thoughts

A quick note on the Labour Party, Brexit and Corbyn.

Owen Jones has, it seems, finally broken with Corbyn and mischief makers are suggesting that Corbyn’s decision to whip the PLP in favour of Article 50 Bill, even if not amended is a potential disaster for Corbyn’s majority amongst Labour’s membership. Others are claiming that he has navigated the issue with the skill of Odysseus passing the threats of Scylla and Charybdis; they argue that any position other than soft brexit is destructive to Labour’s chances of winning in 2020 and that Labour has a duty to respect the results of the referendum. Some of these new democrats have a long history of supporting a brexit anyway.

As members and voters we do not have to respect the result of the referendum, we did not respect Section 28,  and we will always campaign and vote and persuade for the politics we believe is right. When I say we, there are obviously people in the Labour Party who design their policy programs exclusively in order to win but since I believe that leaving the EU will damage the economy for all but the ultra-rich,  create a less tolerant society, damage the rule of Law and diminishes my rights I have no intention of shrugging my shoulders and say that’s all right then.

He is not pursuing the Party’s policy, which is to seek a second mandate if the terms agreed by the Government are unacceptable. Voting for the 3rd reading if the Bill is not amended with the opportunity for Parliament to have a meaningful say on the terms of the deal is not Party policy, and announcing that is what the PLP will do before the amendments are voted on is in my mind extremely poor tactics.

We should also say clearly that if we want to defend workers and consumers rights we need the EU Court and thus the single market is a red line. This is not negotiable with the Tory party which is why they are happy with a shit deal or no deal; it’s the only way they can avoid the court. No ECJ is their red line. Our minimum acceptable standard requires the court and we should say so; we have better law with judges of every other nationality on our supreme court, including. perhaps especially including those from the newer democracies.

However the split in the Party is not only about Brexit. There are some that continue to “triangulate” with UKIP and their caveman allies in the Tories. The code words being about “listening”. We cannot go there. Some call this strategy, asking where do we get the votes to win; but it’s not from the racist elements of UKIP or the Tories. These strategists are taking us to a racist sewer and, are where they are, because they do not do the work in opposing racism. I will not go there but even Corbyn is being pressured to drop his pro-migration line.

After the 2015 election and the disgraceful stitch up the previous year that confirmed the then front bench the right to do what they wanted, leading to the reasonable manifesto, the poor pledge card and the ludicrous “Ed Stone”, I promised myself that I will never not say what I think and never allow the Labour Party to silence me using a “Unity” card. The Party should listen to its members first.

In reality the old Labour electoral coalition is broken, by New Labour in 1997;  it’s time to take sides. We’ve been loosing votes since 1997, 3m between ’97 and 2001.

Therefore I continue to support his imperfect leadership but also those MPs who are voting against the Bill.  I continue to support the 10 point plan and there is to my mind no-one else in the PLP who would be better electorally. It was New Labour that told the organised working class to fuck off; why would they come back for a rehashed austerity programme written in the ’90s which is all that’s on offer. …

This is magnificent. “A Howl into the Void” by Simon Indelicate. A high minded diatribe against brexit. I have book marked it at Diigo and selected some quotes and made some notes there. This is a bit more me.

Personally, I am big fan of swearing, I think at times it can be the most accurate and emotional way to express yourself, and your choice of words speaks for me.

You state that you think it’s done, and while Labour’s parliamentary party is busy shooting itself in the nether regions, we remainers still have cards to play. The Tory remainers have to stand up and surely they must and hilariously we have the European Union Act 2011 which places a referendum lock on treaty changes with EU. So being kicked out, might not invoke the Act but a transitional arrangement probably would. Given it was passed to appease the bottom feeders, this is very funny.

I enjoyed the theoretical power of your talk of the Demos, must admit, I haven’t heard any of the Brexiters discuss this in this way; it’s more xenophobic than that …. Ooh foreigners! We don’t want foreign judges interpreting the Laws of the Mother of Parliaments when in fact that’s exactly who we do want doing this, the children of post fascist western Europe and the children of post Stalinist eastern Europe have a better idea of how to build a liberal society than the lazy children of the nazi appeasers.

You say,

“We’re European because (quite literally for those of us under 42) we were born European – it’s as intrinsic to us as being English (and let’s be honest, that’s what you mean) is to you.”

You should add, that for some of us over 60, this is a life time’s project. We knew we were voting for “Ever Closer Union” having been taught by our war veteran parents what the alternatives were.

