Would the Government find the money if a bank collapsed tomorrow?

 The title of this blog was borrowed from Prem Sikka, a Labour peer in the House of Lords who I've only just heard of, but merely scrolling through his Twitter feed (I will never ever learn to call it X) has proven to be an absolute pleasure. His accountancy background and strong socialist principles make him a fantastic voice from which to criticise capitalism, and I'm really looking forward to seeing more of what he has to say in the future.

Last week, seven Labour MPs voted in favour of an SNP amendment to the King's Speech, in order to scrap the two-child benefit cap which was imposed in 2017 by then Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond. The benefit cap means that families with more than two children cannot receive any benefits for the third child onwards apart from in very particular circumstances. This policy has seen a sharp increase in the number of children living in poverty - the official figures show a record 1.6 million children living in poverty in the UK today.

Proponents of this policy claim that it's an attempt to prevent people having more children than they can afford. This is driven by the cultural perception of working-class families in the late 2000s that they tend to have more children in order to get hand-outs from the state, which wasn't helped by the depiction of the character Vicky Pollard in the television sketch show Little Britain. So before I go into detail about the Labour Party's refusal to scrap this policy, I think I need to outline why it isn't a good policy in the first place:

• It doesn't work. Studies show that very few families have actually had fewer children as a result of this cap being in place.
• It punishes children for their parents' decisions. Condemning a child to grow up in poverty because of something they had no control over (and children very rarely have much control over their circumstances) is exceptionally cruel. If you think that's a fair way to treat children, then I don't know what to tell you.
• Financial security is fluid. Parents will be responsible for their children's wellbeing for around two decades. Two decades is a long time, and your circumstances can change a lot during that time. It's all very well to say 'don't have more children than you can afford', but you don't know what's going to happen in the future. There are lots of people who are able to afford the number of children they have at the time they have them, but fall on hard times after that.
• It's anti-feminist. The overwhelming majority of struggling parents, especially single parents, are women. Policies like this being in place widen the privilege divide between males and females in society, at precisely the time when we're talking about how much we want to break glass ceilings. Added to this is the fact that this really impinges on both abortion rights and the rights of rape survivors. Being pro-choice politically is not just about the right to abort an unwanted pregnancy. It's also about the right not to abort it - that's why it's called pro-choice rather than pro-abortion. If someone doesn't want to have an abortion, for any reason, they have a right not to be pressured into doing so, or to feel like they have to terminate a pregnancy because they don't have enough money when they'd otherwise want the baby. Children conceived from rape are one of the handful of exceptions to the child benefit cap, but that puts a degrading and humiliating burden on the mother to prove she's been raped. If someone falls pregnant as a result of rape, and then makes the decision that they wish to proceed with the pregnancy in spite of the trauma of how it happened, they should be supported in their decision emotionally and financially without having to prove or justify anything.
• Having children is a wonderful thing. I feel that this isn't quite recognised enough in this hyper-capitalist society that prioritises the cost of everything and the value of nothing, so I just wanted to reiterate. I've heard people say, 'Why should my taxes pay for someone else's children?' Well, because these children are a part of our society, and the happier and healthier they are the more likely they are to grow into heathy and happy adults who can give something back to the world. And as for their parents, I don't believe we're alive primarily to make money for the state that we'll never reap the benefits of. If someone's main purpose in life is as someone's parent, someone's sibling, someone's partner, someone's friend, I think that's a really beneficial decision for society. And sometimes when I've expressed that view I've had responses like, 'Well, if everyone did that no one would ever work.' Sure, but not everyone is doing that. Not everyone even wants children - I don't want children. I'd struggle to think of any lifestyle choice that would be beneficial if everyone decided to do it. If we all wanted to be doctors, there'd be no one left to sweep the streets. We all have different hopes and dreams, and if someone's hopes and dreams are to have kids and be a really amazing parent that is just as valuable as any other hope or dream.

--

The Labour administration whipped its MPs not to vote for this amendment, and the seven who did so were suspended from the party and will serve as independent MPs for the next six months. I was particularly disappointed that my local MP Catherine Fookes voted against the amendment. She has made much of the fact that she was formerly the chief executive of Women's Equality Network Wales and considers herself a staunch feminist, so it's quite surprising to learn that she obeyed the Prime Minister Keir Starmer (a man) and the Chief Whip Alan Campbell (also a man) in voting to continue with a policy that really disproportionately harms women.

One Labour MP that has faced a significant amount of attention for her decision to abstain is Kim Johnson. Johnson has been very vocally critical of the child benefit cap and had tabled her own amendment to the King's Speech also calling for the child benefit cap to be scrapped, but Speaker Lindsay Hoyle chose the SNP one instead. The fact that Johnson abstained on an SNP motion calling for the same outcome as a motion she'd tabled herself has led to very significant criticism. So why did she do it? The answer is politics. In the UK, the party system is very confrontational, and much of the time decisions are made based on who has suggested something rather than on what the suggestion is. It would be seen to be embarrassing to the governing Labour Party to agree to a motion proposed by the SNP, even if many of their own MPs have suggested exactly the same thing. There is no morality or principle behind these decisions, purely one's own personal interests. (There is actually a conspiracy theory floating around that Lindsay Hoyle may have chosen the SNP amendment rather than the Labour one deliberately, to give Labour an excuse not to vote for it. I wouldn't like to speculate on this, as I don't know and I don't see how this can be proven. But whether he did or whether he didn't, it still comes down to the fact that the MPs we elected on the platform of 'Change' are more interested in playing stupid games with each other than in actually tangibly changing anything.)

The Labour Party's financial policies are completely nonsensical. The reason I give this blog the title about the bank collapse is that of course they would find the money if a bank collapsed. They always do find the money for projects that they personally endorse. There are no myths about magic money trees or about the Tories having left a bigger hole in our finances than they thought when it comes to providing money to support people in Ukraine. Not that I think there shouldn't be money given to support people in Ukraine, but the fact remains that that money will not go back into our economy. Nor will giving money to the rich, who are more likely to squander it in off-shore tax havens. But giving money to poor people will put the money back into our economy, because the poor people will spend it more quickly. You don't need to be an economic expert to understand that this is the basics of how it works - the more money people have, the more money will be spent and the more quickly it circulates. More to the point, leaving people living in destitute poverty is profoundly unethical. The money exists, and we have a responsibility to provide for those who need providing for.

