An Extremely Good Start

Carlyn Harvey writes:

On 26 May the recent Queen’s Speech was voted on in parliament. It passed by 297 votes to 237. 

But the approval was conditional: Cameron’s government had to accept an amendment to its plans that explicitly protects the NHS from the toxic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently being negotiated with the US. 

This marks the first time in centuries that a UK government has accepted a concession of this nature to its Queen’s Speech.

In fact, until fairly recently parliamentary wording on amendments to the Queen’s Speech were as follows: If the Queen’s Speech is amended, the Prime Minister must resign. 

But apparently that statement has just been removed. A footnote on the parliament’s web page acknowledges: 

This page was amended in May 2016 to remove the sentence ‘If the Queen’s Speech is amended, the Prime Minister must resign.’ Although it could be seen as a test of a new government’s strength, amendments to motion on the Loyal Address do not necessitate a resignation. 

Cameron’s government rewrote the rules on parliamentary procedure in the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act. 

This act essentially changed the terms of what is considered ‘no confidence‘ and weakened the actions that could be taken as a result of amendments like this. 

However, the removal of the article at the very moment this NHS amendment is being tabled shows the Prime Minister is very aware of how precarious his position is. 

The amendment was backed by Labour, the SNP, the Green party, and around 40 Tory MPs. The Conservative government currently only has a parliamentary majority of 17.

If it had resisted the proposal it would have been faced with a crushing defeat over its plan for the next session of parliament. 

The development is great news for the NHS. Cameron has previously refused to consider any clause in TTIP that exempts the health service from its conditions.

This would leave our national treasure in serious danger of being completely swallowed up by the private sector. Labour MP Paula Sherriff, a signatory to the amendment, explained: 

It is clear that a majority in the Commons, as well as in the country, do not accept the government’s position on TTIP, and believe that the trade deal that is currently on the table is a clear threat to the NHS and other public services. 

However, the NHS is not the only aspect of civil life threatened by the controversial deal. 

Climate change protections, food standards regulations, workers’ rights and our digital privacy are all at risk of being diminished under TTIP. 

And although this particular trade deal has received publicity, and opposition, it is not the only one on the table. 

A similar deal called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is currently under negotiation with Canada.

Recently documents have been leaked from these talks which show that the UK is demanding the “fastest possible implementation” of this particular trade agreement.

Both deals are being discussed under the EU umbrella. But the UK is one of the countries most fiercely pushing for the green light. As Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden has noted: 

Toxic trade deals like CETA are inherently undemocratic. But Cameron seems perfectly happy to go beyond what the EU requires — he seems to be interested in handing over sovereignty for the sake of it. Again, Britain plays the role of making the EU less, rather than more, democratic. 

Under pressure from a potential Tory revolt, Cameron has capitulated to demands that will protect our NHS from total corporate capture.

But be under no illusions. He is hell bent on ensuring that the desires and rights of big business have precedence over ours.

So, whether in or out of the EU this fight is far from over. But shielding our NHS from this rotten deal is an extremely good start.

Let’s carry on the momentum and protect the rest of our public services and democratic sovereignty from US giants.

Nick Cohen Is In Your House

Sam Kriss writes:

This is urgent, so I’ll get straight to the point. Nick Cohen is in your house.

Yes, that Nick Cohen, the Orwell Prize-shortlisted writer, journalist and commentator, the author of five books, frequently published in the Observer and the Spectator, the one who looks like a kind of malignant egg, with his pervert’s dent of a top lip, his strange remnant of a haircut, and those eerily mild eyes, the faint twirling eyes of a man who likes more than anything to observe, to spectate: he is in your house.

I don’t know exactly how he got in there. I can’t tell you exactly where he is.

Nick Cohen might be hiding under your bed, rolling a carelessly drooped bit of fabric between his gleeful fingers. He might be in your closet, his breath hard and ecstatic through the slats as you unthinkingly undress in front of him.

He might peek through cracks in the plaster, he might take photos while you sleep. You think you know your own home, but so does Nick Cohen, and there are a thousand places he might be, film camera in hand, watching you.

He could be standing right behind you, pale bloated fingers hovering just above your shoulders. Don’t turn around. You won’t see him unless he wants you to see him.

But you can speak to him if you want. Take out your mobile phone and call your home number. You’ll hear it ring, and then his voice.

‘I told you I was in your house,’ he’ll say. ‘I’m in your house right now. You need to listen to me. The regressive left poses a very real threat to free speech.’

Nick Cohen is a bad writer with terrible opinions, but there are teeming thousands of those; there’s something else about him that makes the man so creepy.

