Prince Charles: The Ceremonial Pimp Of British-Saudi Venality And Hypocrisy

Before recently flying out to pay his last respects to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the last time Prince Charles jetted out to the Wahhabi Kingdom was on Tuesday 18th November 2014 to bring a ceremonial end to the long running business saga by literally customarily dancing to the tune of the Saudi-Wahhabi clan. The first in line to the British crown dressed to the nines in traditional military regalia of the Saudi nepotistic despots, as he helped to seal yet another military deal which will healthily burnish the order book of Europe’s largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems. The price for 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets was finally agreed to by the Saudi clan.

The deal, aptly and Orwellianly named “Salam” (i.e. Peace), is worth £4.5 billion (equivalent to roughly $7.1 billion) and according to a report in the Times of London, is part of the notorious and corrupt £40 billion “Yamamah” (i.e. Dove) deal. Furthermore, the hundreds of millions of pounds newly “wringed” from the Saudi clan will underpin thousands of jobs in the North West of England “and around the British defence supply chain” added the Times.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT,) an organisation which monitors the arms industry, claimed that the United Kingdom sells more weapons to the Saudis than any other country in the world. On the day of the Prince’s arrival to Saudi Arabia a CAAT spokesman urged him to “disassociate” himself from the “despotic regime” so as not to confer legitimacy on it. They also urged Charles to raise the issue of human rights abuses in the Kingdom.

The following day, CAAT was more forthright and condemned Prince Charles for securing the Typhoon deal with the ruling clan. The spokesman once again reiterated the organisation’s contention that the deal primarily lends “legitimacy” to the Saudi repressive regime. On the other hand, an analyst at the investment bank, RBC Capital claimed that with “Salam cash coming in, this should give BAE more flexibility for cash deployment moving forward.”

From Saudi Arabia, the Prince travelled to the only other Wahhabi kingdom in the region, its neighbour Qatar, where there are currently military bids on the table for (coincidentally!) 72 fighter jets. One of the bidders is surprise, surprise, BAE Systems but amazingly Prince Charles seems to only have had time for his favourite hobby horse, global environmental degradation. Naturally he commended the work done by Qataris in addressing the environmental challenges faced by the principality then merrily flew back to Blighty.

However, it is all very well for CAAT to argue the UK and its wondrous Prince Charming is conferring and bestowing “legitimacy” on the Saudis, but if it wasn’t for the Saudis and the other Arabian despots of the Persian Gulf who else would be purchasing arms from BAE Systems or for that matter bankrolling other aspects of the British economy?

In the past decade, Saudi Arabia and the Arab statelets (i.e. Kuwait, UAE, Qatar) created by British Imperialism during the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century have been pumping billions into the British economy keeping it afloat in these financially difficult times. Each of the states have highly dubious human rights records and none are democracies in any sense of the word.

Qatar, for example recently purchased Harrods, the world famous store and built the tallest building in western Europe, the Shard in London. The opulence and waste behind the Shard was partly justified as Qatari “confidence” in London’s economy. Sainsbury’s, a national UK supermarket chain has been kept afloat by the ruling Qatari al-Thani family as well. London’s Olympic Village is owned by Qatari ownership after a deal worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Recently, it was announced that £10billion is on the verge of being invested by Qatar in British infrastructure projects. Kuwait, on the other hand, has already invested half of that on these projects in the UK.

More so, ‘Little Chef’, a UK roadside diner was bailed out by a Kuwaiti company and the British national lingerie retailer ‘La Senza’ was saved from bankruptcy by another Kuwaiti company.

The nepotistic Gulf dynasties have also invested heavily in British sports events through sponsorship and even purchasing football clubs such as Manchester City or Nottingham Forrest. UAE helped to build Arsenal Football Club’s stadium. 

Cricket stadiums built by British companies, a sport which has little traction for Arabs, are multiplying in the Gulf. The UAE and Qatar ruling families also possess a soft spot for British race horses, spending millions on these animals while indigenous Arabs in the hinterland of the Arab World scrape a living and Palestinians continue to endure occupation, theft and ethnic cleansing.

Furthermore, Qatar and UAE have a combined 48% stake in the London Stock Exchange. When Barclays Bank was on the verge of collapse during the recent financial crises, its Chief Executive successfully travelled to Qatar for financial assistance.

Is it really a contradiction that the world’s main harbingers and supporters of jihadism, al-Qaeda and the theology that spawns these violent trends is also the main and largest customer of Great Britain’s ultimate merchant of death, BAE Systems? More so, when Prince Charles complains about the ‘tragic plight’ of Christians in the Middle East isn’t he but exposing his own and Her Majesty Government’s hypocrisy knowing full well that this plight is caused by the ‘sugar daddies’ of the British economy, i.e. the Gulf states, in their support for jihadis in Iraq and Syria?

