My IPCC Take-away: Imagine. Take Action. Repeat.

Written by Rob Hopkins and first published at Transition Network

For those who care about the world and the people and creatures we share it with, the last 6 weeks has offered a barrage of dire news. The new IPCC report called for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. We learnt that since the time the Beatles broke up and I was born (I claim no scandalous link between those two events), human activity has caused a 60% decline in mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians.

We’ve seen the German government, whose ‘Energiewende’ we were all celebrating a few years ago, dragging away protesters trying to prevent the clearing of an ancient woodland in order to create an open cast coal mine. Oh, and Brazil just elected a fascist who has vowed to turn much of the Amazon, that vital global carbon store, into farmland, merging the departments of environment and agriculture so as to ensure maximum cheap beef burger output. 

My own personal WTF moment was the US Department of Justice arguing last week, in their attempt to overturn a court case brought by 21 young people, that “there is no right to ‘a climate system capable of sustaining human life’”.  Er, excuse me? Is anyone actually taking this stuff seriously? Grief and rage feel an entirely appropriate response. As Bill McKibben put it, “we’re running out of options and we’re running out of decades”. 

As I work on the book I’m writing about imagination, I find myself intrigued with a thought that doesn’t seem to want to leave my head, namely that the deeper we get into climate change, the harder we seem to be finding it to imagine a way out. It’s an idea that, for me anyway, gets under the skin. We know that the more we see and feel its impacts, the more anxious we become, which in turn results in more cortisol in our systems and the contraction of our hippocampus, the imagination centre in our brain, hampering our ability to imagine the future.

We know that the increase of CO2 in the air we breathe impacts our cognitive abilities to the extent that the rise to 660ppm of CO2 by the end of the century forecast by the IPCC would lead to a 15% decline in those abilities. If we don’t intentionally put our priority on rebuilding the collective imagination, that vital ability may just slide out of our grasp. We know also that increased CO2 levels results in less of the vital minerals in our food that feed our brains and enable us to be imaginative.

The IPCC report does not say that climate breakdown is inevitable. It tells us that climate breakdown is inevitable if we continue with growth-based neo-liberal economics.  As David Fleming once wrote, “if the mature market economy is to have a sequel it will be the work, substantially, of imagination”. We need to be able to imagine it before we can build it, and we need to help those around us be able to dream about it too. It’s at times like this I come back to Joanna Macy’s assertion that these times call for 3 equally important pillars to underpin our responses:

Holding Actions: putting our bodies on the line to say “no” to the things that are driving us over the edge, always aware that this work is vital, but not enough on its own.

Structural Change: where we build the new world within the shell of the old dying one, creating the structures, economy, connections and models that we will need in order to thrive.

Shift in Consciousness: the inner work needed for the other two to succeed, changing our values and stories to enable the depth of change needed to become instinctive.

We won’t see the imagination needed coming from the top, that much is clear. If it ever was to be found up there, it has long since evaporated. The IPCC report stated clearly that our survival depends on our using less energy, consuming less stuff and eating less meat, and the next day, the UK’s imagination-bereft Energy and Climate Minister Claire Perry told the BBC “who would I be to sit there advising people in the country coming home after a hard day of work to not have steak and chips?”

On my recent visit to the amazing Art Angel project in Dundee, which uses art to help people with mental health issues, anxiety and depression back into the world, I was told that the key aspects of what they create are “safety and hope”.  In the people I spoke to there I saw the rekindling of their imaginations, their connection to the future, because of the safety and hope now in their lives that wasn’t there before.

It feels vital to me that alongside the declaration of a ‘climate emergency’ and the very welcome and needed wave-upon-wave of civil disobedience that the recently-launched Extinction Rebellion are calling for, we must never lose sight of the need to fire the imagination about the future it is still possible to create. Research published recently reminds us that making changes in our own lives, living the change that’s needed, and talking about it with others, does have an impact on the thinking of those around us. The same goes for the projects that our communities undertake too. 

