn did have connections. No evidence was provided. 

In June, following the Tories’ loss of their Parliamentary majority, Dearlove wrote:

no one has stood up and said, unambiguously, how profoundly dangerous it would be for the nation if Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister. So let me be clear, the leader of the Labour Party is an old-fashioned international socialist who has forged links with those quite ready to use terror when they haven’t got their way: the IRA, Hizbollah, Hamas. As a result he is completely unfit to govern and Britain would be less safe with him in No 10.

The USA vs. Corbyn 

It was revealed that in 2009, future Labour MP Ruth Smeeth was informing on the Party to individuals associated with the US National Security Council. 

As a source, Smeeth is designated “strictly protect” in the leaked cables. 

The information she was passing on concerned the prospects for Labour success in the general election under PM Gordon Brown. 

Smeeth says she can’t remember being an informant. 

Having taken money from Israeli groups, Smeeth as MP later joined the chorus of accusations of anti-Semitism in the Corbyn-led Labour Party. 

With Ed Miliband leading Labour, a secret Congressional Research Service memo concerning the approaching May 2015 general election, read: 

“A significant degree of the UK’s international influence flows from the success and dynamism of the British economy, further raising the stakes on whether the UK can sustain stronger economic growth while continuing to pursue ambitious fiscal consolidation.” 

“Dynamism” means maintaining London as the money laundering capital of the world. 

The Daily Mail, which picked up the story, comments that the memo “states that the UK’s continued importance to the US will hinge on the future success of the economy – and Chancellor George Osborne’s implementation of spending cuts,” meaning crippling austerity. 

The implication is that any leftward drift could affect US-UK trade and investment relations. 

In October 2015 at a private fundraiser, ex-US President Bill Clinton said that after Tory PM Cameron “thumped” Miliband in the election, Labour “reached the interesting conclusion that they lost because they hadn’t moved far left enough” (which was not true. It was the grassroots, mainly Momentum, that pushed the Party further left, not the Party managers). 

Clinton adds: “so they went out and practically got a guy off the street,” meaning Corbyn. 

Implicitly, Clinton likened Corbyn to Trump, saying that British people were so disaffected by the government’s economic policy “they just want the maddest person in the room.” 

By implication, a Corbyn government could hurt US-British political relations. 

Given the failure of the Tories in the 2017 snap election, the US Congressional  Research Service, which authored the secret memo above, took the unusual step of updating its public information about the UK, America’s closest ally. 

“Unusual” because US-British relations had, until Corbyn and the Leave result in the Brexit referendum, been predictable (meaning that Britain acquiesces in US demands). 

The report says: 

“Having implemented an overarching program of domestic spending cuts, the Conservative Party also faces growing calls for a new definition of what it stands for in order to counter voters’ receptiveness to the anti-austerity messages of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party.” 

It continues: 

“The Labour Party was relatively effective in focusing on concerns about proposed Conservative social and economic policies, to the extent that some voters seemingly overcame previous doubts about Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, often derided as radically left-wing.” 

As the CIA report quoted at the beginning of this article confirms, “radically left-wing” groups concern the US establishment. 

Conclusion 

The deep state represents elite interests and, as a consequence, tries to subvert democracy. 

Those within it believe the opposite: that members of the public who advocate direct democracy and social freedom are subversive. 

The deep state also believes that left (e.g., Corbyn) and even not-so-left (e.g., Jack Straw) politicians are potential threats to their class interests. 

Corbyn continues to withstand the psychological strain of relentless smears and character assassination. 

While we might not agree with every Corbyn move, policy, or reaction, we can perhaps take comfort in the fact that the top-down panic over the prospect of a government that is not even “radical” in any real sense of the word, has triggered terror and hysteria among the privileged. 

A Corbyn government is not the answer to our problems, but it could be a serious first step toward a “better Britain” (to quote PM Theresa May) and at least an easing of the barbaric attacks by the Tories and “centrists” against the most vulnerable.