It is all very well for CAAT to bemoan Prince Charles’s visit to the Kingdom and insist he secularly redeem himself by advocating human rights but the British have been dependent on the Gulf despots for a long time. In the late 1950’s Harold Macmillan, a former British Prime Minister, stated that without the oil of the Arabian peninsula the British nation would be “lost” and the whole structure of the British “economy would collapse”. Furthermore, “Without oil,” Macmillan noted, “and without the profits from oil” the UK will not be able to survive.[1]

The late Prime Minister’s opinion is probably more true today than it was back in the 1950’s when Great Britain was still renowned for its manufacturing industry which is now greatly diminished. Indeed, the very status of BAE Systems as a leading manufacturer would very much be in question without the “profits from oil.”

In conclusion, CAAT’s notion the Prince should be preaching human rights to the Saudi, Thani or any other Gulf Kingdom clan, British imperialism brought into existence misses the point. Venality and doing business with despots, is the latest economic strategy in a long line of total and inexcusable immoral policies rooted in British imperialist history.

Conducting business with the Saudis and the other Gulf nepotistic despots today is just as important to British prosperity as piracy, the slave trade, imperialist military conquest and colonialism was in the past.

[1] Alistair Horne, “Macmillan 1894-1956 Volume 1 of the Official Biography” (London: Macmillan, 1988) pg.411,422 and 429 respectively.

Nu’man Abd al-Wahid is a Yemeni-English independent researcher specialising in the political relationship between the British state and the Arab World. His main focus is on how the United Kingdom has historically maintained its political interests in the Arab World. His essays have appeared in Alternet, al-Akhbar (Lebanon), Mondoweiss and Black Commentator. A full collection of essays can be accessed at www.churchills-karma.com. Twitter handle: @ChurchillsKarma.

First published at Countercurrents

The Greens have the economic policies to ride the anti-austerity popularity wave

Syriza’s surge to power with a campaign against austerity has forced politicians across Europe to justify their economic policies. The UK chancellor was hot-off-the-mark to assure everyone that the Greek election result should not be interpreted as a rejection of austerity policies:

People get tired of economic failure, they [get] tired of rising unemployment… what you see is not a defeat of austerity, it is a defeat of economic plans that don’t work and in Britain we have got an economic plan that is working.

In private, George Osborne may well be reflecting upon whether British voters will consider the slowest recovery on record, falling real wages and a deteriorating balance of payments an economic plan that is working or a failure of austerity come the May general election.

Over on the Labour front bench, some unease might also be gathering, since both the leader of the opposition and the shadow chancellor promise what might charitably be termed “austerity lite”.

The Conservatives have a chancellor who has epitomised the austerity agenda; the Liberal Democrats have hesitated to say boo to a Tory mouse over it; and UKIP’s enthusiasm for cutting taxes must translate to cutting the public budget. Therefore, it would appear that Labour can play the austerity lite political card to look “responsible” without fear of being flanked on the left.

Green surge

Or so it seemed before the recent surge in the polls of the Green Party. And those pesky Greens have declared unambiguous opposition to austerity policies. Immediately after the election in Greece, the Greens stated their support for the new government:

Greens share the view of the new [Greek] government that austerity is a failed model which has piled misery on the poorest while making the wealthiest even richer… In the UK we are witnessing a Green Surge, in no small part due to our anti-austerity agenda.

Support for the anti-austerity policy of the new Syriza government eliminates the ambiguity in the Green’s 2010 manifesto, when the party promised “to more than halve the deficit by 2013”, a position not substantially different from Gordon Brown’s at the time.

There can be little doubt that the Green party’s unqualified commitment to ending austerity represents the most effective policy for making the leap from niche party of middle-class environmentalist to a viable left-wing alternative to Labour. It is easily understood and therefore easy to sell on doorsteps. In addition, it presents the leadership of the Labour Party with the danger of implicitly supporting Coalition economics if it attacks the Green as being soft on the deficit.

Environmental sustainability

Much harder to clarify and sell is the raison d'etre of the Green party’s policies to achieve an environmentally sustainable society. Much of the criticism that’s been levied at the party’s economic policy should be dismissed as ideological. But it indicates the problem the party has of selling the environmental message to the public – its analytical complexity and its vulnerability to simplistic distortion.

A clear example of both complexity and vulnerability to attack is the “citizens' income” idea. In principle, this is a simple idea to give every adult £72 a week regardless of income. The UK social welfare system is extremely complex, consisting of many programmes, some of which are means tested and some which are not. It has many target groups and is administered through multiple agencies.

Nothing could be more sensible than to consolidate some or most of these into a single payment. Works and pensions secretary Ian Duncan Smith sought to do a means-tested consolidation of several social support programmes, motivated by the goal of reducing “benefits”. The Green’s “citizen’s income” would be a social democratic version, universal rather than means tested and generous rather than parsimonious.

The concept can hardly be contested, since consolidation and universality vastly reduce administrative costs. Prominent right-wingers in the United States have advocated a scheme similar to what the Greens propose, including the conservative icon Milton Friedman.

Explaining the viability of the Green’s citizen’s income policy has proved difficult and it has now been dropped from their 2015 manifesto and downgraded to a “longer term aspiration”. This episode demonstrates how an otherwise sound idea, widely supported across the political spectrum, can turn toxic if badly presented.