Those stories are infectious. Really bold, amazing, world-changing, imagination-firing stuff is happening all over the world, even though you most likely won’t see it on the BBC News. If you haven’t heard about what’s happening in Rojava, Jackson, Cleveland or Iceland, or countless other places too, then you need to really bathe yourself in that stuff. And of course without the policy space and change that results from direct-action like the Extinction Rebellion, making low carbon alternatives happen continues to be like swimming against a very strong tide.

Alongside the call to mobilise hundreds of thousands of people to get arrested, and the call, being heeded by more and more companies and even nations to divest from fossil fuels, what if a similar call invited people to occupy empty shops on their High Street and reopen them as stores that model a low carbon future, and create spaces for conversation and connection? Or playful artistic events that bring together activists and artists to ‘makeover’ their place so people wake up to find themselves in the world we’re talking about, the world where we made it? Acts, if you like, of non-violent anticipatory futures-building in very public places.  As David Graeber wrote, “it’s one thing to say ‘Another World is Possible’. It’s another to experience it, however momentarily”.

While I completely understand that grief and despair are, right now, entirely appropriate, I tend to agree with Dee Hock that “it’s far too late, and far too urgent for pessimism”. Last week I spoke with Kali Akuno at Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi, about the amazing work they’re doing there rebuilding their economy around co-operatives and social justice. He told me: “Wallowing in a defeatist attitude is a sure way to be defeated. The lesson from Mississippi is that we need to stay grounded and utilise what opportunities we have”.

I find it helps to see growth-based economics as being a war on imagination, feeding the inequality, disconnection and anxiety which directly undermines it, creating what Henry Giroux calls the ‘disimagination machine’.  I love this, from ‘Rant’ by Diane di Prima: 

“The war that matters is the war against the imagination

all other wars are subsumed in it….

the war is the war for the human imagination

and no one can fight it but you/ & no one can fight it for you

The imagination is not only holy, it is precise

it is not only fierce, it is practical

men die everyday for the lack of it,

it is vast & elegant”.

Last week, Preston, the northern English city implementing a radical approach which is, in essence, city-scale Transition, was chosen as “the most improved city in the UK”. This stuff works, it changes economies, lives and expectations. The expansion of Transition, through the Municipalities in Transition project, to focus on the enabling and collaborator role that local government can play, is one of the most fascinating developments in its evolution.  Of course it’s not yet enough, by any stretch. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be.

My main take-away from the 2018 IPCC report is that there may still be time, but only if we can bring about a deep reimagining of what the world could be and how it might work. As Daniel Aldana Cohen put it, “we are only doomed if we do nothing”. While mass arrests and a firm “no” is vital, our “yes” being sufficiently rich in imagination, play,  invitation, joy, awe and possibility matters just as much. “Rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. How deeply do those words call to your imagination?  What yearning do they evoke? What possibilities and delights do they invite, what do they call you to step up and do?

As the great Captain Beefheart once said, “fifty years from now you’ll wish you’d gone ‘wow’”. It may well be that the degree to which our work evokes “wow”, here and now, may turn out to be the best indicator we have of its success, and indeed our ability to navigate the next 20 years may, as much as anything else, depend on our ability to cultivate it in those around us. 

* The ‘Imagine. Take Action. Repeat’ from the title of this blog is not my own creation, it is unashamedly purloined from this video by the brilliant Centre for Story-Based Strategy.  All images by James McKay are taken from Paul Chatterton’s new book ‘Unlocking Sustainable Cities‘.

Film Review – Peterloo

I am a fan of Mike Leigh’s films, and I can’t remember not enjoying any of his previous films, but I was a little perturbed by some of the reviews I read of his latest work, Peterloo. Most reviews seem to be a little underwhelmed by the film, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Another concern was the length of the film, as anything over two hours I tend to get a bit bored with, but Peterloo at two and half hours length, just seemed to fly by for me.