NATO's Fascist Wedge In Ukraine

I remain profoundly unconvinced that Gavin Williamson is a real person, rather than a character played by an actor. But fresh from his hilarious spoof visit to Ukraine, he should use Remembrance Sunday to explain the matters of Alex Gordon writes:

The latest advert for Ukraine’s armed forces depicts chiselled military hunks over a caption: “THEY WILL PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENTS — Ukrainian Army: protecting the borders of civilisation.” 

In reality, Russia was Ukraine’s largest single investor in the first six months of 2018, comprising 34.6 per cent of total foreign direct investment. 

Advertising slogans for Ukraine’s army targeted at English-speaking investors are a sign of increasing desperation within ruling circles. 

Recent public reports of the mafia running Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port, were linked via the Paradise Papers in a BBC investigation to money laundering in London’s property market by Alexander “The Don” Angert and his enforcer Hennady Trukhanov, currently Odessa’s mayor. 

Ukraine’s real economy meanwhile is flatlining. 

GDP collapsed from $183 billion (£139bn) per annum in 2013 to $93bn (£70bn) last year. The average Ukrainian wage today is €190 (£170) per month. 

In May rail workers shut down production at Ukraine’s largest steel mill in wage protests against owners ArcelorMittal. 

Daily shelling of urban areas and civilian infrastructure by Ukraine’s army and their allied fascist paramilitary formations affects 60 per cent of the population of the Donbass living along the heavily mined 457km contact line with the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. 

Food insecurity has doubled in Ukraine since 2016, now affecting 1.2 million people, alongside escalating cases of multidrug-resistant TB, HIV and even polio. 

According to the UN refugee agency, Ukraine currently has 1.8 million internally displaced persons and the World Health Organisation records 4.4 million affected by the war in the east, of whom 3.4 million require humanitarian assistance and protection. Over 10,000 have died. 

In this human catastrophe, it is remarkable that the British government’s gift of another £35 million in aid to Ukraine’s military announced in June 2018 receives so little media attention. 

Britain’s latest donation is in addition to £850,000 of “non-lethal” military equipment announced by then Tory defence secretary Michael Fallon in March 2015. 

Around 100 British military trainers were deployed to run 30 courses for infantry, medical and logistics corps across 14 military sites in the Ukraine. Britain also installed a “senior adviser” inside Ukraine’s defence ministry, no doubt, given Ukraine’s epically corrupt politics, to ensure British largesse is greasing the right palms. 

British military funding of Ukraine, however, is dwarfed by that of Canada and the United States. 

In April this year the US supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine and in May 2018 the US Congress approved $250m of military funding, specifically including deliveries of lethal weaponry. 

Just two weeks ago on September 1, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker (a neocon, acolyte of senator John McCain, previously appointed by George Bush as US ambassador to Nato) announced further US arms supplies would follow, boasting of rising anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine. 

One day earlier, a terrorist bomb in a central Donetsk cafe killed Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Ukraine is where the new cold war has tipped into a hot war. 

However, Ukraine’s endemic corruption, state instability and poor-quality armed forces have proved to be constraints on Nato ambitions. 

These constraints have reinforced a reliance on far-right militias, with links to organised crime and neonazi, white supremacist groups. 

Socialists have long warned against the dangers of Western states nurturing far-right Ukrainian political forces. 

In June 2018, Labour MSP Neil Findlay criticised a visit to the Scottish Parliament by Andriy Parubiy, a founder of the neonazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), saying: “I would prefer to know the next time I am asked to welcome a racist, fascist nazi to this parliament.” 

Predictably, the Labour MSP was accused of having “tallied perfectly with Kremlin messaging.” 

More recently, however, “Bellingcat” (an “open source, social media investigation” website with a pronounced pro-Nato reputation) has warned about Western financial, military and political support for Ukrainian neonazis. 

This suggests that Nato countries’ increasing reliance on openly neonazi paramilitaries to maintain the current pro-Western regime in power in Ukraine is causing serious concerns. 

On August 30, Bellingcat published a report (“Ukrainian Far-Right Fighters, White Supremacists Trained by Major European Security Firm”) by Oleksiy Kuzmenko, detailing the “sophisticated training geared towards combat application” delivered since 2016 by the European Security Academy (ESA) to Ukraine’s neonazi Azov Battalion, now part of Ukraine’s National Guard. 