In contrast, Tory proposals for tax reductions rarely suffer such hostile dissection in the media. In practice their impact is extremely complicated in terms of benefit across the population, and more complex still in their knock-on effect to people’s expenditures. To my knowledge, politicians rarely suffer serious criticism or embarrassment for advocating lower taxes no matter how simple-minded and technically unsound the proposal.

The centrepiece to the Green Party’s economic policy, a “carbon neutral economy”, is also a sound idea that proves extremely difficult to present as a credible concrete policy. Here, the party has wisely avoided specifics. These can only come after convincing a substantial portion of the electorate that environmental disaster is in the offing, which it is at a local and global level.

Social democrats to the Green core

With its strong emphasis on regulation of the financial sector, expanded public investment and expansion of social services, the Green Party can be characterised as fostering social democracy on an environmentally sustainable basis. If the party emphasises the first part – social democracy – in the coming months, it could present a serious threat to Labour.

With the Labour Party split between its Blairite and social democrat wings, the Greens will be hoping that the former lead the Labour attack against them. If so, they have a serious chance of moving their number of seats into double figures in the House of Commons.

Written by John Weeks, Professor Emeritus at SOAS, University of London who blogs here

Labour are a Centre Right Party

Policies taken from the Labour party website (tuition fees not on the website, but reported widely in the media recently), demonstrate that Labour is not a party of the left by any discernible means.

‘We will balance the books: getting the current budget into surplus and national debt falling as soon as possible within the next Parliament.’

This is a fairly vague commitment, in that it could be that by encouraging growth in the economy, and growth in wages particularly, the national debt can be paid off by rising tax receipts (particularly from the wealthy), without continuing the Tory cuts to public services. But Labour has already said that public sector wages will be held down, and the minimum wage raised only slightly (more of this later). They talk of no money for extra spending, apart from some minor areas, so we must assume that they will continue to cut public sector wages and spending, including jobs, services and benefits. It is often termed ‘austerity lite’.

This is a continuation of the ‘triangulation’ tactics first developed by Bill Clinton and the US Democrats and faithfully followed by the New Labour governments from 1997 to 2010. The aim is to place the Labour party slightly to the left of the Tories, but only slightly. Whether this will be as effective in gaining voter support as in the past, is highly questionable since the electorate appears to have had enough of this, with Labour leaking support to the Scottish National Party north of the border, and to the Green Party in England. Both of these parties are seen as more authentic left parties than Labour now.     

‘We will freeze your energy bills up to January 2017, saving a typical household £120 and an average business £1,800. An incoming Labour government will legislate immediately to make this happen.’

Considering the recent fall in the price of oil and gas, which amounts to something like a reduction of £150 per year for domestic consumers, this policy, timid though is it is anyway, has been superseded by events. Will Labour now uprate this ‘freeze’ to £270 per household? Don’t hold your breath.

‘Earned entitlements: people coming here won’t be able to claim benefits for at least two years.’

Most immigrants to the UK come here to work, not to claim benefits which are more generous in some other EU countries. Indeed more UK nationals are claiming benefits in other EU countries, than EU nationals claiming in the UK. Another piece of triangulation from Labour, since the Coalition government has promised a similar policy and Labour wants to look tough on benefit claimants. This is likely to lead to more street begging and crime, rather than deter immigrants from coming to the UK.

‘We will increase the National Minimum Wage to £8 an hour by the end of the next Parliament – to help ensure that those doing a hard day’s work are rewarded for doing so.’

Without it seems even a trace of irony, a party that calls itself ‘Labour’ trumpets a policy that is so pitiful in ambition it is pretty much irrelevant. The National Minimum Wage (NMW) stands at £6.50 per hour presently. The Living Wage (LW) is currently £7.85 per hour (£9.15 in London), which even Tory Mayor of London Boris Johnson agrees should be the minimum. And this aspiration of £8.00 per hour NMW is to be achieved over five years.

Taking a likely inflation rate (Consumer Price Index, which doesn’t include housing costs) of 2% per year, would take the NMW to £7.15 per hour, and this is not a cumulative calculation. Even a small rise in inflation of above 2%, which is far from unlikely, will make £8.00 per hour by 2020 a wage cut. Why on the earth the trade unions continue to fund the Labour party is a complete mystery.  

‘We will stop employees from being required to work exclusively for one firm if they are on a zero-hours contract.’

Wouldn’t a real party of Labour just abolish zero hours contracts altogether? Not this Labour party, no. Instead this policy encourages more zero hours contracts by freeing up workers to take on more than one contract at a time. It is a return to the bad old days of On the Waterfront where dock workers queued on a daily basis to try a find some work, just for that day. All the gains in employment legislation since the 1950s are tossed away by the Labour party of 2015.   

‘We will cap social security: addressing the root causes of welfare spending by getting 200,000 homes built a year and making tough decisions like scrapping Winter Fuel Allowance for the richest pensioners and capping Child Benefit rises.’

A cornerstone of the Welfare State created by the present Labour party’s forbears after World War 2, was the universality of the system. These Labour leaders knew that if they were to get the middle classes to buy into the welfare state then they had to able to see some personal benefit from it. Means testing removes this benefit, making claimants feel stigmatised and is effectively a return to pre war welfare policies where claimants had to prove absolute poverty to claim. People were forced to sell their furniture and belongings before receiving benefit. ‘Back to the future with Labour’ might make a good election slogan for the party?  