The Labour MPs who lost the whip were, in alphabetical order, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell and Zarah Sultana. To be clear, I'm not especially angry that they lost the whip because I actually want more independent socialist MPs. As anyone who follows my work regularly will know, my partner stood as an independent socialist in Monmouthshire; during that campaign we were in touch with various other socialists who were standing as independents around the country, many of whom I really hope to see in Westminster in the future. Seven new independents is a cause for celebration, and I hope they decline to return to Labour if and when they're offered to. However, I do think it was a major embarrassment for the Labour Party to take this action. Prior to their suspension, the Government had a majority of 411; there was no way they were going to lose this vote, and everyone knew it. The rebellion was therefore just a statement of principle, without any possibility of actually defeating the Government. There was no need for the Government to react at all. To react so harshly to a rebellion that it was never going to lose to firstly looked weak, secondly gave the matter far more media attention than they ideally wanted and thirdly led to seven more independent socialists who couldn't be controlled in any way. I think this matter was not really thought through, and now the Government just has to double down and pretend that it was.

As indignant as I am on behalf of all the people who will suffer as a result of the child benefit cap, I do think that this situation has highlighted social injustice more than we could ever have hoped for, and I really hope that this will mean the cap will be scrapped sooner than it otherwise would have been. Labour is, quite rightly, held to account more by the public than the Tories are. We must not let this matter drop.

My Facebook My Twitter My YouTube

My letter to Catherine Fookes MP concerning the Whole Truth Five

The following is a letter I wrote to Catherine Fookes, the MP for Monmouthshire and my local MP. You can write to your MP at https://www.writetothem.com/. If possible, please try to write it yourself rather than copying and pasting a template.

 Dear Catherine Fookes MP,

I am writing firstly to congratulate you upon your election to Parliament, and to thank you for your kind words about my partner Owen in your acceptance speech. Owen and I are also very thankful for how encouraging you were to him during the campaign, and we're very much looking forward to working with you on various local issues over the course of the next Parliament. 

Everywhere I've lived since my late teens, I have been a regular correspondent of my local MP, so I expect we'll be interacting a fair bit over the next few years. And to start with, I really wanted to write to you about the really awful miscarriage of justice that happened last week to a group of five environmental campaigners who have become known as the Whole Truth Five. Five people were sentenced to a total of 21 years between them (four people received four years, one person received five) for participating in a Zoom call recruiting activists to take direct action. This call was secretly recorded by a journalist at the Sun, who leaked it to the police and the individuals in question were convicted of 'conspiracy to commit public nuisance' under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. During their trial, the judge forbade them from telling the jury their reasoning for undertaking the actions they did, in spite of the fact that this was very clearly relevant.

The Act was brought in by then Home Secretary Priti Patel, and backed up by her successor Suella Braverman. Both of these Conservative politicians have a reputation for extremely regressive and authoritarian policies, and the Act, and the following Public Order Act 2023, were intended to effectively criminalise individuals participating in peaceful protests, which have increased in scale in recent years. The protests have increased in scale for good reason - because Governments have become increasingly authoritarian and under the control of big business, and particularly when we have threats of runaway climate change, there isn't time to wait. We've seen that more indirect forms of democracy, such as petitioning, have not been sufficient to avert the climate emergency. In 2015 the Paris Agreement committed to prevent carbon emissions going 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This target almost certainly will not be met.

In the global south, it is common for climate activists to be physically attacked and even murdered. Thankfully in the Western world things aren't normally as bad as that for climate activists, but our draconian civil disruption laws make the UK one of the hardest places to be a climate activist in the developed world. Two years ago, activist Marcus Decker was jailed for climbing Dartford Crossing Bridge and unfurling a Just Stop Oil banner. He has now thankfully been released, but ever since has been fighting to avoid deportation back to his native Germany, in spite of the fact that he has a life here in the UK with his partner and stepchildren. I thought this was bad enough at the time, but it pales in comparison to the penalty the Whole Truth Five have received for the offence of discussing peaceful protest on a Zoom call (which is more than people get for many violent offences - in fact, earlier this year this very judge refused to jail someone who had been convicted of sexual assault, citing 'prison overcrowding' as a concern). I'll direct you to this statement from Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, in which he criticises the treatment of one defendant specifically, social worker Daniel Shaw, in which he argues that Daniel's treatment breaches the UK's commitments to international law and is potentially against the Aarhus Convention.

As a 30-year-old with the majority of my life most likely still to come, I am extremely frightened by the climate crisis, which has had a profoundly damaging effect on my mental health. I also know that you have children who are younger than me, and that on your campaign website 'combatting the climate and nature emergencies' is listed as one of your top priorities, so I really hope that you'll share my feelings and be keen to deal with both the climate crisis itself and the absolutely horrific way that the criminal justice system deals with brave activists who are keen to shine a light on these matters and create a sustainable society in which we can survive and thrive. One of the reasons I felt unable to support the Labour Party at the most recent election, and why I encouraged Owen to stand, was that I didn't feel the Labour Party had been supportive enough of those who take direct action to put pressure on those in power, something that I've tried to do regularly since I was 17 and got involved in protests against the austerity policies of David Cameron's new Government. Truthfully, this is still a concern I have with the Labour Party. But I should stress that I don't feel this way about every individual Labour politician. The former Mother of the House Harriet Harman was quoted as saying of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act when it was still a Bill, 'One of our most fundamental rights is to protest. It is the essence of our democracy. To do that, we need to make ourselves heard. The government proposals to allow police to restrict 'noisy' protests are oppressive and wrong.' I also know that your Labour colleague Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, has been extremely vocal about the cruel and oppressive treatment the Whole Truth Five have received, and is seeking a meeting with the Attorney General. So I know that there are plenty of Labour MPs and former MPs who are showing themselves to be on the right side of history over this, and I really hope you'll be one of them.

I'd like to conclude by sharing two resources with you. One is this letter to the Attorney General Richard Hermer, which has been signed by some of your fellow MPs, as well as various climate scientists and concerned individuals. The second is my own blog, The Rebel Without A Clause, in which I expressed my feelings on this (although I wrote it, I also decided to include the full statement from Roger Hallam, as I felt it was more powerful than I was able to express myself).

Please will you stand with environmental protesters, make sure our legal system is fair and respects their rights, campaign to repeal the Acts of Parliament that have caused such damage to their lives, and make sure that combatting the climate emergency is at the top of the Government's agenda?

