I am hearing a lot of people wondering how on earth the Republicans could have ended up with Donald Trump as their presidential nominee. Well, as shocking as it may seem, he may actually have been a reasonably sane choice when you review the other contenders at the beginning of the process. Remember these?

JEB BUSH – Raised and spent more money than all the other candidates combined, but even the Republicans couldn’t stomach yet another Bush. Suggested health insurance wasn’t necessary in an age of Apple watches; that economic woes would be solved by people working longer hours; that evolution should be taken off the science curriculum; and that Christian prisons would solve America’s crime problem.

RICK SANTORUM – Opposed to abortion and all forms of contraception, even among married couples. Believes a child conceived from rape is a gift from God. Compared homosexuality to ‘man-on-dog‘ sex. Accuses radical feminists of promoting the idea that it is socially affirming for women to work outside the home.

RICK PERRY – Ran a summer hunting camp that he called Niggerhead. Likes bragging about shooting coyotes while jogging. Indignant about gays being able to serve openly in the military. Described by a fellow Republican governor as “like GW Bush, but without the brains“.

BOBBY JINDAL – Originally a Hindu, but converted to Catholicism. Attempted to eliminate all personal and corporate taxes in Louisiana, bankrupting the the state finances in the process. Encouraged the teaching of creationism as part of the science curriculum. Believes swathes of Europe are no-go areas that are under sharia law.

CARLY FIORINA – Sacked as CEO of Hewlett-Packard after halving the value of the corporation. Equates worries over climate change to worrying about the weather. Describes having seen videos of fully forms foetuses, alive and kicking, having their brains removed, but cannot produce said video.

DR RAND PAUL – Opthalmologist who is opposed to government ‘interference’ in just about anything (except abortion, of course), but most certainly with regards to guns, health, poverty, environment etc.

MIKE HUCKABEE – Guitar-playing radio preacher, who doesn’t do math, but majors in miracles! Believes that North Koreans have more freedom and that lefties are seeking to criminalise Christianity. Thinks gun control means hitting your target and that asking him to accept gay marriage is comparable to asking a Jewish deli to serve ‘bacon-wrapped shrimp’.

JOHN KASICH – A Fox News presenter and anchor (I said ‘anchor’!), with the dodgy network and NY Times behind him. Ticks all the usual boxes: anti-union, anti-tax, pro-guns, pro-death penalty, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, pro-creationism, anti-environment, pro-privatisation. Believes that god has given him a special appreciation of other people’s problems.

DR BEN CARSON – Neurosurgeon who believes that, but for Fox News and Christian conservative radio, the USA would be Cuba. Apparently has inside knowledge of Chinese troops in Syria, and has revealed that the pyramids were actually huge grain silos. Has suggested that Darwin was possessed by Satan in order to undermine God’s word. Neurosurgery? I think I’ll do it myself thanks.

MARCO RUBIO – Senator who thinks the Senate is a waste of his time and has the worst attendance record. Typical hardliner again. On climate change, he shrugs and declares that you can’t change the weather. Proposes eliminating taxes on the rich. Has modest goals; namely ‘Our goal is eternity – the ability to live alongside our Creator for all time’.

TED CRUZ – variously described by colleagues as ‘wacko bird’ (John McCain), ‘jackass’ and ‘Lucifer in the flesh’ (John Boehner). He points to ‘undeniable facts’ such as that ‘the vast majority of criminals are Democrats’ and that the US constitution makes it clear that there is no place in the USA for gays and atheists. He wants to carpet bomb ISIS into oblivion (although not sure what carpet bombing actually means) and make the sand glow in the dark, while at the same time wanting to ‘awaken and energise the body of Christ’.

All this does, at least, make you (relatively) relieved to be British. At least most of our politicians are merely duplicitous, self-serving liars. I’ll take that over this ……. whatever is the most suitable collective noun you can come up with for this lot. I’m favouring ‘blither’.

All together now:

And so we are being committed to the absurdity of a colossally expensive nuclear arsenal.

Virtually all the Tories stuck together – the blue and the red – as 472 MPs bought the imperialistic neoliberal gibberish that underpins the nonsense that is nuclear deterrence theory.

Most of you reading this will be familiar enough with the arguments against nuclear weapons. But a few aspects of the debate especially nauseated me today.

One MP, I’m not sure who, brought up (vomited if you like) the suggestion that Ukraine would have deterred Russian aggression if it had kept nuclear weapons under its control. And yet, through NATO, the USA has around 200 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe supposedly there to deter exactly such Russian aggression. They did nothing whatsoever to prevent the crisis developing and remain useless in addressing it. How on earth can nuking your near neighbours be anything but suicidal, irrespective of any response back?

Theresa May responded by agreeing with this idiotic position. Implicit in this is the belief that every country ought to aspire to joining the nuclear club. And yet that club is thankfully a very small one, although admittedly it is a worrying list of members:

• China
• France
• Russia
• USA
• India
• Pakistan
• North Korea
• Israel
• and, of course, UK

That is it folks. Just nine in the nuclear ‘nutters’ club. That is exactly how I have heard a number of MPs describe most of the other members of the club we are in. You have to be ‘nutters’ to waste so much public money on them when there are so many other pressing social needs. That is true in every case. You have to be ‘nutters’ to shit on your own doorstep with these abominations, and long range strikes are literally MAD – with ‘mutually assured destruction’ the only likely outcome. They are suicidal and genocidal simultaneously. Having nuclear weapons is the surest way of increasing the prospect of being a target for nuclear weapons!! This, as much as anything, explains why all-but-9 (that is the best part of 200) countries don’t have these magnets for destruction, and the vast majority have absolutely no aspiration to ever have them.

So then we get onto the ridiculous line of argument that we need to have these weapons to contend with the other nutters that may get their hands on them via the club members we regard as nuttier than us. Theresa may actually stood up in Parliament today and suggested that people who opposed this insanity were in fact, and I quote: “defending the UK’s enemies”.

Not only is this factually wrong to the point of being a disgusting slur, it also shows a disturbing disconnect from the realities of the threats we currently face. Be it the truly big threats of growing poverty and inequality, climate change and the privatisation of public assets – all exacerbated by the obscene expense of nuclear weapons systems and the promulgated by the enemy within that is the Tories advocating membership of the nuclear club; or the direct threats we face from terrorists and religious extremists, there simply cannot be any role for nuclear weapons in dealing with these threats.

Derek Johnson, Executive Director of Global Zero, a non-partisan campaign group working towards the phased elimination of nuclear weapons, nails this latter point thus:

Fortunately, in the case of non-state actors [incl. terrorists], nuclear weapons require such a significant financial and scientific infrastructure that they can’t make nuclear weapons on their own; it still takes a nation to develop them. So, the only way for non-state actors to get their hands on a bomb is either to acquire the nuclear material – highly-enriched uranium or plutonium – which is really difficult to produce, or to get their hands on a ready-made weapon.

There will always be a risk that nuclear weapons will be developed by another state or will be acquired in some way by non-state actors so long as those weapons exist. The only way to bring that risk down to zero is to drain the swamp, eliminating these weapons and all weapons-grade material.

No nuclear weapons program has ever gone undetected, not even the United States’. In a global zero future, if a so-called “rogue state” tries to develop nuclear weapons, they would be subjected to intense international isolation and pressure – as with Iran today – or even collective military action.

So pursuing a new generation of nuclear weapons is totally counter-productive in reducing the threat of terrorists obtaining nuclear materials and devices. But May knows this. Neoliberals understand full-well how efficiently such expensive programmes channel public money into the hands of big corporate players hands. Nuclear weapons are not made in entrepreneurs’ sheds like Dyson’s vacuum cleaners after all. Neoliberals, especially those involved in the military-industrial complex that lines the pockets of numerous billionaires, also know how good crises and disasters are for business. They just have to ensure that their idyllic island bolt holes are not in the line of prevailing currents and winds.