Tuition fees: Labour pledges maximum cap of £6,000

This policy returns university tuition fees to the level of the last Labour government (reduced from the present £9,000 per year). It is the worst of both worlds in that it will deprive universities of the funding they need, whilst having no discernible effect on the amount many students will pay back. Students from wealthy backgrounds have these fees paid by their parents so don’t claim these loans. For those from modest backgrounds who do claim the loans, it still leaves a sizable amount to be paid back. Let’s not forget that these students need maintenance loans too and if they do not reach the levels of salary to trigger the pay back threshold, will never actually pay the money back, instead the tax payer picks up the tab. For those that do pay back the loans, they start working life with debts of £30,000 to £40,000 typically. This policy makes little difference.

So there you have it, and Labour whines about losing support to the Greens, who split the ‘left’ vote and will let the Tories in again. It is Labour that is splitting the left vote, with not even very left policies, a mere shadow of the party’s noble past. 

But past it is. 

Interview - Green Party Candidate for the General Election - Clive Martin, Taunton

In the first of a series of interviews with Green Left supporting candidates at the General Election, Mike Shaughnessy interviews the Green Party's Clive Martin, candidate for Taunton, Somerset. 

MS Tell me a bit about your background, political and otherwise, and how you came to join the Green party?

CM I was very politically active from the mid-70s until the mid-80s in various groups and campaigns.  Overall I suppose you could characterise my politics at that time as “libertarian socialist”.  From the mid-80s onwards I was an increasingly inactive and unimpressed member of the Labour Party, finally leaving over the Iraq War.  I had always had time for environmental ideas but it was really as chair of governors at the local primary school, working with another keen environmentalist on the governing body, that I started to take more interest in issues such as climate change, energy, post-growth economics, etc.  I joined the Green Party in 2010, I supposed because I thought it was much the most credible vehicle for political action around radical and environmentalist ideas.

MS Why did you decide to join Green Left?

CM An existing member that I know locally kept bothering me about it and sending me copies of Watermelon.  It was a way to get him off my back!  And, more seriously, I wanted a bit more analysis and discussion than I can get locally.

MS What impact is the Green Surge in membership and opinion polls having in the south west? Has the collapse in support for the Lib Dems, traditionally strong in the area had an impact?

CM We have gone locally from 35 members a year ago to 175 to-day – 500% increase if you will.  The Lib Dems got 49% of the vote here at the last GE but with their national decline I would guess they might do well to get half of that at the 2015 GE. Some of the best people who have joined have been disaffected “left Lib Dems” as it were.

MS What are the main issues that you will campaign on?

CM Austerity, equality, housing, transport, energy, climate change.

MS How do you rate your chances in Taunton – and the Green party more broadly in England?

CM In Taunton the competition for bottom place is a stiff one!  If I got 10% that would be good.  But I am hoping we can field at least one candidate in all of the 26 Borough Council wards (we have 100% of the council seats up for election on 7^th May).  Things are definitely on the move for us here.

MS If elected to Parliament, would you vote for a Labour austerity budget?

CM An interesting hypothetical question.  The easy answer would be a straight no.  I certainly think it a mistake to be talking currently about “confidence and supply” with New Labour.  As I understand it that means that you do have to vote for the coalition leaders Finance Bills i.e. Budget.  I certainly see myself as the only “anti-austerity” candidate in Taunton. But actually if there were a Green Group in parliament, and they operated a whip and group discipline (which I am not on principle opposed to) then I could see myself abiding by that group discipline and voting for things I didn’t like.

MS Much has been made in the media recently of the unaffordable nature of the Green party’s Citizen’s Income. What do you say to this?

CM I have been working on the CI scheme for the party.  Indeed I am these days an “accredited policy expert” on benefits issues for the Green Party.  (Sadly I haven’t received large sums of money for taking on this role, nor do I appear to have become more attractive to the opposite sex).  The Green Party CI scheme is rigorously costed and would work.  You need to understand that although it would “cost” over £300bn, half of that would come from the benefits it replaces: state pension at £90bn, Income Support, tax credits at £35bn, jobseekers, etc., with most of the other half coming from the abolition of the £10k personal allowance (£90bn), abolition of pension relief for high earners, combining NI with income tax are moving the NI ceiling, so that 40% taxpayers and above effectively pay 12% more tax.  It is by no means “unaffordable”.  The more effective criticism is that actually it is too mean, not too generous.  At the sort of figures we have been looking at there was a risk that those wholly dependent on means-tested benefits would actually have been worse off under CI.  The sort of changes that I lobbied for, and will be in the version of the scheme in the manifesto, do largely address that point.  Sadly the critical coverage of that issue, and Natalie Bennett’s faltering performance when grilled about CI by Andrew Neil, have led “the leadership” to row back.  The scheme that we have developed will feature in the manifesto small print, as an aspiration, something for 2020, not an immediate commitment for 2015. 

MS Do you think we still have time to avoid drastic changes to the climate?