Best,

George

My Facebook My Twitter My YouTube

The case of the Whole Truth Five

'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.' Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi (not an actual quote, but wise nevertheless)

On 18th July 2024, at Southwark Crown Court, the harshest criminal sentence for peaceful protest in British history was handed down to five people. Just Stop Oil co-founder Roger Hallam received five years, whilst Cressida Gethin, Louise Lancaster, Daniel Shaw and Lucia Whittaker-De-Abreu each received four years. Their crime? Conspiracy to commit a public nuisance - i.e. speaking on a Zoom call recruiting activists to take part in direct action.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has been convicted of conspiracy to commit public nuisance, although do feel free to correct me if I've got this wrong. This exists as a result of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which gives far broader powers to the authorities to clamp down on peaceful and legitimate protest. To put their sentences into perspective, here is the average sentence for various kinds of offence based on the Ministry of Justice's own figures (courtesy of Stats for Lefties @LeftieStats on Twitter).

I've been very concerned by the number of comments I've seen on social media celebrating this outcome, suggesting that they should have got even longer, and so on. I can only conclude that these people fail to understand the full scale of the climate crisis. But even if someone does misunderstand the climate crisis (hell, even if 99% of the world's scientists and academics inexplicably turn out to have been completely wrong about global warming) that would still not be cause for celebration. The callous attitude of the judge Christopher Hehir (who earlier this year refused to jail a police officer found guilty of rape, citing prison overcrowding as a factor) and the fact that in spite of having taken an oath to tell 'the whole truth' the group were forbidden from giving the jury information as to the reasons behind their actions, is something that is deeply disturbing and should chill us all. This is why the group has been colloquially referred to as the 'Whole Truth Five'.

I wasn't in the courtroom, and therefore feel that my words would not be sufficient to summarise all the things that are wrong with this case. Therefore, I will give you the statement that Roger Hallam has posted on his Twitter account, which is as follows:

'I've just been sentenced to 5 years in prison.