The only glimmer of sanity in the proceedings in Westminster was seeing all but one MP (the sole Scottish Tory of course) steadfastly wanting rid of Trident – even in the face of the pathetic jibes from May that it was a vote against Scottish jobs, as if gas chambers would be great job opportunities for gas fitters. Of course, ridding Scotland of the nuclear attack magnet while England and Wales retains it is not likely to be hugely beneficial. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster led to monitoring restrictions on Scottish livestock up until 2010. But at least a direct strike on Faslane could be averted I guess – with it’s facilities being moved to …… well, Milford Haven if Carwyn gets his way , putting a target on all our backs into the bargain (and with Owen Smith fighting with Theresa May for the right to press the button and get the fireworks going).

And thus we await the stench of death drifting from Westminster to South Wales, after another sobering and nauseating day in Tory/Blairite Britain.

To conclude, here is cctv of briefing session on Trident in Westminster:

One of the first things I did on joining Welsh Labour recently was to seek clarification on where my Labour MP stood on the current leadership mischief being created by Labour MPs.

I sent her this brief email:

Her reply is covered by the this relatively standard clause : The information contained in this email is private and confidential and it is intended solely for the use of the addressee. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete from your system. Any unauthorised use, dissemination, printing or copying of this email is prohibited.

However, my response is not covered by such constraints and you will be able to infer Madeliene’s position clear enough from this!

Dear Madeleine,

Thank you for your carefully considered response. It is, however, a deeply flawed response that gives rise to serious concerns on various fronts and at various levels.

Having examined your voting record in some detail, alongside your remarks below, you clearly identify as a Blairite. It is, perhaps, no surprise that you therefore seem to share Tony Blair’s capacity for self-delusion and disregard for the Party’s true heritage. You also seriously misjudge Jeremy Corbyn’s ability and appeal.

Let me share my own political journey with you. I was first involved with the Labour Party in my home town of Gravesend, in Kent, in the early 1980s, in response to Thatcher’s election. It was another tumultuous time and there was a similar battle for the heart and soul of the Party that ultimately led to the Gang of Four creating the SDP. I took a serious look at the SDP at the time. Michael Foot was floundering and the whole zeitgeist of the time was against left wing policies having any common appeal. Being young and impressionable, I left the Labour Party and joined the SDP briefly, but soon realised the error of my ways.

Leaving party politics for many years, I did however become heavily involved with my teaching union, the NASUWT. From this vantage point I watched with growing optimism as Kinnock looked to ‘modernise’ the party and close the gap on the Tories, while remaining discernibly democratic socialist in character (his true character had yet to reveal itself!). But for personal circumstances, I would have rejoined Labour in the run-up to the 1992 election. But, of course, it went horribly wrong.

John Smith was beginning to lure me back with his continued but cautious reforms (I supported the removal of Trade Union bloc votes in favour of ‘one member, one vote’, for example), but his tenure was, of course cut tragically short. Little were we to know that his untimely death would also mark the death of any socialist pretensions within the party. This was destined to be with the accession of Tony Blair.

The writing was very clearly on the wall with the the trashing of Clause 4 in 1995. The ‘Third Way’ manifesto that accompanied the 1997 triumph was a ‘centrist’ manifesto that the SDP would have been proud of. None of us read it, of course, as it was simply a matter of getting the Tories out. Their time was well-and truly up (Black Wednesday being the final nail in their coffin). Blair quickly mastered the art of spin and media manipulation (the lack of which did for Michael Foot, more than anything else) and he was going to win no matter what. This massive ‘triumph’ turns out to have been a tragic catastrophe in the making.

I, of course, voted for Blair in 1997. We were all euphoric to see the end of 18 years of Tory mis-rule. But I could never like him personally. He looked like a Tory, sounded like a Tory and ever-increasingly espoused Tory policies. After the 18 years of ultra-Tories, Blair recognised that Tory-lite was the best way of getting the Conservatives out of no.10. “What counts is what works” I remember him saying. Ideology was an outdated basis for modern politics in Blair’s world.

Blair continued to drift the party rightwards with policies like tax credits to subsidise the inadequate wages being paid, but finally revealed his truly neoliberal imperialist soul when he effectively sold that soul to GW Bush and undertook the Iraq War (no need to go into that any more – I take it you have digested Chilcott by now!). Despite all the advice and briefings to the contrary, despite 1.5 million taking to the streets, he was going to stand by his buddy George ‘no matter what’. You were not in Parliament until 2005, but you consistently voted AGAINST investigations, have consistently voted for Trident replacement and voted for the Syria airstrikes. There can be no doubt that you would have backed Blair’s illegal war, and therefore should be held in the contempt that that position brings with it.

I quickly learned to despise Blair as much as I had ever despised the Tories. My left wing beliefs were homeless. The Lib Dems opposition to the Iraq War attracted me, and I liked Chrales Kennedy. He was very evidently and significantly to the left of Tony Blair, and the Lib Dems were discernibly the only major Party evenly remotely aspiring to be left of centre. I joined after their big advance in 2001, but never got very involved (having a young family demanding most of my time by now). Then of course, Clegg arrived and took the Lib Dems on a Blair-like leap to the right and that was the end of that.

By 2010, I was working in Bridgend with long-term unemployed people. I was encouraged to try to educate my clients about the stances of the different parties in the run-up to that year’s General Election. The vast majority had no intention of voting at all, even though there was a family history of being Labour supporters in most cases. We used sites like “Votes for Policies” and the “Political Compass” to help identify which parties came closet to our core values and beliefs. Below is a screen shot of where the parties stood in 2010. Of the 30 or so clients I put through this programme, a small number came out closest to the BNP, but just about everyone else was in the green quarter somewhere. Some were close to Plaid Cymru, some were close to the Greens. Several, including me, were right in the bottom left hand corner. Many resolved to vote for either Plaid Cymru or the Greens as a result. Some of us actually decided we should join the Green Party, which we duly did, only to find that there was no branch in Bridgend. We set one up by the end of the 2010.

Ideologically, the Green Party remains a pretty good fit for me. I identify more firmly than ever as an ecosocialsit. I suspect that if you were bold enough to give it a go, you may even find they are a better fit for you than New Labour (perhaps). Over recent years, while involved with the Green Party, I challenged a lot of my friends and acquaintances within the Welsh Labour Party, including elected councillors, to join an ecosocialist party rather than continue to prop up a completely out-of-touch Blaitite Tory-lite party. Surprisingly large numbers are prepared to acknowledge that the Party is not the same as the Party they joined (30+ years ago in many cases) but that they believe in remaining loyal and fighting for some socialist principles from within than join a perhaps more avowedly socialist party like the Greens (or even, Plaid Cymru) that are so far from having and power to implement anything. I have spent years ridiculing their imperceptible efforts to drag the party back to its roots, while they pick up their Councillor stipends in seats as safe as houses.

I gave up on the Green Party after its inept performance in the 2015 election (all chronicled in my blog). Wales Green Party are utterly clueless, even if their hearts are in roughly the right place. I was thinking I was done with party politics yet again as there seemed no hope of electoral politics being able to deliver any sort of meaningful move towards the left – despite the desperate need for it, as big sections of society become increasingly victimised by the establishment – an establishment that Labour have very much become an irrevocable part of since the accession of Blair. But then a fresh beacon of hope emerged last September. That beacon of hope is personified in Jeremy Corbyn.

You and your Blairite colleagues are utterly wrong and ridiculously out-of -touch in your evaluations of Jeremy Corbyn. Hundreds of thousands have been drawn to the Labour Party purely because he has a clear and easy to to understand vision; he has unstinting energy; he has the personal dynamics that allow him to connect with ordinary people; he articulates loudly and clearly the worries, concerns and experiences of ordinary people in this country today.

