Politics

Today BBC News provided a platform for Lisa Daftari, an apologist for the Iranian military dictatorship which preceded the Islamic Republic.

In an interview on the BBC News channel today, Daftari sang the praises of the Shah of Iran’s regime. She argued that ‘millions’ had taken part in the current wave of unrest and demonstrations in Iran, and the majority of slogans at the demonstrations were in support of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former dictator.

The interviewer, Carl Nasman, allowed her to continue with her assertions unchallenged. Eventually he suggested the Pahlavi regime had not been democratic.

Daftari’s response was to describe the dictatorship of the Shah as ‘a utopia’ compared to the current regime. The utopia claim went unchallenged.

The facts about the Shah’s dictatorship are undisputed.

The self-titled Shah of Iran, came to power in a coup that overthrew a democratically elected regime.

The regime he overthrew nationalised Iranian oil assets, taking control from foreign oil companies.

The coup was actively backed by British and US intelligence services.

During the Shah’s dictatorship thousands of political opponents were routinely killed or tortured by his secret police, SAVAK.

SAVAK extensively monitored the activities of Iranian students and others living abroad, creating a climate of fear. Students and other Iranians living abroad were terrified they would be arrested and tortured or killed, when they returned home.

The facts show the Shah’s regime was one of the most brutal regimes of oppression.

Lisa Daftari has a strange idea of what utopia means.

And the BBC claims to report the facts without bias.

Today on BBC Radio 4 Alan Milburn was being interviewed. The host said he was a former Health Secretary in the Labour government, and was now working for a private health consultancy.

Well knock me down with a feather! #jobsfortheboys

A quick internet search reveals Wikipedia has him listed as a consultant to Price Waterhouse Coopers while holding another appointment at Bridgepoint Capital and all while being a member of the Healthcare Advisory Panel at Lloyds Pharmacy.

What a busy little bee he is.

On 8 July 2022 The Economist set out its explanation of why Georgia had been denied candidate status on the same day Ukraine and Moldova were granted their candidacy, on 23 June 2022.

The Economist explains the failure by uncritically repeating the EU’s explanation. But the EU’s real reasons are not necessarily the reasons they give for their actions.

In 2014 all three countries signed association agreements with the EU. The Economist omits to explain the difference between an ‘association agreement’ and ‘candidate status’ but they are essentially steps along the same path. The EU expects countries seeking membership to demonstrate a stable bourgeois democracy and also have a reasonably strong economy. If the applicant is deemed to meet their criteria they are granted candidate status. If not they draw up an association agreement setting out what changes the EU requires before they can become candidates.

Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine are former Soviet states and all three were subject to the same economic anarchy that enabled powerful individuals to seize the assets of the people at a tiny percentage of their true value. This was achieved primarily through the corruption of the government bureaucracies who were bribed or co-opted into the new capitalist entities that took over the state assets. In many cases the corruption was at arm’s length. The co-owners of the massive new enterprises were often the family members of the people who actually wielded the power.

The problem Georgia faced with it’s candidacy was its failure to ‘de-oligarchize’. This is a term used by the EU to stigmatise the obscenely rich individuals who own and control Georgia. They cite Bidzina Ivanishvili as an example of type of oligarch whose influence needs to be restricted. And like many oligarchs in the states of the former Soviet Union, he uses proxies to do his dirty work. The trouble with the EU’s concerns about oligarch power in Georgia is their failure to show the same concern about oligarch power in Ukraine and Moldova.

The Economist let’s slip the reason behind the EU’s selective blindness. ‘Russia’s relationship with Georgia will also be on the minds of EU leaders’ we are told. Of course it will.

The defeat of Trump at the election gave rise to a huge sigh of relief from the mass media. There were displays of triumphalism across the USA, most famously in central New York City with his opponents celebrating in the streets. Trump’s decision to challenge validity of some of the voting procedures is portrayed as vainglorious peevishness by sections of the press.

The spectre hanging over this election, however, is the huge number of people who voted for a second term of Trump presidency. For the Democrats and their supporters in the media the question is: why did so many voters choose not to support Joe Biden?

Trump could not have made a Democrat victory easier for them if he had tried. By siding with the anti-maskers and the Covid-deniers and failing to take drastic steps to control the spread of Covid-19, he virtually handed the election to them. And yet the walkover that was predicted for the Democrats did not materialise.