The longest ever for nonviolent action. The 'crime'? Giving a talk on civil disobedience as an effective, evidence-based method for stopping the elite from putting enough carbon in the atmosphere to send us to extinction. I have given hundreds of similar speeches encouraging nonviolent action and have never been arrested for it. This time I was an advisor to the M25 motorway disruption, recommending the action to go ahead to wake up the British public to societal collapse. I was not part of the planning or action itself. In the trial, I swore before God to tell the truth. The truth is the science. The science is clear. We're heading for billions of deaths and ecological collapse. To prove this, I presented the jury with a 250-page dossier of leading scientists' research as evidence in my defence. This was denied by the judge as an invalid - climate science is now illegal in the British courtroom. I then began to speak about the apocalyptic conditions humanity faces - floods, wildfires, mass heat deaths - and was silenced by the judge. He sent out the jury and threatened to arrest me if I didn't stop. Instead, I stayed in the dock and argued that until I was given the right to complete my defence – I would not move. Even the prosecution tried to argue in my defence and the judge let me continue. When the jury had shuffled in again, I spoke about the legal concept of “equality of arms” – that as the prosecution had had a right to lay facts over a whole week, I also wanted an equal opportunity. I spoke of various cases where juries had acquitted defendants when they had heard the facts, such as the Extinction Rebellion cracking of Shell's windows in 2018 as a reasonable action against criminal destruction. The Dutch Supreme Court has even said that all governments have a legal obligation to prevent the emission of greenhouse gases. Whilst the prosecution accepted that emissions pose an existential threat, for the first time in British history no less, they still tried to convict us for public nuisance rather than praise us for trying to stop those emissions. Given the objectivity of existential threat, there were overwhelming grounds to be involved in a plan to cause some disruption to the M25. In the British law on public nuisance, there is a ‘reasonable excuse’ clause. Science says there is an overwhelming threat to my life, my children, you and your children. To argue there is not a reasonable excuse directly defies the wish of this legislation. Things are happening that cause harm – people are engaged in physical acts to stop that harm – it doesn’t matter whether it’s a protest or not. As I began to offer up some case law, the judge kept intervening telling me I was “wasting my time” and ordering the jury to disregard me. To illustrate that I was not talking about my motivations but speaking about real necessity, I referred to a famous case over a decision to operate on conjoined twins with the likelihood that one would die. In this dilemma, I quoted the 19th Century principle that the action was necessary if the threat faced was inevitable and irrevocable, that no more should be done than essential, and that it must be proportionate. I argued that there was a “duress of circumstances” including the objective danger I’ve experienced as a farmer unable to grow food, and the global significance of “food insecurity” – a euphemism for famine and starvation. There has never been a moment in history where ‘necessity’ has been more supported by objective facts – more than 10,000 scientific and peer-reviewed papers, indicating an outcome of mass starvation and death from man-made climate collapse. In response, Judge Hehir called for an early lunch and dismissed the jury. He turned to me and warned that I wasn't a lawyer and that “this is not the Roger Hallam show”. He then gave me just 15 more minutes to put forward my “beliefs” - a totally fucking incoherent statement. This isn’t belief - it’s the objective threat of destruction of property and livelihoods of billions of people and the secondary effects of famine i.e. war, rape, and torture. I outlined four characteristics of the effects of emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere, describing them as easy to understand, but unique to human experience and so horrific that they are impossible to assimilate. 1. They have universal effects – what’s emitted in India affects the USA, a melting Arctic affects Argentina and so on. 2. The ultimate consequence of GHGs in the atmosphere is that you destroy the basis of life – some experts say for 100,000 years, others 50 million, and some say the Earth will simply become like Venus. In other words, for the first time in human history, a group of people, namely a 1% of wealthy elites, are responsible for destroying everything forever. 3. The Earth has reached a 1.5˚C rise in temperature already and at some point in the next decade we’ll have triggered geological tipping points – regardless of any action, we’ll have started unstoppable change. In other words, we don’t have time to not pull that person from in front of the lorry, if we don’t act now it will be too late. Some scientists contend it’s already too late – the UN has said we have two years in which to make radical changes – so we’re not just trying to stop people from doing bad things, but to prevent them from doing bad things which will create badness forever. 4. There is not an insubstantial possibility of entire human extinction as a result of pumping GHGs into the atmosphere, we’re talking about a crime fundamentally different from any other in history. This, I said, is why I want to be able to show the jury expert evidence. The judge, showing obvious disinterest, told me to wrap up in a few minutes. Returning to the idea of ‘necessity’, I gave more examples. We agree that if a man pulls a dagger out in a pub and someone else pushes him and disarms him then there would be no question of prosecution. In Ireland, a cyclist who stopped and intervened when an immigrant was being attacked became a national hero. But what if someone plants a bomb under the table in a pub, set to explode in 30 minutes? If you push him over, grab the bomb and take it out to the police, you wouldn’t be prosecuted, even though the harm you’re trying to prevent is in the future. And what about those people pulling down houses in the Great Fire Of London? Their action was to try and prevent harm in other parts of London if the fire had spread. So just because something causes damage over a long time or space is irrelevant – it comes down to causality. The fact that emissions will cause damage across the planet for millions of years is not a reason to stop it from coming into court. In fact, the massive extent of the time and space is the very reason it should be in every court. At this point, the judge sent the jury home, and again scoffed at me for defending myself as an “amateur lawyer” getting “amateur results”. The next day reminded the courtroom that I was under oath to tell the whole truth and would continue with my evidence. The judge immediately ordered the jury out, and when I continued to declare I was under an obligation to continue, the public gallery was cleared and I was warned he would be arrested if he didn’t return to his seat. Then three police officers arrived. I said I would not resist, but also would not assist in my own arrest. As they forcibly dragged me towards the prisoner dock I announced to the observing journalists that this was “Democracy in Action” - Nonviolent resistance to a grossly unjust system. This obscene miscarriage of justice happened to me five times throughout the trial. What a fucking indignity. I received no good reason why I could not tell the jury what is blindingly obvious - that the elite putting carbon in the atmosphere will kill billions. Without the whole truth, it is not a fair trial. If thousands of people were going to die further up that motorway, we would have a reasonable excuse to disrupt it. Except it's not further up the motorway - it's everyone, all around us. Humanity, gone forever. The judge began the next morning by bizarrely reading out my Twitter feed, which alerted my followers to the fact I wasn’t allowed to give my whole defence and called for support for a presence outside the court. But then he moved on to gleefully recounting some of the various trolls – why this was any part of a serious trial, no one could fathom. I was ordered to take them down by lunchtime or I’d be in contempt of court. This is a British judge in 2024. Meanwhile, the UN special rapporteur for Environmental Defenders, Michel Forst sat in the gallery, watching. He had previously put out a statement on the injustice of our treatment. It states that the UK could be breaking international law on the rights of environmental protesters. A repressed, UN phrase for trying to stop the carbon elite from killing us all. I stood up and told the jury that after they’d been ejected yesterday, I had been arrested and removed, but that they had a right to hear my evidence. Once again, the judge ordered the jury and forcibly removed me. The UN guy watched as I was dragged away. I was sent to prison and couldn’t hear the rest of the day’s trial. Afterwards, the judge falsely claimed that I was behind the jury protection campaign, Defend Our Juries, and had ‘conned’ vulnerable people into coming to the court. No evidence was given. Fair, right? The next day I again explained that blocking motorways has direct effects on society e.g. the farmers’ protests quickly changed EU policy, and road protests held fuel prices down. The judge dismissed this by asking whether the action had any effect on global temperatures and told me to sit down. I stayed standing and the judge just left the courtroom. What the fuck? I even looked to the prosecution for help again against the judge’s incoherent madness. When he came back, he started quoting his favourite movie, Goodfellas, and asked me “What are you still doing here?”. Then he ordered me arrested and sent to prison, again. Whilst I was jailed, the judge gave my friends a pathetic 15 minutes each to defend themselves. When they also spoke of the necessity for action against mass death from carbon emissions, the judge ordered them all to be arrested. After this gagging, people began to call us the #WholeTruthFive. Finally, we came to the prosecution's closing statement, where, I kid you not, they argued that the jury must take direction from the judge, that the rule of law keeps our society free from collapse, and that climate change is irrelevant. I, of course, was dismissed as someone who “waffles about the cause”. Not a cofounder of the most influential climate movements in the world and academic on social change. Show trials are about lies, remember? In response I gave my final statement, from behind the glass panel of the dock, reminding jurors they must be sure, not almost sure or on the verge of being sure, and that they must consider ALL the evidence and make a decision that they have actually been given all the evidence. I reminded them of the placard in the Old Bailey that confirms they can acquit based on their conscience without having to give an explanation and without any legal repercussions. There are two elements to the indictment - conspiracy and disruption. The prosecution had presented what they say is ‘powerful evidence’ of involvement in the plan, but this is not the same as ‘conclusive evidence’. I was there to make arguments for action, and not directly involved in actual planning. What does it say about civil liberties if people are imprisoned for making speeches? I offered an alternative explanation for what happened – that a Murdoch-owned newspaper, the Sun, had a journalist who just wanted to make a film of my arrest and so recorded and leaked the public Zoom meeting to the police. Let me remind you that for this I have already been to prison for four months in 2022 without a trial and have been tagged with an 11pm curfew ever since. Even during my closing statement, the judge tried to shut me down but I went on. I argued that I just wanted the jury to hear the defendants for a few hours and to present them with three or four expert witnesses to give the whole evidence. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to mention the ‘C-word’ but the jury had heard the undisputed facts of existential threats – which between them describe an unimaginable harm lasting tens of thousands of years. I simply asked them to consider doing what many other juries have done, let good people go free when they are persecuted by the state. This was about facts, not beliefs. Without facts, this is not a ‘functioning democracy’ but a government that is facilitating the destruction and death of our population. That’s why UN people sat in on the trial – because we do NOT have a functioning democratic state. If you go and ask people in the street, many would laugh at the idea that they have a say in how this country is run. Plenty of expert witnesses would come and tell us we live in a capitalist democracy, a democracy for the rich. In other words no kind of democracy at all. In the end, I said to the jury that if I speak the truth to them I may end up in prison. If the lawyers speak the truth to them they may lose their jobs. If the jury speaks the truth, nothing will happen to them. I begged them to consult their conscience and ask themselves if they were really sure we didn’t have a reasonable excuse. The result of this kangaroo court? You have guessed it. The jury representative stood up the next day, and one by one gave guilty verdicts for all of us, all unanimous. After the verdict, the judge accused me of fraud and ‘grifting’ because my social media post asked for donations towards ‘court fees’. A slight miswording by my friend who writes the posts, as there were no such fees in this trial. But of course, there are massive costs around the whole legal team supporting us and the consequences of going to prison. Please donate towards them at https://chuffed.org/project/support-the-five-on-trial-for-conspiracy. The judge then slandered me by proposing to the jurors that if I was telling lies to obtain money, I might be telling people other lies, and maybe other protesters outside the court were being told lies. He said one of them had been an elderly man hard of hearing and was worried I was exploiting vulnerable people. The public gallery gasped. The man in question was a retired GP in full possession of his faculties with a keen knowledge of the issues – what an insult, and what baseless accusations. To top it off, he said I was 'incapable of introspection'. Guess I’ll have plenty of time for that now… The judge finished his attacks by then personally thanking the jury for not being ‘intimidated’ and said “Well done”. He said he didn’t care what we thought of him. He was just 'doing his job'. This is the banality of evil all over again. He claimed our conviction was just a result of our “single issue fanaticism”. Again, no bias there from a judge who is planning to fly off on holiday when
@JustStop_Oil are planning to disrupt airports… 

Repression is increasing around the world. Amnesty just put out a report on the systematic state attacks on peaceful protest. Look it up. Either we resist the the carbon elites' repression and build a true democracy, led by ordinary people in Citizen’s Assemblies, or Covid-like, ecological and economic shocks spark chaos and fascism. We've seen it over and over again. It's time to say never again. Never again will we let fascism produce a holocaust. Never again we will fail to tell the whole truth: that we face the greatest holocaust ever known, a worldwide gas chamber of carbon that could kill us all. 