I am a Mancunian, albeit living in London for many years now, so the story of Peterloo is familiar to me, it is part, and quite a big part, of the city’s social and political history. The name Peterloo referenced the battle of Waterloo, just four years earlier, when the British army, with considerable help from the Prussian army, finally defeated Napoleon’s French forces.

The film opens with a scene from the battle, with one of the characters Joseph, played by David Moorst, surviving the mayhem. He then returns to his family home in Manchester, tired, hungry and still in uniform. Contrast this to the huge amount of money given to the Duke of Wellington from the nation, for his contribution to winning the battle.

The film then moves to political discussions within Joseph's family, and later at a series of public meetings, where the main issue is a lack of political representation for most people. At this time Manchester didn’t have a single representative in Parliament. This was a time when Britain was moving from a rural farm based economy, to an industrialised one, and Manchester and much of Lancashire was the centre of it.

There are great, passionate speeches being made in this section of film, about the lack of political representation and much grumbling about wage cuts and the Corn Laws, which banned imported grain, and therefore artificially inflated prices for land owners, at the expense of the burgeoning factory workers in the towns and cities. The Corn Laws were eventually repealed in 1849, splitting the Tory party in the process.

There are many fine acting performances, especially Maxine Peake, as the matriarch trying to feed her family and hold things together. The period costume is fantastic too. The sense of social solidarity amongst the working classes and their generosity is captured well in the film. 

Some of the accents and turns of phrase in the film didn’t seem to me to be authentic Manchester, more Lancashire and even in some cases Yorkshire, but these characters could have been from those areas, and Manchester probably didn’t have a distinctive culture that it has today, so maybe I’m being unfair here. I did chuckle at a couple of turns of phrase that I hadn’t heard for a while, like ‘mithering’ (pestering) and someone had a ‘cob on’ (grumpy), which are authentic Manchester.

The people decide to hold a large public protest and march to St Peter’s field in central Manchester, on a Monday, so as to halt work in the cotton mills and other factories, and it is very successful in bringing a large crowd to the protest. The police had been spying on the leaders of the march for some time and the local and national authorities were getting nervous, and they call in the army to confront the marchers.

This was only forty years after the French revolution, so this nervousness was perhaps understandable. But the kind of contempt that ordinary folk are held in by the ruling classes comes through well in the film and the brutality, and not just in final scene, with which they are treated.

The march organisers, decide to invite a charismatic speaker, who some have seen speak in London for increased suffrage, Henry Hunt, a wealthy liberal land owner from Wiltshire, played by Rory Kinnear. He really takes over the whole thing and insists on being the only speaker on the day.

As it happens, the authorities act when the Hunt speaks and he and some of the organisers are arrested, the army, cavalry and infantry, then massacre the crowd, with about 15 people killed and 400–700 injured, including women and children. The crowd eventually scatters and that is the end of things.

It was the end of the film, but not in real life. Such an event as the Peterloo massacre has not taken place since 1819, Percy Shelley wrote his famous poem ‘The Masque of Anarachy,’ ‘rise like lions etc’ after the massacre. The ruling classes were fearful that if there was another occasion such as this, demonstrators would come armed, and it might have led to their overthrow by the people. The liberal (Manchester) Guardian newspaper was founded. Suffrage was gradually extended.

A great film, I highly recommend it, especially if you are of a left wing persuasion.

Red and Green Politics is a Common Cause – but too many can’t see this

As an ecosocialist, of course I think that this is the case, but not everyone who is a green or a socialist agrees with this thinking. It does depend on what you mean by green and socialist in the first place though. Many greens are essentially liberals or green social democrats, and many people who call themselves socialists are in fact social democrats, or as the phrase popular in the US these days has it, democratic socialists.

Democracy is an essential part of ecosocialist theory, but not the bourgeois democracy that is prevalent in much of the world, and easily corrupted by moneyed interests. True democracy is probably impossible under a capitalist political and economic system, although it can round the sharp edges off unfettered capitalism, like the neo-liberal version which has been prevalent for the last forty years or so.