The outgoing President has announced he will challenge many of the votes in court. The media are spitting feathers at the prospect of a judicial challenge to the electoral process. This is despite the fact that Trump’s opponents spent years trying to overturn Trump’s election, through the Mueller enquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election and into alleged collusion, and through an attempted impeachment of the President.

The legal process is invoked by losing Presidential candidates as a matter of routine in American elections. In this case, however, the media announce that it is unreasonable for Trump to invoke his rights under the law.

Trump has been written off as a crank, a madman and a fool. But that analysis also assumes over 70 million US voters chose a crank, a madman and a fool to run their country for the next four years.

I have more confidence in the American working class than that.

It is closer to the truth to say that millions of American workers have absolutely no faith in the Democrats to carry out policies that are in the interests of working people. And they are right to be suspicious.

Within the Democrat Party the right wing have already declared their intention to ditch some of the policies which helped them attract some working class support. They effectively put an end to the bid of Bernie Sanders to offer a moderately social-democratic programme to the voters. Instead they chose to put forward a long-standing supporter of Wall Street, big finance and crony capitalism. They assumed that any candidate, no matter how tainted by their connection with financial capital, would be enough to defeat Trump.

The question for the American working class, and for socialists everywhere, is to create an alternative party committed to promoting the interests of the working class. The economic crisis faced by world capitalism has not gone away during the pandemic. In fact it has been exacerbated by the creation of billions of dollars, pounds and Euros of fictional capital. This growing credit mountain can only intensify the struggle between the working class and finance capital for the real wealth created by the labour of the working class. The ruling class will be driven by economic necessity to make deeper and more savage attacks on the living standards and welfare of working people.

The working class need their own party, their own leadership, and their own policies, because a programme that defends the rights and living conditions of working people will come into uncompromising conflict with the needs of the ruling class.

Ayesha Hazarika’s advice in her Evening Standard column echoes what many political commentators have suggested.

From their point of view neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Boris Johnson are suitable prime ministers. But one of them is going to win, so you have to choose the one you least dislike.

I am not convinced.

For nearly forty years I abstained in every election because I did not think it made a difference. When New Labour was born, I felt my abstention had been vindicated. Here was a leader, Tony Blair, who was so similar to the Tories you could not separated them with a cigarette paper.

But then came theEU referendum. I was back. Here was a vote in which my vote counted. I could make a difference. The choice was simple – Leave or Remain – and whichever side won, their decision would be implemented. So I voted to Leave.

How naive I seem now.I was wrong. The most basic student of Marxism could have told me why. There is a reason why they call it the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They don’t need jackboots and detention camps to exercise their power. They do not need to scrap parliament and dismantle the facade of democratic control. When you hold all the levers of power, the facde of a democratic referendum is an obstacle you can overcome.

So the machine rolled into action. For three years we heard an almost constant refrain of how we had got it wrong. First we were stupid or ignorant. Initially they reassured us they would still respect our decision. Every political discussion started with “Of course we respect the result of the referendum, but…” In the immediate aftermath of the biggest democratic kicking the ruling class have received since the 1945 election, it could have provoked a revolution (what they like to refer to as civil disorder) if they had simply slapped the working class electorate in the face at that point.

So they do what they know best. Kick it into the long grass. Delay. Shilly-shally. Drag it out in the hope the public would lose interest. And start the high-powered propaganda campaign to overturn the result.

The first prong of the attack was that we did not know what we voted for. Hard Brexit? Soft Brexit? But our self-appointed leaders of public opinion would sort it out for us. Every variation of Brexit was discussed, with a constant refrain in the background saying – see, it is more complicated than you thought.

After a year or so they moved to stage two of the campaign – the call for a ‘second referendum’. Of course that would be complicated too. We would need a three-way vote. Remain, Leave outright or accept some compromise deal. Keeping Leave on the ballot paper was a reluctant concession. But they still lacked the confidence to declare their intention to ignore our vote.

Finally after a three year war of attrition, the second referendum or People’s Vote morphed into a confirmatory referendum. The difference between the terminology is important. The crucial difference between a second referendum and a confirmatory vote is the disappearance of the Just Leave option. A confirmatory vote is a choice between staying in the EU and whatever deal the government of the day has negotiated. The option to Leave outright has just been dropped. Maybe they thought we would not notice.