You are right in one respect. I disagree when you say that he cannot bridge the cavernous divides in the country and that he cannot reach out to communities. But you are right in that he cannot heal the divide in the party that you and your parliamentary colleagues have opened up. You bandy meaningless numbers around comparing Corbyn and Blair’s levels of support. The fact of the matter is that he was elected on an overwhelmingly strong mandate of the Party membership. Blair never had 60% support. Corbyn is bringing in support and membership on unprecedented scales. That should, in itself, fill you with joy and pride in your party, were you genuinely respectful of it. A leadership contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Angela Eagle will be the most one-sided landslide in the history of British politics. She was only the fourth choice for deputy a year after all. Any attempt to exclude Corbyn from the ballot will be foolhardy in the extreme and spell the near-certain end of the party you pretend to care about.

You simply have to accept that the Blairite chapter is over. History will see it is an aberration in the Party’s history – albeit a temporarily successful one in electoral terms. It will be seen as the period in which the party lost its soul and very nearly its entire raison d’être. The Labour Party was always meant to be a socialist party that represents the interests of workers and the oppressed. It has always been something of a broad church, ranging from the neo-marxist to the democratic socialist. Neoliberal, right of centre (however you want to label it) was never going to be a long term option.

Times, they are a-changing. People across Europe and beyond are waking up to the realities of unsustainable economics, the inbuilt inequalities and environmental catastrophes that are intrinsically part of globalised neoliberalism. Witness the resurgence of the Left in Greece, Spain, Portugal. Eastern bloc countries are set to follow suit as their initial freedom to drift right begins to yield the same realisation of the neoliberal realities.

You ought to be thanking your lucky stars that after the lame (to be kind) Milliband years, the party was presented with an unexpected opportunity to reclaim its heritage, revitalise itself from the roots up and finally tackle the challenges head on, rather than meekly be complicit in pursuing the same unsustainable path.

This has been underlined by the Brexit vote. There can be little doubt that this was first and foremost an anti-establishment vote. It saw people being prepared to vote contrary to purported self-interest because people no longer trust politicians to stand up for their interests. That is the biggest indictment of what Labour has become than anything else I can think of. The Leave strap line about taking back control was the telling one – not so much in terms the right wingers vision of what this could mean for them, but in terms of people wanting to feel than could take back some measure of control in their own lives.

This is fundamentally intertwined with what is happening in the Labour Party. After years of feeling alienated from what should be their party, the left-leaning people of the country are finally sensing an opportunity to take their party back. It is invigorating and exciting like nothing else I have experienced in politics. There is an irresistible force palpably building that is going to overwhelm you and your now anachronistic Blairite pals. Chilcott is the final nail in the coffin. There is no way back.

It seems to me that you have two reasonable choices and one unreasonable one from which to choose. It would be quite reasonable for an elected representative to fall into line with the people to whom you owe your position – party members and the electorate. It would also be perfectly reasonable to maintain the power of your personal convictions, recognise that those are no longer compatible with your current party and clear off to another more compatible party (or follow the Gang of Four’s example and go create your own new party – the Gang of 172?). It would not, however, be reasonable for a you to be part of a gang of elected representatives that have no regard for democratic process and that hold the overwhelming wishes of the Party membership in contempt. This can only rip the party apart, and this will be your epitaph (not Corbyn’s) if it comes to pass.

You are absolutely right when you conclude that the future of the Party is at stake and that it is much bigger than one individual. Wake up and smell the coffee. It is not about you!!

Yours sincerely,

Andy Chyba

Hopefully we can all now be crystal clear where both I and Madeleine stand. It is going to be interesting!

And so it came to pass and, yet again, so many got it so badly wrong.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/23/leave-or-remain-eu-referendum-results-and-live-maps/

I am not talking about the 52% of voters who have decided to take us out of the EU. It would be an anti-democratic and conceited view to accuse 17.4 million people of being wrong, although it has to be said that 52% of a 72% turnout still means this seismic decision has been made by barely 37% of the electorate. However, in this country’s flawed democracy huge government majorities in Westminster are regularly achieved by even less of a mandate.

No, what I mean by so many getting it wrong is the supposed left. Left-wing politics is defined by Wikipedia thus:

“Left-wing politics supports social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality. They typically involve concern for those in society whom they perceive as disadvantaged relative to others and a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished.”

The salient point here is the phrase “concern for those in society whom they perceive as disadvantaged relative to others”. Implicit in this is a prerogative to understand the perspective of those people and offer a programme that addresses their needs. The perspective of these people has been very clear for quite some time. They are sick of the establishment screwing them over. They are sick of politicians reneging on promises and and being self-serving hypocrites. They are sick of feeling detached from the decision-making process. Cardiff seems remote to many. Westminster has long been completely out-of-touch and Brussels is positively alien. This was an anti-establishment vote, first and foremost. The left should have recognised this and embraced it.

Immigration has been talked up as the central issue, but this is classic scapegoating in more than one sense. While I accept that racists were bound to find appeal in leaving the EU, I refuse to accept the characterisation of Leave voters as die-hard racists. When the disadvantaged are trying to make sense of their predicament, when they are offered credible scapegoats they will accept this, in the absence of coherent alternative explanations and solutions. This failure to communicate the true reasons for the predicament of the disadvantaged , and to offer credible socialist alternatives, is the big failing of the Left in this campaign, and has left what should be their core support open to being picked off by the right-wing scapegoat merchants.

Straight talking and honest? Until this campaign!

A major part of the problem has been the fact that the traditionally left of centre party, Labour, is no longer remotely socialist. The grass-roots support for Corbyn should have been the wake up call they needed, but the PLP steadfastly refused to rally around him and shed their red-tory Blairism. This in turn led Corbyn to reluctantly falling into line, casting aside a lifetime of socialist opposition to the EU (alongside Tony Benn), and becoming a reluctant Remainer. That there is now a PLP revolt underway, accusing Corbyn of undermining the Remain campaign with his lack of enthusiasm, highlights just how completely out of touch these people have become. We now have a glorious opportunity to see a socialist Labour Party reborn under Corbyn, and be in the right place at the right time to finally dislodge the tory hegemony. But no. They look hell-bent on re-instigating internal warfare while Cameron retires gracefully and allows the Tories to potentially steady their ship. If they ditch Corbyn and anoint a Blairite successor they really will become utterly pointless and probably finished.

Things look little better for the other left-wing pretenders. Both Plaid Cymru and the Green Party emphatically backed the wrong horse. Jenny Jones is not looking quite to silly now. It will be fascinating to watch how Plaid Cymru attempt to spin their way out of yet another mess of their own making. Of course, their support for Remain was heavily influenced by the dream of opening up a schism with England (long perceived as the the most likely source of Leave votes) in pursuit of the independence holy grail. It was the same ploy for the SNP, but with important differences. Firstly, the SNP are an overtly neoliberal party that would always feel at home in the EU neoliberal club. Secondly, the close call ( and I still think, perhaps, the ‘manipulated’ outcome) of the Scottish Indy referendum, closely followed by the SNP landslide in the General Election, always made it likely that the Scottish electorate would trust the SNPs advice on how best to re-open the independence debate.

Plaid Cymru are in a very different position. They have pretensions to be an ecosocialist party and as such should have recognised the prevailing mood in their core vote, embraced the sound socialist arguments for Brexit, and put clear red water between themselves and Welsh Labour. They would still have had to contend with the other big difference with the SNP though. Namely, that relatively few of the electorate actually trust Plaid Cymru (20% in the WG vote and just 12% in the GE vote, compared to the SNP’s 47% SG vote and 50% GE vote). So now they find themselves between a rock and a hard place with nowhere obvious to turn.