Today it was me imprisoned for telling the truth. Next, it could be you.

Join the resistance at http://juststopoil.org before it’s too late.'

--

Since I've become politically active, there have been many court cases and sentences that I have disagreed with. I actually think that is to a certain extent inevitable, because rules have to be followed, none of us are infallible and in any justice situation there will be instances in which we'll think that the wrong decision was made. There is no getting away from that. But truthfully, I have never in my life come across any judge who is as partisan as Christopher Hehir seems to be here.

When someone is in a criminal court, they have to swear to tell 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth'. The whole truth, without a doubt, includes the motives that prompted someone to commit the actions they did. Whether those motives made the course of action justified is a separate matter (in this case, given the severity of the climate emergency, I'd argue that they were, but that's open to discussion). But in preventing the jury from hearing the motives at all, Judge Hehir was intentionally prejudicing the outcome of the trial. The right to a fair trial is protected by Article 6 of the Human Rights Act, and on this occasion this was breached. I hope that everyone can agree to that irrespective of whether they have faith in the actions of groups like Just Stop Oil. Not only that, but Hehir showed absolute contempt for the UK's obligations under international law, in spite of having been shown the relevant information beforehand.

In the interests of addressing one of the most commonly cited concerns about Just Stop Oil's tactics, I feel I must answer the frequently-raised question of, 'What about people's daily lives? What if it disrupts someone who needs to be somewhere in an emergency?' This question is normally posed by media sources, but there are regular folk who ask it, some of whose lives have been severely impeded by climate protests, so I think it's only fair to answer. The first answer is that these environmental groups generally make sure the relevant information regarding the road blocks is communicated out beforehand so that people can make their travel arrangements accordingly. There are also blue light policies, which means that emergency vehicles are allowed through.

I'm certain that they haven't been effective in every single case - volunteers are only human, and occasionally there'll be someone who didn't get the memo or an incident that could have been handled more appropriately. There is no way to avoid that. However, I would also raise two points. The first point that roadworks cause major inconveniences to people's lives all the time, and no one is constantly expecting them to account for the inconvenience they cause. It is recognised that in order for our roads to function, the wear and tear from regular use will routinely have to be repaired, even if it does cause a bit of inconvenience now and again. And the second and more important point is: with runaway climate change, our infrastructure will just stop working. In New York earlier this week, the Third Avenue Bridge in Manhattan had to be shut down because the heat had caused the metal pivots inside the bridge to expand, meaning it couldn't close correctly. Hurricanes, wildfires, floods and heatwaves will continue to cause major inconveniences, and increasingly so with time. If you're so concerned about these inconveniences preventing you from getting quickly from place to place, why aren't you worried about how difficult that might be in the future? Environmental groups are trying to stop that from happening. It's not fun. No one likes sitting in a dirty road all day, being shouted at by frustrated drivers, and putting their freedoms on the line. No one likes feeling as though they're ruining someone's day. But they do it because they are genuinely frightened by the speed of environmental progress in the world. They do it for me, for you, for all of us, and are prepared to spend years in jail in the interests of stopping the future from being that bit worse. I think that's worthy of respect.

If there's one positive to be found in the situation with the Whole Truth Five, it's the fact that this jail sentence is so disproportionate that I don't think this story is going to go away. In the long run, I think instances like this are beneficial for the cause of environmentalism, in much the same way as how Emily Davison jumping in front of a moving horse was beneficial for the Suffragettes' movement. It's just a shame how traumatic this will be for the individuals concerned - but there are ways in which we can help them. The first thing you can do is to sign the petition to the Attorney General Richard Hermer KC calling for the Whole Truth Five's release and for cases like this not to involve severe jail sentences. The second thing you can do is to contact your local representatives. Since the passing of the relevant Act, we have a new Government. It will be very interesting to see if Labour is committed to justice and the rule of law. I hope they are - but even if not, we will not let this matter pass.

I'd just like to finish by saying that I know how anxiety-inducing the matter of climate change can be. I myself often get panic attacks when I read too much about it; I have to be quite selective about my sources, and only go for the things that make me feel compelled to take action, rather than those which make me paralysed with fear (there are a lot of those). So I want to share this article by one of the world's most accomplished climatologists, Michael Mann, which emphasises that we aren't doomed and we are making progress. We're not making enough progress - there's still far more that needs to be done, and currently is not being - but I think sometimes the language we use to describe these things is quite a barrier to making further progress. There are more people than ever before who care about these matters. This is emphasised by the fact that at the recent UK General Election the Green Party quadrupled their representation in Parliament, and the reason that harsh sentences like that of the Whole Truth Five are happening now, rather than a few decades back, is because we are winning, and the establishment is scared of us. We must not allow ourselves to be cowed.

My Facebook My Twitter My YouTube

Reform UK voters are victims of grooming

 When I was on doorsteps campaigning for my partner Owen Lewis in Monmouthshire, one of the things that surprised me most was how much better I got on with people who were planning on voting Reform UK than I thought I would.

I wrote a bit about my views on Reform UK on a previous blog, and how I feel that a major part of their appeal is not based especially concretely on their policies. Nevertheless, I had presumed (perhaps unfairly so) that people with those kinds of views would be types that I would really struggle to talk to, people I'd feel were a bit racist, people whose approach to life would be the complete antithesis of mine. What I found was the opposite - although many of these people did express opinions that I felt a little dodgy, I often found them to be quite interesting people, and their views to be ones that I respected.

