Post-Brexit Theory: Thoughts on a New Historical Era

There are watersheds in history: the reformation, the renaissance, the post-war period. These are lines in the sand; dividing markers in the annals of history. The most common one you hear about these days is the one we’re in: post 9/11. The terrorist attack on the twin towers underlined a new era in media as well as in social conscience: it was an era defined by paranoia, the undermining of US Supremacy, the War on Terror, and racial division.

The events of September 11th 2001 had a huge impact on media. The Dark Knight trilogy by Christopher Nolan epitomises post-9/11 film, taking the campy city of Gotham and turning it into a dark, complex and deadly-serious world of inequality and crime populated by complex characters. The Joker and Bane become crime lords; nuclear energy and the stock market are important points in The Dark Knight Rises (the latter inspired by the recession in 2008).

Or take James Bond. Every iteration before 9/11 was of a smart-mouthed lethario who faced off against Cold War caricatures. James Bond was always classed as an action series, but it was equal parts comedy. That changed in the Daniel Craig iteration of Bond: his drinking turned from playboy martini-love to an obvious problem, his womanising became a desperate escape from reality; enemies began to try to tap into his trauma rather than just shoot at him and brag about their plans. James Bond enemies had always been terrorists, more or less, but they became less comical and more threatening, their plans based on exacting a revenge or making a political point rather than for mere monetary gain.

But it seems, in Britain at least, that we’re entering a new era. On June 24th 2016, it was revealed that the UK had voted by a small margin to leave the EU, which it had been part of since 1973. The media had had a field day over the referendum and now that the unlikely scenario had come to pass, it had the field day to end all field days. It had been a divisive campaign, with lies and ugly rhetoric used on both sides. There were some very real, very immediate results:

1.  There was a huge rise in hate crimes on ethnic minorities and, to a lesser extent, the LBGT community
2. The value of the pound fell. It has continued to do so on-and-off ever since. On one occasion, it fell by a entire penny during a 40 minute speech by David Davis.

But it was the more far-reaching implications of Brexit that were most interesting. For years, it had seemed that the government enacted policy and the people more or less accepted it. It was a somewhat stable time. There were of course exceptions with enormous protests against the Iraq War and suchlike, but nothing was ever overturned. By and large, the political establishment advocated Britain remaining in the EU. The vote to Leave was, on one level, a statement that rejected the political status quo. People were fed up of having their concerns sidelined. That fundamentally destabilised the establishment.

The features of the Post-Brexit theory I’m proposing are intrinsically related to post-9/11 theory and also the political situation in America and, to an extent, in Europe too. I’ll try to elucidate my ideas and the international links here in no particular order:

1) Absurdity. Politics and society have always been pretty absurd, but, as a fan of satire, it’s become more and more difficult to differentiate between life and parody. Characters like Farage and Boris are so ridiculous it becomes hard to satirise them. This extends over to the American Presidential race with Donald Trump’s regular outrageous outbursts, Hilary’s hypocrisy, and Gary Johnson’s apparent lack of knowledge about anything.

2) Post-Truth. Lie upon lie was used to rally people in the EU Referendum debate. £350million for the NHS which was immediately swept under the carpet, that we could keep the single market but reject freedom of movement. Now May’s government says that they have a clear mandate for a Hard Brexit even though no one voted on the terms of leaving the EU and the majority was so small that in some countries it wouldn’t even count as a mandate. Politicians have always lied, but it used to matter when they got caught lying. Now they lie and nothing is done. We’ve become completely desensitised to it. The same has happened with both Hilary and Trump lying on a regular basis just to hear a crowd cheer.

3) The Return of Nationalism. There was an old-fashioned sort of nationalism surrounding Brexit. Meaningless phrases like “Take England back” were bandied around. They mean something to someone, but ultimately nationalism is entirely fruitless, particularly in this globalised era when the economy relies on open borders. Nationalism is pride in the random chance that deigned to put you in the place where you are, and a silly attempt to assert that your random place in the universe is better than a different place. It’s divisive and it causes tension. The same has happened in America with Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rhetoric. In the EU too, far-right parties with nationalist sentiments have seen a resurgence. This stems from 9/11 and the War on Terror which has seen Muslims chastised for years in the media, and also from an influx of Muslim refugees fleeing war-torn nations which were destroyed by the War on Terror. In a sense, 9/11 has come full circle and pushed us into a new era. A reaction to the post 9/11 era. A post post-9/11 era, to put it crudely.

