An estimated 5000 people marched in memory of the 72 people who died in the Grenfell Tower fire, and in solidarity
with their loved ones who are still fighting for justice.
Hisam Choucair, who lost six members of his
family on the 22nd floor, said during a public inquiry last month: “I have to live with my family ripped apart for the rest of my life. I
don’t see this as a tragedy; I see it as an atrocity, because
essentially there is segregation between the rich and the poor… Everything has just been a fight for us.
One thing after another. And we’re going to fight it to the end. I’m not going
to shut up, I’m not going to allow this to be brushed beneath the
carpet. As long as I have a breath in my soul I will not let that happen
because I’d be letting my family down, the community down, everybody.”
It was not meant to be this way. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher and her
allies championed what they called “popular capitalism”. According to
this theory, voters would be given a permanent stake in the market
through the sale of council housing and shares in privatised utilities.
And, for a period, it worked. The sale of more than a million council
homes helped transform Labour voters into Tory loyalists. In 1984,
shares in the privatised BT were 10 times oversubscribed, gifted a
windfall to the government and voters. The sale of British Gas
(exemplified by the populist “Tell Sid” campaign), British Airways and
the water companies followed. By the end of the 1980s, share ownership
among the public had risen from seven per cent to a quarter.
The revenue from privatised assets, and the North Sea oil boom,
underwrote Thatcherism as unemployment spiked, and funded costly income
tax cuts. But these unique circumstances cannot be repeated. As
left-wingers have taken to remarking, the problem with Thatcherism is that eventually you run out of other people’s assets.
Ok, this is a common narrative in both Britain and in the US about Republicans, and it is definitely true, there is an intellectual exhaustion and a lack of anything positive to sell from conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. The public is more skeptical of unfettered capitalism and increasingly feels like the marketplace doesn’t work for them. The low hanging policy fruit for conservatives has been picked. This narrative has been true for at least ten years now.
But what I’m confused by is this: you’d think the left would have decisively taken power in a durable way given this. And yet, in both the US and UK, the right has managed to hang onto power, and the left parties are merely competitive at best. In the UK, Labor still lags slightly behind conservatives albeit somewhat less so than one might expect. In the US, Democrats look like they’ll make gains, but the polling leads haven’t been large enough or durable enough to guaranteed that they’ll win any real power back in either 2018 or 2020, at least from our present vantage point. This despite our current president being someone that a consistent majority of people disapprove of.
Why isn’t the left more successful? Why aren’t we at the start of a generation of left party dominance as was seen in the mid-20th century?
very off-the-cuff answer, but it could be because instead of offering to give people things, the tories are now offering to stop some nebulous other from taking away people’s things. see things like anti-immigration policies or anti-fiscalism.
admittedly these have always been strategies of the right. but working conditions have been steadily deteriorating for the past few years (thanks in no small measure to the right’s policies), and the right has played on people’s fears about their future quite effectively. and the more they get re-elected the worse they make working conditions and the more they get to stoke people’s fears, hence creating a cycle.
Also most of the people who dislike capitalism on the left are younger and more politically disengaged so it doesn’t translate as easily into political gains.
I know we’re all terrified by America right now, but you need to know what is happening in Britain, there’s so much shit going on, but here’s some of the highlights:
The UN have condemned the British government for “grave” failures regarding disabled people’s rights. [x]
There are over half a million people using food banks, because they cannot afford to eat. [x]
The benefits system is declaring people fit to work, ignoring the opinions of their doctors, and refusing them money unless they spend 35 hours a week actively looking for work. These include people with severe disabilities, mental health issues, and people who are literally dying. In fact, around eighty people a month die within six weeks of being declared fit to work by this system. [x]
16.7% of the population is living in poverty, with a further 30% at serious risk of slipping into poverty [x]
Children are suffering from such severe malnutrition they’re having to be treated for rickets. [x]
It’s currently estimated that 1 in 200 people in the UK are homeless. [x]
This is just a tiny snapshot, and I won’t even go into the NHS crisis, because that deserves it’s own massive post.
We’re now deporting people who’ve lived and worked here for decades. We invited a load of commonwealth citizens over, starting in 1948, with the arrival of HMS Windrush, and they became known as the Windrush Generation, but though they were given indefinite leave to remain we didn’t give out any damned paperwork until after 1971 so we’re kicking them out now that they’re old and not paying taxes, despite the fact that most of them came over as children, and that they made lives here, and worked to support this goddamned racist backwater of a country for decades. [x]
There should be a law that says British people are not allowed to talk about Israel and Palestine until they can prove they understand exactly why Britain is responsible for this conflict, how we washed our hands when it became too much like hard work and how we are still enabling murder on both sides.
And then maybe we could all sit and reflect for a moment in our relatively peaceful surroundings on how even the least successful terrorist attack causes us British people to lose our shit and yet we all expect the people of Israel and Palestine to react calmly and reasonably to a century’s history of massacres.
Since there is a royal wedding coming up, you’re probably going to see takes like this a lot, as people who’s self image demands that they appear to have put some intelligent thought into their political beliefs try to justify getting all excited about it.
So, whenever you see this historically illiterate ‘constitutional monarchy is a fail-safe mechanism against authoritarianism/fascism’ take, remember two things.
1. Original fascist Benito Mussolini co-existed with King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy just fine.
2. Hitler’s choice for head of a conquered British state was his good mate Edward VIII.
These days, the function of monarchy is to lend legitimacy to whatever political system is dominant at the time, and whenever that dominance shifts, for example from liberal democracy to fascist state, the function of the monarchy is to smooth that transition by providing continuity and conferring legitimacy. Given that the monarch has the power to dissolve parliament and is commander in chief of the British armed forces, the existence of the British monarchy is the one route by which a fascist takeover could be 100% legal and constitutional.
Also worth remembering that the current heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, is a capital T traditionalist, a follower of Rene Guenon who thinks that we’re living at the end of a historical cycle and should be preparing for the next one, where we can transcend the “chronic imbalance and disharmony” of modernity.
Sheffield Pride is under fire for calling its upcoming parade a ‘celebration, not protest’ and banning all ‘offensive’ placards. The Pride event, held in England’s north, posted the warning for applicants marching in the parade this year. On their online application form, they also state they ‘will not be accepting any applications by Political Groups for this years (sic) event.’
Rush's tumblr archive 