I also like,

“It feels physically illegitimate to us that any vote could strip us of these rights. It feels unconstitutional in a bodily sense…..

“Our people are Europeans and your poxy provincial mandate doesn’t come close to the bar that would need clearing if we are to have our birthright stripped from us. It’s not a majority of us, it’s a majority of you. It’s only democratic to support it if you accept that we are only British. We don’t accept it. We’ve been European too long. I don’t honestly think that that many of us even knew that this was how we felt.

You finish talking about democratic commitment, and must be noted that these fuckers gerrymandered the electorate to meet, in your words, their poxy provincial mandate; we even denied the spouses of narrowly defined British citizens the right to vote and we are now expelling them, we denied 16-18 years olds the right to vote, we denied ex-pats and their spouses the right to vote.

I agree this will never end, but I haven’t given up, every other time a polity has voted to fuck up the Union, the Union has survived and they have remained.

There is no better Brexit terms than remaining, and we might still win if we win a second mandate as they die and youth earns the vote.

Finally, well done for writing the article without talking about economics, immigration or the democratic credentials of the EU vs. the parliamentary sovereignty, with its hereditary monarchy and appointed House of Lords. FFS. Obviously I find it hard to leave it alone but if more of us had spoken about the nobility of the cause for longer we might have won and might still do!

In solidarity! …

It becomes clearer. It seems that Labour’s amendments to the Article 50 Bill are committee stage amendments and thus can’t be debated if the Bill fell at the second reading. While I think that supporting the Bill is wrong, especially if unamended, the real test will be at 3rd Reading …

Both Bruce Schneier and The Register cover Trump’s issuing of a “Executive Order”, known in the English language as a Decree called “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” in which he instructs Federal agencies (nudge nudge, wink wink) to ensure that their privacy policies apply only to US citizens or lawful permanent residents and that Privacy Act protections are not to be applied to, well, the rest of the world. The Register, doesn’t quite call this a “Fuck You, EU” and Schneier is more balanced offering counter opinions, but it does question the US commitment to the Privacy Shield which as the Register points out is itself questioned by many EU law makers. …

Is it true that Labour’s amendments to the Article 50 Bill are Committee stage amendments and will only be debated now that the Bill has passed its 2nd Reading? So let’s see what happens to the amendments. What will Corbyn and the PLP do if none of them pass? Despite all the calls that the referendum result is the final democratic voice of the people, Labour’s Conference position is clear; we should only leave if the deal is acceptable and Parliament should demand the last word when we know what the deal is. …

It’d be hilarious if the Tories’ European Union Act 2011, which mandates a referendum in circumstances where the UK relationship with the EU is amended still applies and thus a second referendum is in fact Law. It was written because they feared a tightening of the relationship, but looks like it applies even if we’re loosening the ties. 😆 …

For the idiots, we are not getting our blue passports back, there’s another international treaty which governs the look, feel and format of passports and it would seem that the old blue passports are also the result of an international treaty. …

I was experimenting with deepart.io and was looking for style sheets which reminded me André Derain & Dufy. Here’s some pictures of theirs, from the ‘net, curiously both of the river bisecting the Capitals of the old Entente Cordiale.

Derain’s “Pool of London”, I think

and one from Jean Dufy;

I have one of his, or is it his brother’s bucolic pictures on my wall, but I liked this. …

Is Capitalism transforming, must we have a citizen’s income because it can’t offer enough people jobs?. Thinking about this leads me to the theories about the declining rate of profit. I decided that Wikipedia would be the most intellectually accessible.

Amongst other things, it says,

The central idea that Marx had, was that overall technological progress has a long-term “labor saving bias”, and that the overall long-term effect of saving labor time in producing commodities with the aid of more and more machinery had to be a falling rate of profit on production capital,

This depends on the assumption that only Labour can produce surplus value and in a software managed world, I am not sure its true. It may also depend upon the idea that capital is and has been homogeneous over time; I am of the view that Capital Productivity has been reset and rebooted by the five technological revolutions. I also question if Labour is as it was and how the increasing value of information, knowledge and human capital impacts these theories. Marx also stated that nature is a source of wealth and production; it’s not exclusively about Labour. I think I need to read the fragment of the machines, and write a review of the second machine age. …

In my mind, I have seen three ideas coming together.

1. The Nation State cannot defend both universal human rights and citizenship,
2. Asylum is a universal right and immigration controls cannot legally nor morally contravene these rights.
3. Parliamentary Sovereignty is an on-ramp to dictatorship; it must be constrained  by a  basic law and thus require judges. (We need the ECHR!)

  …