No time this morning for links (other than my own), but here goes my initial take on the British elections this week:
First, I think there has been a failure of the entire pundit class in corporate media and the BBC. The belief for the past three years was that Remain was far stronger than Leave. If that was true, then Jo Swinson and the LibDems should have vastly outperformed expectations and Corbyn only winning a right to form a coalition with the LibDems and perhaps the SNP and other parties. Instead, Leave won big. This also means Corbyn’s attempted strategy of trying to find a compromise was correct, but the corporate and BBC media failed him by presenting Corbyn as a ditherer. One thing I find most Anglo-American voters do not want is a ditherer. They want resoluteness. The Conservative message, built on a lie, as usual, was still one of resoluteness. “We’ll get Brexit done!", without saying just what that "done" in fact is. The Blairites, and their many friends in the British corporate media (I definitely include the Manchester Guardian here) and the BBC have no basis to say anything against Corbyn, and in fact bear most of the blame for undermining their party’s leadership. Their elitist oriented Remain arguments and attacks on Corbyn sure didn’t help Jo Swinson and the LibDems–again–and Swinson lost as did the Blairites who defected from Labour to run as LibDems.
I also underestimated myself, here in the States, how much differently Corbyn is viewed in the UK compared to Sanders in the US. Sanders remains the most popular politician in the US, and it is Sanders' resoluteness and his consistency which gives people here a positive feeling about him. Corbyn was made into a pariah (the Guardian this morning showed Corbyn had lost 55% of his popularity in ratings and was essentially in negative territory), and, as Corbyn attempted to hold Remain and Leave voters together, again with the constant attacks in media in the UK, it seems those attacks had their effect. The ridiculous attacks on Corbyn as an anti-Semite, when the number of anti-Semites in the Labour Party is no greater than the Conservative Party, and where Corbyn himself is one who is not at all anti-Semitic in any way, had their effect, but somehow one wonders, Did more well off Jews in Great Britain simply vote for the Conservative Party and bypass the LibDems, too? If so, there should be a lot of soul searching around British shuls tonight and tomorrow. If anyone thinks Boris Johnson would come to "the" Jews' rescue if the anti-Muslim fervor and anti-cosmopolitan fervor develops, those people have no understanding of Conservative Party "principles" over the past 100 years, when British working people first tasted their rights to vote. Fascism is the language capitalists use to maintain power over the people they still consider serfs.
As I initially see things, there are two ironies in this election: First, the voters who jumped on board with the Conservative Party in those coal mining and other towns just jumped on board with the very people who did them in 30 years ago under Thatcher. And the Conservatives have not changed in their hostility to worker unions, hostility to the entire Beveridge project and hostility to the NHS. This leads to the second irony, which makes this a Twilight Zone election, meaning voters strongly demanded something, have now gotten it, and will one day realize they will not get happiness, but what they “deserve,” which is disaster. Getting Brexit “done” will mean more economic ruin and the undermining of the NHS, especially in those more rural areas in Wales and Midlands and the coal and other mining areas. The Fascist International is definitely on the rise, and the Weimar Republic politicians in the US and UK have been, as in the 1920s and early 1930s, the handmaidens for fascism, preaching “moderation” at a time of pain and recrimination on the part of voters who feel betrayed and left behind.
One query exists in my mind, however: Where was the youth vote? And, were the lines for older Brits who came out in force, feeling their whole way of life was under attack, and lured by the siren song of the Conservatives? Did the youth simply stay home, thinking they were outnumbered? These are important questions for the US, as the youth would be making a grave error to stay home in 2020. I have said we can expect Trump to win 60% or more of the aging white vote, and that there will be a 70% and possibly 80% turnout of aging white voters. They are mobilized by right wing media and they are enthusiastic in their fears, hatreds, and clinging to old ideas based upon white supremacy. If the Democrats want to win in 2020, it will not be through "moderation." It will be through resoluteness and exciting the Democratic Party's natural bases, starting with youth and people of color. People of color have shown in polling data they are not looking for superficial skin color, but people who are--that word again--resolutely on their side. There is reason to believe trade will be included in Trump's "triumph" arguments and Dems would be wise to let Sanders continue to stand foursquare against the past trade deals, and push for his vision on international trade, a vision that begins with American workers' interests. It has deeply concerned me how the elite classes and the US corporate media would rather risk Trump's re-election through the Electoral College than stand with the sanity that is Sanders. Sanders is right to remain resolute. Sanders is right to remain critical of corporate media. Sanders is right to push his candidacy through social media.
In closing, anyone who thinks more "moderation" on the part of Labour would have won the elections this week have missed the point and moment entirely. This is far less a repudiation of Corbyn and the Labourites than a repudiation of the elites and, instead, an embrace of fascism, which of course is just the elite wolves in sheep's clothing.