More conventional greens tend to see the ecological problems as largely unconnected to capitalism itself, just the form that we have and how it is applied, with greens believing that somehow capitalism can be reformed and made more eco-friendly. 

Conventional socialists, all too often see ecological politics as an add on issue, at best, which will somehow cease to be a problem when we move to a traditional socialist system. Socialist governments that we have seen around the world (USSR, China etc), have often had an even more dismal environmental record than capitalist countries.

Ecosocialists think that both are wrong.

Ecosocialists see the problems of ecological justice and social justice, as profoundly linked in our economic system, capitalism, and no amount of tinkering with capitalism will ultimately resolve the ecological and social problems caused by this unfair and destructive system.

A healthy environment is essential to humanity’s well-being, and the effects of climate change, for example, impact much more on poorer people. Rich capitalist countries can build defences against the effects of volatile changes in the climate, whilst poor ones cannot. Things like incinerators and toxic dumps, tend to be located in poor neighbourhoods, even in the richer nations.  

For greens, especially in more recent times, social justice issues have been accepted as part of the changed society they want to see, but attempt to treat the symptoms caused by our economic system, rather than the root cause itself. Some greens, for example, still see population issues as the main issue affecting ecological destruction, but fail to see that the poverty that is inherent in capitalism, forces poor people to have larger families, to generate income, particularly where there is no welfare system, old age pensions and the like.

Some greens who do not see themselves as ecosocialists still do recognise that economic growth, is not good for the environment, and ultimately, infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible, and can only lead to the degradation of the natural world which sustains us. Greens tend to talk about different measures of well-being rather than GDP, which is heading in the right direction, but doesn’t seem to take account of the unsuitability of the capitalist system in providing an alternative measure of success.

Greens often talk about ‘sustainable’ growth, powered by renewable energy, but whilst this is preferable to that powered by burning fossil fuels, it would still mean precious resources being used up in production, and so is only a temporary solution to our ecological ills. I see it as useful only as a transitional measure, on the way to ecosocialism. I am also sceptical about in an ever growing economic system, renewable energy will provide enough power to satisfy capitalism demands.

This doesn’t mean that this should not be campaigned for, and indeed I do myself, but there is a limit on the effectiveness of sustainable growth that we should recognise. Conventional socialists and social democrats see growth as essential to their agenda. The greater the economic growth achieved, the more wealth there is to share around and concentrate on the redistribution of this growth.

Socialists and social democrats are often in favour of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, which are an anathema to most greens. Trade unions are often in this socialist/social democrat camp, not unreasonably since these industries offer high skilled, high paid jobs to their members. Ecosocialsts and some greens will stress the concept of a ‘just transition’ to a sustainable and peaceful future. This basically means retraining for these workers to make socially useful goods, like solar panels or wind turbines.       

The point of ecosocialism in the longer term, is not to try and make the capitalist system run better, but to replace the system altogether and start afresh with a new system. Indeed, ecology is the system's Achilles heel, since infinite economic growth is irrational, and therefore a threat to the central logic of capitalism, grow or die. Once this concept is grasped, the inevitable conclusion is, that capitalism is unsustainable. It needs to be replaced by ecosocialism.

Hammond Delivers Pothole Budget for the UK Economy

The £420 million for potholes that Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, announced at yesterday’s budget, was his best gag in the whole 71 minute budget statement to Parliament. The real jokes, by contrast, were painfully lame. But the pothole money is a neat metaphor for the UK economy, in that it is a patch up of the nation’s economic policy, meant to see the country through until next year’s spending review.

A perfect example is the extra £650 million for social care, which is to fill in the hole in this funding for this issue for the next twelve months, until it is sorted out permanently at some stage in the future. The government has promised a Green Paper on funding social care but it has yet to materialise, with an expected date of launch before the end of this year. Last year’s hole filler was to raise council tax, but this can’t really be repeated year on year. Big decisions are being put off.

There was some welcome news in extra, mainly future, funding for the NHS and the ending of new Private Finance Initiative deals for public sector contracts, but that’s about it.