CM I do worry that what we are seeing is far too little too late.  One piece of evidence is the alarming increase in the incidence of extreme weather events.  When I was learning about this stuff 10 years ago people were saying you would start to see that 20 or 30 years down the line – but it’s already here.

Clive's Facebook page is here

Now, Can Podemos Win in Spain?

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators — whom the world press refer to as los indignados — gathered in the square of Puerta del Sol in Madrid on 15 May 2011, protesting against the banks’ stranglehold on the economy and a democracy they felt no longer represented them. They outlawed flags, insignia and speeches on behalf of organisations and parties, and soon had a slogan: “United, the people do not need parties.”

The square is no longer occupied. The desire for change remains, but unexpectedly has formed around a new political party, Podemos (We Can). While most political parties across Europe are in disrepute, Podemos is having unprecedented success. “It’s hard to believe,” Podemos MEP Pablo Echenique told me in Paris recently. “Our party was created in January 2014. Five months later, we got 8% of votes in the EU election. Today all the polls show we’re the biggest political force in the country.” Podemos’s leaders know that opinion polls and elections are not the same thing; January polls put them ahead of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and People’s Party. The possibility of a Podemos victory in the general election (which must be held by 20 December 2015) remains real.

Podemos’s creation stemmed from the realisation that “15-M [15 May] was locked in a social movement-based conception of politics,” said sociologist Jorge Lago, a member of Podemos’s citizens’ council, part of its wider leadership structure. “The idea that a progressive build-up of strength among the demonstrators would inevitably produce political results proved to be false.” Associations to fight tenant evictions and resistance networks against health sector cuts were established, but the movement ran out of steam and fell apart.

There was disappointment at the ballot box, too. According to Lago, “80% of people said they agreed with the movement, but they continued to vote in the same old way.” The conservatives won a landslide in the November 2011 general election. That prompted the Podemos founders to ask questions: what if some of those who sympathised with the 15-M movement did still want to be represented? And what if using the machinery of the state was a necessary condition for social change?

The spirit of May

Though at odds with the Puerta del Sol call for direct democracy, Podemos wants to be heir to the “spirit of May”, especially over crowdfunding, transparency and collective decision-making. At the same time, its members have recognised some of the traps of doing away with all the old vertical political structures. At the party’s first conference last October, Echenique tabled a motion to increase decentralisation, and the party’s flat structure and flexibility. Pablo Iglesias, Podemos leader, suggested that achieving the movement’s objectives meant focusing less on debate about the organisation’s inner workings. He won by a landslide.

To M-15’s most fervent supporters, this sounded like a betrayal of autonomy: the new party would be no more than the willing stooge of the system. “Podemos has arisen as a way of channelling social energy and the process of large-scale experimentation [of recent years],” said Nuria Alabao, a Barcelona activist (1). Iglesias’s inner circle claims Podemos has not subsumed the 15-M movement but provided a new way of advancing the struggle. “Social movements are perfectly capable of retaining their autonomy while also supporting, if they see fit, a government that is more favourable to them than recent ones,” said Lago.

But what should happen when a government that social movements regard as over-timid comes under fire from conservatives? Should they play into their enemy’s hands by joining the criticism, or keep silent, betraying their cause? There is no easy answer to this.

Even though there is no direct continuity between the 15-M movement and the rise of Podemos, party leaders believe the movement enabled the creation of the party by giving it a political focus that is rarely so coherent in Europe — the people. “It’s not ‘the people’ who produce the revolt, but the revolt which produces its people,” is how the collective Comité Invisible put it in its most recent book (2). Whereas in other countries the word “people” remains hollow, it gained real substance in Spain during the occupation of the squares.

Corruption is structural

The emergence of this collective “we” is a response to the conduct of the country’s elite, which Podemos calls “the caste”. The level of corruption in Spain makes France look virtuous. Nearly 2,000 corruption cases are under official investigation, involving at least 500 high-ranking civil servants and an estimated annual cost to the state of €40bn (3). The main parties — the ruling rightwing People’s Party (PP) and the PSOE — have responded by agreeing to “limit the legal responsibility of individuals who have received illegal donations” (4) and keep the political parties that benefited beyond the reach of the law. Even the monarchy, long considered untouchable, has been unable to restore the reputation of Spain’s elite, since the scandals involve the new king’s sister, Infanta Cristina de Borbón.

Iglesias maintains that corruption at this level is “structural” (5). It becomes indistinguishable from the wider conception of politics illustrated by conservative member of parliament Andrea Fabra in 2012; when prime minister Mariano Rajoy announced further unemployment benefit cuts, Fabra said of the unemployed: “They can go fuck themselves.”

Half of Spain’s unemployed no longer receive benefits, while 33 of the 35 biggest companies avoid tax through subsidiaries in tax havens (6). Half a million children have been plunged into poverty since 2009, but the wealth of Spain’s super-rich has increased by 67% since Rajoy came to power (7). To avoid the wrath of a fractious population, last December’s “citizen security” law outlawed everything that made the 2011 mobilisation possible, including meetings in public places and distributing leaflets.