4) Racism. This one is, of course, inextricably tied to the nationalism point. Racism has always existed in some form, but the new polarisation of politics (more on that in a moment) and the nationalist rhetoric that has arisen has given a new lease of life to racism. In the UK we have the rise in hate crimes, and the resistance to letting refugees from the Calais Jungle into the country, and the backlash when we do (which saw Gary Lineker – a football pundit who advertises crisps – attacked for expressing an opinion in favour of the refugees. People wanted him fired. He advertises crisps for God sake – there’s that absurdity again). In America, this division comes in the form of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as Donald Trump’s vitriol towards Mexican’s and Muslims, advocating the building of a wall (absurdity) and the deportation of foreigners.

5) Polarisation to Extremes. Politics has, for a while now, been very centrist. In Britain, John Major’s government moved somewhat more to the centre from the days of Thatcher, but this centrism was ingrained in our politics with the election of Tony Blair. This persisted throughout his leadership, into Gordon Brown’s, was tempered by the Lib Dems in the 2010 Coalition and still remained a feature of David Cameron’s Conservative majority, though it moved rightward in some key senses. However, it’s May’s government that can truly be said to have lurched to the Right. Of course, this move reflects the perceived political mood in Britain: Brexit was generally tied to right-wing groups such as UKIP and Britain First, as well as the right-wing newspapers: The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, and the shift in political tone reflects the perceived right-wing rejection of the EU and immigration.
Conversely, in the Labour party we’ve seen the rise of Jeremy Corbyn. By those comfortable in the centre, his two leadership election wins have been seen as a sign of a protest movement rather than a real political option, but his election makes a lot of sense as a reaction to the government’s shift rightward in the last couple of years, evidenced by the dismantling of the welfare state. Corbyn has put a lot of progressively left-wing issues on the table such as renationalisation of the railways, an emphasis on the NHS, the creation of a NHS-style service for education, the breaking up of newspaper monopolies, talk of nationalised energy, green industry, and many other things. Ironically, in the post-truth era, Corbyn has been vilified in the media whilst the rightward shift of the government has hardly been documented. This maintains the illusion of government centrism.
In America, the polarisation is an easy spot: Donald Trump vs Bernie Sanders. The phenomenal grassroots campaign of Bernie was utterly unprecedented in America, a country that hears “socialist” and starts shooting. But it showed that there was polarisation and room for a left-wing movement in the US, and may be a potential precursor of a three-party system in the future. I’ve already outlined Trump’s right-wing philosophy and it doesn’t need elaboration. In the US, the race between Clinton and Bernie meant that Clinton could comfortably hold the centre-ground between Sanders and Trump, meaning that the polarisation is less marked – quiet for the moment – in the US, but it’s nonetheless there.

Indeed, post-Brexit media already exists. The BBC are making a comedy about post-Brexit Nigel Farage. Ali Smith published Autumn, a literary piece based on the seasons set in the divided backdrop of this new Britain. These will be the first works to be set against this backdrop. Undoubtedly we’ll see works set against the backdrop of Trump’s America (be that a fictional or non-fictional state), and movies that tap into the division in society (we already have one in I, Daniel Blake, as well as the documentary 13TH). I’d also argue we have a few musical works that tap into this new era, notably Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly which taps into black culture’s place in this era; and To Be Everywhere is To Be Nowhere by Thrice, which addresses issues such as the War on Terror and its aftermath, gun violence in America, and the whistleblowing of Edward Snowden;

Of course, insofar as I’ve outlined the international aspects of this change in society, it seems silly to call it the Post-Brexit era. America’s got a Post-Trump moment going on, the EU has a post-refugee crisis era going on… There needs to be a name for the whole era.

I saw a satire article with the headline ‘Reality continues to crumble in the wake of David Bowie’s death’. Indeed, it does seem like Bowie was somehow holding the universe together. It’s all about 2016 really. This is the year that everything went to shit – the year when all the tension that had built in the wake of 9/11 and the recession finally broke and the world collapsed underneath it’s weight.

Perhaps we should just call it Post-2016. Because when people talk about “2016” in future it’ll be a year with meaning behind it’s name, ;ike the discovery of the New World in 1492, or the declaration of Independence in 1776. When people talk about 1215 we know they must be referring to Magna Carta, just as when they mention 1939, we know they’re talking about World War II.