His views are, broadly, those of the liberal commentariat in general, and arguing against them would just mean repeating the same lines, endlessly, until every newspaper columnist in the country has heard them. An utter waste of time.

This is why you have to resort to personal attacks. ‘So you’ve got a problem with what I have to say?’ Nick Cohen asks. ‘You want to silence me?’

And it’s true, I don’t agree with what he says, but that’s not the problem: the problem is that he’s saying it while inside my house.

If you’ve seen the 1997 David Lynch film Lost Highway, you’ve met Nick Cohen before. He is the Mystery Man, the sinister deathly-white figure at the party who is, simultaneously, in your house.

I’m not just saying that Nick Cohen looks absolutely identical to him – although he really does; they have the same bulbously terrifying face, with its deep-set eyes and its obscene red gash of a mouth – but that they are, quite literally, the same thing.

(A brief detour. Lynch scholarship is still very much dominated by Slavoj Žižek, and under this Lacanian rubric  ... Reducing the Lynchian vertigo to oneirocriticism is actually deeply boring. Dreams are just a rearrangement of reality, but if you fold the process of representation you get mise en abyme, the image emerging from the void.)

The Mystery Man tells you that he is in your house, and that you invited him in, even though you’re repulsed by him, even though you don’t want him there.

Later, he shoves his camera in your face. ‘And your name,’ he barks. ‘What the fuck is your name?’

Nick Cohen is in the political left. It’s not that he’s part of it, exactly; he doesn’t fight in the left’s struggles, he doesn’t seem to care about leftist causes, but he’s there, within, watching.

This has been, for some years now, his journalistic gimmick.

He’s on the left, yes, but he’s also possibly the last journalist in Britain to still defend the 2003 attack on Iraq, he endlessly whinges about student no-platforming of fascists or the censure of Charlie Hebdo’s state-sponsored racism as a threat to freedom of speech, and he’s never met a socialist government or a popular resistance movement that he didn’t loathe.

But because he’s on the left, his global hostility to actual socialism must therefore be an authentic leftist position.

A strange, greasy three-stage manoeuvre: first he’s in the left, then he is the left, then you’re not.

Nick Cohen’s favoured term for people who don’t think exactly like Nick Cohen is ‘pseudo-left’: people who oppose imperialist wars, for instance, or defend successful socialist revolutions – what the fuck is your name?

This was the subject of an entire book, but it seems the theme hasn’t yet exhausted itself.

In his most recent article, an utterly bizarre outburst, politically useless but the kind of parapraxical emission that’s always been of interest to psychoanalysis, he writes that Westerners who have solidarity with the progressive government in Venezuela are exactly like sex tourists.

During the Labour leadership contest, he dismissed support for the socialist Jeremy Corbyn as a kind of ‘identity leftism’ on the part of the narcissistic youth, people who just want to see their opinions reflected in someone else – a strange critique, coming from a man whose only real connection to the left is that he identifies himself as being within it.

But there he is. Nick Cohen is in your left. As a matter of fact, he’s there right now.

Nick Cohen is a Jew. He’s not halachically Jewish – one paternal grandfather, enough to claim Israeli citizenship, not enough to help make up a minyan – and neither is he in any sense culturally Jewish.

It’s not only that he never spun a dreidel or had to ask why his penis looked different to all the other boys’; as anyone who’s read his columns will know, he has no connection at all to the great Jewish literary, comedic or radical traditions.

But he has decided to be a Jew. In fact, he’s decided to do so not once but twice.

He’s not actually converting, you understand; no siddur will pollute his atheist’s hands.

He’s becoming a Jew first of all so that he can claim for himself a slice of Jewish oppression, so he can rub oily indignity all over his face – but also so he can have a peek at his newfound co-religionists, and he doesn’t like what he sees.

In his most recent statement of conversion, he spares a few lines for those actual Jews who oppose the state of Israel, people like me.

‘Whenever I hear Jews announce their hatred of Israel’s very existence,’ he writes, ‘I suspect that underneath their loud bombast lies a quiet plea to the Islamists and neo-Nazis who might harm them: I’m not like the others. Don’t pick on me.’

If this invective was coming from someone who was not Jewish, it would be recognised for what it is: a collection of classically antisemitic tropes, the cringing Jew, the cowardly Jew, the conniving Jew, the Jew who will lie and grovel and dissimulate to protect himself and his miserly little pile of belongings.

That would be unacceptable; surely nobody would publish him, not even the Spectator.

