Labour’s Grim Election Farce Won’t Bring Real Change

Since the disastrous outcome of the local elections for Starmer's Labour there have been rumblings of discontent in the party including MPs calling for him to be replaced. Now it is beginning to look like there may well be a serious leadership challenge. The front runners are Rayner, Burnham and Streeting. There's a problem here. Firstly, Burnham has to get himself into parliament via the upcoming byelection in Makerfield and beat Reform. Starmer shows no sign of giving way and is looking to sit it out for as long as he can.

The record of all three ‘contenders’ is poor.  Recent articles in the Guardian have shown that Burnham supports Reeves fiscal rules which continue austerity and he now supports Shabana Mahmood's racist immigration policies.  That pretty much rules him out for anyone who has left or progressive values. 

Rayner appears to be keeping her head down for the moment, perhaps hoping she’ll be able to sneak through when the other contenders have managed to make fools of themselves. Streeting has resigned and called for a new PM but his record on privatising the NHS and harming trans people is pretty grim. He appears to be trying to rehabilitate himself now by calling for ‘wealth taxes’.

Excellent cartoon from Roger Latham which sums up the Starmer situation (Private Eye)

We need to take a quick look back to a UK political history over the past half century to get the context here. First neoliberalism started with Thatcher - huge damage to UK with PFI, right to buy, privatisation, underfunding the NHS and education. Then New Labour win in 1997 talking about a national integrated public transport system, bring rail back into public ownership and other progressive policies. Blair didn’t do any of those things introducing tuition fees and continuing privatisation.  Then 14 disastrous years of Tory government leading to austerity and Brexit. So Labour gets elected in 2024 with Starmer lying about supporting Corbynite policies to become leader, and predictably doing nothing to reverse austerity and privatisation or to properly fund the NHS.

This is where we are now in 2026, in the UK, the EU and the USA our politicians are owned by oligarchs and corporations. We don’t live in

democracies anymore - if we ever did. Its worth reading this excellent piece by Jonathon Cook which explains where we are now. here are two quotes:

"The super-rich and their vassals are deeply invested in the system because it richly rewards them. They’ll deploy everything they can – from the media to the 'security' forces – to prevent change”

"Corporations are the main institutions shaping the way our societies function under globalised capitalism. They are soulless, predatory, extractive, polluting, profit-driven business empires seeking monopolistic domination over parts of the economy”.

It’s time for people to wake up and understand that our politicians in the USA, UK, and EU don't work for us.They work for oligarchs and corporations and they have done for decades. It's called #Neoliberalism. We need radical change in our democratic institutions.

WE NEED REAL DEMOCRACY!

REAL HOPE, REAL CHANGE!

Only the Green Party in the UK are offering this.

IF YOU WANT - REAL HOPE, REAL CHANGE - VOTE GREEN!

As we approach the 2026 local elections Greens are campaigning for REAL, HOPE CHANGE! Predictably the right wing MSM are ramping up ridiculous attacks and, in particular, of course, they are targeting the leader Zack Polanski. 

One of the recent ‘classics’ is an article in the Daily Heil which attacks Zack and his ‘Green Utopia’. It’s hard not to laugh when you see these cheap pathetic smears, but no doubt some will fall for them.

The Canary produced an article which summed up the nonsense well:

"The Daily Mail has attacked Zack Polanski’s Green Party as “authoritarian”. But considering that’s bullshit, and in light of the Mail‘s long record of cheerleading for fascism, the Mail may be doing its elitist cause more harm than good.” [link]

And, the headline is hilarious:

Desperation from the Daily Mail

I think we can we can expect the Greens to do well on May 7th but there is no room for complacency. The Zionist propaganda attack machine better known as Israel 'Lobby’ is already targeting the Greens, both its leader and members. Recently two anti-Zionist members have been suspended after antisemitism claims made about them. One of them, Tony Greenstein, is a well known jewish anti-Zionist who has spoken out, condemning the Gaza Genocide. Expect more members to be smeared.