Other fiscal measures in the budget only undo the damage caused by the government’s austerity agenda, like the extra funding for Universal Credit, roughly the amount cut from the scheme by George Osborne when he was Chancellor. Many Tory MPs had pressed for this, so Hammond was keeping them happy, whilst having a dig at Osborne.  

An increase in income tax personal allowances, worth only about £130 per year to basic rate taxpayers, probably less than £10 per month once National Insurance contributions are factored in. Higher rate payers will gain around £860 per year, less National Insurance contributions. More money for those who don’t really need it, and less for those who do, it is typical of this Tory government.

In total, 84% of the income tax cuts announced on Monday will go to the top half of the income distribution next year, rising to 89% by the end of the parliament.

But what of the end of austerity, that the Prime Minister, Theresa May announced at Tory party conference? Well, the budget falls way short of this. Funding for government departments will at best flat line, outside of health, so cuts to public services will continue largely unabated throughout 2019-20.

What Hammond did say was that ‘the end of austerity is in sight,’ but only if you have a telescope, as he said this will not be until 2024. Not even a case of jam tomorrow, but jam in five years time, perhaps, if Brexit doesn’t cause the UK economy to go into recession. That would mean fourteen years of austerity inflicted by the Coalition and full blown Tory governments. By which time public services if they exists at all will be basic and geographically variable.

So, austerity is set to continue, with only a slight softening of the impacts generally. The Tories know that the public is getting very weary of the austerity agenda, so their rhetoric hints at ending it, but their actions say otherwise. This is because austerity always was an ideological choice for the Tories, to cut the public realm and reduce the size of state to only minimum proportions.

There will need to be tax raised in the future to pay for adult social care, one way or another with a rising ageing population, but outside of health and care, all other services will continue to be cut, including a further £1.3 billion from local authority funding. Public sector employees will continue to get below inflation pay rises whereas high earners will continue to reward themselves often for failure and pay less tax on their increased incomes.

Of course, we may well be shut of this government before 2024. There needs to be a general election by 2022 at the latest, and the way things are going it might come a good deal earlier than that. It can’t come soon enough.

Ecosocialists Believe the Only Way to Stop Climate Change Is to Abandon Capitalism

Written by Kaleigh Rogers and first published at Motherboard

We earthlings have had to swallow some hard truths lately. The impending impacts of climate change, and just how far we are from meeting our goals to stop them, have been brought into crisp focus by not only major, intergovernmental reports but also the slew of dramatic weather events around the globe.

It can be easy to feel hopeless, like there’s nothing we can do to stop our species from obliterating the planet as we know it in less than a generation. But there’s one sect of people who think they have the answer and, if everyone would just get on board, could easily curb the effects of climate change. It’s called ecosocialism, and it’s exactly as radical as it sounds.

“Ecosocialism combines the ideas of ecology and socialism, meaning that you have a society without class divisions that lives in some kind of harmony or balance with nature,” Victor Wallis, author of Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism, told me in a phone interview . “You can’t make the decisions necessary for the health of the environment on the basis of profit calculations.”

Ecosocialism first began to spread in the 1980s alongside environmentalism, though some scholars argue that the roots of this movement trace back to Karl Marx’s theories. The concept is basically that environmental protection is incompatible with capitalism, and the best (or, some would argue, only) way to fight climate change is to move towards a socialist society. Capitalism is always going to be driven towards producing and consuming more and more, which is a big part of how we got in this pickle to begin with.

Though proponents of the movement have trouble detangling the two ideologies, the overlap may not be immediately apparent to everyone. After all, there are profits to be made from the fight against climate change: think of renewable energy or electric cars. These industries don’t exist out of some corporate altruism, they exist because they’re profitable. And they’re growing rapidly—in 2017, more than 500,000 new jobs in renewable energy were created around the world, bringing the total number of people employed in the sector to 10 million, and $335.5billion of new investments were made in the industry.