So when people say 2016, we’ll know what they mean – it’ll be a landmark year; another watershed.

Unless 2016 is just the beginning of the storm. Perhaps something wicked this way comes.

Idealists, Fundamentalists and Cynics: Politics in the Era of Corbyn

The British politics scene is more interesting now than it has been in a long time. By which I mean, it’s a complete omni-shambles – but this is Britain, we don’t half-arse being terrible at things.

To summarise: we’ve got a Prime Minister who no one voted for who took over from her predecessor who stepped down after ending up on the losing side in the EU Referendum, which – though a close call – saw the country vote to leave the EU. No one will invoke the dreaded Brexit, but they assure us that Brexit means Brexit. The lexicographers at the OED are probably starting to sweat over that one, trawling the news for a definition that doesn’t just repeat the word meaninglessly in readiness for adding it to the updated dictionaries at the end of the year. If we do ever get a real definition of Brexit it’ll be because angry linguists have applied thumbscrews to Boris Johnson until he babbled something half-coherent.

On the opposite benches, the Labour party – a year on from its Labour leadership election has just had… another Labour leadership election. The guy who won it before won it again, despite everyone saying he’s unelectable. The reason this came about is that the MPs in his party decided that they only liked democracy when it suited them. So when the outlier beat their ideological friends, they decided to say they didn’t like him, and when support for the party began to waver they pointed at him and said “It’s all his fault”, unaware that the disillusionment in the party mostly stemmed from disgust at the lack of unity on offer.

In the wake of all this messy name-calling and flagrant disregard for that elusive beast called democracy, three differing ideologies emerged supreme across the political spectrum.

The first, and most hopeful one, is idealism. Corbyn’s “politics of hope” has inspired a lot of people, particularly young voters, to gain faith in a political system that had previously totally marginalised them – the Tories happy to rely on votes from the older generations, and Miliband’s Labour continually aping them. This optimism proved a refreshing change to the normal political attitude in Britain which usually centres around the dual national emotions of disillusionment and apathy. Not only is Corbyn’s message a positive one, it’s also the first to provide a meaningful alternative to the austerity agenda espoused by both the Tories and the EU.

However, this ideology doesn’t attract everyone. Cynicism pervades all levels of society at the moment, with everyone from former Labour supporters attracted rightwards by anti-immigration rhetoric, to raving neoliberals, to columnists from the Grauniad determined to denounce Corbyn’s ideas as loony left and wishful thinking. The reasons for this cynicism are varied: from a disbelief that the political establishment can change, to a fear that it will change if too many people start supporting it. As a nation we’re well practiced at cynicism, and the bar has been raised by one man who dares have the temerity to try to rise above that outlook. “Back down in your place,” they whinge, “Let’s not have any lofty rhetoric about making life better – we’d lose all meaning if we couldn’t moan about something”.

The third, and most widespread, dangerous and downright stupid ideology is the fundamentalism which has swept up everyone. The EU Referendum debate was defined by this fundamentalism: staunch Leave voters choosing not to believe experts because none of them supported disconnecting from the European Union; families torn apart by a refusal to compromise on the issues; Remainers refusing to concede that anyone wanting to leave the EU could want to do so for reasons other than race. It was one of the most shameful episodes in recent British politics, as the population was swept into a bloodthirsty fight over its national character, the irrational storm whipped up by a sensationalist media and a seemingly absent government.

We can see this fundamentalism at work everyday: it’s the bloke loudly talking about foreigners coming over here taking our jobs and our welfare in the supermarket, his hatred stirred up by reprehensible tabloids. It’s the ex-Labour voter convinced of Corbyn’s unelectability. “The man’s a clown,” he says, “He can’t win an election”. You ask why and his argument amounts to “because he is; because the newspapers and the Tories told me he is”. You ask him if he’d like full employment, the renationalisation of the railways, and a fully-funded education system for his children and grandchildren and he says yes. You ask him why he won’t vote for Corbyn then, and he repeats “because he’s unelectable” – but if you voted for him he might be, you say, “But I won’t because he’s unelectable…” It goes on.

However, the most dangerous fundamentalism to emerge at this time is Corbynism itself. Jeremy Corbyn’s rise has inspired a lot of people, but some have taken their idolatry of the Labour leader to a silly level, unable to accept any criticism of the man. Ok, so he’s not a naughty boy like a lot of people like to say, but he’s not the messiah either. His ideas are appealing, progressive and a refreshing change to the current mantra, but this doesn’t mean he’s without fault.