UPDATE December 15, 2019: I have been told, but have not confirmed in a published account, the number of Labour and LibDems votes exceeded Conservative votes. However, that did not reflect the number of seats won because the UK suffers even more from the start demographics between rural and urban/suburban districts than the US. There are many districts scattered throughout Great Britain, particularly in Wales and England proper, where a relatively few voters can have their votes count far more than the multitudes in London and other larger cities. This, however, is not an argument against my analysis, but favors it. It means, again, Corbyn was correct to pursue a softer and reasonable approach to Brexit, and proves the near uniform negative attacks on Corbyn in corporate/BBC media made Corbyn look weak--a fatal arrow right through the heart of Corbyn's personality over his long career, where he often would stand alone and be fearless. This article also provides a voter breakdown which should prove, to anyone acting in good faith, that the "third way," "centrist," "Blairite," etc. would have done better is as wrong as ever. The third way, etc. candidates fared worse across the board. Again, the corporate media/BBC failure was overstating the Remain vote throughout Great Britain, without analyzing the issue district by district. The failure is regarding political strategy, since many in the elite cannot be happy with Johnson's victory. This failure to comprehend the correctness of Corbyn's political strategy led to overconfidence and the belief among the British economic elites that attacking Corbyn would lead to a great surge for the LibDems. There is no showing our nation's corporate media and economic elite will learn any lessons from the historic defeat for Labour in this past week's elections in Great Britain.
I should also say, without modesty, that Bernard Porter, a very intelligent British historian, agrees with the essence of my analysis. See his blog post from the other day, and his reply in the comments to my comment, which was written before my own blog post on this subject. Porter remains my favorite commentator, and it is telling he is only at a blog, not in, say, The Guardian. Here are other posts from him these past couple of days, all well worth reading. He and I appear to agree about the loss of a reasoned discourse, even among elites, and we were both outraged at the anti-Semitism charge against Corbyn, especially as his mother taught him the importance of both anti-fascist politics and protecting Jewish people from fascist bullies and institutions, a favorite sport of Europeans for nearly two millennia.
UPDATE #2: Here is a fairly detailed set of polling data and analysis, which, to me, showed why the attacks on Corbyn for dithering on Brexit proved decisive in undermining Labour's unity, and favored the Conservatives.
UPDATE #3: David Graeber, who lives in Great Britain and is a respected social anthropologist, writes in the New York Review of Books about the election debacle and comes to essentially the same conclusions I did in my first reaction. Nice to see Graeber, an astute mind, seeing what I saw. :)
UPDATE December 15, 2019: I have been told, but have not confirmed in a published account, the number of Labour and LibDems votes exceeded Conservative votes. However, that did not reflect the number of seats won because the UK suffers even more from the start demographics between rural and urban/suburban districts than the US. There are many districts scattered throughout Great Britain, particularly in Wales and England proper, where a relatively few voters can have their votes count far more than the multitudes in London and other larger cities. This, however, is not an argument against my analysis, but favors it. It means, again, Corbyn was correct to pursue a softer and reasonable approach to Brexit, and proves the near uniform negative attacks on Corbyn in corporate/BBC media made Corbyn look weak--a fatal arrow right through the heart of Corbyn's personality over his long career, where he often would stand alone and be fearless. This article also provides a voter breakdown which should prove, to anyone acting in good faith, that the "third way," "centrist," "Blairite," etc. would have done better is as wrong as ever. The third way, etc. candidates fared worse across the board. Again, the corporate media/BBC failure was overstating the Remain vote throughout Great Britain, without analyzing the issue district by district. The failure is regarding political strategy, since many in the elite cannot be happy with Johnson's victory. This failure to comprehend the correctness of Corbyn's political strategy led to overconfidence and the belief among the British economic elites that attacking Corbyn would lead to a great surge for the LibDems. There is no showing our nation's corporate media and economic elite will learn any lessons from the historic defeat for Labour in this past week's elections in Great Britain.
I should also say, without modesty, that Bernard Porter, a very intelligent British historian, agrees with the essence of my analysis. See his blog post from the other day, and his reply in the comments to my comment, which was written before my own blog post on this subject. Porter remains my favorite commentator, and it is telling he is only at a blog, not in, say, The Guardian. Here are other posts from him these past couple of days, all well worth reading. He and I appear to agree about the loss of a reasoned discourse, even among elites, and we were both outraged at the anti-Semitism charge against Corbyn, especially as his mother taught him the importance of both anti-fascist politics and protecting Jewish people from fascist bullies and institutions, a favorite sport of Europeans for nearly two millennia.
UPDATE #2: Here is a fairly detailed set of polling data and analysis, which, to me, showed why the attacks on Corbyn for dithering on Brexit proved decisive in undermining Labour's unity, and favored the Conservatives.
UPDATE #3: David Graeber, who lives in Great Britain and is a respected social anthropologist, writes in the New York Review of Books about the election debacle and comes to essentially the same conclusions I did in my first reaction. Nice to see Graeber, an astute mind, seeing what I saw. :)