As for the Greens, well they hardly merit a footnote. They are making very little progress anywhere, going backwards in Wales, and were just as split on this EU debate as other parties. And yet again, the leadership misjudged it badly. With much of the genuinely ecosocialist Green Left faction gone (at least several very prominent members to my knowledge), the Greens seem to be little more than a middle-class bunch of pseuds with no real passion for the genuine revolutions needed to actually achieve their environmental goals, let alone purported social goals. Just another party playing the election game, but losing nearly every time.

So what of the new dawn presented by this historic Brexit vote?

The left-wing Remainers have to look at themselves very hard. Remain never was a socialist vote. It was ‘a lesser of two evils’ vote. The greater evil they saw in Brexit will be self-fulfilling prophecy if they fail to re-assert themselves as left-wingers with genuine concern for the disadvantaged. I will be looking on with interest to see which party, if any is up for the challenge. It will start with eating some humble pie and admitting they got it wrong; that they had failed to understand their (potential) electorate and offer them a more positive Brexit alternative to the xenophobic scapegoating that was allowed to characterise the Leave campaign. With the egos involved, it is actually hard to imagine any of the parties managing this any time soon. Failure to do so, however, will simply re-enforce the tragedy of UKippers being seen to be more in touch with the disadvantaged.

“This will be a victory for the real people, for the ordinary people, and for the decent people. We fought against the multi-nationals, we fought against the big merchant banks, we fought against lies, corruption and deceit. Honesty, decency and belief in nation is going to win. And we will have done it without having to fight, without a single bullet being fired.”

This rousing left-wing rhetoric was uttered by none other than Nigel Farage as the dawn broke on the result. That he said it with his fingers crossed, in all probability, is not the point. It is what we should and could have heard from someone like Corbyn, and echoed by people like Leanne Wood. It is what the disadvantaged electorate wanted to hear and they got it from Farage. Note that he made no mention of immigration. It was the anti-establishment message he choose to drive home.

Whoever proves to be the first to learn the lessons will be well-placed to prosper and finally put Farage and company in their place. It will also be the signal for me to re-engage with politics. In the meantime, I feel pretty much disenfranchised but will enjoy a break from it all.

A part of me thinks that what I am about to say and do is part of the neoliberal masterplan, in terms of me (and many others) giving up the fight, but I feel myself teetering on the abyss again and my sense of self-preservation is kicking in.

This blog and social media have chronicled how I have wrestled with this infernal EU debate over many months and leant one way and then the other several times over. I have seen others in a similar quandary. This alone has made it a unique phenomenon. It is indicative of the only obvious fact of the matter – that nobody really knows what the hell is going to happen either way.

A consequence of this fact is that people have to rely on their own assimilation of the (conflicting) information presented (from invariably biased sources). The sources have presented this information as factual when it can never be thus in any meaningful sense – there are no definite facts about the future. They are suppositions, predictions and speculations; inevitably distorted by the vantage points and inherent prejudices of the observers. They are opinions. This is as true of my proclamations on the issue as anyone else’s. This is the basis for having to respect diverse opinion. FFS, we even have to tolerate religion because we cannot prove it to be wrong. But the lack of respect and toleration flowing in all directions on this occasion has been staggering, even amongst supposed friends, allies and comrades.

Personally, I know I can be forthright and belligerent at times, but I always try to respect individuals, even when I don’t respect organisations to which some individuals belong. I know I singularly fail in this when it comes royalty (parasites), tories of all hues (arseholes), and religious fundamentalists (fuckwits). I am but human after all. But I hope I have never directed abuse at anyone I know, on any sort of personal level, simply because I felt they were wrong. I also hope I have managed to maintain friendships with people who I know hold fundamentally different views to me on many matters. I take pride in choosing not to be offended by things – it generally means the argument has been lost for a start – but some of the stuff directed at me recently has tested that resolve.

There has been a strong irony in this as well. Not so long ago I was in the ‘reluctant Remain’ camp along with many leftie associates. Because of my circle of contacts, I was not exposed to any direct right-wing abuse at all. Even the Tories I have contact with were respectful of my stance. Many shared it. I did enter into dialogue with leftie friends who had positioned themselves in the ‘Lexit’ camp and had some well-mannered dialogue with some of them. I slowly began to see their perspective and, swallowing hard, a while back, declared myself convinced of their perspective. This is where it all turns sour from my own personal perspective.

The bitter abuse and vitriol that began to come my way from supposed leftie comrades left me somewhat bewildered. You would have thought I had come out as a full-blown Nazi. All of a sudden I was undermining civilisation as we know it, a traitor to both past (my fathers) and future (my kids) generations, stooping low enough to associate with ‘cockroaches’ and ‘vermin’. This is the talk of the fundamentalist, the ideologue, the irrational. And the irony is, of course, that these people were in the grip of fear of the fundamentalists, the ideologues and the irrational people on the other side of the debate. Indeed, the whole thing has been rightly characterised as Project Fear, on both sides of the argument.

Enough is enough. In a debate on matters of opinion, where there is no respect from either side for the people holding differing (let alone opposing) views, there can be no winners. Everyone is bound to be a loser. There can be no respect for the outcome either. The verdict on Thursday is likely to mark the start, not the end, of ongoing power struggles and malcontent on all sides.

Thus, while I still believe Brexit to be the correct way to go for a genuine socialist, and recognise that fear of the extreme right makes Bremain by far the safer way to go, I no longer want to be associated with fundamentalists, ideologies and irrational fear-mongers on either side. So this is what my ballot paper will now look like this:And going forward? I can see no way forward for me or genuine ecosocialists. The game is up. It is patently clear that all the supposed leftie people I know, now push has come to shove, are not prepared to fight our corner. There is no socialist avenue to explore in remaining in the EU. That has largely been conceded. They have capitulated because they could not imagine taking on the likes of Farage, BoJo, IDS and Gove and winning. I find this, quite frankly, so depressingly defeatist. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t; still leaves you in bed with the devil.

So what if Brexit wins? The defeatists I have just lambasted will ensure it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no stomach for a fight. And why not? I suspect that it is because most of the supposed lefties out there – and certainly the vast majority in the Green Party – actually have just a bit too much to lose from putting conviction before pragmatism.

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard them say ‘yes, the EU has to go, but the time is not right’. The time will never be right. Sniping from the sidelines is just fine, but taking revolution to the streets? Only if we can fit in before Jessica’s piano lesson.

So hence the feeling of being stuck between the devil (the extreme-right) and the deep blue sea (the neoliberal super-club that is the EU). There is nowhere for me to go. I am at the end of the road. I give up. This is not say I can’t be proven wrong. With a Remain verdict, maybe the socialists across Europe will rest the ethos of the EU from the neoliberal hegemons after all. With a Leave verdict, maybe the factions of the left will unite like never before to face up to and face down the far-right threat. Excuse me if I don’t hold my breath on either of these coming to pass, but if they do it’ll be fantastic and I will surely be there. However, I suspect we will carry on pretty much as before, slowly sleepwalking towards and beyond tipping points that will not be subject to any referendum, as depicted in the Age of Stupid; the way our generation is destined to be remembered.

So, for the time being at least, Bridgend’s Green Leftie is retiring – I am sure some will say crawling back under my stone. I am going to turn my attention to other priorities: mental well-being and becoming an evangelical humanist.

And finally, here’s evidence that reaching the end of the road and going into the wilderness is actually a pretty good place to be. Na zdrowie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3JYE30LrBE

How can a simple closed question with just two answers to choose from be so bloody agonising?

