Solidarity 525, 20 November 2019

The parties at the bosses’ conference

On Monday 18 November the Tory, Labour, and Lib Dem leaders all spoke at the conference of the Confederation of British Industry, the main bosses’ organisation. Jo Swinson of the Lib Dems got the warmest applause. The Lib Dems, with their new ultra-neo-liberal pledge always to run a government budget surplus, are pitching to be considered the full-on party of big business. According to the Financial Times , “many admitted, sometimes grudgingly, that the Conservatives would still probably get their vote”. Boris Johnson’s policy of “taking the UK out of the EU as soon as possible... remains...

Where are the manifestos?

Labour’s manifesto is due to be published on 21 November, almost halfway through the election campaign which started on 6 November and will end on 12 December. The Tories will publish their manifesto around the end of November, more like two-thirds of the way through the campaign. The Lib Dems, too, have not published their manifesto yet. From all reports, the delay is not because of last-minute wrangling, but a deliberate ploy. It seems common sense that parties should publish their manifestos at the start of the election campaign. The manifestos should be crisp summaries of what the parties...

Trump pushes against Palestinian rights

Donald Trump’s US administration moved a step nearer pushing a “one-state” solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict on Monday 18 November. Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the USA no longer considers the Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. Partly under US pressure, Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza in 2005, and in Sinai in 1982. Pompeo’s announcement green-lights the next Israeli government — when it’s formed — formally to annex to Israel all or most of “Area C”, the over-60% of the West Bank including the settlements and the Israeli road system...

Yes to publicly-owned free broadband!

Labour’s policy on part-nationalising BT (its infrastructure arm Openreach, and a few other sections) has pushed a long-held union policy written by the left in the Communication Workers Union into the limelight. The union has in fact been pushing for the full renationalisation of BT. Even though there could have been much more of a genuine collaboration by Labour with the union, and the detail published so far does not go far enough, this policy is both radical and interesting. All over the world governments are pushing for the replacement of copper wiring in “The Last Mile” of phone...

Tell McCluskey: solidarity, not borders!

Len McCluskey’s intervention in the debate over freedom of movement is aiding the Tories, and promoting myths about immigration that the trade union movement should be dismantling. On 13 November McCluskey [general secretary of the Unite trade union] criticised the policy voted for at Labour Party conference, of defending and extending freedom of movement for all migrants. McCluskey said “It’s wrong in my view to have any greater free movement of labour unless you get stricter labour market regulation.” What does stricter labour market regulation mean? If McCluskey means more rights for trade...

Labour dumps Kashmir policy

Labour chair Ian Lavery has written a letter to Indian-background voters in the UK saying that “Labour is opposed to external interference in the political affairs of any other country”. Lavery does nod towards the right of the Kashmiri people “to have a say in their own future”, but insists that “Kashmir is a bilateral matter for India and Pakistan to resolve together”. “Labour will not take a pro-Indian or pro-Pakistan stance on Kashmir”. Lavery’s statement is a mass of evasions — denouncing “external interference” in such a way as to rule out international solidarity, and dismissing the...

Liberals out Tory the Tories

The Lib Dems have proposed rules mandating a 1% surplus on current spending – meaning the day-to-day costs of public services would have to be lower than the amount raised in taxes. This is quite something. It is not done even by “fiscally conservative” governments elsewhere. It is more draconian than the approach taken by George Osborne when he was chancellor, suggesting Lib Dem support for even deeper austerity. And in fact when he announced the budget surplus policy, Lib Dem deputy leader Ed Davey condemned not only Labour’s but the Tories’ plans public spending plans as making “Santa Claus...

Facts and figures of the election

The Tories have condemned Labour’s plans as “eye-watering”, “wild”, “reckless”, “unaffordable” and set to “bankrupt the country”, with much of the press singing in tune. Just after Labour’s 2017 election manifesto came out, Solidarity estimated that its proposals would “take some tens of billions of pounds — John McDonnell estimates £50-odd billion — out of the £1,000 billion a year which currently goes to the rich and the very well-off, or to enterprises under their control”. The 2019 manifesto isn’t out until Thursday 21 November, but the indications are it will be a similar document to 2017...

Right wing on the rampage in Bolivia

After two weeks of protests Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, in power for the last 14 years, has been forced by the armed forces to resign his post. The unrest was a result of accusations of electoral fraud in Morales’s latest election (October 2019), as well as the Supreme Court (November 2017) overruling the referendum result which denied Morales the right to run for his fourth re-election. There has been some controversy on whether the last presidential election was in fact rigged. Following the accusation, Morales himself asked the Organisation of American States (OAS) to...

Hong Kong: the crackdown and the future

The conflict in Hong Kong has further escalated and has reached a critical point as I write on 19 November. The escalation began last week with the first casualty of the protest, a university student falling fatally from a multi-story car park in a conflict zone. Since then, policeman have fired live rounds seriously injuring a number of protesters, a man was doused in petrol and set alight by protesters, a pro-Beijing legislator was stabbed, a pro-democracy legislator had his ear bitten off, and there have been many other individual violent acts. A woman has launched a legal case after being...

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