Podemos reckons that when Spain’s real estate bubble burst it destroyed the foundations of the consensus dating from the 1978 constitution: a transition pact, the monarchy — now so tarnished that Juan Carlos had to abdicate in favour of his son last year — and aspirations of social mobility. “The economic crisis,” Lago said, “has caused a political crisis, the kind of exceptional situation that is a necessary forerunner of any deep social change.” After the “dismissal” process of May 2011, the time may be ripe for a constitutive process: transforming the state through the mechanisms of the state.

Spain’s situation may be risky. It makes the far right, Iglesias has pointed out, “as happy as a fish in water” (8). Yet the Spanish left has an advantage over its French counterpart: a large fringe element of the nationalist far right is formally integrated into the PP, which makes it difficult for them to push an anti-system platform, unlike France’s Front National, which has only ever run local councils.
But the situation in Spain does not explain Podemos’s recent ascent. Izquierda Unida (United Left) has long promoted a similar political programme without managing to change the political order. So it is also a question of method.

The leaders of Podemos believe the left has long been guilty of abstruse analysis, obscure references and opaque language. Iglesias reckons that “people don’t vote for someone because they identify with his ideology, culture or values, but because they agree with him.” And they are more likely to do that if candidates seem normal, likeable and have a sense of humour.

Economic democracy

Podemos’s first task has been to translate the left’s traditional discourse into issues capable of winning the broadest support: democracy, sovereignty and social justice. “To be specific,” Lago said, “we don’t talk about capitalism. We defend the idea of economic democracy.” Nor is the left-right dichotomy discussed: “The divide,” Iglesias has said, “now separates those, like us, who defend democracy … and those who are on the side of the elites, the banks, the markets. There are people at the bottom and people at the top … an elite and the majority.”

Guardians of Marxist orthodoxy criticise this undifferentiated social critique. Last August, an activist challenged Iglesias on why he never used the term “proletariat”. He replied: “When the 15-M movement began, the students in my faculty — we’re talking highly politicised students who’ve read their Marx and Lenin — took part in rallies with ‘normal’ people for the first time. They were soon tearing their hair out: ‘They don’t understand anything!’ They were yelling: ‘You’re a worker even if you don’t realise it!’ People looked at them like they were from another planet, and my students went home discouraged … That’s what the enemy is expecting us to do: use words no one understands, remain a minority, fall back on our traditional symbols. And they know that as long as we do that, we pose no threat to them.”

Though some of its founders came from the far left, including Izquierda Anticapitalista (Anticapitalist Left), Podemos managed to draw 10% of its support in the 2014 European elections from people who had voted for the right. The party’s support base has grown all across Spain through the creation of over a thousand “circles”. The young university-educated members from the cities have since been joined by white and blue-collar workers and rural residents.

History shows that such class alliances tend to fall apart when the aspirations of the better off are met. How can Podemos make sure it avoids this fate? “We can’t,” Lago admits. “But that is a question which only gets asked of those who are capable of winning. I’d prefer to have to deal with that than shelter behind the left’s traditional position on the margins.”

Shaped by Gramscian thought, Podemos leaders believe that the political struggle should not be limited to overthrowing existing social and economic structures, but should also be against the hegemony that legitimises the domination of the powerful in the eyes of those they dominate. In this cultural area, the enemy imposes its codes, language and narrative. And one tool stands out for its ability to shape “common sense” — television.

Since 2003, Iglesias and his friends (including university professor Juan Carlos Monedero, now a Podemos leader) have been making their own programmes, including La Tuerka, a political discussion show broadcast on local TV channels, and online. It acts as a focus for “understanding the world from a Leninist perspective, so that we are ready when the time comes,” Iglesias has said. Iglesias and his friends, who sometimes invite rightwingers on too, have become well known and now appear on political discussion shows on major TV channels: the second element of the Podemos strategy is “not leaving the field to the enemy”.

Not that it’s a cosy relationship. Last December, Iglesias was a guest on La noche en 24 horas, an important political programme on TVE (Spain’s main public channel). He made clear that he did not regard the invitation as a favour: “We had to fight for me to come on the show,” he told the sheepish producer, journalist Sergio Martín. “Please allow me to thank the workers in this organisation because, as you know, without pressure from them, you would never have asked me on.”

Spain’s ruling class has an electoral system that favours the two main parties, and parties with regionally limited appeal, such as the nationalists. “The arithmetic is simple,” said sociologist Laurent Bonelli in 2011. “The Navarran nationalists of Geroa Bai need 42,411 votes to get a seat.

The PP needs 60,000; PSOE, 64,000; and the IU, 155,000.” Podemos has ruled out alliances — a “soup of symbols” that might risk drawing the movement back into the old left-right divide — and could deprive the party of votes from leftwing nationalists and IU activists, who have criticised Podemos’s “historical irresponsibility” (9). Spain’s elite is worried: in December the leader of the bosses’ organisation, Juan Rosell, called for a “German-style” grand coalition between the PP and the PSOE to counter Podemos.