The EU Referendum campaign has been the most distorted, contorted, and plain torted campaign I have ever witnessed. You only have to see the ragbag supporters from across the political spectrum on both sides the debate to realise that there was never going to be any chance of a sane, rational and, most significantly, truthful campaign from either side. The scaremongering, lies and hyperbole from both sides simply underline just how dogmatic, deceitful and, probably most significantly in most cases, plain scared of each other the protagonists have become.

What has become patently clear to me is that nobody has any clear idea what the consequences of the outcome will be however it comes out. It is boiling down to pure gut instincts on whether to go with the devil we know (and mostly hate) or take a huge gamble that is possibly more likely to go wrong than well. The very essence of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The debate has regularly trawled the depths of absurdity, and because it is all founded on speculation and can’t be disproved, it has proven impossible to counter with rationalism and reality. There are prophets of mercy and snake-oil salesmen on both sides.

Listening to the debate has got me nowhere. Over the last few months alone, I have vacillated one way then the other repeatedly. With crunch time imminent and no reliable help at hand, I have to try and work it out for myself. Rationality can only take me so far. Gut feelings will have to take me the rest of the way.

First of all, let me try and cut through a lot of the nonsense about exactly what is at stake in this referendum. Not for the first time, people do not seem to have any sort of clear idea what areas of jurisdiction are involved. So just as we saw with the Welsh Assembly elections recently, too much of the debate is being taken up by things that are not directly relevant. For example:

• You are not voting to leave the EEA or WTO, meaning most, if not all of the UK’s trade and benefit agreements will remain unchanged should we leave, until such a time that the UK decides to renegotiate them for any reason.
• You are not voting to leave NATO, meaning our security agreements remain unchanged. Should we receive an act of hostility from a non-NATO member, then NATO countries are obliged to come to our assistance. This does not change. I would vote to leave NATO, but that is another issue entirely.
• You are not voting to leave the UN, G8 or G20, meaning Britain will have much the same voice on the world (if not European) stage as it does today.
• You are not voting to leave the continent of Europe!! The UK will still, geographically, be part of Europe. Non-political organisations of Europe will still extend membership to the UK (i.e. sports governing bodies, Eurovision etc.).
• You are not voting to stop recognising Interpol or Europol and neither are you voting for our security services to stop dealing with other intelligence services in the fight against terrorism and global, organised crime. This would be in nobody’s interest.
• You are not voting against being able to travel to Europe. The UK has always maintained stricter border and passport controls than many EU members. This will not change. You will still use a passport to go on holiday and you will still be allowed entry to countries in Europe. Indeed, rather than being held up more it is entirely possible that you may get the chance to skip queues by using the non-EU queues at the airport.
• Medical and science research will not simply stop. Academia rarely recognises borders.
• You are not voting against human rights. The EU Convention on, and European Court of Human Rights are not part of the EU. Until Parliament passes a new bill of rights for the UK, these will still apply, as will precedents already passed down to UK courts from Brussels. Conservatives intend to withdraw us from the ECHR irrespective of the referendum outcome. It will remain a battle to be fought, and won separate from this referendum campaign.
• The UK is already outside of the Schengen zone and so migrant workers must enter the UK with a valid passport before and after June 23rd. That will not change.

So what ARE we actually voting about? What you are voting for is UK sovereignty. You are voting to stay in or leave a political union of leaders and representatives that you British people did not elect. You are voting against a commission of unelected, elite men that nobody at all voted for and yet they make many crucial decisions on our behalf.

Thus the focus has to be the anti-democratic and anti-political nature of the EU. On the one hand we have the technocracy of commissioners and central bankers, for whom neither monetary or fiscal policy are up for debate (just ask Greece?); while on the other hand, we have nationalists invoking ethnicity, language and territory as the basis of political identities, while disregarding the role these very factors have had in the very worst episodes of european history. This is the problem with a debate essentially based on issues of sovereignty. One side disregards it; the side abuses it. We are reduced to a ‘Remain’ campaign focused on economic scaremongering and a ‘Leave’ campaign focused on the myth of Britishness and fear of foreigners. Small-minded answers to very big questions.

Sovereignty is, off-course, a loaded term. It stems from sovereign, as in monarch and thus monarchy. It therefore can make people (especially on the left) bristle. We need clarity about what we mean by sovereignty. My understanding of sovereignty goes back to my ‘A’ Level Enlightenment studies and more specifically Rousseau’s Social Contract. He turned the traditional sovereignty of the ruler on its head. Sovereignty should belong to the ruled, not the ruler. In a democracy, consent to rule is always provisional – rulers are subjected to the will of the people.

We are simply voting to bring sovereignty back to Westminster, and that is all. If you worry about that because you don’t like the Conservative government, look at the reality. Their majority in parliament is very slim. They have been blocked on big decisions already. You are therefore not giving sovereignty to David Cameron, but to the UK House of elected representatives. And if that refuses to work for us, we have the option of taking to the streets and bending our institutions to our will. That is manageable and doable at a UK level (although admittedly a daunting prospect). It is utterly impossible in an EU of 28 countries spread across the length and breadth of the continent.

Are we seriously saying we cannot beat this bunch?

I have found the Left’s unremitting pessimism nauseating at times through this campaign. Talk of voting ‘‘Remain’ through gritted teeth’ is rife on social media. It is giving up the fight. It is saying we know that the EU is a shite neoliberal stitch up, but that it is the lesser of two evils as we cannot manage the wherewithal to take on Tory gobshites like Boris, Gove and IDS.

Owen Jones recognised the Left’s pessimism about implementing social reform at home without the help of the EU in his Guardian column (14/07/15):

Let’s just be honest about our fears. We fear that we will inadvertently line up with the xenophobes and the immigrant-bashing nationalists, and a “no” result will be seen as their vindication, unleashing a carnival of Ukippery. Hostility to the EU is seen as the preserve of the hard right, and not the sort of thing progressives should entertain. And that is why – if indeed much of the left decides on Lexit – it must run its own separate campaign and try and win ownership of the issue.

This last point has not happened. After a lifetime of being anti-EU even Corbyn got badgered into line.

Even those that defend the EU concede that it faces a crisis of legitimacy. Any trace of the once vaunted European social model has been kicked into touch by the neoliberal hegemons with their unremitting regime of austerity, privatisation, competitiveness and erosion of fundamental rights. You vote ‘Remain’ to defend and perpetuate this system. You vote ‘Leave’ to oppose this and fight another day for something better.

It is against my natural instincts to pursue an optimistic vision. But what option is there, when push comes to shove for someone harbouring dreams of an ecosocialist future? Keeping dreams alive surely has to trump seeing dreams extinguished for another generation or more.

On this basis, I will VOTE LEAVE on 23rd June.

POSTSCRIPT:

I didn’t, in the end , vote ‘Leave’. I spoilt my ballot paper. To vote Leave at a time when the populism of Johnson and his far-right cronies were holding sway in the Tory party seemed too big a risk to take. I also baulked at voting ‘Remain’ as I still believed most of the arguments above, and also believed that Remain was comfortably ahead in any case.

That all our worst fears about a Tory-led Brexit have come to pass is a tragedy. It all went wrong when Labour MPs mutinied and scuppered Corbyn. A socialist Brexit would have been good news. The neoliberal Brexit we got was always going to be a disaster.

JC with Tariq Ali

I have just been reading Tariq Ali‘s essay in the London Review of Books entitled “Corbyn’s Progress”.  Tariq is always worth listening to, but he has not got anything particularly insightful or revelatory to say about Corbyn’s period as leader of the Labour Party to date.

The most interesting section, to my mind, was that he has to say about debates over whether bomb Islamic State positions in Syria. Ali speculates that part of Cameron’s motives were to try and make Corbyn’s position as leader untenable in the aftermath of Maria Eagle shafting him over Labour’s trident position. Ali suggests that in this light, Corbyn should not have allowed a free vote on the issue, thus allowing Hilary Benn to deliver his disgraceful tirade citing Hitler and the Spanish Civil War, and culminating with 66 Labour MPs voting with the Tories. However, the majority of the PLP did support the Corbyn position.