But ecosocialists argue even if some parts of capitalism can advance an environmental agenda, the rest of the market will still be working against it, and we’ll never get where we need to be.

“Unless you do away with capitalism, you’ll still have the other companies that are much more influential and bigger in scale, like oil companies,” Wallis said. “There is ultimately a clash in the wider scheme of things, even if you have one sector of a capitalist market that responds to people’s concerns about the environment.”

The other aspect of socialism that Wallis says meshes well with environmentalism is leveling the playing field. You may not like that your job at a coal mine contributes to climate change, but you still need to feed your family and pay your bills. If we could flatten out class structures so that was no longer a concern, more people would be able to participate in the changes we need to make.

But what does an ecosocialist society even look like? Do we all live in vertical farms together, sharing crops and riding bicycles to power our light bulbs? Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist, reporter, and ecosocialist, told me it doesn’t have to be that dramatic of a shift.

“It’s not going to require everyone giving up all their possessions and living on a farm for the rest of their lives,” Holthaus said in a phone interview.

Holthaus argues that we have the technology to rapidly switch to a world that runs on carbon-free energy, but that won’t happen in the current structure because it doesn’t benefit those already at the top. He pointed to the fact that studies have shown just 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. If we created a government willing to strictly regulate these companies, it would make a drastic impact and open the door to a clean energy future.

This all sounds peachy, but it also sounds impossible, especially under the current climate-change-denying administration in the US. It doesn’t seem likely that we could make such a massive global shift in enough time to slow down this runaway train of destruction. While Wallis largely agreed, quipping that even though it’s highly unlikely, it’s “our only option,” Holthaus was a little more optimistic.

“Think of 30 years ago: 1988 was a very different world,” he said. “The example I always go back to is gay marriage. At one point, it felt impossible. It felt like an issue we would never change. But with a lot of people working behind the scenes and very publicly for decades, the political world switched within just a few years.”

Holthaus thinks we can see similar switches with climate change, as more people become aware of the dire straits we’re all in and decide, y’know, we’d like to stay on this planet for awhile.

And it’s not just a fringe movement. The US Green Party has embraced ecosocialism as a core tenant of its platform since 2016. Democratic socialism has seen a surge in popularity this year, including the election of Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who ousted a 10-term incumbent for a congressional seat in New York this summer. The Democratic Socialists of America organization has also adopted the ecosocialism philosophy and has an ecosocialism working group.

It reaches beyond the US, as well. In the UK, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been an outspoken advocate of an ecosocialist approach to climate change.

Regardless of how tightly you subscribe to the notion of ecosocialism, both Holthaus and Wallis recommended getting out and getting active. Find like minded individuals, groups, and political parties, get organized, and start living in a way that will make this kind of transition easier. Though it may not be a panacea, at this stage in the game, I for one am happy to explore any idea that people believe will bring us back from the brink.

“I think it’s possible to have the world that we want and the world that we need to have,” Holthaus said. “I want to believe that that’s true.”

Does Anyone Believe a Word Theresa May Says?

It would be comical if the UK government and prime minister were not such a shambles at the moment, at this crucial stage for the country. As we approach what is probably the most critical period for Britain since the end of world war two, Theresa May appears to have no idea as to how to look after our interests, and to make matters worse, she seems to think she can just bluff her way through as the impending national crisis looms. She is making it up as she goes along.

It is now more than two years since May succeeded David Cameron as leader of the Tory party and prime minister. Cameron wasn’t a hard act to follow, as he whistled his way out of public life after setting in motion events that have led to this pass. Lazy, dripping with privilege and arrogance, it should have been easy to impress by comparison, but May has flunked it.

Yes, she was dealt a difficult hand with the result of the Brexit referendum, but she has played it all wrong, with a series of strategic mistakes. The country was crying out for someone to bring us together, but May just furthered the divide with her ill judged rhetoric and no discernible plan. She triggered Article 50 before she had decided even remotely how we will leave the European Union (EU).