My partner's campaign was fundamentally about the rights of the most vulnerable people, and for that reason I felt quite reticent about getting too deep into conversations about immigration or about refugees or asylum seekers with people sympathetic to Reform's message. If these topics did come up, I would normally either divert the subject to people drowning in the channel, the reasons why people make these crossings in the first place, or agreeing that there needs to be a better and more fair system (which is what I believe, even if my idea of what is a fair system might differ quite strongly from theirs). This was not in the interests of trying to avoid the subject, far from it; more that I felt that it would be more conducive to finding something in common with the people I was talking to, and a lot of the time this was a lot more easy than I'd expected.

One man in particular, who'd been planning on voting Reform as a protest vote, stuck in my mind. He told me quite a bit about his life and his frustrations, very much of which I was very sympathetic to. I didn't have the impression that he was especially right-wing or especially anti-woke - more that, just like me, he was absolutely fed up with the Tories and didn't have the slightest bit of faith in the Labour Party to deal with the myriad of problems they'd caused, and that he therefore wanted to send a message. 

The conversation reaffirmed to me something that I've felt for a while - which is that irrespective of the political choices we might make, most of the time the problems we face in the world are exactly the same as everyone else's. It's also true that politicians manipulate this for their own ends. I think a good example of this is to look at how much the matter of the NHS was used by both the Leave and Remain campaigns around the 2016 EU referendum. Some people were led to believe that leaving the EU would benefit the NHS, some were led to believe that remaining in the EU would. The common factor was that pretty much everyone wanted to help the NHS; this ought to have been something the UK public could agree and unite on, but politicians cynically used it to make people fight amongst themselves. The outcome was that we were stuck with a Government that was intent on destroying the NHS, and more importantly this would still have happened had Remain won the referendum. The whole NHS conversation was an absolute scam and was always going to be, right from the very beginning.

Scams are horrible things to experience, and most of us will fall victim to a scam at some point in our lifetime. There are certainly things we can do to protect ourselves from scams, just as there are things we can do to protect ourselves from being raped or from having burglars break into our homes. But the important thing to remember is that none of these protections are infallible, and that if you happen to fall victim to a crime it is absolutely not your fault. I feel this way about people who vote in ways that cause them additional harm. The common perception of people who vote for parties like this are that they're bigoted, racist or just stupid. I'll confess to having expressed myself views to this effect in the past; it's something that is quite a common belief here on the left.

I don't believe that these kinds of people are stupid, but I do think that a lot of the time they aren't as informed about politics as perhaps they should be. This raises the question as to whose responsibility it is to inform oneself about politics. I am fortunate enough to be someone who does have quite a lot of information about what's going on; I've been writing this blog since I was 17 and first got into going to social justice protests, and I've used it to network a lot online with people, educate myself and inform others. But this didn't just come out of nowhere. Even before I started writing about politics, I had lived with people from multiple different countries, been to school with people from all kinds of class backgrounds and had a fairly clear shape of how I viewed the world. My earliest blogs are quite embarrassing for me to look back on now - naturally as I've grown older and matured my perspective on these topics has become a bit less black-and-white - but on the whole my view of the world hasn't particularly shifted since the time I started doing this fourteen years ago. For my opinion to change, I need to see really good reasons that are in line with my understanding of morality.

If you're someone whose experience of the world is radically different to mine, someone who hasn't been as privileged as I have or met the sorts of people that I've met, it is natural that you may have come to different conclusions to mine - or, more likely, not to have come to very thought-out conclusions at all. The way that political discourse is presented in our media is exceptionally convoluted and difficult to follow. I believe that this is done on purpose so that Governments can get away with more things and it's harder to consistently hold them to account for it, but as years pass it makes the population increasingly susceptible to being groomed by the extreme right. This is what I think has happened with the rise of UKIP and now the rise of Reform - people are rightly, rationally and intelligently crying out for a change in the system, but their lack of reliable political information results in cynical politicians like Nigel Farage being able to take advantage of them. I would view anyone who becomes a target of this to be as vulnerable as anyone who is groomed in any other way.

To the man who was considering voting Reform, I told him that our local candidate had failed to turn up to all hustings bar one, so how could he be relied upon to care or know about local issues? I also made clear that these kinds of politicians are not actually anti-establishment - they're just very practiced in the art of appearing so, when in reality they are as wealthy and connected as the two main parties. The man grudgingly admitted that this was probably true, and I left thinking that he might vote for my partner - naturally I don't know if he did in the end. I've had other conversations like this, and some of them went better than others. But the whole experience did affirm to me that dismissing these kinds of voters as racist bigots causes more harm than good. Reform UK relies on the fact that the left is going to do that - we need to prove them wrong, be willing to have these conversations and be prepared to listen to the problems these people are experiencing. Fascism can only thrive in the absence of a valid alternative.

My Facebook My Twitter My YouTube

What does the Labour Party intend to change?

 The Labour Party cruised to electoral success in the 2024 election with a campaign revolving around a single-word slogan: 'Change'. This replaced the slogan 'For the many, not the few' which Labour used for the previous two elections (and which on election night I likened to how when I was 16, our new headteacher changed my school's motto from 'Learn together, achieve together' to 'Achieving excellence' - my opinion of that pretty much mirrors my opinion of this).

Nevertheless, 'Change' is quite a clever slogan because it means different things to different people, which means that no one can exactly argue that change isn't needed. Almost everyone would like to see a change in something. Here's some ideas for things that 'Change' could mean, and my speculation on what Labour intends it to mean.

One way it could be interpreted is as change in our pockets. This could mean one of two things: everyone being wealthier, or a stand against a cashless society. I'd support either of these things. I'd love us all to have a bit more money, whereas the increasing digitisation of our currency and banking is something I've been campaigning against for a long time (I wrote in April about the campaign to save Halifax bank). Now that Labour is in Government, I will definitely pressure them to keep physical cash as a regular part of our lives. However, I doubt this is what 'Change' meant in the context of the Labour slogan, for no other reason that that my local Labour campaigners didn't seem to have thought of this when I suggested it to them!

It may mean a complete change in the system and the reversal of the absolute horrors of Conservative austerity. Again, this is something I'd welcome, as I'm sure most other people would. Conservative austerity has caused substantial damage to the quality of our lives, and it is this that has caused them to be so utterly wiped out across the UK, including to have lost every single MP in Wales which is where I live. Unfortunately, listening to the rhetoric from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, such as Reeves' comment that it will be the private sector that takes charge of new housing, makes me doubt this. Still, they're very welcome to surprise me.