Californian Congressman Ro Khanna, a strong critic of Azov, claimed in May 2018 that the “battalion has very much engaged in incidents of neonazism.” 

Khanna characterizes Azov as a “neonazi battalion” and promoted the 2018 US Congressional ban on the use of US budget funds “to provide arms, training, or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” 

Based in Wroclaw, Poland, ESA is Europe’s largest private military training agency. 

Serving British soldiers are sent there on specialist training and security courses paid for by the British government as part of “resettlement programmes” to prepare them for the world of private security contractors in civvy street. 

Azov Battalion veterans and activists in Azov’s political party, The National Corps, received special-ops training at ESA’s training centre in Poland along with activists of other far-right organisations in Ukraine linked to attacks on Roma, LGBT persons and civil rights activists. 

Members of Azov’s aggressively expanding street force, the National Militia, which attacks minorities in Ukraine and seeks to mirror law-enforcement to enforce “Ukrainian order,” also received ESA training. 

Yet another, Tradition and Order, “an aggressively expanding violent ultra-nationalist organisation,” at least one of whose leaders is a self-admitted “national-socialist” with a penchant for nazi salutes, also attended an ESA course in Poland. 

Politicians like Neil Findlay have shown that it is possible to stand up against the normalisation of the far right in Ukrainian politics. 

It is now essential that the Westminster government is held to account for its funding and training of far-right, Ukrainian paramilitaries.

Trial Date Watch: Day 131

More than 23 weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Libel Watch: Day 184

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Chess, Not Chequers

A General Election could now come at any moment.

This is one of the areas the votes of which decided the EU referendum. We voted to reject 39 years of failure under all three parties, going all the way back to the adoption of monetarism by the Callaghan Government in 1977, the year of my birth. 

Brexit needs to meet our needs, which are not for chasing after the unicorns of the “Anglosphere” (what were once the Dominions have moved on, and anti-British protectionism is America’s historical norm), but for trade deals with the BRICS countries even while remaining thoroughly critical of their present governments, for integration into the Belt and Road Initiative, for full enjoyment of our freedom from the Single Market’s bans on such measures as State Aid and capital controls, for an extra £350 million per week for the National Health Service, and for the restoration of the United Kingdom’s historic fishing rights in accordance with international law: 200 miles, or to the median line. 

Anything along the lines of “the Norway Option” would represent the only thing worse than staying in the EU, namely becoming a rule-taker but not a rule-maker, and paying while having no say, so that Britain would be reduced to a colony and a satrapy. 

The advocates of such a thing are those who, going all the way back to the initially pro-Market Enoch Powell, have only ever objected to the terms rather than to the principle of EU membership. In a referendum between that and Remain, then even Remain would be preferable. But the key is to stop matters from ever making it that far.

Although even if we did find ourselves in that position, then we could simply resume the struggle the next day. We could, we should, and we would. Some of us stand in the tradition that did precisely that in 1973, in 1975, and in 1983.

Unlike those who think that the whole thing only went wrong at some point in the very late 1980s, before which any opposition to it was labelled “Loony Left”, we have been in this for the very long haul, and we always will be.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

Systemic Failures

Yes, Chris Grayling, they are called privatisation. 

Rail privatisation did not even begin until 1994, and it was not completed until 1997. You do not have to be some Delphic elder in order to remember better days. That increasingly unchallenged suggestion needs to be well and truly shunted into the sidings.

Like the huge majority of the population across all political allegiances, and like so conservative a figure as Peter Hitchens, I support the renationalisation of the rail services as each franchise came up for renewal, and thus at no cost.

The outright lie is now being spread that proponents of this massively popular policy claim that there would then be no need to subsidise the railways. We have never made any such suggestion.

I would make the renationalised rail service the backbone of a rebuilt network of public transport, eventually free at the point of use, and extending to every village in this or any other constituency.

Even prior to that, I would require the approval of the House of Commons for any increase in public transport fares, with the cost of HS2 diverted to reconnecting many towns to the rail network. That would include several towns in North West Durham. 

Another hung Parliament is coming, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.