“There’s nothing extremist about Podemos’s programme” (10), Iglesias has said: a constituent assembly on coming to power, tax reforms, debt restructuring, opposition to raising the retirement age to 67, the introduction of a 35-hour week (40 at present), a referendum on the monarchy, a kick-start for industry, the recovery of powers ceded to Brussels, self-determination for Spanish regions. Foreseeing an alliance with similar movements in southern Europe (Syriza in Greece, which has come to power in the 25 January election), Podemos’s plans do threaten financial powers, what Iglesias calls “German Europe” and “the caste”.

And those powers are already baring their teeth. A piece by journalist Salvador Sostres in El Mundo in December compared Iglesias to the former Romanian leader Nicolae Ceauşescu, and claimed he had only one idea: “to make the blood of the poorest flow, to the very last drop.” A PP politician was even more direct: “Someone should put a bullet in the back of his head.”

Written by Renaud Lambert who is deputy editor of Le Monde diplomatique.

(1) Nuria Alabao, “Podemos y los movimientos”, Periódico Diagonal, 7 November 2014.
(2) Comité Invisible, A nos amis, La Fabrique, Paris, 2014.
(3) “Investigadores de la ULPGC analizan como estimar el coste social de la corrupción en España”, Las Palmas University communiqué, 29 July 2013.
(4) Europa Press, Madrid, 28 November 2014.
(5) Pablo Iglesias Turrión, Disputar la democracia: Política para tiempos de crisis, Akal, Madrid, 2014.
(6) “La responsabilidad social corporativa en las memorias anuales del IBEX 3”, 10th edition, Observatorio de Responsabilidad Social Corporativa, Madrid, 2012.
(7) Vicente Clavero, “Los dueños del Ibex son un 67% más ricos desde que gobierna Rajoy”, Público, 7 May 2014.
(8) Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Pablo Iglesias come from public speeches online.
(9) Europa Press, 12 December 2014.
(10) Pablo Iglesias Turrión, Disputar la democracia,op cit.

This article appears in the excellent Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com.

Housing is a human right

Photo Paul Coleman, London Intelligence 2015

Yesterday, some 2,000 - 3,000 people converged outside the City Hall in the #MarchforHomes.

March for Homes protest brought together council tenants, private renters, many local housing campaigns and groups from across London, trade unions and others, to demand the homes Londoners can actually afford to live in.

Organisers had planned two routes for the march, one from Shoreditch, for the East/North London campaigners, another from Elephant & Castle for those of us on this side of the river. We were pleased to see many Southwark residents and campaigners there, as Southwark, courtesy of our 'elected representatives', is being 'regenerated' left right and centre. Fellow campaigners from Lambeth, Lewisham and Greenwich were also there, many telling painfully similar, if not identical, stories of residents' struggles to keep their homes in spite of the local authorities' and developers' greed. We spectacularly missed out on all of the speeches but you can hear Tom Chance of Green Party and see some of the video footage on London SE1 website here.

The march itself was ridiculously over-policed. Protesters were filmed, countless 'Liaison Officers' were there, mingling, then more 'guarding' the procession.

The South London contingent was joined by the people from FocusE15 campaign, New Era Estate, Save Earls Court, Our West Hendon and many many others at the City Hall. More speeches re-iterated the madness of what is happening in London, where perfectly liveable council homes are being demolished so they can be redeveloped as property investments of the super-rich global elite, where Londoners are being pushed further and further out of the city, where thousands of homes are empty while homelessness continues to rise, demanding an immediate end to this, introduction of rent caps, building of more council homes etc.

When we got home, we found out that a group of activists visited the neighbouring luxury development, 'One Tower Bridge' and temporarily occupied one of the empty apartments. Meanwhile, some 200 people reclaimed one of the blocks on the Aylesbury, where Southwark Council had evicted all of the residents so that the new, 'luxury' (aka totally unaffordable to anyone who lives in Southwark now) apartments can be built instead.

Yesterday's march clearly showed that growing numbers of Londoners are no longer prepared to put up with this. Whether local politicians and Boris are going to listen remains to be seen.

See also:

Guardian article about the protest
Paul Coleman's article about the protest
Aylesbury Estate occupied
Johnny Void's article about the Aylesbury occupation

First published at People's Republic of Southwark

Sustainability Over Growth: The Paradigm Shift At The Heart Of The UK 's "Green Surge"

With the leftist Green Party now polling at record levels in the UK , the predictable backlash from the conservative media arrived last week.

The Tory press had fun spinning the Party's policies into sensationalistic drivel (see Matthew Holehouse's Drugs, brothels, al-Qaeda and the Beyonce tax: the Green Party plan for Britain for the Telegraph). There was vocal criticism from a number of Labour supporters too.

While hostility from the conservative press was to be expected, I must say I have been quite taken aback by how many Labour commentators have completely failed to grasp the mentality of Green supporters or what the "Green Surge" is all about.

Most of the articles I have read ranged from bad to terrible, such as this one on LabourList, where a bizarre swipe at the Green Party's " almost exclusively white, middle class and privately educated " leaders served in lieu of a sustained critique of the party's policies. By far the worst though was this abysmal rant by the (supposedly Labour) writer Conor Pope on the New Statesman's political blog. 