If, as expected, the Greens do well, the attacks will increase. This is the same old stuff which was used to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, and helped to lead to his demise as Labour leader.

So we need to be on our guard and to support the victims of the smear campaign. We can also expect attacks and smears on Zack Polanski to increase. After the horrific attack on two Jews in Golders Green, officers tasered the assailant and then repeatedly kicked him in the head as he lay on the ground. Zack retweeted a tweet criticising this which lead to the Met Chief Mark Rowley writing a letter to him. Zack apologised for the retweet, something I don’t think he needed to do, but it provided the MSM with another opportunity to lay into him. The Times even published an antisemitic cartoon of Polanski kicking one of the police officers in the head.

Times are getting harder for the majority of British people with the cost of living crisis, young people mired in student debt and growing poverty for millions. The Greens have policies which can help to lift us out of the mire we have been dumped in by 50 years of neoliberalism. Including:

• Renationalise NHS • 500,000 Council Homes • Wealth Tax on Superrich • Renationalise Water

• Abolish Tuition Fees

• £15 minimum p/h

• Universal Basic Income • 4 Day Week • Renationalise Energy • Universal Care System • Rent Controls

All of these things are popular with the majority of voters. Now, we need to make them happen. Campaign in your local area if you can and talk to your local friends and your family. We have a real fight on our hands but we can win if we use our agency and strive for a better Britain. VOTE GREEN!

A Remembrance of Things Past

Once you pass the big six-o you can no longer pretend to be young. In your fifties, you can just about get away with thinking you could go clubbing, even though you never do. It's not just creaking joints that bring about this situation - its change. Things have really changed since you were young, and you have changed. Even though you probably have a mobile phone and use social media things have moved on - Facebook is for boring grown-ups - not the youth of today. For my part, I use Facebook and Twitter, though I loathe the former, but can't be bothered to also use any more social media apps. The gap between you and youth is growing, and it will get wider as time goes on. Their lives, as they develop, will be very different to yours - that's progress - allegedly.

I began to muse about this during the latest episode of my never-ending quest to clear 'stuff' out of the garage - something I suspect many people will be doing for years to come and that will affect children who haven't been born yet - because the only real solution to this problem is not to have a garage. Whilst sorting through stuff I found a box that contained a number of old letters I'd kept dating back to the early eighties. They were all love-letters from ex-girlfriends and I found them very moving. What struck me about them, apart from the passion, was their length and the relative amount of effort involved. Does anybody do that anymore? Does anyone send long passionate emails to their girlfriends or boyfriends? It's possible but I doubt it - we live in the soundbite age of the text and the Tweet.

I think the letter is something from the past, something we are all, young and old, missing and all the poorer for not receiving. I remember the anticipation of receiving a letter, of hearing the clank of the letterbox as the postie made his early morning delivery (you had two posts a day then) and going to pick up the post. Was there a personal letter for me amongst the brown envelopes? Was it from her? Then sitting down to read and digest the letter's contents - it was good, it moved me. And all the better because it was handwritten, and someone had taken the trouble to craft it. It was personal and had a kind of warmth that can never be reproduced in digital communication.

While I'm on the subject of good things we have lost due to 'progress' I need to put in a word for the vinyl record. For people of my generation, your album collection wasn't just a shelf full of records - it spoke about who you were and what you were into. Your record collection was one of your most treasured possessions and something you happily humped around from student flats to shared houses along with your stereo. Now you can have digital devices that store thousands of tracks, create playlists, and listen to virtually any music for free on Spotify, but it's just not the same.

Listening to an album was a ritual, finding the one you wanted, hauling it out, looking at the cover art, lovingly sliding it out of its sleeve, putting it on the deck and then listening to that satisfying clunk as the needle hit the record. Then, sitting down to listen to the music. Listening was a rewarding activity and the music was not just something in the background when you were talking to others or doing the washing up. And the best bit is the fact that the analogue sound quality is superior to digital - warmth, once again.