It’s true that he’s not the greatest statesman – we’re talking about a backbencher of thirty years suddenly tasked with leading the opposition – his strength won’t be leadership. He can be unwilling to compromise on his policies and though this is admirable in one way he has to be able to engage a wider spectrum of debate than merely his own views. This isn’t flip-flopping, it’s strategy: you can’t shift the debate too your court instantly – it takes time and campaigning to sway both the direction of the party and the opinion of the people.

And, unfortunately, he isn’t electable. Not without the full support of his party and a relatively unbiased media discussion. We may be at a watershed now where the Labour coup – which saw 12 members of his shadow cabinet resign and issue a vote of no confidence just to destabilise his leadership which they instantly refused to get behind – is more or less defeated; and where the media might begin to balance its reporting after it was found that just 11% of newspaper articles represented Corbyn and Labour policies accurately and fairly (or even at all, in the case of the policies). If we’ve reached a time when this needless throwing of toys out the pram is over, then Corbyn can be electable and positive change is a real possibility in the next few years. But in a country where a newspaper as shameless and obscene as The Sun can predict every election outcome correctly, Corbyn doesn’t stand a chance without a fair debate.

However, many new Labour voters (not to be confused with New Labour voters) refuse to acknowledge Corbyn’s shortcomings or rationally discuss the odds he’s up against. This attitude doesn’t help the already cynical and fundamentalist attitudes currently pervading society – Corbyn faces enough challenges without his own supporters adding to them. Zealotry will get the Left nowhere, but an appeal to reason might. Fighting fundamentalism with fundamentalism achieves nothing but polarisation. But an attempt to fight the cries of “unelectable” and “loony lefty” with calm and sensible discussion about policy, corruption and injustice might begin to sway the hardened hearts of the cynics and other zealots. If we can show that this reformed Labour party has real ideas that combat the current crises that the government refuse to face up to, perhaps people will start listening and be drawn out of their cosy hideaway where they’ve been weathering the storm of unreasonable debate, cuts and soaring unemployment.

It’s a lot to assume, but if our period of madness is over, we might be able to achieve it. If the Labour party puts aside its squabbles and unites under its leader, we can present a strong and powerful alternative to Tory austerity and Ms May’s hard-right push. If the media can put aside its establishment bias and respect the legitimate mandate of Corbyn and the politics he espouses, then we can start a sensible and unbiased debate. If the ideologues can accept that no one idea is truly right and that politics is about compromise, then we can utilise a passionate and thoughtful grassroots base of campaigners, prepared to engage the floating voters and wider public with the news that there’s an alternative to what we currently have: its bold but it listens, it’s different and its scary, but its rooted in a combination of politics old and new, and it has everyone’s best interests at heart. Who knows what the future will bring, but I know what I’m hoping for.

“It makes no difference which one of us you vote for. Either way your planet is doomed, DOOMED”: The Horrific Reality of Politics in 2016.

I will maintain until my dying breath that The Simpsons is one of the most brilliant, timeless and relevant works of popular culture ever created. Anyone who sees a dumb cartoon loaded with catchphrases doesn’t get it. In its heyday, The Simpsons managed to skewer every popular figure and satirise every possible situation: family life, alcoholism, small-town America, big city America, Australia, homosexuality and homophobia… you name it, the Simpson’s already did it. And one of the biggest things they’ve consistently ridiculed is American politics.

Now, the Simpsons writers are admittedly pretty left-wing by American standards and have always seemed to support the democratic candidate. That is in all except one case, which is one of the most perfectly unbiased attacks on politics ever conceived.

“It doesn’t matter who you vote for. Either way you planet is doomed. DOOOOOMED!”

That quote was uttered by Bob Dole. Well, it was hideous Rigelian alien Kang who said it, wearing Bob Dole’s skin, but that’s not the point. Almost exactly twenty years later (the episode was released on October 27th 1996), it’s point is more relevant than in any other election. And the rest of the episode is a lesson in current events.

In just a couple of months, we’ll know who the next President of the United States of America is. It’s a close run-race, but one thing is certain: we are utterly doomed. We’ve got a racist, reality TV businessman who looks like an Oompa Loompa was attacked by a maniac with a bicycle pump. He wants Mexico to build a wall to stop Mexicans coming into the country, is going to stop Islamic immigration and start deportation, and he might have some other ideas – it’s not really clear beyond the posturing and talking in circles.