It could mean a change to our electoral system. This is the first change I'd wish for that I actually have hope that Labour might achieve. At the hustings, my now MP Catherine Fookes promised that Labour would extend General Elections to sixteen-year-olds, and even hinted at one point that we might replace First Past the Post with a more proportional system. Unfortunately I've learned to become extremely cynical - Keir Starmer has previously declined to make Proportional Representation an actual election pledge, whereas I've got a nasty feeling that this votes for 16-year-olds idea will go the same way as Keir Starmer's leadership pledges. Nevertheless, I am somewhat optimistic; especially given how many minority MPs managed to get into Westminster this time, I think it's possible for there to be enough pressure on the Government to properly change the system within the next Parliament.

It could mean a change to our climate. Naturally, I would NOT support increasing climate change, and I doubt the Labour Party would advertise themselves like that in the first place. Whether their policies will halt climate change or accelerate it remains to be seen - perhaps the Green Party can put the pressure on.

What I suspect 'Change' was meant to mean though, and what I repeatedly said on doorsteps, is a change to the people in Government. I do not believe that Labour had, or has, any intention of changing the status quo, merely of changing the people enacting it. It is a curious truth in politics that much of the time, slogans and titles promise the opposite of what they actually do. In the late 2010s, various MPs resigned from their parties in order to form the short-lived 'Change UK' party, and ironically its main aim seemed to be to keep the status quo exactly as it was. The politicians who made up Change UK generally had the same kinds of politics as the current senior Labour Party officials, and I think that the Labour Party's current understanding of the word 'Change' is probably quite similar.

But this does not mean that I think true change is out of reach. I believe that the outcome of that election, the number of Labour MPs whose vote majorities in their constituencies reduced significantly, and the amount of people now who will demand that their lives and futures improve, have created some great opportunities to hold the powerful to account. The powerful know this and don't want to be held to account so they will undoubtedly throw us a few more cake crumbs that they'd planned to - our job is to strategically determine when to accept them and when to stand up and say that we want more. Watch this space!

My Facebook My Twitter My YouTube

My thoughts on the 2024 UK General Election

For quite a long time, I was told that Labour would win the next General Election by an absolute landslide. The people who told me this (especially if they were people whose political opinions were fairly leftist, progressive and similar to mine) assured me that this would not be because they were actually doing especially well, but just because the Conservatives were doing particularly badly. I always responded by saying that Labour's super-majority was not guaranteed, and that just because another party was doing badly did not automatically mean that Labour would do well. I have said as much on this blog, many times.

My main reasoning for coming to this conclusion was that I felt that you could have said exactly the same thing in 2015. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of the early 2010s was supremely unpopular, and the huge wipeout the Liberal Democrats suffered at that election was demonstrative of that. That should have been an extraordinarily easy election for Labour's then-leader Ed Miliband to win - but unfortunately, his iteration of Labour was so abjectly unappealing that the anti-Tory vote was widely split, and the result was that David Cameron's Conservatives managed a full majority by themselves. It wasn't until Jeremy Corbyn took over the party's leadership that it became more of a two-party fight again. Whether you supported Corbyn's policies or whether you didn't, it is inarguable that he galvanised a lot of the people who had strong anti-Tory sentiments, and the 2017 and 2019 elections very clearly became Labour versus the Conservatives again, in a way that 2015 just had not been. Since Keir Starmer has taken over the reins of the Labour Party, I have felt that a lot of the problems that prevented Labour's win in 2015 have re-emerged, in particular the party in opposition failing to take especially strong stances against much of the Conservative Government's ideology. In fact, I think these problems have been worse under Keir Starmer than they were in 2015 under Ed Miliband, and I didn't see why taking such a similar approach to one that had clearly failed in the past was likely to have a different outcome this time.

Of course, we've now seen that Labour did get a huge majority of seats at the 2024 election, just as they were predicted to. However, this does not mean I'm going to sit and eat humble pie, because I still don't believe I was wrong. I never claimed to be certain they wouldn't get a super-majority, just that I didn't think it was inevitable. I still don't think it was inevitable. From interacting with people, both across the country via social media and on doorsteps whilst campaigning for my partner (who was standing as an independent in Monmouthshire) I sensed great dissatisfaction from many people not just with the Conservatives, but with the Labour Party as well.

I do not feel that Labour did as well in this election as the amount of seats they won would suggest. They received around 600,000 votes less than they did in 2019, which is generally considered to be Labour's worst result since the Second World War, some of their most prominent MPs such as Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire lost their seats, and many got in on a much reduced vote count in their constituencies (Keir Starmer's majority was reduced by half, which is absolutely unheard of for an incoming Prime Minister, whilst Health Secretary Wes Streeting came within around 500 votes of losing his seat as well). More significant than this is that in both cases an independent candidate came second, which is pretty unusual under our archaic First Past The Post system. The Green Party quadrupled their seat count, and some independents did get in, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

So why, if we're to agree with my basic standpoint that Labour isn't especially popular and that the Tories imploding wouldn't by itself be enough for them to win, did they get such a large seat count compared to elections like 2015? There are many reasons for that, but I've narrowed it down to three key ones: the 2020 pandemic, the rise of Reform UK and the collapse of the SNP in Scotland.

The 2020 pandemic

I don't see this matter discussed very much in the media anymore, and certainly not in reference to the election, but I believe it's vitally important in terms of exactly how much the Tories fell from grace.

Personally, I had quite a nice time during the COVID-19 pandemic, although I know a lot of people didn't. But whether we were happy or whether we weren't, I feel that that pandemic changed us as human beings, and that the impacts of this have not been acknowledged by the establishment class. For the first time since the World War II, we were all in a situation where we felt we had to collectively inconvenience ourselves for the greater good. Some of us were trapped with toxic partners. Some of us missed loved ones' funerals. Some of us were far shorter of money than normal. Some of us (me included) were lucky enough to be generally okay, but if we were we felt obliged to check in from time to time with people who might not be. But that was okay - because we were doing the right thing, and all in it together.

I remember the day the glue snapped - when Dominic Cummings decided to drive to Barnard Castle ostensibly to check his eyesight, and Government ministers tripped over themselves to defend his behaviour. At this point, that community spirit died. People thought, quite rightly, that they'd been taken for absolute mugs - that they'd put themselves to great inconvenience for the safety of everyone, and the people who made these rules couldn't even be bothered to follow them themselves. At that point, we all decided we couldn't be bothered anymore to follow the rules, even in the interests of keeping people safe, and when scandals like Partygate came out we didn't lose any respect for the Government because there was already none left.