Ali purports that this relatively good result for Corbyn led the media to seek out someone else to blame for MPs getting behind Corbyn. That, he suggests, was ‘Stop The War’, an organisation chaired by Corbyn ever since the death of Tony Benn. The fact that Corbyn wished to consult Stop The War before the Syria bombing debate in Parliament rattled the cages of many, both inside and outside the Labour Party.

Curiously, it also seems to have had repercussions in the Green Party too. Caroline Lucas had been a prominent supporter and committee member of Stop The War for many years, sharing platforms with Corbyn on many occasions. She resigned not long before the Commons debate. Ali suggests that this was possibly at the behest of Natalie Bennett, who he describes as inept and fearful that Green supporters were being seduced away by Corbyn and therefore wanted to be seen as taking a different approach. I am not too convinced by this analysis, although disappointed by Lucas’ actions (for once). She offers an explanation (or is it more of an excuse) on her website.

Given that Bennett has now decided to stand down, there is enormous support (including from me) for Lucas to take on the leadership position again. If she does so, it will be fascinating to see how she seeks to position the Party. It is to be hoped that she will seek to enhance the Party’s ecosocialist credentials – rebuffing the relatively right wing elements that have effectively driven many of the Green Left ecosocialists within the Party to at least consider their positions, if they haven’t already given up (I am far from the only one in this category).

The Green Parties USP is its ecologism, which is subtly but significantly different from the environmentalism found in many political parties. This gives it a vital role to play in any potential coalition of the progressive left, so long as it does not lose its socialism.

Never in my lifetime has there been so much deep-rooted inner turmoil in just about very political party simultaneously. Every party seems to be having a kind of identity crisis. There is the real possibility of the long-standing neoliberal hegemony (established by Thatcher, reinforced by Blair and maintained ever since), finally crumbling. This is largely being self-inflicted by self-serving, complacent, arrogant and ignorant Tories of various hues from blue to red via purple. Now is the time for the radical left to get its shit together, cut out the sectarianism and form a united front that can step successfully into the breach.

As we have seen in Wales in recent days, the first step towards that is for parties to heal themselves. It is little wonder that Plaid Cymru (itself not quite as homogenised as it likes to pretend) cannot work out whether to see Labour as friends or foes. Corbyn’s Labour ought to be seen as friends. Carwyn Jones’ red tory Welsh Labour are rightly distrusted.

As Tories and Labour, in particular, continue to tear themselves apart, they are both beginning to realise that FPTP may not look after them quite so well in the future. All other parties are also freshly reminded of just how un-representative FPTP is, and even Additional Member systems are. The time is ripe to bring PR back onto the agenda.

That being the case, parties need to recognise that the old sectarian habits will get them nowhere. Coalition will become the norm. For Greens and Plaid Cymru to have so very much in common, and for Labour and Lib Dems to also have significant ground in common, means that implementing the common ground ought too be a formality. What ruins this though is the vitriolic, sectarian spite that emerges over areas of difference. The dynamics within our politics need to change.

This, more than anything else, is why Corbyn truly shows us the way forward. Without compromising his most strongly held beliefs, he is prepared to talk to anybody in a civilised and constructive manner. It allows apologies to be made for past mistakes, compromises to be made that allows some progress in the right direction (rather than none), and for everybody, friend or foe, to be treated with dignity and respect.

Corbyn’s progress has been astonishing, but he has a long way to go, within his own party first and foremost. Tariq Ali seems to think he is getting there. That is good news for all of us.

Perhaps the best thing ecosocialists in Wales can do is to join Welsh Labour and help steer onto the Corbyn path. It is a very big ask though, and one that I for one am do not have the stomach for at present.

For ecosocialists in this country, election time is generally a time of despair by and large. There are no parties that really embrace what ecosocialism is truly about. They are players within the system that will always maintain the neoliberal hegemony, by hook or by crook. Every election simply serves to underline that transforming our world for the better (as defined by ecosocialist values) through engaging with the political process is the very essence of pissing in the wind.

What are the alternatives?

History suggest that taking to streets and bloody insurrection are probably the quickest way of bringing down the established order, but that what comes in its place is seldom the panacea we envision at the outset. It is, at best, a high risk strategy that reeks a lot of collateral damage along the way. It is not an option we should select, but may become the default option foisted upon us if nothing else changes the unsustainable course we are on.

Another alternative (one I dream about regularly) is opting out. Find a remote spot, build an off-grid dwelling and grow your own food. Fuck the rest of the world. It may be eco, but it is not a socialist response. It flounders as a way forward for humanity as a whole. It is backward looking too – it takes us back to pre-industrial lifestyles (and will bring pre-indutrial problems along with pre-industrial benefits).

What we need are innovative solutions and new ideas, not just the revitalisation of discarded ideas because they seem less bad than the current problems. My generation and those before me are the ones that have created this neoliberal, capitalist nightmare we find ourselves in. It has provided most with material wealth and comfort that we now see as everyday essentials. Asking people to give up those comforts is a hard sell, even amongst those that accept the truth that indefinite growth is impossible on a finite planet. But maybe this isn’t the core of the problem. At the end of the day it will be self-regulating.

In many ways, the more distressing impacts of capitalist culture is how it commodifies our labour as little more than production units. There is a growing epidemic of mental illness and dissatisfaction with our lives. This leads us to take solace in consumerism as a way of gauging our success and our value. It also creates the dog-eat-dog competition that destroys camaraderie and empathy between fellow human beings.

But maybe a different world is slowly emerging, without the direction or assistance of politicians, among the new and upcoming generation. Those born around the turn of the century/millenium are now beginning to join the economic world. This millennial generation are beginning to show signs of taking some old anarchist ideas and adapting them to the new technological age to develop new working relationships that, in one form of new business organisation, is known as an IMAGINAL ORGANISATION (explained in this video:

At the recent Reclaim the Power ‘End Coal’ event I have taken part in (report), i was greatly encouraged by witnessing a young generation organise so effectively and throughly, while embracing consensus decision-making and every decent value I would recognise as belonging to good ecosocialists. I left wondering whether they could transfer these qualities into other areas of life. It appears they can.

Anton Chernikov and Giles Hutchins have written extensively about this. Together, they wrote “Redefining The Nature of Business for the Millennial Age” and Chernikov wrote a great article entitled The Imaginal Economy in the STIR magazine issue 13. Hutchins runs an interesting blog here.

In essence, there is a movement beginning to gain traction among a new generation of creative, socially minded and information-enabled young professionals and entrepreneurs who are beginning to transform our economy from the inside out. They don’t play by the established rules. They utilise the new opportunities offered by technological innovation to secure economic freedom while living lives on their own terms. It is close to the world that Bertrand Russell envisioned in his great essay ‘In Praise of Idleness’. Not that these millennials are remotely idle. They are busying away endeavouring to replace the now broken economic models of the past with a new collaborative imaginal economy.

Watch the video link above, if you haven’t done so already. An Imaginal Organisations (IO) is effectively a non-organistion. It is held together with social capital and has no need for a legal entity or a bank account. It hold no assets and pays no salaries. It is formed when a group of like-minded founders come together to form a imaginal foundation of shared values and intentions. It is all about exploring potential synergy and partnerships. Networks, skills and expertise are pooled and shared to the benefit of all. As the IO grows, some degree of leadership and management will be required, but this focuses purely on maintaining the right culture. What management there is acts as the guardian of the IO, perhaps though regular communications, get-togethers and events. They will always be leaders by example first and foremost.