“My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball; but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!” – Don’t pretend you wouldn’t believe me if I told you Donald Trump said this.

On the other side we have Hilary Clinton: in recent years she’s proven that her formerly quite progressive politics have changed. She has run very much as a centrist candidate in the Trump-Bernie sandwich with no real radical ideas other than “I’m not Trump” which, for anyone else, would probably be enough to win on. The trouble with Hilary is that she’s a ravenously pro-corporate warmonger who, like her husband, will rape the world of resources for the sake of business profits whilst the populations of her own country and others fall deeper and deeper into poverty.

“I am Clin-ton. As overlord, all will kneel trembling before me and obey my brutal command. End communication” – Hilary, or a really good impression of her.

In any American election there’s a lot of mudslinging and unpleasantness, but, in the Golden Age of Internet opinions, never have things been quite as awful as they have been this year. It’s not just down to our ability to network our political views. The two candidates are, quite simply awful. The tagline for the film Alien vs. Predator was “Whoever wins, we lose” and it applies just as well here.

I think Trump is a horrendous individual with absolutely abhorrent views. However, what I find even more disturbing about him is that the USA might elect a president who is quite clearly a lot thicker than I am. I don’t claim to be some intellectual genius, but I would be offended if someone claimed I was less intelligent than Donald Trump. Linguists found he has the vocabulary of an eleven year old, he has a preoccupation with the size of his hands (no one with a complex about the size of anything on their body should be in charge of phallic atomic weapons), and, far from being a self-made man as people like to crow, he inherited his fortune and has since managed to lose a significant amount of money; perhaps because he keeps trying to market things with his name like “Trump Water” and “Trump steaks” when I can already buy those things without his name attached and would rather do that. The idea of a man this inherently stupid running the most powerful nation on the planet is positively terrifying.

On the other hand, you’ve got Hilary: a tool of business with no real interest in improving the lives of her voters or the piss-poor situation in her country. She’s flip-flopped on so many issues that no one can really say what her true politics are. Even if we could, I doubt she’d adhere to her principles over whatever she could be bribed to do in terms of donations. Hilary is quite clearly a woman who can be bought, and who has no one’s best interests at heart other than her own. She is quite simply, a careerist – and though most politicians are to some extent, she’s a careerist through and through.

As with many thing, American politics has become a race to the bottom. We’ve got a man doing his best to appeal to small-town conservative America where homosexuals, Muslims and rational thought are all myths. Clinton, meanwhile, is a known tool of the banks and the corporations and the only reason she’s popular at all is because Trump is so abhorrent.

What about a third-party candidate, like Gary Johnson?

“Go ahead, throw your vote away!” – Kang. It was Kang who said that. A fictional squid-alien is a better source than any real political commentator.

I’m interested to know how many Americans will simply write ‘Kodos’ on their ballot. At least they can’t be blamed for whatever happens.

How Do We Get Out of This Mess? A Manifesto.

We all have a plan of what we would do if we were “in charge”. Delusions of grandeur and a propensity for fantasizing are what make us human, after all. There’s no denying, particularly in this dreadful year which has seen reality continue to crumble in the wake of David Bowie’s death, that the world is broken. There are reasons for this, believe it or not: inequality, wider economic issues, propaganda, division between generations, the fallout of war and many other factors have led to the various horrors we have witnessed in 2016: from terrorists attacks, to the rise of Trump, to Brexit.

So, without any further ado, here’s how I would go about fixing the country and perhaps even the world. It’s not a good or even especially original list. These are just the solutions I see as best for some of the problems we have. It’s not an exhaustive list, my ideas aren’t without their flaws, and they’re obviously up for debate:

Work

• Stronger employee rights enshrined in contracts
• Investment in new industries: green jobs, etc
• A National living wage
• Invest in job centres and offer subsidies to companies that commit to hiring a small percentage of workers from job centres.