The irony is that from the Conservative Government's perspective, this probably didn't feel especially significant because they've always had contempt for the common people and consider themselves to be exempt from the rules. They're so removed from people's daily lives that they probably saw nothing wrong with what they did. And for ordinary people, the Government playing to a different set of rules is what we've come to expect, and in most cases we just shrug and say, 'So what? It's always like that.' But this was different. This was such an extreme situation, where everyone felt that they had to care for each other, that this felt like a gross betrayal in a way that this kind of thing normally does not.

Another feature of the 2020 pandemic is that it gave a lot of people a bit of time to think. Many found new hobbies, or discovered they had talents that they didn't know about themselves. It gave us the time to think about what we wanted to do with our lives, what values we held and what we wanted to do with them, in ways that normally we don't quite have time for. These feelings have stayed with us since, and there are many people now in creative work that they picked up during lockdown. This time taken has, I think, made it more possible to recognise when our elected officials are taking advantage of us.

Of course, this one itself would only result in the Tories doing badly, not necessarily in Labour gaining seats - but I think it does explain a big part of why they were so much more unpopular than normal.

The rise of Reform UK

Reform UK is the new name for the Brexit Party, which advocated for a no-deal Brexit in the late 2010s. Although they are not the same party, it bears a striking resemblance to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), mainly due to the ongoing association both parties have had with the politician Nigel Farage, who is Reform's current leader and serves as the MP for Clacton.

It wouldn't be accurate or fair for me to say that Reform doesn't have any coherent policies, because it clearly does if you take the time to read them, and my local Reform candidate Max Windsor-Peplow gave some quite thought-out and complex answers to questions during the one single hustings he attended, even if I didn't agree with what he said. However, what I can say is that when canvassing on doorsteps and meeting Reform voters, it was quite rare for them to be able to coherently explain what their policies actually were, besides vague comments like, 'It's all the immigrants, isn't it?' Reform may have some policies, but they have not taken the time during their campaign to make clear what these policies actually are, or what the causes are of our societal problems.

What UKIP, the Brexit Party and Reform all have in common, and what Nigel Farage in particular is exceptionally good at, is that they purport to be the main anti-establishment option for voters. This is demonstrated by the fact that they received the third highest vote share nationwide. People were sick of both the Tories and Labour, Reform UK recognised this and presented themselves as being a credible alternative. Just as a personal anecdote, I found that potential Reform voters were some of the most easy to talk to about my partner Owen's campaign, even though his actual politics are radically different from theirs and Nigel Farage's. This is because a lot of the time, this wasn't actually about anyone's policies; it was about wanting to send a message that people want to be listened to a bit more, and voting for a really good independent does that just as much as voting for a party like Reform.

In reality, Reform UK is not anti-establishment - its organisers have just learned how to appear to be, when in reality they care very little about ordinary folk and are connected to exactly the same kind of powerful individuals as the Conservatives are. This can be seen by how much they are featured in the mainstream media - Nigel Farage is one of the most frequently-featured faces on Question Time in spite of the fact that until last Thursday he'd never been an MP, whereas someone like Caroline Lucas of the Green Party has appeared far less often despite having been in Westminster for fourteen years. With the complete lack of impartiality from the UK's media, a truly anti-establishment politician could never hope to receive this amount of prominent coverage. The aim is to purport to be anti-establishment whilst driving the UK's domestic and foreign policies increasingly to the extreme right.

However, there are some major differences between UKIP and Reform UK. The most important one for this election is the fact that UKIP's aim was not really to gain seats - it was more to spook the Conservative Party into adopting more of their policies, in particular to pressure David Cameron into ordering a referendum into the UK's continued membership of the European Union. Reform UK isn't so interested in this, perhaps because it could see that at this point the Conservative Party was dead in the water. Its aim is more ambitious than this - it's to take advantage of the complete drop in support for establishment politics generally, and for this they do need seats.

In my constituency of Monmouthshire, the newly elected Labour MP Catherine Fookes unseated incumbent Tory David TC Davies, who had held the seat since 2005. Her majority is roughly the same amount of votes that Reform got. I will not say that this is fundamentally the reason why Labour won that seat, as I don't believe Reform's voters would necessarily have otherwise voted Conservative (I actually think my partner Owen could have got more votes as an anti-establishment candidate in the absence of Reform). Nevertheless, the fact that Reform was more interested in taking votes from the Conservatives than UKIP were has overall benefitted Labour.

Although I'm concerned by the rise in Reform, I do really hope that by sitting as an MP it will become apparent to the populace how devoid of practical measures to improve our lives Nigel Farage actually is. In the meantime, I'm confident in the left's role in presenting decent principles as an alternative. But these will not come from the Labour Party, they'll come from people who are truly anti-establishment and not just purporting to be.

The collapse of the SNP

I believe that the performance of the SNP is the most crucial reason why Labour did so much better in this election than they did in 2015.

In 2015, pretty much all the other parties were wiped out across Scotland as the SNP dominated, winning 56 out of a total 59 Scottish seats. This was embarrassing for all the other parties, but particularly for Labour, as Labour has traditionally dominated Scottish politics. The reason for the SNP's success is not because Scottish voters have fundamentally different values to voters across the rest of the UK; it's merely that they happened to be presented with a valid alternative to neoliberalism when the rest of the UK was not.

Fast forward to 2024, and the SNP has lost huge numbers of seats. There is no one single main reason for this, and I don't know enough about Scottish politics to feel comfortable speculating. I feel that there were just too many small things that made the SNP far less appealing than they were ten years ago, including having constant changes of leader since the departure of Nicola Sturgeon. It is this, to me, that has caused the Labour Party to get so much more success at this election, as Scotland is the nation where the Labour vote has increased the most (in England it remained fairly static, and in Wales where I live it actually fell). Again, I don't believe that this was because of radical differences of value between Scottish voters and the rest of the UK; merely that the Scots had become accustomed to having a decent alternative to the main parties, and without one fell back towards supporting Labour as they traditionally would have.

--

For me, I'm very optimistic about the new Westminster make-up, in spite of the fact that I really did not think Labour deserved to win an election. The fact that they won such a landslide in terms of seat numbers but dropped so much in terms of actual votes is something bizarre that has never happened before. The Government knows that seats they thought were safe are now perhaps not so safe, and for this reason I feel the time is ripe to put pressure on them to really stand up for the things that matter to us.

But we must not be complacent. If we are, our NHS will be privatised, our civil rights to protest will be stripped from us, and our general quality of life will be radically reduced before we can say, 'We shall not be moved'.

My Facebook My Twitter My YouTube