It is a form of organisation that built on a culture of shared purpose, friendship and trust. On this basis not only are people more effective, but they don’t even need contacts and salaries! The idea of ‘the commons’ is fundamental to many aspects of ecosocialism. For an IO to exist and to work, members have to embrace the concepts of creative commons and radical transparency. There also needs to be a high level of consciousness and self-awareness so that tensions can be addressed before they become toxic. This may be influence the varied success rates of IOs in different cultures.

It is essentially a simple enough idea. It takes organisational concepts back to fundamentals that have all-too-often been lost in the capitalist world. It is essentially about enabling people to work together to create value that sustains them all in a way that would not be possible individually. There is no place for the fear and ego that dominates most organisations that I have worked for. There are no limits to directions that can be followed and what can be accomplished.

It may all sound like a utopian vision. My fear, borne by what I have witnessed myself, is that such things succeed on the back of almost limitless commitment when people are in their mid to late twenties, but then life’s other responsibilities kick in, like having a family. The ideals also seem to eventually get corrupted by those ever present human traits of greed and jealousy. But this is what happened in the past, under the old models and paradigms. We are not talking about working for soulless corporations in glass boxes according to strict schedules. We are talking about being part of a community that comes together out of choice, surrounding ourselves with people we like and can learn from. It is an environment that enhances your creativity and humanity – rather than drains it away.

Chernikov sums where we are well:

“Our world is beginning to wake up to the fact that business, society and the environment are interconnected and that many of the systems and institutions that we have today have become too big and are no longer fit for purpose. To profit at the expense of nature or the poorest in society is not a victory, it is a failure of our humanity…… In a sentence, a new collaborative, pro-social economy is emerging, and if we are going to thrive in this new economy we all need to become better at practising collaboration, not just talking about it.”

The march of new technologies knows no bounds. From 3D printing to nano tech and robotics, it is hard to imagine the world that may be just around the corner. The good news is that much of the technology erodes barriers to to entry. Tiny start-up companies an compete and outperform corporate giants in evermore fields. Instead of using armies of workers and costly infrastructure, new IO firms can leverage with technology and shared expertise, often de-materialising into the digital world. Economic and social theorist, Jeremy Rifkin, has described the ‘Zero Marginal Cost Society’. in which there is a shift in business goals from ownership and control towards access and value. This means less emphasis on selling stuff and more on providing value and enhancing the lives of a community of stakeholders. Marginal costs of production are reduced through the use of creative commons, open source and peer-to-peer networks. This can yield products and services of bespoke quality at unprecedented speed and cost.

As Bertand Russell once imagined (back in the 1930s), technology emancipates us and can free us up from drudgery. It can eliminate the hideous commute and the soulless workplace. It can free up more time for creativity, relaxation and leisure. Under current models, technology rarely achieves these things. It is more likely to imprison and overwhelm us. Social media are more likely to breed superficiality than empathy. We get sucked into the need to constantly have bigger, faster, cheaper, more efficient. None of this actually represents any sort of human progress.

Abraham Lincoln once said that the best way to predict the future is to create the future. Add this to Einstein’s quote about not being able to solve problems with the same thinking that created them. These thoughts inform the thinking of the millennials seeking to sort out the messes that we have ctreated for them to inherit. Chernikov’s essay ends with the following vision, that offers reason for us ecosocilaists to look forward to handing over the baton to the upcoming generation:

“What would happen if we rebuild society from the ground up with IO values? What would happen if we unleash a wave of exponential organisations that are driven by purpose and consciousness rather than profit and ego? What would happen if we stopped trying to squash everyone into increasingly congested cities in the name of progress and unleashed an wave of entrepreneurial migration into the countryside? What is we could make learning fun, relevant and social for students of all ages so that they can be better prepared for the imaginal economy?”

Imagine.

Throughout the entire Welsh Assembly election campaign, it was obvious to just about everyone that the best chance of a stable government, assuming no Labour majority, would be some sort of deal between Labour and Plaid Cymru. But there is a world of difference between stable government and good government.

Plaid Cymru have spent much of the last five years, and especially the campaign period, lambasting Welsh Labour, entirely justifiably, for their complacency, lack of imagination and shocking record in areas of key services like health and education.

“No deal” (Fingers crossed behind back)

Leanne Wood repeatedly said that she wanted no deals with anybody and that she wanted a Plaid Cymru government. That was always a pipe dream, but more realistically, and one of the main reasons I ended up up voting for them, she also has repeatedly said that as the main party of opposition, they would provide the robust opposition so patently missing when the Tories were the main opposition party.

All this make the shenanigans of the last week hard to fathom.

Plaid Cymru took a calculated risk in standing Leanne against Carwyn last week. It almost led to Leanne becoming the First Minister – which would have been an embarrassing car crash – no way could she form a government – and had Kirsty Williams to thank for saving her from that mishappenstance. As it turned out, Carwyn got his bloody nose, and Plaid Cymru had to deal with the shame of having the full support of both Tories and the devil-incarnate, UKIP, tarnishing their public image before the new Senedd had even got started.

With both these gifts pocketed, Tories and UKIP could now manipulate things further by offers of support to Welsh Labour (with strings attached, of course) and by undermining any need for Welsh Labour to do any bargaining with Plaid Cymru by, as the Tories have done, declaring the intention to abstain in the next First Minister vote and thereby rubber stamping Carwyn RT Jones as First Minister, after a week’s fun and games.

“What do you want from me?” (through gritted teeth)

At this point, both Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour should have realised their proper places and had the maturity to take those roles more seriously going forward. There was no need for any deal at all, let alone a cosying up behind closed doors. Both will claim it was in their best interests, whereas in reality it undermines them both.

Welsh Labour will presumably have been seeking assurances that Plaid Cymru will not continue to pull stunts to undermine the government process. With Kirsty Williams

Kirsty puckering up for Carwyn?

likely to be largely co-operative, and UKIP likely to be absent increasingly often as they get bored with provincial minutiae, I am not sure they really had much to worry about. That was very much their thinking before last weeks stunt. They have now made themselves publicly beholden to Plaid Cymru. Whatever has been agreed, that will be the perception.

Plaid Cymru will presumably have been seeking pledges to give them a few snippets from their manifesto. This will be held up as justification for the farce they have made of the first week of the new Senedd (following on from the Health Bill farce they enacted in the last week of the last Senedd before the election). However, as the lead opposition party against a minority government, I find it hard to imagine that they have been given any concessions from Labour this week that would not have been able to achieve on a case-by-case basis anyway. Wrapping up such concessions in a secretive deal behind closed doors now is going to reap more negatives than positives in terms of positive perceptions of the Party in the eyes of voters next time around. Regular public concessions as time goes by in the Senedd would have a more positive impact. It is the difference between a strong opponent putting in regular telling blows that might eventually lead to knock out, as opposed to a virtual coalition where partners prop each other up because they are both too weak to stand tall and strong.

Will we ever find out exactly what they have agreed? I somehow doubt it as they will probably both feel a bit embarrassed about all the fuss over what I suspect amounts to very little.

And where does all this leave Bridgend’s Green Leftie? Having given up on a largely clueless Green Party, I had been hoping to join a largely ecosocialist Plaid Cymru that might actually be on the verge of achieving major positive things in Wales. Their manifesto was pretty impressive overall.

McAvoy – the ‘Bluebird Bruiser’

However, they still seem to lack the maturity and guile to convince people that they are fit to govern. I can’t be doing with such nonsense when there is so much pressing work to be getting on with immediately (e.g. Port Talbot steel in particular). Those that know the ‘marmite’ Neil McAvoy, one of PC’s new AMs, will also understand why I expect an increase in petty, immature squabbles going forward.