 

Education, Education, Education

• Make university education free again.
• No new grammar schools; more investment in current schools.
• An emphasis on teaching a variety of foreign languages by investing in local “teaching pools” whereby teachers fluent in a variety of languages can be selected by schools to teach lessons, thereby sharing teachers among a number of schools in a local area.
• Investment in English-language support for immigrant children.
• Mandatory lessons on politics, practical life skills (sorting finances, mortgages, applying for jobs, etc)
• Support groups in all schools to help children in all situations: financial, personal, domestic, education, mental-health, disability, etc.
• Greater investment and emphasis on vocational subjects such as carpentry, metalwork, cookery, engineering, etc.
• Non-class societies open to all students and abilities in order to make use of facilities and nurture talent outside the classroom as well as in it.
• State of the art sports facilities in schools that can be used by local citizens for a membership fee that goes towards raising money for the school (students and school activities have free, priority use of the facilities).
• Encourage industries (particularly local businesses) to work with schools by offering placements, internships, scholarships, apprenticeships and in-school talks in exchange for tax breaks.
• Scholarships, grants and bursaries for poor and outstanding students to increase social mobility.

 

Tax

• An altered tax system which sees more tiers of tax thus spreading the burden of taxation more evenly.
• The move to this new, more complex tax system creates jobs.
• The closing of tax loopholes and evasion by individuals and companies, who are made to pay back all missed taxes. Prison cannot be an alternative; the money must be paid back.
• Abolish non-dom status.
• Introduce a mansion tax on homes over £1m.
• 50p rate of tax on earnings over £150,000; 60% on earnings over £500,000.
• The money gained from these increased and enforced taxes would go towards funding many of the outlined proposals in the rest of this manifesto.
• End the bailing out of banks and corporations using taxpayer money.

 

Housing

• 1 million new affordable houses by 2020.
• Make new housing developments into communities rather than housing estates.
• Invest in homeless shelter that are run by charities. Subsidies/tax breaks for companies and organisations that work with these shelters to educate and employ homeless people.
• Cap on private rent.
• Housing benefit for 18-21 year olds.

 

Health and Social Care

• End privatisation of the NHS and increase funding to ensure a high-level of care and facilities.
• Encourage and invest in medical education for all ages with bursaries and practical courses in addition to current degrees and teaching.
• Investment in mental health and social support services.
• An emphasis on widening the healthcare sector into a cradle to grave service, linking the NHS to childcare support groups and end-of-life care and nursing homes.
• An emphasis on building nursing homes that attend to the needs of the elderly and do their best to enrich the lives of older people.

 

Energy and the Environment

• Freeze energy bills until 2020.
• Create a new national energy company selling energy at cost-price.
• Investment in green energies and industries, with enough energy for the entire country’s needs being made by renewable sources by 2030.
• Reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2030.
• Ban fracking, as well as the building of new fossil-fuel and nuclear plants.
• Encourage businesses with an environmental conscience and that help in the local community (small tax break?).
• Foster a healthy interest in community-based environmental projects. Grants and funding for community projects.

 

Business 

• Tax rates fixed against company profit totals.
• Subsidies and tax breaks for businesses that involve themselves in the wider community.
• More support for local businesses and start-ups.

 

Politics 

• Devolution of further powers to Scottish and Welsh assemblies.
• Abolish the House of Lords and replace with an elected senate.
• Hold a referendum on electoral reform in England, moving to a proportional representation system.
• All MPs and politicians must be transparent about their affiliation with outside groups.
• Failure to show up in parliament for debates and votes results in a cut to MP’s pay-packets.
• A freeze on MPs salaries for five years.

 

Transport and Infrastructure

• Nationalisation of railways, and investment in reopening old lines, as well as new lines as and where necessary.
• A nationalised green vehicles industry that endeavours to create a fleet of green national transport.
• Investment in public transport and infrastructure: buses, park-and-ride services, cycle paths and walking options.
• Move towards underground parking to limit unnecessary expansion of urban areas.
• Green targets for local councils to ensure an emphasis on recycling and litter-picking.
• More investment in public transport for rural areas.

 

Agriculture and Food

• Subsidies for small farms.
• A cap on raising the rent on land.
• Commitment to decrease battery farming
• Greater education on where our food comes from and ingredients
• “Irregular” shaped veg and food to be sold at a reduced price to the poor.
• Baked goods and any food usually thrown out after a day to be given to food banks and homeless shelters.

 

Brexit

• There’s no easy answer to the Brexit debacle, but a plan must be put in place as soon as possible. It shouldn’t be extreme but it shouldn’t be a non-Brexit either.
• It is of paramount importance to have a strong trade plan in place.
• We have to continue to work with Europe on issues such as intelligence and terrorism, as well as in international politics and peacekeeping.
• We need to look after the institutions in the UK that the EU supported, such as science and academia, and farming.