May attacked the 16 million remain voters as ‘citizens of nowhere,’ insisted that 'no deal is better than a bad deal’ and failed to give guarantees to the 3 million EU nationals residing in the UK , that they would be allowed to stay here. Even Brexiters like Michael Gove said that giving such a guarantee would be ‘the decent thing to do'. No they were held as bargaining chips in the opening round of negotiations which inevitably led to a lack of goodwill on the part of the EU.

Then May called a snap general election, after previously ruling it out, pursued the hardest of Brexit language during the campaign, and promptly lost the Parliamentary majority that she had inherited from Cameron. To salvage something from the disaster May was forced into bribing the bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party to cling onto power by her finger tips. A series of bad calls, quite unprecedented in UK politics, to my memory.

But more than the incompetence it is her untrustworthiness which the most shocking aspect of May's reign. She began by saying that she would tackle the ‘burning injustices’ at play in the country, but is there even a shred of evidence from the last two years that she meant it? No.

May then took to prefacing anything she said publicly with ‘I have been clear…’ before going onto say something that is anything but clear. In December last year, she agreed to the EU’s back stop position on keeping the border open between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but seems to be breaking that commitment, saying it is unacceptable now.

Jean Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, revealed this week that May had been the one who suggested that we could stay in the transitional period for longer than planned after our formal Brexit. May denies this, but with her track record, I know who I believe.  

In 2009, May told her constituents in Maidenhead "we must say no to a third runway at Heathrow", but approved the expansion just after becoming prime minister. At about this time she called in the decision to go ahead with the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station, only to change her mind and give it the go-ahead.

Simon Wren-Lewis, a professor at Oxford University and a leading economist, strongly denied the prime minister's suggestion in Parliament on Wednesday, that he had said (in a chapter he wrote for a book, titled Economics for the Many) that the figures in Labour's last manifesto ‘did not add up’. The claim appeared to be ‘a deliberate lie told to gain political effect’, he said. The facts are easily checked, but May just can’t seem to stop herself from making things up.

May told the Tory party conference earlier this month, that austerity is over, but who has any confidence that is not just another fabrication?

We know that most politicians are a bit slippery, but when the prime minister tells blatant lies, it is no surprise that the public concludes that you can’t believe a word May says, and become disillusioned with our democratic system in general.  

I will leave you with Captain Ska's Liar, Liar.

Trans issues - a Gift for Conspiracy Theorists or Shutting Down Debate?

Written by Dee Searle

The recent tensions about proposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act - to allow people identifying as transgender to legally change their gender without medical diagnosis or other evidence - could (or maybe should) be a gift for conspiracy theorists.

Among the most prominent theories is that the proposals are the work of private medicine providers and pharmaceutical companies keen to cash in on the likely resulting increase in demand for gender reassignment surgery, drugs and other treatment. Another is that it’s a plot by the right to distract the left and liberals from effectively challenging the Government’s incompetence and all-round viciousness by occupying us with splits and hand-wringing about how to critique the proposed changes without appearing to be against trans rights.

Yet another is that the security forces (that’s right - those folks who infiltrated and had relationships with environmental activists in the 1990s) are manipulating young politicos to passionately promote a highly individualistic strand of identity politics, to take energy away from tackling climate crisis, loss of biodiversity, inequality, growing international instability and other bigger strategic issues. Or that the ‘trans extremists’ (as some commentators have dubbed them) are misogynists, keen to undermine the gains made by women in recent decades and reassert global male dominance

Whatever the underlying impetus, the upshot is that there has been precious little thoughtful, in-depth discussion on the left about the implications of the proposed new rules.

While there can be no denying that trans people deserve the right to live in peace and security in their desired sex or gender, it was intriguing that the trans lobby, as well as many of those campaigning for lesbians, gays and bisexuals, leapt so quickly to support the draft legislation and to attack as transphobic anyone who suggested that it would be good to look at the issues in more detail.

The response to even the mildest of Guardian editorials has been claims from trans people that they are being made to feel unsafe or that their very existence is being challenged, while ignoring the fact that anyone questioning the changes are denounced as TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) and subjected to violent threats on social media. 