But Nick Cohen is in your Judaism. As a matter of fact, he’s there right now.

Nick Cohen is in your house.

You might not think you want him there, but you invited him in. It is not his custom to go where he is not wanted.

And it’s been a pleasure for him to talk to you.

The Substance of The Matter

Do many Catholics still believe in transubstantiation? Well, if such things were ever taught in Catholic schools, then more of them might.

But anyway, so what? What matters is that the Church teaches it.

Catholics who dissent from the Teaching of the Church are just wrong, objectively speaking. That is all that there is to it.

Only the Catholic Church provides such objectivity, which is perfectly encapsulated in transubstantiation.

It was only from Christianity in general, and from Catholicism in particular, that science acquired the idea that some propositions were just plain true, so that others were just plain false.

And it was only from Christianity in general, and from Catholicism in particular, that science acquired the idea that there was an investigable order in the universe; even if that order is a law of chaos, then the point still stands.

Faced with a changed intellectual environment which denies those foundations rather than simply presupposing them, science must return to the system that first asserted them in the midst of a former such environment.

That system is Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular.

Thus, for example, while and by affirming the objective existence of the substance distinct from the accidents, transubstantiation also affirms the objective existence of the accidents, which are the objects of scientific investigation.

Transubstantiation is the bulwark against the Postmodern assault on science.

Nothing else is.

Could Not Have Created

When Remain wins, then thank Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, pretty much for existing at all.

When Hillary Clinton wins, balanced or not by her allies' massive control of both Houses of Congress, then thank Donald Trump, pretty much for existing at all.

The Remain campaign could not have created an opposition better suited to its own needs than Vote Leave.

And the plutocratic, hawkish wing of the Democratic Party could not create an opposition better suited to its own needs than the organisation that now laughably purports to be the Republican Party.

Beyond Blair

Tony Blair was last elected to anything 15 years before the next General Election.

Yet he is younger than two of his three successors as Leader of the Labour Party, including the present one. He is quite conceivably younger than the next one.

If those who insist that he remains a massively popular figure truly believe that, then they ought to ensure that he contest the next available by-election, so that we might all see exactly how many votes he would take.

Blair did some good, and Jeremy Corbyn voted for it. On everything except the EU, when Corbyn voted against Blair, then the Conservative Party voted with Blair.

Look at Corbyn on the EU now? Well, look at the Conservative Party on the EU now, when that party is in Government.

Blair has been the Labour Right's embarrassing relative for quite some time. And that has been before the Chilcot Report.

If the Labour Right wishes to have any kind of future, then it urgently needs to get over Tony Blair, and move on.

Courage and Solidarity

Here:

We are writing to express our great appreciation and support of the Morning Star for its exceptional courage and solidarity with women everywhere in publishing two recent articles [here and here] highlighting the problems of current political dogma regarding gender identity.

Along with the writers of those articles, we are watching with some alarm as the few hard-won rights and protections that women have managed to gain are being eroded through political and social developments that will have very serious consequences for women indeed.

We very much appreciate your efforts in giving a platform for a sex-class based analysis of women's position, in the face of the convergence of neoliberal individualism and alienation from class consciousness which we believe is very clearly at the heart of gender identity politics.

Those of us who speak out in defence of women are no strangers to the particular viciousness of the backlash that such speech is invariably met with. 

We applaud the Morning Star for taking a courageous stand against the erasure of women as a class, and stand in solidarity with you in the face of this inevitable backlash.

Please note that some signatories were only able to provide their initials, for fear of possible repercussions were they to be identified. This, sadly, reflects the climate of fear and intimidation that we are currently living in.

A Very British Form of Corruption

Simon Jenkins writes: 

Now we know. 

The glitzy 50-storey tower that looms over London’s Vauxhall and Pimlico is, as the Guardian revealed yesterday, just a stack of bank deposits. 

Once dubbed Prescott Tower, after the minister who approved it against all advice, it is virtually empty.

At night, vulgar lighting more suited to a casino cannot conceal the fact that its interior is dark, owned by absent Russians, Nigerians and Chinese.

It makes no more contribution to London than a gold bar in a bank vault, but is far more prominent, a great smudge of tainted wealth on the city’s horizon.

In 2003 London’s first elected mayor, Ken Livingstone, was dazzled by a dinner invitation to the Villa Katoushka outside Cannes.

His hosts were the titans of London’s property world and he was reportedly soon in thrall to them.

He said he would offer them “the potential to make very good profits” in his new London. He especially wanted tall buildings; the taller the better. 