 

Military and Foreign Policy

• Unilateral nuclear disarmament.
• Oppose TTIP

 

The Corbyn Paradox: Electability V Principles

At the moment, Labour is embroiled in a months-long leadership battle which sees left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was voted into the position on an enormous mandate of nearly 60%, under fire from his party and the establishment for being “unelectable”. Little over a year on from his appointment as Leader of the Opposition, Corbyn has been accused by his party of not doing enough to improve Labour’s standing in the polls, of not campaigning hard enough during the EU referendum, and of not appealing to the wider electorate and floating voters.

Supporters of Corbyn deny the charges, pointing out that the party has never truly rallied behind its leader, and that he has been systematically denigrated in the media and by his own MPs since before he even won. After the EU Referendum vote, 12 members of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet resigned and pushed through a vote of no confidence, triggering a new leadership election which now pits Corbyn (who they tried to keep off the ballot) against newcomer Owen Smith. The number of members of the party who can vote has been limited by the PLP which has seen a disgraceful court battle take place. In short, the situation is one farcical development after another. It’s complete and utter omnishambles.

Under Corbyn’s leadership Labour party membership has risen to 500,000, an all-time high. Corbyn is saying the right things and voicing real concerns of the public: there is a housing crisis that needs to be properly dealt with, the NHS needs protecting and funding, we need to combat inequality, renationalisation of the railways is the best solution to the problems epitomised by Southern Rail, we need to invest in greener solutions to climate change that could create more jobs, we need to reject the mantra of austerity which has failed to heal the economic problems the country faces, and free education would benefit society immensely. At every juncture, Corbyn and his vision for the party makes a lot of sense. It is on this base that he’s built support.

Smith’s position, meanwhile, is somewhat difficult to pin down. The PLP and establishment spent a long time criticising Corbyn for being a raving lefty loony who loved terrorists and hated Britain, wouldn’t bow low enough at the cenotaph or sing the national anthem. His policies, though little discussed, were, by extension, also loony. Yet Smith seems to seek to stand on a similar platform, aping Corbyn’s stance but watering it down slightly. Earlier this week he expressed a desire to enter talks with ISIS when such action was possible, presumably mimicking Corbyn’s support for peace talks with the IRA. Of course, sitting down with a militant terrorist organisation such as ISIS is an utterly mad idea, but it didn’t get picked up by the media and or become mercilessly destroyed like it would have been had Corbyn suggested it.

So could Corbyn win an election? Yes, I think he could in theory, but only in extreme circumstances. Grassroots campaigning, social media savvy and sensible policies will only get you so far. We voted Brexit based on meaningless mantras and good old-fashioned jingoism. The rats who exploited the public with such shameless techniques jumped ship the second we voted their way. The Sun newspaper has never been wrong on an election prediction, and one can never see it supporting Corbyn. Blair won a third term despite the disastrous illegal war he’d waded into. What I’m saying is that, without the support of the press, Corbyn is nothing. The sad reality is that the media controls politics in the country. Some perfect, prophesied leader could walk out of the fog and present himself to us, but if Rupert Murdoch hated him then he wouldn’t get elected.

This is what Corbyn’s leadership lacks: mainstream media appeal. The newspapers – even the supposedly left-wing Guardian – are staunchly anti-Corbyn, and a recent LSE study found that in thousands of articles across the mainstream newspapers, Corbyn’s policies were only represented fairly or positively 11% of the time, and never at all in many of the right-wing papers. To appeal to floating voters and the sorts of people who vote based on what they read in the papers, Corbyn would have to be accepted by a larger proportion of the mainstream media, and this simply isn’t going to happen. The Labour party is fighting an uphill battle against the media.

However, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the party rallied behind its leader. The reason Corbyn can so frequently and easily be attacked is partly down to the fact that half the people attacking him are his own MPs. Were the party to have supported its leader from the get-go, then the negativity that has surrounded his tenure thus far would be diminished. Sadiq Khan wouldn’t have criticised Corbyn, and people couldn’t talk about Khan criticising him. The pool of denigration would be more limited, and the papers would likely look upon Corbyn more fairly if there were no MPs fueling the campaign of hate. It would, theoretically, increase the width of the Overton Window – that is, the acceptable spectrum of debate.