This ‘confirmatory referendum’ was originally mooted when the deal on offer was Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement a deal which was almost universally rejected. So a confirmatory referendum at that point seemed an easy win for the ruling class’s preferred option – Remain. This has been complicated somewhat by the new Tory PM’s deal, which has a better chance of winning in a second vote.

The general election has been presented as a kind of second referendum. Giving the Tories a majority makes the Boris deal a shoe-in. Giving Labour a majority makes a confirmatory vote a shoe-in. And Labour have volunteered to load the dice even more heavily in favour of Remain by saying they will renegotiate a withdrawal agreement which will so closely resemble the Remain option as to make voting for it an almost pointless exercise.

But framing the general election as a second referendum is complicated. A general election is never a single issue decision – it cannot simply be about Brexit. The election also determines the economic and social policy of the next government. That is why Ms Hazarika and others want us to hold our noses and vote Labour.

They want both left wing Leave voters and left wing Corbyn haters to vote Labour – a Remain party in all but name – to keep out the Tories.

My answer to Hazarika and Co. is this. I came out of political abstentionism to participate in this farce. And Leave won. If your party cannot implement that decision then your party does not deserve my vote.

I am not going to ‘hold my nose’ and vote for a party that stinks. I would rather not vote than give my support to a political process that demonstrates its contempt for the democratic decision of the working class.

I have been looking at several left-wing websites, hoping to find a rationale for the position I have decided to take. And I do not see it.

They all want me to vote Labour. Some say put them in power to demonstrate to the working class they are not truly socialist. The argument goes that Corbyn and McDonnell will talk the good fight, claiming to be radical socialists, until they are put on the spot. Others seem to be taken in by the left-wing credentials of Corbyn, and see him as a genuine left-wing alternative to the status quo. And others, more desperately, cling to the argument that failing to vote for Corbyn is tantamount to voting for another 5 years of Tory austerity.

I am sorry, but I do not buy it.

Maybe I overestimate the working class. But if the last 3 years have achieved anything, it is to focus our minds on the contrast between what we vote for and what we get.

We can vote to Leave the EU. But what we get is a concerted campaign to overturn that decision. And the leadership of the Labour party has been complicit in that betrayal. Not just Starmer and Watson and Thornberry, but Corbyn too. And his erstwhile partner in arms, McDonnell, has made the most enthusiastic volte face of all.

If Corbyn was a principled socialist, he would have stuck to his guns and argued openly for the Labour Party to campaign against the EU. Like the parliamentary manoeuvrer he is, Corbyn weighed up the pros and cons of sticking to his principles, and decided he should jettison them. He chose to curry favour with the anti-Brexit membership of his party. Campaigning against them would have jeopardised his position as leader. So he went with the flow.

My first instinct, when the election was announced, was to abstain. There is no party standing which represents my position. So there is no party that gets my vote.

I think this is a position which is shared by millions of workers across the country. We want to support a party that would implement the type of policies the Labour Party claims to support. But we do not trust Corbyn to put those policies into practice.

If, after decades of anti-EU activism, he caves under the pressure of the last three years, what hope is there that he will implement genuine anti-capitalist policies?

So I will abstain.

Until there is a party in which I can place my trust, nobody gets my vote.

I was in Wales at the weekend where I saw a Sunday morning political programme. All 8 of the parties putting up candidates for the EU elections were represented.

I was struck by how blatantly anti-Brexit Jackie Jones (the Labour Party representative) was.

She told the presenter voters who wanted to remain in the EU should vote Labour. She was challenged – the Labour Party manifesto was not explicitly pro-Remain – and she answered defiantly she had always been a Remainer and all four Labour candidates in Wales had come out in favour of a second referendum.

I noted Ms Jones prefers to use the term ‘Final Say’ instead of second referendum. The subtle difference is that a ‘final say’ is about accepting or rejecting the government’s deal with the EU. It excludes the possibility of having on the ballot paper an option to Leave the EU without accepting the government deal.

Back in England later the same day I heard the Labour Party Shadow Health Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, say to Andrew Marr …

“This is a two horse race now between the Labour Party and the Brexit Party. The Liberals or the Change Party are not going to stop Nigel Farage’s party in the election… Only the Labour Party can stop Nigel Farage.”.