The developer Gerald Ronson lauded him for his remarkable “vision”. Tony Pidgley of Berkeley Homes called him “refreshing”. 

The mayor was as good as his word. 

He backed Ronson’s monster Heron Tower in the City. He backed Prescott’s Vauxhall tower. He backed the Bermondsey Shard. 

He even spent taxpayers’ money on lawyers to support developers at public inquiries. 

At the time the Tory leader of Wandsworth, Eddie Lister, assailed Livingstone’s obsession with towers as a “one-man dictatorship”. 

David Cameron’s then cities spokesman, John Gummer, compared Livingstone to Mussolini, and spoke of the towers as “the vulgarity of bigness”. 

Yet when Cameron came to power, this was all forgotten. 

In London, property is the most potent lobby. The Tory mayor, Boris Johnson, increased Livingstone’s rate of tower approvals, while Lister gratefully took office as his tall-buildings champion. 

There was no published plan for the drastic surgery being inflicted on London’s appearance. No limit was set to the towers’ location or height. 

No one took care of their appearance or bulk, their civic significance or their role in the life of the capital. 

Some 80% of the approvals were for luxury flats, chiefly marketed as speculations in east Asia. 

Such has been the rate of unrestricted growth, there seems no reason to doubt the dystopian vision of London’s future depicted in the last Star Trek movie. 

Johnson’s current legacy to London is 54,000 luxury flats priced at over £1m, about to hit a market that even before the present downturn needed just 4,000 a year. 

This bubble simply has to burst. The waste of building resources, energy and space, the sheer market-wrecking bad planning, beggars belief. 

Towers have a perfectly reputable place in the history of cities.

By their nature they dominate. They mark victories and royal palaces; they signify civic centres and clustered downtowns. 

The tallest towers, in the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Singapore and China, reflect the priapic obsessions of dictators and the celebrity cravings of banana republics.

Civilised cities such as Paris, Rome, Amsterdam – even New York, Boston and San Francisco – either ban new towers from historic areas or zone them into clusters. 

Above all they show some consideration for the aesthetics of place. No such considerations applied to the Vauxhall tower. 

Some people like towers, though few want them everywhere. 

Architects love them as “icons”, as bankers love money. Some cities desperate for space, such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, build high to cram in the poor, often in dire conditions. 

Studies from Jane Jacobs to Lynsey Hanley catalogue the impact of high living on family life and community cohesion. 

In London, as the Guardian shows, these buildings have nothing to do with housing supply, let alone low-cost supply. 

Their front doors are manned not by concierges, but by security guards, like banks. 

They are the product of speculative flows of often “dodgy” cash, seeking an unregulated property market that asks no questions and seeks a quick profit. 

That is all. 

Most cities, ironically including Hong Kong and Singapore, in some way restrict foreign or non-resident acquisition of property, as do most New York condominiums. 

In London gullible politicians and venal architects have conspired to suborn a great city, simply because towers seemed vaguely macho and money smells sweet. 

Nor do towers have to do with population density. 

The idea that modern cities must “go high” as part of the densification cause is rubbish. External landscaping and internal servicing makes them costly and inefficient. 

The densest parts of London are the crowded and desirable low-rise terraces of Victorian Islington, Camden and Kensington. 

The recently proposed Paddington Pole, the height of the Shard, had just 330 flats on 72 storeys. Adjacent, Victorian Bayswater could supply 400 on the same plot.

London has seen nothing yet. A row of giant blocks is about to rise around the Shell Centre behind the National Theatre. 

The 50-storey cucumber-shaped One Blackfriars is emerging on the bank of the Thames opposite the Embankment. It will intrude on views of the City far more than does the Shard.

The line of the Thames will be marked by a series of jagged broken teeth. Prescott’s tower at Vauxhall is to be joined by two more apartment stacks next door, one even higher. 

Next to Battersea power station is a crowded over-development on an almost Hong Kong scale, named Malaysia Square and aimed at the Asian super-rich. 

Johnson helped sell it in 2014 by actually unveiling the development not in London but in Kuala Lumpur. It will probably go bust and end up as slums. 

At least the poor may one day live there. 

Livingstone and Johnson promoted these towers not because they cared where ordinary Londoners would live, or because they had a coherent vision of how a historic city should look in the 21st century. 

They knew they were planning “dead” speculations, because plenty of people told them so. They went ahead because powerful men with money and a gift for flattery just asked.

It was very British sort of corruption.

The appearance of these structures on the London horizon must rank as the saddest episode in the city’s recent history.

We must live with them forever.

But we shall not forget their facilitators.