There is hope for vinyl, sales are increasing, but will we ever see the revival of the letter? We are missing out, but does it matter? Yes, it does.

The US Empire has always been a stain on the world, Now Trump has exposed it.

Another day, another week, another Trump shit show. Recently, there was the Davos debacle. Trump highlighted his obvious decline by blabbering nonsense, talking about Iceland instead of Greenland. This is only to be expected. He also introduced his so-called 'Board of Peace' which includes war criminals Putin, Blair and Netanyahu, all of whom should be in The Hague. This Board of Criminals has been set up to 'legitimize' the destruction of what's left of the Palestinian community in Gaza, and its transformation into the new Dubai for the super-rich, as well as lining Trump's pockets. 

People and Western politicians have been shocked by Trump's ranting about expanding the US Empire with the kidnapping of Maduro from Venezuela, and talk of taking over Greenland, Cuba, Mexico, and anywhere else he fancies controlling. Trump knows that Europe is weak and has relied on the US led NATO for its security for far too long. It's high time that Europe was prepared to defend itself without the Americans. Of course, NATO was a Cold War alliance which should have been disbanded after the collapse of the USSR, but it was maintained to solidify US hegemony.

The US Empire is nothing new, it's just that the rest of the West has turned a blind eye to it since WWII. The Monroe Doctrine, articulated by President James Monroe in 1832 asserted America's control over all the Americas including South America, it's very own backyard. 

Trump's Gaza

The rules-based order was always BS!

In the USA, ICE are roaming Minnesota abducting and murdering citizens with impunity, including Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Thousands of Americans have come together to resist, but the Democrats continue their spineless opposition to paedophile Trump's crimes.

Trumps latest fascist power grab, no doubt designed to rig the mid-terms, is the SAVE Act. It's a voter suppression bill which requires citizens, to provide specific ID to be able to vote, including passports and birth certificates. Many Americans don't have the correct ID. Only 51% of American have passports and birth certificates must have the persons current name. This obviously discriminates against women. This is all shades of the Handmaids Tale, a prescient dystopian book by Margaret Atwood published 50 years ago. The fascist American right want women to be disempowered child bearers (white women, obviously), cooking, washing and bearing numerous kids - just like the good old days. 

The problem with the USA is that, given the pathetic state of the democratic 'opposition' - who are also in the pockets of corporations and oligarchs - it's difficult to see where change is going to come from. And, of course, Trump is a real threat to the wider world. Things in the UK aren't much better with Starmer bending the knee to Trump and mimicking Reform's racism. More of that in my next post.

In 2026, lets all be human

You may not know it, but we are in the fight of our lives. In the USA, UK and Europe, the far right are gaining ground. Trump is already, effectively, a dictator. Empty vessel Starmer is in the pockets of corporations and private equity. All the Western nations, with a few exceptions, are complicit in the Gaza genocide. Now, we wake up in 2026 to see the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife in an illegal attack on Venezuela by Donald Trump. The media, what was left of it, is controlled by oligarchs

So what has happened to humanity? What have we become as humans? Why are some of us voting for and supporting racist, grifting scum like Nigel Farage? How did we get here?

Well, none of this is new. We have lived through many centuries of war, oppression, empire and genocide, with a ruling class dictation the outcomes. I wrote about the toxicity of Western culture in this post  - racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, lavery, empire and settler colonialism have been rife for many centuries.

In the later 20th century, after WWII, with rising equality and prosperity, we thought all this had changed for the better. I was lucky enough to grow up in this time when we thought that things could only get better. They are getting worse.

As I have said many times on this blog, all we can do is work together, resist, and organise to bring about real, positive change. This needs to happen from the grassroots upwards. The people need to take control. No more fake 'democracy' and domination by corporations and oligarchs. We need to foster empathy and humanity, supporting our brothers and sisters. This may seem like a daunting task, but we can make it happen!