The message here was plain. The ugly phrase ‘dog-whistle politics’ comes to mind – if you do not have the courage to say what you mean, imply it and let those who share your views draw their own conclusions. Jonathan Ashworth was explicit enough for the deafest of dogs to get the message – name two explicitly Remain parties and tell people who are thinking of voting for them they should support the Labour Party. What conclusion should they draw? The Labour Party is anti-Brexit.

There is a clear message here to the working class – the Labour Party does not represent the millions of workers who voted to leave the pro-big business, pro-capitalist free market economic system represented by the EU.

The prospect of a Brexit Party landslide is worrying the existing parties. But the support for the Brexit Party does not represent support for the kind of right-wing policies Nigel Farage favours.

The British working class is educated enough to understand you can vote Brexit Party to send a message to the powers-that-be – we said Leave in June 2016, and we meant Leave. We know this is not a General Election and we are not voting for the party that will decide economic and social policy in the UK for the next five years. We are electing representatives to a body that has no effective power whatsoever. So we can use this vote to express our anger at Parliament’s refusal to implement the referendum result.

On May 23rd millions of socialist-minded working-class voters will be casting their vote for the Brexit Party. Farage may interpret a big vote as support for the Brexit Party. In fact it is the only electoral way to express anger at the decision of the main political groups to overturn the Leave decision.

If there was a Labour Party, or another socialist party, explicitly supporting Leave, I have no doubt they would get massive support. But Labour’s weasel-worded prevarication on the issue, trying to be all things to all people, fools nobody. It definitely does not fool the politically sophisticated working class voters.

Labour claims that their solution (staying in a permanent Customs Union) delivers Brexit. That is simply not true.

I was in Wales at the weekend where I saw a Sunday morning political programme. All 8 of the parties putting up candidates for the EU elections were represented.

I was struck by how blatantly anti-Brexit Jackie Jones (the Labour Party representative) was.

She told the presenter, in no uncertain terms, that voters who wanted to remain in the EU should vote Labour. She was challenged – the Labour Party manifesto was not explicitly pro-Remain – and she answered defiantly she had always been a Remainer and all four Labour candidates in Wales had come out in favour of a second referendum.

Ms Jones prefers to use the term ‘Final Say’ instead of second referendum. The subtle difference is that a ‘final say’ is about accepting or rejecting the government’s deal with the EU. It excludes the possibility of having on the ballot paper an option to Leave the EU without accepting the government deal.

Back in England later the same day I heard the Labour Party Shadow Health Secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, say to Andrew Marr …

“This is a two horse race now between the Labour Party and the Brexit Party. The Liberals or the Change Party are not going to stop Nigel Farage’s party in the election… Only the Labour Party can stop Nigel Farage.”

The message here was plain. The ugly phrase ‘dog-whistle politics’ comes to mind – if you do not have the courage to say what you mean explicitly, imply it and let those who share your views draw their own conclusions. And Jonathan Ashworth was explicit enough for the deafest of dogs to get the message – name two explicitly Remain parties, then tell people who are thinking of voting for them they should support the Labour Party. What conclusion should they draw? That the Labour Party is anti-Brexit.

There is a clear message here to the working class – the Labour Party does not represent the millions of workers who voted to leave the pro-big business, pro-capitalist free market economic system represented by the EU.

The prospect of a Brexit Party landslide is worrying the existing parties. But the support for the Brexit Party does not represent support for the kind of right-wing policies Nigel Farage favours.

The British working class is educated enough to understand you can vote Brexit Party to send a message to the powers that be – we said Leave in June 2016, and we meant it. We know this is not a General Election and we are not voting for the party that will decide economic and social policy in the UK for the next five years. We are electing representatives to a body that has no effective power whatsoever.

On May 23rd millions of working-class socialist-minded voters will be casting their vote for the Brexit Party. Farage may interpret a big vote as support for the Brexit Party. In fact it is the only electoral way to express anger at the decision of the main political groups to overturn the Leave decision.

If there was a Labour Party, or another socialist party, explicitly supporting Leave, they would get massive support. But Labour’s weasel-worded prevarication on the issue, trying to be all things to all people, fools nobody. It definitely does not fool the politically sophisticated working class voters. Labour claims that their solution (staying in a permanent Customs Union) delivers Brexit. That is simply not true.