So there you have it: any leader in theory is a viable candidate. Hell, if failed businessman and psychopath Donald Trump can become the Republican nomination for President in the US, why can’t allotment-tender and manhole-cover-enthusiast Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister? Quite simply, Trump only threatens national security and the lives of everyone on the planet. Corbyn, on the other hand, threatens the interests of the 1% (of which, it should be noted, Trump is of course a member). Corbyn is vilified because he dares represent the interests of the people. No one has done that since Michael Foot and that… well let’s just say it didn’t go well. Democracy is a myth, and Corbyn embodies such legends. His popularity comes down to his honesty and integrity. He hasn’t been caught afoul of his voters thus far, and that counts for a lot. It’s also his downfall. No man with morals or principles could surely lead a country. That’s what we have to learn from this ongoing debacle: that the people who run this country abhor its voters and think we’re stupid. Let’s prove we’re cleverer than they think.

The Numerous Problems with the Leave Campaign’s Party Political Broadcast

So you may have seen this party political broadcast by the Leave campaign doing the rounds.

Let’s go over a few important points:

1. Those three guys in the thumbnail.
   Winston Churchill is considered a founder of the EU despite dying before the UK joined the early EEC, and he long advocated the creation of a “United States of Europe”. The other two guys are Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan, who oversaw the introduction of the NHS and created the welfare state as we know it today. Both, along with Churchill are considered to be among the greatest politicians the UK has ever had. Yes, there was a time when people liked politicians! This ad is using images of one EU-supporter and two founders of a socialist healthcare organisation that people associated with the Leave campaign are actively trying to destroy.
2. “Every week we give £350million to Brussels. That money is wasted”. I’m not going to go into a breakdown of how our contribution is used or how the £350 million figure is inaccurate, you can find that info here.
3. “The Euro is broken”, and we’ll have to bail out countries when the Euro collapses. The Euro is an inherently flawed idea, but it’s not likely to collapse any time soon. Nonetheless, if it does collapse, it will throw the world economy a curve ball, not just Europe. It could also see the pound appreciate as investors gravitate back to it. It’s all economic speculation really, but the main point is that the Euro isn’t likely to collapse, and if it does, well, they’re gonna be feeling that one on Mars, let alone just in Britain.
4. What happens if Albania, Turkey, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro join the EU?
   According to the Implicitly-Racist Arrows, all 88.7 million of them are coming straight over here. Thanks for clearing that up Implicitly-Racist Arrows, nice to see you found work after Dad’s Army finished.
5. “Imagine our money being spent on our priorities?”
   Imagine leaving the EU. Iain Duncan Smith comes round your house every evening and just laughs in your face. You can’t kill him because he now wears a suit of solid-gold armour he bought using taxpayer money. He’s indestructible. Meanwhile, you can’t get a doctor’s appointment because the bank won’t give you the loan to afford a weekend in the new private hospitals, and what’s left of the NHS is even more overstretched than it is at present. Thanks a lot, Brexiteers.
6. But look at that £350 million we’re saving from having left the EU!
   Well, no. Don’t take my word for it. Former Norwegian Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide summarises it:“Those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU and chose (sic) the Norwegian way can hence correctly claim that a country can retain access to the single market from outside the EU. What is normally not said, however, is that this also means retaining all the EU’s product standards, financial regulations, employment regulations, and substantial contributions to the EU budget. A Britain choosing this track would, in other words, keep paying, it would be “run by Brussels”, and it would remain committed to the four freedoms, including free movement.
   Without full European Union membership, however, it would have given up on having a say over EU policies: like Norway, it would have no vote and no presence when crucial decisions that affect the daily lives of its citizens are made.”
   The full article is well-worth a read.
7. Conclusion
   The sheer audacity of the Leave campaign using the NHS for its Party Political Broadcast is beyond belief. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Lord Lawson and Iain Duncan Smith are all members of a party that is actively trying to destroy the NHS: through cuts to budgets that mean hospitals fail to perform, in the recent junior doctors strike which saw the government refusing to listen to the very people who work in hospitals about how they need to be run, and through the fact that the current health minister, Jeremy Hunt, co-authored a book that called for the privatisation of the NHS.
   It’s sheer hypocrisy that such people can be allowed to use the NHS as blackmail against the British people, especially when they have no interest in protecting the NHS themselves. One could argue that the NHS is safer in the EU.