The issue has caused almost as big a rift in the Green Party as allegations of anti-Semitism have in the Labour Party. Trans activists called the police to disperse a group of three middle-aged women outside the Green Party’s autumn conference who were attempting to give out leaflets providing a feminist perspective on the proposals. And Labour has not escaped entirely: trans lobbying resulted in Jeremy Corbyn declaring his support for the legal changes with the result (according to Labour Women for Women’s Rights) that women are leaving the party.

The government’s consultation has now closed, but several pertinent questions remain unanswered, such as:

What is the motivation?

It’s bizarre that a particularly right-wing Tory government, preoccupied with Brexit and the mess caused by some of its previous legislation, such as Universal Credit, would spend Parliamentary time on a minority rights issue. The consultation document and accompanying factsheets read as though they have been drafted by trans activists rather than lawyers or civil servants. The government doesn’t have a track record in doing the right thing. What are they seeking to gain from relaxing procedures to change gender identity?

What are the implications of self-certification for trans people?

At least one group of transsexuals has expressed ‘deep concern’ about the proposed weakening of controls on who can self-select their gender. Their concerns include the blurring of differences between transsexual and transgender people.

They state that transsexual is a “medically diagnosed condition from childhood. It involves acute stress from knowing that psychologically that person is of opposite sex to the physiology of their body. A transsexual person knows that you cannot change biological sex but extensive psychotherapy and medical assistance alter their body to match with the mind and live in harmony. 

A large majority have had surgical alteration.” Whereas a transgender person has “a desire to adopt the lifestyle of the opposite sex, full time or part time, often expressing this via clothing and makeup. The desire to have surgery or other medical treatments is much less common (some suggest as low as 10 per cent). Few wish to see doctors or be psychiatrically evaluated. Some transition back and forth.”

What are the implications for women’s protected spaces?

There has already been at least one case of a self-identified trans woman prisoner being transferred to a women’s prison (although she was still physically male) where she sexually assaulted two female prisoners.

People working with the homeless report having to deal with male rough sleepers who self-identify as women to gain access to women’s shelters. This is sometimes because women’s shelters tend to be nicer and safer, but could also be to gain access to vulnerable women. Even if it’s the former, many homeless women are fleeing violent men, so being confronted by a biological male in a supposedly women-only space is likely to be traumatic.

More broadly, self-identified trans women would be able to use female toilets and changing rooms, and to access facilities, such as youth clubs, gym and swimming sessions, reserved for women and girls. These sessions are often the only opportunity for women and girls from some religious and cultural backgrounds to participate. It’s highly likely that they would not be able to attend in the presence of of trans females who were physically male.

Where are the voices of female-to-male transgender people?

Almost all of the public support for self-identification has come from male-to-female transgender people but almost none from the female-to-male trans community. Is that because they understand the risks to women’s safe spaces, which they possibly have experience of?

What about male behaviour?

Trans activists claim to be the most persecuted of any minority in Britain. Given that these claims come from male-to-female trans people, presumably the persecution comes from men. Yet the proposed amendments to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act do nothing to address male violence or attitudes. If the activists were genuinely concerned about enabling trans people to live in their desired gender, safe from aggression or abuse, surely they should be more concerned about tackling the source of the problems. However, none of the trans lobby groups has actually mentioned male behaviour.

Regardless of the worth of the proposed amendments (and any possible underlying malign agenda), they have caused deep divisions in left-leaning political parties and campaign groups such as Stonewall. The real question is not whether transgender people should self identify (or whether Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic) but how can the (green) left build its confidence and develop a robust overarching political agenda, while being inclusive of (but not taken over by) special interest groups.

Unless we can do that, we will continue to be vulnerable to emotional pressure from the loudest voices, which saps energy from the challenging task of creating a fairer society that can live within the planet’s resources.

Dee Searle is a member of Camden Green Party and a Green Left Supporter