Many of my ecosocialist friends have been tempted to join the Labour Party in support of Jeremy Corbyn‘s vision of the way forward. I would be sorely tempted by that too, but I am struggling to find any sort of socialist in Welsh Labour (other than Mick Antoniw) and Carwyn RT Jones local branch would be my branch here in Bridgend – and a more Blairite mafia you would struggle to find.

So I guess that leaves me here sniping from the sidelines. I will continue to try of offer constructive opinions to anyone (is there anyone?) prepared to listen, and when I eventually, if ever, see evidence of a Party that actually has a clue about how to put the world to rights, not just on paper, but in practice, then I will sign up and try to do my bit.

In the meantime, although it was pretty immature in itself putting this out as an election broadcast, this Green Party video sums up British politics at the moment pretty well (a Welsh language version featuring Carwyn, Leanne, RT, Hamilton and Kirsty anybody?):

(Click image for the video)

ADDENDUM

I was wrong about them keeping the details of the deal deal quiet – Plaid Cymru have been keen to brag about what they have achieved. They have summarised it thus:

Looks impressive – but on closer analysis, especially in the context of the Welsh Labour manifesto for these elections,  what exactly have they extracted from Labour that was not likely to happen anyway? The answer is very little.

Looking at the lists above and starting with the left hand column:

• 30 hours of free childcare is in the Labour manifesto – nothing gained.
• National Infrastructure Commission is something gained – but commissions and commissioners are no assurance of change on the ground (e.g Electoral Commission and Police Commissioners) – it is potentailly a low cost quango offering some jobs to some mates and corprate connections, if we take a cynical view of it.
• A new Drugs Fund is in the Labour manifesto – scope may be slightly different now, but no significant gain.
• Welsh Development Bank – another quango gained. Labour’s manifesto pledges £2billion in devlopment investment. Overall then, a gain of dubious value.
• Recruitment and training of GPs is too vague to have much meaning. Recruitment and training of GPs goes on all the time. The Labour manifesto cites other strategies for relieving pressure on GPs that may help stem the loss of GPs that are quitting under the strain. This may well be more effective overall. Thus, a gain of dubious overall value.
• 100,000 new apprenticeships – exactly as in the Labour manifesto – nothing gained.
• Support for the steel industry – surely a given and therefore, without specifics, nothing gained.
• Campaigning to ‘Remain in EU’ – an already declared given – nothing gained.
• Anti-smacking legislation – a gain, but not really contentious to most Labour AMs, so not a hard fought gain. May prove more contentious in wider circles.
• Additional Learning Needs Bill and Autism Act – takes Labour manifesto pledges a little further (into legislation). Probably the most significant gain, but not a huge stride forward.
• Strengthen Welsh Language Measure – in the Labour manifesto – nothing gained.
• New Public Health Bill – a given after the debacle preciptated by ‘Cheap-date-gate’ in the last session of the last Senedd. Removing the e-cigarette element was a ridiculously late change of heart by PC to justify their petulance. It’s removal is a mistake in my opinion – thus I rate it a step backwards rather than a step forward.
• A review of Health & Social Care – assuming a presumption towards better integration of these services – is in the Labour manifesto. Nothing gained.

To summarise, behind all the spin is only ONE gain that genuinely excites me – regarding legislation to improve services to those on the Autistic spectrum and with additional learning needs. As an educationalist, I fully recognise just how important this is, but it is, sadly, a measure of limited mass appeal across the general public.

There a few gains of dubious and/or uncertain benefit, but at least 8 things listed here that are either in the Labour manifesto or that were going to happen anyway.

And where is anything on fracking? On fossil fuels and climate change? On scrapping the Black Route option for the M4 relief road? Plaid Cymru are supposed to make the Greens irrelevant in Wales, aren’t they?

Thus my overall feelings are not changed. The whole thing has been a convoluted stunt that, when the dust settles, will have achieved very little. Indeed, I still think the negative impacts on public perceptions will prove more costly to both Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour in the long run. We knew they had areas of common ground already. Cosying up together behind closed doors to do deals does not constitute the robust opposition I expected from PC, despite Leanne Woods trying to say otherwise. The best that can be said of the whole affair is that Welsh Labour may have learned a bit more humility, but that did not necessitate them choosing to kowtow to just one of the opposition parties. That takes humilty into the realms of humiliation.

An inauspicious start to the new Senedd!

The new Senedd has only been back a few days and yet the toxicity of UKIP’s presence is already being felt.

Witness the vitriol aimed at Plaid Cymru for having UKIP AMs backing Leanne Wood‘s candidature for First Minister. Witness UKIP AMs also making unwanted overtures towards Labour. Any association with them, invited or not is pure political poison.

As someone who has supported Greens and Lib Dems at times in the past, and knowing the true values of those parties and the hard honest toil of many of their members, to see UKIP come from nowhere to claim not just a token seat, but a 7 out of 60 seats simply appals me. Lib Dems and Greens have one between them.

Some will say that this is just democracy at work, but democracy comes in many flavours. Or more specifically, it comes in many configurations. What we have in Wales is the Additional Member version, a fudge between the notoriously unrepresentative FPTP and the allegedly too representative truly proportional representation.

Only truly proportional representation ensures no place for tactical voting. With 60 seats available, truly proportional representation would give a seat for even 1.7% of the vote achieved. Under FPTP, Labour won 27 of the 40 constituency seats – 67.5% of the seats for 35% of the votes cast. Even under Additional Member hybrid system, Labour still achieved 29 seats , or 48% of the total, that still significantly overstates the level of support they actually have.

Working with what we’ve got, there is still a crucial role for tactical voting, not just in the established manner in FPTP votes, but also in the top-up list system used in Wales, the system that provided us with all 7 of The new UKIP AMs.

The crucial thing to grasp here is that due to their dominance in the constituencies, they can generally achieve little in terms of extra seats through the top-up lists (achieving between 0 and 2 at best in the 5 elections using this system).

This time around, the idiosyncracies of the system gave Labour 2 additional seats in there weakest region re constituencies – just one constituency AM out of 8 inMid & West Wales, despite poling less than Conservatives (0 top up seats due to winning 3 constituencies, and Plaid Cymru, 1 top-up to go with their 3 constituency wins). It also allowed Neil Hamilton to squeak in here with just 1500 more vote than the Lib Dem.

The point I am getting to is that with the exception of this region, where 45,000 Tory top-up votes were a waste, in every other region, votes for Labour were a waste, nearly 280,000 Labour votes, the most in every region bar Mid & West, achieved precisely zero AMs, while these regions yielded 6 colleagues for Neil Hamilton.

It would have been perfectly legitimate for Labour voters to have looked for better value from their vote – and for their party of choice to have helped them do this with some guidance.

In fact, Welsh Labour have influenced the outcome by deciding not to provide such guidance. Given that the polls were clear enough, then failing to head off the UKIP influx has to be interpreted as Welsh Labour being content with that outcome. And indeed, I believe that they are quite happy with it. Having the oddball collection of chancers, sleaze bags and uber-Toris in the Senedd can only make Labour look moderate and reasonable in comparison. From their perspective, that can only be preferable to having more eco-socialists in the form of PC and perhaps the odd Green present. This would only highlight the red-Tory truth of Welsh Labour under Carwyn Jones. Even extra truly-moderate Lib Dems would have done this too.

Thus, I for one, hold Welsh Labour responsible for this tainting of the Senedd. They could have done something about it. However, the sobering fact is that with 13% of the popular vote, that translates, under a truly proportional system, to …….. erm…. (big sigh) EIGHT seats. So perhaps UKIP are the only ones who actually got close to what they deserved!!

This means the battle to expose UKIP’s ideology and unsavoury under-belly has to be rejoined (Stand Up To UKIP) . Just don’t expect any help from Welsh Labour in doing so!