Here it was said that the "joke... crackpot... utterly useless" Green Party's " current solution amounts to little more than free condoms. " If further evidence was needed that Pope hadn't bothered to actually read the Party's detailed policies, the article touched on such hard-hitting issues as leader Natalie Bennett's views on homeopathy.

Needless to say, the standard of debate isn't particularly high.

Ultimately though I get the sense that there is genuine confusion amongst supporters of the mainstream parties as to what is motivating people to 'go Green'. In my view this is what is prompting some of the wild lashing out we have seen. It's easier to dismiss ideas that you don't understand than actually try to engage with them.

Sustainability or growth?

The major stumbling block appears to be what a Green economy might look like. Many commentators seem to have grabbed hold of the fact that the Green Party, unlike other parties, doesn't condition all of its policies on the premise of economic growth. This has, in some cases, been twisted and spun into the notion that what the Green Party wants is a stagnant economy where everyone is poorer.

According to LabourWire: " Most (Green) economic policies are recessionary, which would mean job losses on a massive scale and lower living standards for almost everyone "

Meanwhile, the Telegraph said: " Britain would be in permanent recession; families would become materially poorer each year."

Comments such as these are misconceived.

First, it is important to point out that Green supporters as a whole reject Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a reliable or informative economic indicator. No matter how much David Cameron bangs his dispatch box and tells us the economy is "growing" (in GDP terms), people are now clued up to the fact that this growth is not reflected at all in broader society.

GDP is misleading in all sorts of ways. It only measures certain types of transactions that occur within the formal economy, so for example a million pound personal injury claim would contribute to GDP growth whereas unpaid community work wouldn't. Similarly, it offers no real qualitative data, failing to distinguish between "good growth" and "bad growth". To illustrate what this means in practice, the rise of payday lenders and fixed-odd betting terminals since the recession are deemed to have contributed to our recent "recovery" despite being widely condemned as socially irresponsible.

For these reasons Green supporters don't put much stock in GDP, so it's hardly surprising that this type of growth isn't seen as a priority.

To be clear though, the Party doesn't think growth is bad. It just recognises that a blind commitment to GDP growth is a fairly poor basis for running a fair and sustainable economy. A Green government would look to different types of economic indictors as barometers for prosperity. For example, it would consider increased growth and technological advancements in priority industries such as renewable energy as a sign of success. On the other hand, growth in sectors that damage our health and social fabric would be seen as a bad thing.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the relentless pursuit of growth is no longer sustainable. The world's population is rising and the earth's finite resources are declining. Science and technology aren't advancing fast enough to plug the gap. We need a new paradigm to meet these challenges.

Therefore the key to a Green economy is sustainability, which would always take precedence over growth. The definition of a sustainable economy is one that meets society's current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Contrast this with the economic policies of the mainstream UK parties, which are all premised on short term growth without a long term strategy. David Cameron repeatedly talks of a " global race" between nations for economic power. He talks of Britain needing to "compete" with emerging powerhouse economies in Asia . 

This is a race to the bottom, not a race to the top. It is a race which will ultimately see all countries lose out when natural resources are depleted and recession becomes not a choice, but an unavoidable reality. Do we have to wait for this to happen before we realise what we should have been doing all along?

The Green Party is the only party in the UK that seeks to address these concerns in the long term. It is ironic that the party is accused of wanting to impose a recession on the British people when in fact it is the only party that seeks to put into place long term economic policies that would actually protect the poorest in society if there is a repeat recession.

Idealistic policies?

The notion of Green supporters as a ragbag band of hippies, out-of-work liberal arts graduates and animal rights nuts is now dead. Nevertheless, certain prejudices remain. The one that I find most difficult to stomach is the idea that Green supporters are middle-class idealists who care nothing for the working class or about solving immediate problems.

On this point, I would first take exception to the idea that Green policies are idealistic. In this sense I believe the Party is being penalised for being the only party to set out, in painstaking detail, its long term goals for a better society (something no other party has had the foresight to do). By the Party's own admission, not all of its long term goals can be achieved immediately. It is quite wrong to suggest that the Party would seek to enforce all of its policy objectives immediately when it is clear that a process of gradual reform will be needed to bring the changes to fruition.

In the short term the Greens rejects austerity and strongly oppose the marketisation of crucial public services. But unlike Labour, it is not content with protecting those services that are already in public hands (i.e. the National Health Service), it also wants to bring other services, such as rail, back into public ownership where the private sector has failed to deliver what the free market ideologues promised.

The truth is that most people in the Green Party would rather see change start today than spend an eternity on the sidelines waiting to be taken seriously. If that is by Labour (or the Liberal Democrats) taking on board some of the Party's messages, so be it. Given that a recent poll revealed Green economic policies are more popular than those of any other party (according to the excellent Vote for Polices website ) perhaps this is something the mainstream parties ought to seriously consider.

But for the time being conservative economic thought remains entrenched within all the main political parties. An ever increasing number of people throughout the UK (not to mention in Europe ) are abandoning these principles and have found a new paradigm in sustainability. This now represents a red line that won't be crossed.

The sooner the mainstream parties realise that, the better. 

Written by Richard Collie who blogs at The Green Man